Because I Love You

Why else would I post stuff like this?






Well, that, and because I couldn't find any of exploding mimes.

Eight Things that Entertain Me

This is not a meme. Nor is it a mime. (You didn't seriously think I'd post a serious mime picture, did you? Get serious!) Mimes will be shot on sight. They do not entertain me except by being mercilessly gored by avenging unicorns or similar activities. On with the list.

Rude people: I encountered 2 of them today. Have you ever noticed that rude people are almost inevitably stupid? Every now and then it's fun to have a good laugh at a stupid person (a definite shortcoming of mine, I know) and I feel no compunction about laughing at the rude ones. ^_^

Free Stuff (in this case, digital scrapbooking downloads)

Pure Dead _____ books by Deb Gliori - a total scream. Possibly even funnier than Lemony Snicket. ^_^

The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig
. . .So he huffed and he puffed and he puffed and he huffed, but the house didn't fall down.
But the pig wasn't called big and bad for nothing. He went and fetched his sledgehammer, and he knocked the house down. . .

"Please will you give us some of your barbed wire, a few iron bars and armor plates, and some heavy metal padlocks?" they said to the rhinoceros who was driving the truck.
"Sure," said the rhinoceros. . . He also gave them some Plexiglas and some reinforced steel chains, because he was a generous and kindhearted rhinoceros. . .

Your Blogs (Ooooh! Suck-up!! ^_^ ) Oooh, and this one that I just stumbled across.

Psychic Nikky predictions

Andy McKee:





And if nothing else, click this one to see the harp guitar. O_O



And Erik Mongrain to finish it off:



What entertains you? No sucking up. I already took care of that. I don't think this post can handle any more of it. ^_^

Deadlines

You know what Douglas Adams said: "I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."

I'm trying to make two deadlines for ERWA, so if you see me here or at your own blogs, please chase me off with a stick. ^_^

In lieu of today's post, I present the infinitely more entertaining Mr. Adams himself. If you watch the whole thing, you'll get to hear the infamous biscuit/cookie story.

Random Snapshots

Not photographs, mind you. ;)

All you need is:


Dance of the slightly naughty fairies:


This one made my eye feel weird afterwards and was probably bad for my lens. I don't recommend trying it at home.


Counting pendulum cycles: 12, 13, 14. . .


Uh, start over :-P


We got together last Friday to do a late Christmas with friends. The kids all got Nerf dart guns. Woo hoo!!


Of course, MuNKi and I have been playing, too. I decided to leave the devil eyes on Fishy because they're appropriate for war.


No one is safe.


And you may find yourself under fire at any moment. (See how handsome BILLY is, standing so suavely next to the Mollusc?)


Friendly fire sometimes goes astray. But so far nothing's broken.


I highly recommend stocking up your armoury with these things as well as with a passel of the nifty novelty darts such as the whistling darts (so your enemy can hear his fate just before it catches up with him) and the velcro ones, which stick in a very satisfying and amusing fashion to fleece, socks, and the random peeking out G-string. Don't bother with the glow-in-the-dark ones. They fly poorly.

We had a huge class tonight and then 11 people stayed for sparring, so we got to free spar. I clonked knees with at least 2 of the guys I sparred. My knees both hurt a LOT, but at least it's only bruising, and you should see the other guy. ^_^

Room for Error

Internet. Not. Working.

Not as well as it was earlier today at least. Blargh.

We did more pendulum stuff for Science today and Trillian had to help. It's hard to count cycles accurately when outside forces impose their will (or paws) on your pendulum. :-P

I need to do our Scholastic book order, but the net is being too flaky.

YouTube is down for maintenance.

The Gods are spelling it out quite clearly: Go To Bed!

Oh, alright.

The Younger Ones

Some amazing person out there has put Thomas the Tank Engine bits to Young Ones audio. Brilliant!






I know I said I was going to do a real post the other day, but apparently I lied. I'm still cruisin' on the Reading Rainbow, so between that and flaky net connections (probably my (bent) wireless card) there's not a whole lotta postin' goin' on. ^_^

So Cute Your Eyes Will Bleed

VERY short and sweet clippies. I will attempt to post in the 16 second interval that my connection is up. Anything longer might be lost.

Insubstantial Evidence

I love Red Dwarf. I wanted to find a clip of "There's an emergency going on," or Cat spraying everything with cologne ("This is mine. This is mine. . .") but no dice. So in lieu of that, the backwards bar fight:




Gosford Park was a great beginning for a movie, but it ended just when it was getting going. In my version there would be more humour, and a lot more people would have killed whatsisname. And then the last bit would have been some outrageously ridiculous character also having killed him, probably accidentally. Additionally, I would tack on an ending to the whole Parks thing, instead of cutting it off in the middle. Other than that, I enjoyed it. ^_^


Real post tomorrow.

Razzle Dazzle

Welcome to my world.










Paperweight? Life imitates art.


Nature's millefiori




Hope springs eternal. . .










Ice Fairy






"Now the green blade rises. . ."

Babu, Babu, Babu

In lieu of a real post, I give you Jeff.

Jeff is my favourite Coupling character, and this is one of my favourite episodes. In the whole thing you first get this bit with Jeff speaking in English and the girl speaking Hebrew. Then we get what you're about to see here, as if we understood Hebrew, so she's speaking English and Jeff's doing gibberish. (And very good gibberish, too, I might add!) Jeff is trying to learn her name, and she thinks - well, you'll see what she thinks.




And now I'm going to try to watch Gosford Park, apparently with the delectable Clive Owen. What, is he gonna be, like 4? I thought this was an older film. Hmm. Guess not. Well, well, well!

Digital Diarrhea

You've heard of diarrhea of the mouth? Sometimes it happens with my camera. Luckily for you, you have the option of clicking the hell out of here at any moment. ^_^










I have my mittens on. May I go out to play with the birds?
















Look, Ma: no Adobe! Is this where people got the idea of lighting trees?







Needless to say, we've been loving the ice. Beholding the dazzling beauty is almost a religious experience.

Monday, Bloody Monday

Seems I've done that title before. Ah well. . .

We've had ice and stuff from the sky and it looked SO COOL out there this morning! After dragging our totally unmotivated butts to TKD, we returned home to do lunch and I got out the (still bug infested) camera to take some pics of the bizarre icy wonderland out there. The roads had been simply wet rather than slippery, so thus lulled into a false sense of security, I stepped boldly out the door. My feet promptly shot out from under me, and I flailed my arms wildly, all the while thinking "save the camera!" Somehow the camera and I managed to produce some sort of anti-gravitational field, and neither of us hit the ground. Whew!

After that, I managed to creep and crunch carefully around the yard, taking pics of all the strange new sculptures rendered in ice. Sadly, the photos are all trapped in another computer, so no pics here until tomorrow. :-P

Tonight it's snowing on top of the ice. I'm hoping it will make for some more fun photo ops.

The kids are working on a "knots" badge, so today we did overhand knots, figure eights, and bowlines. I couldn't believe it when The Prawn showed me her perfect bowline. I had been trying to help Fishy and she had, apparently, been listening. I asked her how she had done it and she replied "I just did what you said to do!" (duh, mama! - OK she was kind enough not to add that) Maybe we have a sailor in the making. ^_^

They're also working on a chess badge, so Sluggie and Fishy had an epic battle that lasted about 45 minutes and ended very, very badly for Fishy. (as in, she ate everything but his king, LOL!) Not too unexpected, considering he had started out the game by pointing out pieces for Sluggie to take in order "be nice" to her. As Mollusc told him, "there's no 'nice' in chess." ^_^

Flushed with the success of my own rapid victory over Empire, I've started The Historian, and it promises to be fascinating as well, so I'm off to read more of that.

Hazy Daze

I'm in a kind of haze right now. I've finished not only more than my share of the bottle of (very passable) wine, but Empire as well. What a book. Maybe it helps that I love Card and have done since I first read Ender's Game so many years ago. Maybe it helps that I haven't read nearly as many military thrillers as GuTTer MuNKi has. Maybe it helps that the book wasn't full of twice-printed paragraphs, grammatical errors, and typos (in SPITE of being a Tor publication! Have you ever read Tor books? This must be a first!) Maybe it helps to have been in the military. Maybe it helps that I don't fully fit into either of the main 2 political camps. Whatever the reason, I found this a highly compelling, fascinating read.

Speaking of Tor -- in the realm of typos and the like -- check out this hilarious error that Mollusc found on the box of Philly Cheese Steak thinggies in our freezer:



See the captions for the last two pictures? It may be kinda hard to tell in my pic, but the meat is in distinctly different states between the "90 seconds" and the "1 Minute 30 Seconds" pictures. ^_^ Maybe they'd had too much of this wine.

Tonight MuNKi made his tremendous Bolognese sauce as well as some lovely French bread. O. M. G. It's a good thing I do strenuous exercise on a regular basis! :-P

Next up: The Historian. But I'm still plugging away (tee hee) at Dragonfly in Amber as well. ^_^

Marshmallowy Promises

As promised, some fluff'n'stuff.

This one goes out to TG in memory of his dear departed "Pasta."

Please don't worry; this is a child-safe video. Neither animal comes out on the losing end. :)




In addition, I would like to share this next one that GuTTer MuNKi* showed me. I'll admit that in my haste to get the supper mess cleared up yesterday I was less than gracious about taking the minute whatever to watch this, and I thought it was going to be really stupid, but even in that mindset I was pretty impressed with the end result here.




*HA!! Shorts vs. skins!! ^_^

I have a picture that I actually took myself, too. Maybe tomorrow. . .

I Can Go ANYwhere. . .

Like Jamie, it's about time for me to take a trip on the Reading Rainbow. My Empire has expanded to include many new treasures. I am, for instance, in Possession of A Dragonfly in Amber, and The Historian 'round these parts assures me that it's rather valuable and well worth my time, not to mention the numerous Star Wars artifacts that have come my way.

So I warn you in advance that if my self-discipline holds out at all, my posts will be sporadic and devoid of any real substance. (Em. . . no, don't say it. ^_^ )

Seriously, tonight was a record night for adult class (18 of us) and it was like a BookFest! I brought a book to show to 2 friends, one of them brought a book to return to me (and I'd have brought another I have for her had I known she was coming) and 2 completely different friends brought one each to give me. Yoikes! We were joking that we need to put up a list of available books on the corkboard and people who want them can sign up for them. Discussions will then be held during stretching. ^_^

In other news, I suspect that GuTTer MuNKi is cheating on me with some SKÄNKA at IKEA, but if the guilt scores me more BILLYs, I can hardly complain. ^_^

"I'll see you next time." (yeah, I had the hots for him, too.)

Cutting Edge Vid (wink wink, nudge nudge)

I've been busy with BILLY. He's so tall and handsome, and I've been doing my best to fulfill him, or at least fill him. And then GuTTer MuNKi brought BILLY's twin brother home tonight. Bliss, I tell you.

Also, after a frantic hunt for 2 due library books and the disinterring of a 3rd which had been missing and presumed dead, I have decided that we have way too much stuff. This is what happens when you stay in the same house for more than 2 years, apparently. So look out Stuff, here we come!

And now, for any number of reasons, I give you The Scissor Sisters with a slightly ABBA meets Wham! sort of number. I don't profess to have the faintest inkling of what the video might mean; I just like the song. They may not feel like dancing, but I bet you will.

Various Dates

Poo. I wanted to give blood today in memory of my dad because today would have been his birthday, but they don't want my contaminated blood since I have a bit of a cold.

In other news, ANOTHER 12 or 13 year old boy has asked #2 daughter on a date. He's an extremely nice kid and wrote her a very short, sweet letter, but I feel like buying her a shirt that says "I'm NINE!" I thought I wouldn't have to deal with this until she'd at least hit double digits. *sigh* I explained to her that she's too young to date and she was fine with that. She likes the boy, but doesn't want anything serious either (duh) and wrote a very nice letter back to him. I guess this is a good time to talk about girly stuff, though, like not giving your heart away too easily and all that.

BILLY is Mine!

We went to IKEA today to buy BILLY. Our plan is to start with one and add on, mainly because we can only strap 110 lbs to the roof of our van, and BILLY weighs 98. We also planned to find a bin or 2 to go on BILLY's bottom shelf. Of course, what you plan to get at IKEA and what you actually buy are often 2 different things, but we did pretty well.

Wandering around upstairs we were delighted to no end by products like EKTORP, MAGIKER, PLUTT, and LACK (which seems to be missing something I can't put my finger on.)

We were fascinated, too, to find out the origins of some of the names. POÄNG, for instance, is an onomatopoeic word representing the sound that the chair makes when you lean it back too far and it springs up, launching you across the room. This actually happened while we were there, and we were thrilled to witness the birth of a new product, PLOOMPF, which, as it turns out, is excellent for cushioning a rapidly broken fall. Look for it soon in an IKEA near you.

Being a container-loving geek, I was quite taken with MUCK. MUCK can be used in BILLY to hold KRAPP. (We already have plenty of KRAPP.) I was also very tempted by GORM. Not the least because if I buy one, no one can rightly accuse me of being GORMless. But when it came to GROGGY, I figured I didn't need any more of that. Especially now that I've got the cold everyone else had.

We chose not to eat at the cafeteria. I've heard the meatballs can make you FARTYG.

Downstairs, I tried to steer the kids right past the AINA near the ORGEL section and around the large pile of ASPUDDEN someone had left on the floor. I was making haste for a more family-friendly section, but the little MuNKis were pretty ALERT and I wasn't able to get them out of there before they had asked some pretty awkward questions about the GLÄNSA, which were, to my dismay, prominently displayed at child's-eye level. I think a complaint is in order. (Though it will no doubt go straight into their DOKUMENT holder.)

After a lot of wandering around, we developed some FLÄRKing nasty KRAMFORS in our legs. And on top of it all, I found myself in the middle of what seemed to be an Abbott and Costello routine trying to explain that yes, I did want NOT. No, realli. We headed straight for checkout after MuNKi took the name BUMERANG to heart and turned FRAGIL into two new lines: SPLINTR and SHÅRD.

When we finally left, we had a HELLUM a time getting BILLY home. At one point on the freeway, we heard something clunk against the car and feared the worst. WET was coming from the sky and when we stopped at a light, MuNKi found that BILLY's box (apparently made from recycled toilet paper) had disintegrated and blown open on on the stem end. We pulled into the nearest parking lot to see what we could do. Fortunately, I had impulsively bought BAG for 99 cents at the checkout to use as our new swimming carryall and I had the presence of mind to slip it over the end of BILLY's box and BILLY made it home with no damaged or missing parts. Hooray for impulse buys say I.

I can't wait to put BILLY together tomorrow. I'm sure he'll be PERFEKT.

Battlestations! Battlestations!

It was a relatively hectic day for a "mostly free" day. Visions of lying about reading and writing soon dissolved into the reality of attacking Mt. Laundry, swapping Sluggie's stuff into Fishy's room and vice versa, and hitting both the grocery store and co-op. Oh, and making another batch of meringues. By then it was almost time for red belt classes. Maybe if I had gotten up before 10am. . .O_o

My dairy order was off rather significantly today. I had ordered a half pint of heavy whipping cream and what was actually delivered was a half gallon of the stuff. (for the 1/2 pint price - hallelujah, Jaffar!) OMG! Do you know how much a half gallon of whipping cream is? Holy mother of kitchen mercy, it's a lot. I am now formulating my battle plan. It goes something like this:

• Make butter with the kids in a mayo jar. (Or in a mayo jar with the kids. . .)

• Make O'Brien potatoes

• Make a batch of Snow Ghost Pudding (2nd recipe down) and do a bunch of whipped cream for topping.

•Make custard. Does custard take cream? I have 4 egg yolks leftover from meringues and this vague notion that I can use them in a custard. Obviously I haven't yet gone recipe-hunting. :-P

In addition to the 1/2 gallon of cream from today, I still have a couple of 1/2 pints from the last co-op run that are still good, so if you want to add to my battle plan, suggestions are more than welcome.

The kids got to do kendo with squishy swords in their red belt class tonight, and I got called up to ref a second ring. What a hoot. ^_^ Too bad the swords don't have built-in lightsaber sound effects. But it was happening in my head, trust me.

Skater HNT

No, not like "ice skater" or Sk8ter Boi, or "roller skater" but like "What a skater! She totally skated out of that one!"

OK, now that "skater" no longer looks like a word any more. . . (hate when that happens)

My geeky butt is on Jinx. You can try to figure out which one, or not, as desired, or just enjoy the lineup. Some of you saw the pic back in June when I got the pants for my birthday. Sorry it's a rehash. I'm too lazy today to take a new pic, and my geeky bun muscles are tired.

Movie review: I ♥ Huckabees was just plain weird. Nothing like the trailer led me to believe, but just enough humour to keep me hanging in there, and a few very laugh out loud moments. There were a couple of promising bits when it seemed about to go in a Dirk Gently direction, but alas. Overall recommendation: don't bother, unless maybe it's 2 am, you have insomnia and are very, very drunk (and have nothing else to watch.)

I got a slew of random flicks from the library. I'll let you know if any turn out to be winners.

It's raining like a Big Dog out there. Kinda cosy, really. Tomorrow will be a good day for laying about and tearing into some good books, writing (you laugh! Humph!) and goingtoBordersbecauseit's paydayandIhaveacouponfromWednesday. (maybe) The Children's Writer's Guide to 2007 came from SCBWI today, reminding me how little writing I've been doing and making me feel totally guilty. Writing is the perfect angst machine for me. I love it so much that I feel guilty when doing it (should be doing something I'm probably avoiding) and want to be successful at it enough that I also feel guilty when I don't. It could almost be a religion. ^_^

Listening to: Creed

and, for your edification, the vastly different Egg Song

♪ ♪ "White and tender surround the center, cozy sitting in the crackling shell. . ." ♪ ♪

which I found by going to the website listed on an adorable Korean comic book my friend brought to class this morning.

Tell me about your favourite comics. :)

Speaking of dancing. . .

. . . let's Merengue!



Yes, Mollusc and I made meringues today. Not being the type to let anything sans chocolate be considered a proper dessert, we chopped up a bunch of semisweet choolate and stirred it in. :) I have to say that they are delicious!

Speaking of Mollusc, how would you like the chance to make an impression on a young, moldable child's life? I'm putting together the year's reading lists for all of the kids and am taking suggestions mostly for Mollusc. At 11.5, she reads and enjoys many kinds of fiction and nonfiction, lately coming more and more from the adult section at the library. She reads and comprehends at a college level (right now she's reading my review book and laughing as she goes) though we are still avoiding really heavy stuff on the socio/emotional level. I think this would be a great time for me to compile a broad list of titles from which we can choose over the next year, and hopefully even have more left over for the next year or two. And maybe you all will suggest things that might otherwise get overlooked. Feel free to suggest books from any genre you like. My one caveat - she has a high disregard for books with cruelty to animals, or those in which the main animal dies at the end ("Old Yeller" is right out but "No More Dead Dogs" would get a nod of approval) and is not a fan of anthropomorphic animals. (not that many older children/adult books have those)

Busy Thursday looms large, but for now I'm going to watch I ♥ Huckabees and then read more Outlander #2.

Maybe the next dance/food will be salsa. ^_^

Ode to Wednesday

Today was Not-quite-so-crazy Tuesday as it turned out that I didn't have to teach After-School class after all. Bonus! And tomorrow is WEDNESDAY!! Oh lovely, fantabulous, no-commitments Wednesday. It makes me feel like dancing.


My heart sings, and a heady gladness stains
My sense, as though tequila I had drunk,
Or emptied some bright coffee drink to the drains
One minute past, and Mneme-wards had sunk. . .

(with apologies to Keats. )

And Now, Back to the Program. . .

Last night we watched the funky hand clock (oooh, the link works!) when the new year rolled in. The children squealed with delight as the hands went crazy erasing all those numbers and pencilling in the new ones. (OK, maybe I did, too.) We've been meaning to catch a rollover for a few years now and always forget.

Tomorrow we jump back into Real Life with both feet as it's Crazy Tuesday. Provided no one else throws up, that is. I'm more than ready to get back to class, and tomorrow we'll have sparring afterwards, so hooray! But the being there to teach 10am class will be rough considering we haven't even been waking up until 10 and 11 these last few days. (Woken twice by Jehovah's Witnesses, whom we promptly ignored.) Note to self: get to bed before 3am this time.

I need a new calendar but, cheap person that I am, I don't plan to get one until Wednesday when they should be marked down. How long do I have to wait for them to hit $1 at Borders? Anyone remember? Of course then there's the risk that my choices will be whittled down to 365 Sawdust Recipes, Marital Aids You Can Make From Duct Tape, and North Yorkshire Mimes and Clowns. In which case I'll order from Amazon. :-P

Sluggie has discovered the joys of Jeeves and Wooster, so we've been having "a-thons" and I'm inspired to read more Wodehouse. I don't usually do the whole resolution thing, but I guess if I had one this year it would be to spend more time reading books. This may seem silly for someone who loves to read, but the Web has sucked a lot of book reading time from my life. I've made a move in the right direction over the last few months, but find myself sliding down the slippery slope of blogsurfdom far too often, because Bloggers talk back, whereas my books usually don't. Considering that GuTTer MuNKi got me both Outlander #2 (already started this one) and Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife for Christmas, I have plenty of incentive to follow up on this. I plan to take more review books, too, in order to broaden the scope of my material. But my biggest plan for the upcoming future is to make it a point to do my daily writing before I blog, because this whole blogging as a warmup thing has gotten out of hand. ^_^ After reading Hungarian Rhapsody, I have to say that I feel a spate of sewing for orphanages coming on again, too.

My friend is giving up plastic bags as much as possible, electing to carry her own with her. ( 99 cents from Trader Joe's, made from recycled plastic bags - cool, huh?) I think it's a great idea. I reuse mine for scooping the litter pans, though, so will have to rethink things if I try to copy her.

Well, I have children to shuffle off to Buffalo, and a book review to write, so that's all for now.