Progress Report: Tweak appears to be feeling fine & dandy and no longer has a wet tail, but still has to take antibiotics for a few days. Richard's tongue is back to normal. The moronic robotic butler is still in the hallway, grossing me out, but is destined for the kids' house next weekend. I am almost through Book the Tenth of the Unfortunate Series of Events. Here are a few of my favourite quotes so far:

• describing an elevator shaft: "It was darker than a pitch-black panther, covered in tar, eating black licorice at the very bottom of the deepest part of the Black Sea." [The Ersatz Elevator]
• "and now, come hell or high water - an expression which here means 'using a fork, a few teaspoons of creamed spinich, a small potato, a live crab, and noisy shoes' - she was going to invent a staple-making device." [The Austere Academy]
• "The quoting of an aphorism, like the angry barking of a dog or the smell of overcooked broccoli, rarely indicates that something helpful is about to happen." [The Vile Village]
• "The approaching crowd felt like a root vegetable that made every tree in the Finite Forest look like a tiny twig, made the huge lasagna served at the Prufrock Preparatory School cafeteria look like a light snack, and made the skyscraper at 667 Dark Avenue look like a dollhouse made for midget children to play with, a root vegetable so tremendous in size that it would win every first-place ribbon in every starchy farm crop competition in every state and county fair in the entire world from now until the end of time." [The Vile Village]