Blame Mardi Gras for my lethargy. Perhaps non-Catholics should rename Ash Wednesday — how about Hangover Wednesday? At any rate, I've been absolved from pounding my throbbing head on my desk by this questionnaire that arrived in my email inbox. Everyone loves filling out a questionnaire, especially when it's about your favorite subject — you. And books.

1. My favorite book:
Tastes like chicken.

2. My least favorite book:
Smells vaguely of elderberries.

3. The last book I threw at the wall was:
Unlikely to bounce off.

4. The last good book I threw at someone's head was:
The Dictionary. A page-turner!

5. Did that person deserve to have a book thrown at his/her head?
To quote Clint Eastwood from Unforgiven: "Deserve's got nothin' to do with it. We all got it comin', kid."

6. Did said book cause any damage to the target's head?
Not enough.

7. Do you regret throwing that book at the target's head?
I wasn't aiming at his head. But, yes.

8. If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?
A book-throwing tree, like something out of a very poorly written children's fantasy novel. "The prophets have decreed: Beware the book-throwing tree, especially during fire season."

Fill this out for yourself and send it to me at brockman@powells.com. I may not reply — I may not even read them — but I promise, at the very least, I'll glance at the subject lines for as long as I can hold my head up.

When he returns from vacation, Bagheera and Oreo aren't home. No one has seen them for days.

The house isn't empty, however. He finds Fup and Bear in the basement with Zooey, his dog.

"You haven't even seen them?" he asks. Also, several times, between trips upstairs to unpack, "Bagheera and Oreo didn't tell you where they were going?"

Bagheera is likely camped under a neighbor's porch; he favors tight, dark spaces and local espionage. Oreo on the other hand favors food and petting, either-or, but better yet both. No doubt he's been boarding at Thelma's, whose kibble bowl — kibble "pool," Oreo once called it — is rumored to be almost as large as her ottoman, and the ottoman is said to be huge.

Fup favors an empty home now and then to escape the bookstore's commotion. Who knows, really, what Bagheera and Oreo have been up to? They invited her to housesit. She didn't ask why.