Okay. So I recognize that in the light of everything going on, this is a very trivial question, but it rocked my world today. I was trying to tell Rob this convoluted story about Norwescon and Easter. During the course of which, I said, “And I got to tell one of my favorite bad jokes. ‘Why does the Easter Bunny hide his eggs?’”

“Is the Easter Bunny a boy?”

I stared at him goggle-eyed. “Peter Cottontail?”

He shrugged and shook his head. At this point the joke was totally blown. We spent the next five minutes with me trying to supply evidence that the Easter Bunny is, in fact, male. He insists that he always thought the Bunny was girl.

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One of the chores to do before we move is to clean out the basement. This is my workshop, so I have ridiculous quantities of puppet making supplies down there. I haven’t had to be selective in years and now, suddenly, I do. I’m sorting things into the categories Take, Store, Give Away. My thought is that when I get the Take and Store stuff out of the basement, that I’ll send out an email to all my puppeteer and otherwise crafty friends inviting them to a party. Sure, we’ll have food, but everyone who comes will be expected to take something from the Give Away category. The rest of it will go on Free Cycle.

I’ve got to say, this is fairly overwhelming. I mean, I’ve got a giant Cyclops head in the basement. Do I keep that? Give it away? It’s huge! And what about the mailman’s uniform? Or the bag of plaster? Heck, what about the life-size mold of a Clydesdale’s head? Oh, and then there’s the box of spare parts for the Audrey II puppet that I’ll probably never see again. Choices, choices, choices…

Good heavens. Go check out The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death.

Dollhouses as crime scenes. We were just tipped off to a remarkable book, the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death. It tells the story of Frances Glessner Lee (1878–1962), who was barred from attending medical school becuase she was a woman, but went on, nevertheless, to become a pioneer in the field of scientific crime detection and to later build these miniature crime scenes…