In which it's been an interesting few weeks

Je suis tired, my dears. February has been a thorny month, spiky with challenges and not a great deal of time for replenishing. (So much for winter being a fallow time when you can just hibernate and wait for spring.) It's been a testing time, where just when I think I have a handle on something, something entirely different taps me on the shoulder. Of course, if you were to read my horoscope for this month, you'd think I was dancing with unicorns in a meadow made of marshmallows. (And if you have my dancing unicorn, give it BACK already.)

Anyway, enough whingeing. There have been loads of good things as well, starting with the fact that dear Mama didn't have to have surgery on her broken leg and is mending nicely. And here are a few other things that have made me smile during February:

*Johnny Weir. I ADORE him. I have enjoyed watching him skate for ages now, and at a time when the athletic envelope keeps getting pushed and some skaters seem like tidy little automatons churning out quads, Johnny is unabashedly, gloriously himself. He's also a terribly gracious tweeter. Twitterer? (I am quite smitten with his show on Sundance--"Be Good, Johnny Weir". Of course, the downside is that I now spontaneously erupt in a Russian accent for no good reason. It amuses me to no end, but if I lived with me, I'd be getting pretty tired of it.) If you haven't seen his exhibition skate to "Poker Face", oh dear me, you have missed out. Enjoy!

*Unlike the "Poker Face" clip--which I watch a few times a week--I've only seen this one once, but I defy you to watch it without saying out loud, "The HELL?" Because you really have no frame of reference for surreal until you've seen My Little Ponies doing a duet of "Defying Gravity". The "Wicked" bit starts halfway through.

*The 20 Questions interview I did over at All the World's Our Page, a writing blog kept by Kristen Callihan, Claire Gregory, Jennifer Hendren, and Rachel Walsh. I was so pleased to be invited to participate, and the questions were great fun--including some speculation on whether Robert Downey Jr.'s Holmes could take Brisbane in a fight...

*Being asked by a writer whose work I LOVE to blurb her next book. This thrills me to bits because, selfishly, I get to read her next book months before it hits the shelves. And secondly, her editor told me this author is a fan of mine, which is so hard for me to wrap my head around, I wonder if this is what it feels like to drop acid. I mean, honestly. This is someone whose books I read when I was aspiring, DYING, to be published. And she is very graciously behaving as if I'm doing her a favor. It's a strange world, people. A very strange world.

So, share the joy, duckies. What good things have happened to YOU this week?