AEJ and I flew to Florida last week to deal with a horrible family scare. I couldn’t have made it through without AEJ. Fortunately, everything is fine now.

For a cheery change of pace from the usual photos of Loki, here’s a picture of my mom’s dog, Molly.

Here’s one of my mom’s cats, Needles. A much sweeter cat than Loki, I’ll admit. Not as fun, but sweeter.

This is one of her other cats, Beverly. This cat is a bitch. She’s all, “meow, meow, pet me, meow” (not unlike Henrietta Pussycat), but when you pet her, she bites you. Somehow, my mom loves her.

In other happy news… I discovered a new recording artist recently called MIKA, a British pop singer who may or may not be known much in the US. (I’m totally out of the loop when it comes to pop music, which, for the most part, makes me gag.) MIKA’s stuff is like Queen plus Scissor Sisters plus ELO. It has that retro sound that somehow feels completely current. And man alive, it is CATCHY. The album (iTunes link) is “Life in Cartoon Motion.” Check out “Grace Kelly” (could totally be a Queen song — he even mentions Freddie, presumably Freddie Mercury), “My Interpretation,” “Billy Brown” (another very Queen song), and “Stuck in the Middle.” If you’re a fan of Queen’s “Fat Bottom Girls,” check out MIKA’s “Big Girl (You Are Beautiful).” The entire album is only $7.99 on iTunes, and I recommend the whole thing (only one song is kind of a dud — out of 14 tracks). If nothing else, if you like Scissor Sisters, Queen, ELO, or Elton John, you should check out the iTunes previews.

In the happiest news of all, word is that our friend Jonathan Newman and his wife, Melissa, have had a baby (with Melissa doing considerably more work than Newman), and everybody is doing great. Congratulations!!!

I have a picture of the baby (who, admittedly, is even cuter than a cat), but I don’t want to share more than I’m supposed to, so to keep things private for them, here’s another picture of Needles.