I left Manhattan yesterday. Today, I swam in the Atlantic Ocean and played bocci on the beach. There were no seagull incidents. However, I did float a little too far into the water and for all I knew, giant man-eating leviathons were eyeing me from the murkey depths. Actually, once that thought entered my mind, I did some serious swimming back towards the beach.

I've been so busy working and writing that I have neglected my duties at Genius Labs. Starting next week, that will change! I'm going back to the Lab and I'm gonna make stuff happen. Good new stuff. I hope Amtrak is still running on Friday.

This is my last week designing book covers on staff at Picador. I have chosen early retirement from the company. I hope I get a huge pension. It turns out that working in New York and living in Massachusetts isn't so easy especially with Amtrak in such disarray and teleportation not yet a commuting option.

I can't read things that other people seem to be able to read. Like road signs. So I went to the eye doctor yesterday. After a battery of tests, she told me I didn't really need glasses but she would write me a perscription if I wanted one. I told her I'd think about it. So, should I eat more carrots or get glasses? I know I am pictured in the upper left corner with a huge pair of reading glasses from Rite Aid, but I don't actually wear glasses...yet!

Largest Asteroid in Years Misses Earth "It's a good thing it missed the Earth, because we never saw it coming," Steve Maran of the American Astronomical Society said in a telephone interview. Oh, good.

Today is the birthday of one Greg Yaitanes. It is also the exact day that in 1928, Aviator Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean as she completed a flight from Newfoundland to Wales in about 21 hours. Coincidence? Ha! Genius Labs is looking into this with severity and ferver.

I went to Cape Cod this weekend. I fell into a cranberry bog and almost died. Actually, that didn't happen, but somehow me almost drowning in a mushy pond filled with sour little fruits is funny isn't it? It's funny to you that I could perish at any moment. Yeah, real funny. Laugh it up.

Oxford English Dictionary: Current Newsletter: "The NAEU is also working closely with the new words group in Oxford, carefully reviewing the high-profile new words that are so often of American origin, and drafting new entries for words that have come to our attention. Some of the words we have drafted in recent months include tipping point, gentleman's C, weaponize, collateral damage, blog, skeevy, and perp walk."

While WWIII percolates on dry land, scientists have revealed a mysterious recording that they say could be the sound of a giant beast lurking in the depths of the ocean. Nice.

Livia used to work at Handcraft Illustrated--a Boston Common Press magazine that was really great. The End of Free reports that BCP's cooking mag is doing well online. I wish that Handcraft was still kickin'.

Laura just told me that some of the screenshots for my book have profanity in them and they need to be done over (New Riders is good like that.) The culprits? Metafilter, Blogger, and Jim Romenesko's Obscure Store and Reading Room. I'm gonna clean it up for the book-buying masses.

The new Yahoo! home page is in beta.

I got some nice emails from people who read my Digital Web Magazine tutorial on independent publishing. Thanks!

City of Gloucester Calendar of Events for June: "Leslie Dillen's one woman show recalling her encounters with George Cluney during filming of The Perfect Storm." Nice.

New feature for Paul Bausch's Weblog BookWatch: "By clicking on 'focus this link,' you'll have the opportunity to put in the permalink location for the post that discusses that book."

BlogOmania "There's always room for one more!"

Mozilla 1.0 has officially launched! For a continuous stream of information on the Mozilla project, check out the Blogger-powered MozillaZine Weblogs.

Pyramid Scheme Dot Com: How I Realized The Internet Bubble Was A Pyramid Scheme is Bob Hiler's first article for his new Corante indie publication, Beyond Value Investing. When it comes to investing, my mind usually goes blank but Bob's article was a good read and made sense. "Substitute kitchen knives with banner ads, and we saw the exact same dynamic in the digital media market." I like it.

Yahoo - MSNBC.com Launches Weblogs "We see blogs as both a new literary genre and the next generation of online communities: A focused, information-rich environment in which a writer -- famous, infamous, or unknown -- engages in the daily act of thinking aloud, in the ever-expanding universe of the Web," Genius Labs agrees with this assessment.

I took a little time off from my computer today and drove to Ipswich, MA. There's a little farm there that makes interesting wines out of various fruits like apples and pears. They also make wine out of dandelions and we bought some. It's great! Then I googled it and found out that it's super easy to make. So if you have a big lawn and three weeks to wait, you can make some dandelion wine. Nice. Biz Stone: Wineologist.