Seattle got a new public library this week, and it looks awesome. Not that I need more excuses to go to Seattle, but the next time I am visiting friends there, I will have to go.

Or should that be “in tha hizzouse”? Either way, here are some new photos of Kitty. She’s grown a bit since we first got her, but she still just as cute. And, yes, that is poop in the fourth one:

One thing we have learned is that we got some false advertising: she be stanky. It’s not overwhelming most of the time, but there is a distinctive odor. We’re not talking ferrets, or even rotten compost, but the people who say they don’t smell too bad were trying to sell hedgehogs, I think.

There is a possibility the odor has something to do with our choice of bedding for her, but her cage is a lot easier to clean since we switch from fluffy paper junk to Velux (think cheap hotel blanket), so there is a trade-off. We are headed to San Francisco to visit my brother this weekend, and for the benefit of our hogsitter we are going to switch back to fluffy paper junk, so this could be a good comparison test.

Or it could just shorten our list of potential hogsitters for the future.

My friend Dave Taylor and I did a little work-trade this week. He was doodling some cool flamingoes a while back (he’s all Miami like that), and I liked them. We struck a deal, and DT got us some 10-inch-square panels and we up and painted them. It was good fun.

I really like the concept of work trades, as an artist. I think buying and selling art is a complicated thing for me to internalize because I make stuff because I really enjoy doing it. But trading one painting for another makes perfect sense. Prints make even more sense because of their multiple nature. I love the smell of a print shop at 2 in the morning. It smells like… chemicals.