OmegaMom

Once upon a time, there was a great land called Acirema, ruled by scholars and politicians and wizards.  For many years, there was were plagues upon the land that swept through on a regular basis, killing children and the elderly and infirm, and occasionally leaving the people that they attacked disabled–blind or deaf or having miscarriages or brain damage or inability to breathe or paralysis.  The people kept on keeping on–they were sorrowful, but used to losing children at an early age, and tended to those who were damaged as best they could. 

But the wizards of the country decided to join with other wizards around the world to study the plagues and see what they could do.

They learned that by using a magical potion of soap and water, they could fend off many diseases.  They discovered that clean water and clean houses helped.  For some diseases, like the grey marrow, they invented magical machines that helped those who were paralyzed walk, and helped those who could not breathe to breathe again.  But that was after the fact, and the wizards delved deeper and studied harder, and soon discovered the little creatures that caused the plagues, and came up with magical potions called vakseens to keep the plagues from…er…plaguing the children.

The people rejoiced.  No longer would their children die from the wheezles.  No longer would they have to fear the summer months, when the grey marrow flourished.  Now they didn’t have to worry about their older children being unable to have children of their own after having the lumps. 

Before the wizards developed their magical potion, for instance, 5.7 million people around the world would die each year from the wheezles.  Even in the magical country of Acirema (which was very advanced, and had the money to keep the water clean and educate people about the soap and water combination) before the potions saw thousands of children dying from the wheezles annually.  But after the potions were developed and spread around, the wheezle creatures fled, and the number of children dying from the wheezles diminished to NONE each year, and on average only 50 or 60 cases were reported by the medical wizards each year.

The people, being people, soon stopped rejoicing, had their kids take the magical potions as a matter of course, and forgot that the wheezles (and the grey marrow and the lumps and the malign influence and the cough-alot) were actually killers.  They got used to thinking of them as “childhood diseases” that were No Big Deal, just something you worked through if your kid caught it, because the wizards took care of any serious cases.

Life went on.

Children were born who had never even known someone who had one of the horrible plagues.

They grew up.

They started to have children of their own.

Some of those children had odd behaviors, where they turned away from others, and the wizards called this “self-turning”.  This was very rare–twenty years prior to this story, only 5,000+ children in Acirema’s schools were diagnosed with self-turning by the wizards.  But the number of children who had this issue kept growing, and by five years prior to this story, there were 118,000+ children in the schools who were self-turning.

The parents of these children were scared.  The wizards were studying this problem, too, but the wizards weren’t finding answers fast enough.  After all, they had worked miracles before!  Surely they knew what was causing this horrible problem!  Maybe…Maybe it was even something the wizards had done!

Some people began to spread the word that it was, indeed, something the wizards had done…and that something was the magical vakseen against the wheezles.  The parents cried out, “Don’t use that horrible vakseen!  It will give your children the self-turning!  It has Bad Things in it, especially liquid silver!”  The wizards studied this, and found no connection, but just in case, they took the liquid silver out of the vakseens.  But the number of children who were self-turning did not decrease after the liquid silver was taken out of the vakseens.  The parents, still scared, said there must be something else in the vakseens.  The wizards, who knew about the need for children to get vakseens because of something called “herd protection” (if more than a certain percentage of the children were to get the vakseens, all children would be protected, because the horrible wheezle creatures wouldn’t be able to find hosts to grow in, but if less than that percentage got the vakseens, the wheezles would come back each year, bigger and stronger), kept protesting that children needed the vakseens.

But more people listened to the scared parents.  And more people began to doubt the wizards.  And in Brittannia, for instance, the percentage of children who got the vakseen went from 92% down to 80% over the course of 10 years, and the number of children who got the wheezles rose to 917 in 2007.

All of which leads us to today.  Or at least, the past few weeks.  A few weeks ago, a lady named Amanda Peet, who stars in the latest X-Files movie, caused a flap at Cookie Magazine by saying in an interview that she thought that people who don’t vaccinate are “parasites”.  One of my regular blog stops, CrabMommy, said something similar when cheering Amanda Peet on. 

Oh, the wails and gnashing of teeth!  The cries of “tell me that when you’ve held your screaming, thrashing child down as they have a seizure!”!  The uproar about the horrible, awful, nasty vaccines that cause autism caused Peet and CrabMommy to have to apologize.  CrabMommy apologized in her own personal blog, as well.  And I am left…aghast?  Speechless?  Angry?  Frustrated?

Folks, this disease kills children.  An estimated 242,000 children died from measles worldwide in 2006.  Every year prior to the introduction of the MMR vaccine, children in the U.S. died from measles, mumps, rubella.  Not just one or two.  THOUSANDS.  And after the introduction of the vaccine, these days, how many children DIE from these diseases in the U.S. today?

NONE.

Chew on that for a while.

(In more personal news, today–the day before OmegaGranny arrives–has been sunny and glorious.  Isn’t that just the way of things?!)

Sort of a this-n-that thing.

OmegaGranny is coming to visit, arriving in Big City at about midnight tomorrow night.  As a result, we have been cleaning.  This means I’ve been busy busy busy.  Lots of reading and thinking, but no late night posts forming in my brain fully written, sort of like Venus rising from the sea.

Let’s see:  Since the weather’s been so bad, it got written up big time in Big City’s newspaper, and the anti-gl0bal warming crew have seized upon that article, saying, “See?!  See?!  Why haven’t the gl0bal warming believers been waving this about?  Could it be they have Something To Hide?”  Or words to that effect.  To which I say, it may have been a cold summer, but it’s still in the top quarter of the past hundred years of weather records.  (Which makes me think:  Ack.  You mean we could be having a colder “summer”?)

(Note to Lisa:  There is no set time for us to leave Alaska.  OmegaDad loves his job, which is really a Good Thing, compared to how he felt about his job back in Small Mountain University Town.  So there’s no calendar I can cross days or months off, looking forward to a move to warmer climes.)

Anyway, in the midst of all the cleaning and laundry and what-not, we purchased a volleyball/badminton kit.  Can I just say that (a) my eye-hand coordination has been shot to hell, and (b) I haven’t been running back and forth like that for a while?  Aside from that, though, it was grand fun.

I do have a couple of what could be considered “controversial” topics noodling around in my head, based on incidents on other blogs, but am trying to figure out if I’m too wussy to tackle them, or just too tired from all this cleaning.  I also have a few pics, which I will toss onto another post.

When I was growing up, one of the things that I learned to look forwards to during the summer was when OmegaGranny would buy a whole bunch of beets and beet greens, cook them up, and serve plain with butter.

Mmmmmm.

Now, probably most of you are going, “Eh?  Beets?” and thinking of that ghastly monstrosity perpetrated upon humanity called “pickled beets”.  I can handle a slice or two of pickled beets at best.  But, believe me, beets and greens are just plain good.

When OmegaDad and I were newly together, on one shopping expedition I saw a nice display of bunches of beets, and demanded he purchase and cook same.  His response was, “Eh?  Beets?”, and he was, indeed, thinking of pickled beets, which had been his only exposure to the plant before meeting me.  So we bought them, took them home, and I prepared them the proper way:  Boiling the beet roots for an hour, peeling them, chopping into small cubes, setting aside, washing the greens and slicing them, then tossing them into a tiny bit of boiling water for all of two or three minutes, draining the greens, then mixing them with the cubed beet roots and serving with butter.

He saw the light.  Sort of.  Beets are still not his most favorite of fresh veggies, but since he knows I looooove beets, he keeps an eye out.

OmegaDad requested, earlier this week, that I email him and remind him to put the Farmers Market into his calendar so he would remember that it’s open on Fridays only a couple of blocks from his office.  Since today was sunny and beautiful (YES!  It was up to 70F today!  ::OmegaMom pumps her fist in a victory move:: ) and since he was oh-so-tired of dealing with the mess a coworker had made of his nice clean data in the database, he skipped out of work early, headed off to the market, and returned home with the lusciousness above.

And lusciousness it truly was.  The beets were sweet and crisp, the greens slightly tart and acidic, and the butter complemented it all.

The dotter?

OmegaMom beams in delight:  This child is my dotter!  Woot!

The dotter eyed the beets and greens dubiously when served.  But she is well aware that the rule in the house is “one or two bites of everything on your plate”, and since she has decided that her great dream is to become a chef, she has taken to being much more open to new and strange food items.  So she tasted the beets.

At first she carefully pulled the beet cubes out from the greens and ate only those (eagerly).  But I urged her to try the greens as well.

She wanted seconds.  Of a vegetable.  And when I told OmegaDad that I could eat a dinner of just beets served that way with biscuits, she said, enthusiastically, “A whole big plateful!  Yum, yum!”

(We are hoping that our veggie garden actually produces beets; we have two types growing.  The moose did not get the beet plants.  Oh!  Oh!  And our decimated broccoli?  That were shorn?  They are fighting back, and we now have baby broccoli florets growing!)

On the menu tomorrow are those beautiful fresh green beans.

(Kate, over at High Altitude Gardening, is trying to identify a flowering plant in her garden.  If you’ve got some gardening know-how, go take a look and see if you can help.)

Yes!  It’s yet another “gripe about the weather” post!  Woohoo!

Let’s see:

Today’s high?  Was the normal low.  That would be 52F.  That means that tomorrow there will be another of those red bars in the image to the left, but this one will just barely touch the dark grey area.  The light grey shows record temps, the dark grey the average temps for the day.

The number of highs above 59F this year?  Thirty-five.  The normal average for a year?  Eighty-eight.

The number of highs above 64F this year?  Seven.  The norm?  Forty-four.

The number of highs above 70F this year? 

Are you ready?

TWO.

Two bloody days above 70 degrees.  It’s almost the end of July.  Normally, there are 15 in a year.

That’s why I’ve been complaining. 

The NOAA didn’t mention “number of sunny days”, but I found an average climate listing, which shows 43% sunshine in July.  That means almost every other day should have some sunshine.  The last day with sunshine?  We had a little bit on Saturday…We had a little bit the Saturday before that…We had a fair amount on the 4th and 5th of July.  That would be a sunshine rate of 17%.

Bah.  And humbug.

Shoes, ships, ceiling wax, cabbages, kings.  Etc.

Thanks for the nice comments about my mushroom pics!  I like them, and just wanted to share.

One of the comments was from John, at AdopteeNetwork, which is a new social networking site for adoptees, birthparents, and adoptive parents.  Of course, I checked it out before approving the comment, and it looks pretty neat.  John and his brother Peter, both adopted from Korea, have been absorbed by the ins and outs of adoption for many years.  If you check out the forum there and you’re a regular adoption blog reader, you may recognize some of the handles.  Looks like it’s brand new–like maybe two weeks?  Go check it out.

PretZel very sweetly awarded me this:

She likes my moose stories, apparently.  I blush.  Go read Prez’s latest post about dealing with a L.A.Z.Y. Teen, and console her in her travails.  In the meantime, I have to think up 7 blogs to pass the award onto.

Miss Cellania also passed on an award to me, the Arte y Pico award:

She did it so long ago (July 9) that I had to scroll through–holy moly!–nine pages of entries to find that one!  She has fun with her blog, also writes for Neatorama and a few other places, and actually makes a living blogging.  AND she’s raising two kids as a single mom.  I don’t know how she does it.  Anyway, I have to pass on the Arte y Pico award to 5 bloggers.

Any time I think that infertility sort of made me crazy for a while, I encounter a story like this, and realize, “Hey! I wasn’t that crazy!”  The worst of it is that this woman was charged and convicted of the same thing in 1990.  That is some crazy.  Really.

Then, just as lagniappe, I come across this article about the devastation from the pine bark beetle in Colorado.  Not to toot my own horn, but, hey, didn’t I write about this almost two years ago?!  How on earth can it take the mainstream media two years to catch onto something???

I will do the awards-passing-on tomorrow or the next day–this post is a quick round-up and the dotter is about to go to bed.

So sue me.  I’m fascinated by the mushrooms, by the wild variety, by how pretty they are, by where they grow, by how quickly they appeared after we got some serious moisture.  OmegaDad and I spent Sunday cleaning out the Massive Pile O’ Rotten Scrap Wood out from behind the stable.  OmegaDad would drag out a piece of old, water soaked lumber, turn to fling it onto the “have OmegaMom stand on the wood on top of an old tire so I can saw it in half so it will go into the dumpster” staging area, glimpse a mushroom, and call out, “Wow!  Here’s a grand one for your blog!”

Thus, in between flinging sodden lumber into the wheelbarrow, wheeling the barrow down to the dumpster, flinging sodden lumber into the dumpster, and wheeling the barrow back up to the stable-now-a-coop, I kept grabbing the camera and taking snaps.

Here we have a very phallic ’shroom.  Dig the hairy fibers in the middle and the neat black, oozy gills down below:

Using MushroomExpert.Com, my guess is that this is a “Shaggy Mane“.

The one below has the typical bright colors that scream out “DON’T EAT ME!!!”.  That would be because it’s an Amanita, well-known for being…um…not good to eat.  In fact, all amanitas tend to be poisonous.  (I like the highlighted, bolded comment, “You are stupid if you eat this mushroom” in the article.  Apparently there’s a coterie of folks who do eat this mushroom, looking for cheap psychedelic thrills.  And then they end up in the emergency room.)

I don’t know what these little dainties are, but they were just cute as…well, buttons!  (While wandering through the mushroom guide, I came across something that indicated it might not be a good idea to pop any old small, brown mushroom into your mouth.  I can assure all my readers that I am not planning to eat any of these ’shrooms, just admiring them.)  Note the bug on the cap at the top of the picture.

This is what they look like opened up:

This guy is a more aged version of one of the mushrooms in my previous post:

This guy was inside a stump; he looks quite leathery and not tender at all!

I’m sure you’re all tired of mushroom pictures.  But, honestly, I’m finding them fascinating and beautiful.  At the very least, it’s a pleasant reward for lots of rain and lots of grey days.  (The local newspaper has been running stories all about how everyone in the area is sick and tired of cold, grey, sometimes rainy days.  The article I last read pretty much said, straight out, that the local populace had been “spoiled” by 2004, 2005, and maybe 2006, which were, apparently, bright, sunny and warm.  Damn.  I’d like some of that.)

Last night OmegaDad and I finished watching our movie at 12:30 a.m. (there was a break at 11 p.m. to go pick up the dotter; she couldn’t quite do a full night away from home).  When I turned off the light in the office, which we were using as indirect light for the family room where we were watching the movie, it was dark.

Holy moly.  When did that happen?!

So here we are, a month past solstice.  At solstice, the sun set at 11:42 p.m. and rose at 4:20 a.m., and the sunrise/sunset calculator at my favorite site showed “light” for the start and end times of all forms of twilight.  Now, in last third of July, the sun is setting at 11:09 p.m. and rising at 5:02 a.m.  And we now have official start and end times for “twilight”, with “light” showing for civil and astronomical twilights.  According to this calculator, we will get civil twilight starting on August 6.

(The U.S. Naval Observatory has a nice discussion of the difference between “twilight”, “civil twilight”, and “astronomical twilight”.)

Anyway, the gloaming was noticeably less gloamy last night, which means we may actually get to see some stars in, oh, two months.

After the movie ended, we headed upstairs and piddled around, clearing away used dishes, turning off lights, closing blinds, and I went outside to the kitchen porch to have my last smoke of the night.  I leaned on the railing, and gloried in the dimness, then glanced down at the rose bush beneath me.  And there, flitting about in the twilight, were moths.

Flittering back and forth, silver, white and gray.  When had those moths appeared?  I didn’t remember them from a few weeks ago.  Did they need the dimness to avoid being eaten by birds?  If so, what did they do when there was more light around, just a few weeks ago?

Ahhhh…

All of these questions were prompted, actually, by my recent reading of a gem of a book called “In A Patch of Fireweed“, by Bernd Heinrich.  A few weeks ago I was left bereft by having read all my new science fiction books, re-read all my old SF and fantasy books, and needing something to keep me entertained while I sat by OmegaDotter’s bed when she fell asleep at night.  I started with OmegaDad’s copy of John McPhee’s “Coming Into the Country” (a great read, and very descriptive of the type of mindset that one finds amongst Alaskans), and then found myself needing another book.  So I browsed OmegaDad’s bookshelf and found this one, purporting to be an autobiography of a biologist.  It was a slender volume, so it seemed to be a fairly quick read, and the mention of fireweed appealed to me as the fireweed are beginning to bloom here.

It’s a lovely book.  It’s lyrical, it’s gently humorous, it describes a boy’s journey from a childhood in a war-torn Europe to adulthood as a biologist who spends his time studying insect thermoregulation by sticking thermocouples up the ass of hornets and bees.  And it does a splendid job of describing the constant babble of questions that prompt a biologist (or any scientist, I would think) to pursue his or her studies.  A glance at some ants emerging from a nest raises a quick question, which raises another, which leads to some study on a few consecutive days, which leads to yet more questions and some answers.  A few months later, looking at some bees foraging on a hot summer’s day leads to another set of queries, which circle back to the original questions.

It’s hard to describe how wonderful the book was.  I loved it.  It was his description of his endless curious observation of the world around him that led me to looking at those moths and asking those questions.

Later, as OmegaDad and I laid in bed trying to sleep, I mentioned the moths to him, and shared some of the things I had wondered, and we had a great little discussion, then snuggled up in spoon fashion, closed our eyes, and fell asleep.

While it’s been grey and chilly here for, it seems like, months on end, we haven’t really had any rain to speak of.  The past few days, however, have remedied this problem.  And suddenly, we have mushrooms again.

So I got out the camera while OmegaDad was planting our new perennial bed (woohoo!) (pictures tomorrow), and started fiddling around with the “macro” setting, which I’d never played with before. 

The end result, I must say, is rather nice.  Above is the macro–below is the close-up.  This little batch of fungi would be almost overwhelmed in the greenery that surrounds us (OmegaDad calls it “the annual chlorophyll orgasm!”); the macro setting makes it pop quite nicely.

If I were really anal, I would correct the color on the macro to match the close-up; the shrooms were actually that lovely peach-orange color.  But I also liked the way the macro version looked so much like a flower.

We have one of the red spotty mushrooms out front.  I knew we had one, but couldn’t locate it where I thought it was, so didn’t photograph it.  Of course, when OmegaDad and I went out for dinner, he spotted it.  I will try to get a shot of it tomorrow.

There’s nothing to give spatial context on the shroom above.  It is actually about the size of a salad plate, and it is leaning over like that.  I assume it was just too top-heavy.

The little dainty above was hiding away.  He’s nothing special; about an inch-and-a-half across, white, pretty much “eh”.  But the contrast between it and the greenery was just too nice to pass up.

In the meantime, we are enjoying an evening off:  OmegaDotter is spending the night at a friend’s house.  When I called at 5, she excitedly told me that K. has her very own guitar!  And it’s real!  It’s not a toy!  Whoa.

There is something profoundly satisfying about being able to toss a small bomb at a living creature and feel righteous about it.  It gives me a teeny tiny glimmer of understanding about people who are willing to subsume themselves into hatred and prejudice; it’s visceral.

In other words:  I threw a firework at a pair of moose who were in the yard and felt a warm glow of achievement as these huge critters went barreling off through the woods.  Into one of our neighbors’ back yards.  Oh, well.  They’ve lived here a long time, surely they already have the moose thang sussed out, unlike us hapless Alaska newbies.

Aside from that, nothing is roiling my brain right now.  OmegaGranny sent me a link to a blog post about kids books and end-of-the-world catastrophism, prompted by a write-up in Newsweek.

Eh.

Frankly, the majority of stuff that kids read right now is so fluffy and frilly and substance-less that a few more meaty books here and there don’t bother me.  After all, we’ve got Barbie and Bratz and My Little Pony and CareBears and sweetness and light all over the place.  (Speaking of “sweetness and light”, have you seen JibJab’s take on the latest presidential campaign, in particular the very amusing part about Barack Obama?  And you should read their blog about pulling it all together, too.)

Good old-fashioned disaster lit just takes one back to an earlier, more gritty age, when Cinderella’s stepsisters cut off their toes and heels to try to fit into the glass slipper, and one princess’s evil stepmother was forced to dance at her wedding in iron-hot dancing shoes.  It’s not like catastrophe, disaster, vengeance, killing, and what-not is anything new.  Bambi’s mother, for instance, is shot.  And Disney movies are run through-and-through with dead or absent moms.

Anyway, if the disaster lit wasn’t written specifically for juveniles, you can be assured that the juveniles will just find grown-up disaster lit to read.  Or movies to watch.  Poseidon Adventure, anyone?  Towering Inferno?  On The Beach?  Godzilla?

I think that humans are hard-wired to want drama.  Humans against humans!  All against the backdrop of war! or disaster! You’ve got yer Ulysses.  You’ve got yer Beowulf.  You’ve got yer Bayeaux Tapestry, Don Quixote, Les Miserables, Gone With The Wind, The Day After Tomorrow…  Probably those ancient humans who did the cave paintings in Lescaux had their own version of the disaster/drama/horror story while sitting around fires and eating freshly slain bison.

Right now, my personal desire is for a rockin’, sockin’ disaster novel that ends up with the End Of All Moose, and the Flourishing Of All Veggie Gardens.  I’ll settle, however, for a few books that are due to show up in my mailbox within a week or so, good old-fashioned escapist fantasy and science fiction, replete with–of course–catastrophic end-of-the-world shenanigans…

(ETA:  Ack!  I forgot to mention Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog!  You must check it out within the next two days, before they make you pay for it!)

(Thanks to Jeb for the word!)

This is how I feel about moose right now:

Yes, the moose returned, as Jean said it would.  Even with the PlantSkydd.  It’s time for the recommended moth balls, Irish Spring, marigolds, maybe a bazooka or a nuclear warhead.  OmegaDad, when we were wakened at 4:30 a.m. by the howling dawg, barreled down the back stairs (this time wearing shorts, rather than just tighty whities), lit the fuse on one of our leftover fireworks, and sent it flying.  The moose ran, most satisfyingly.  But not before it had eaten the broccoli, win win choi, mei tsin tei choi, and goodness knows what else.

My boss, when I signed into IM and messaged that I was going to do Something To The Moose, suggested “moose burgers…”  We back-and-forthed for a while with:

Moose kebabs.

Moose steak.

Ground moose.

Moose sausage.

Moose a l’orange.

Moose fricassee.

Moose a la king.

I can think of more.  Give me half a chance.

Let’s just say that it was bad enough being roused at 4:30 a.m. by the dawg, let alone the firework (only one!), let alone the realization that our SuperSized not-a-Pet had chowed down on our veggies yet again.

In other news:  The dotter’s feet have grown six inches in the past two weeks.  Okay, that may be a bit of an exaggeration.  Maybe she’s grown six inches taller in the past two weeks?!  Whatevs.  The end result:  a dotter whose shoes are suddenly too tight throwing a mini-fit at having to wear them to Bike Day at summer camp, no matter how much OmegaDad and I reiterated that the folks at summer camp–no liability fools, they!–would insist on the shoes in addition to the helmet, and that all of her other shoes were too tight, and no, she could not wear the flip-flops.

Oh, yes, and she’s no longer an inch beneath the midline of my bust, but an inch above the midline of my bust.  (Okay, let’s be vulgar:  She’s an inch above the nipples.)  Now she’s showing large amounts of ankle and shin when wearing her pants that fit her just fine about four weeks ago.  I am left contemplating some big time shopping for basics, so she is not razzed for flood-waders when first grade starts.

In the wide world Outside:  President Bush says the “Banking system is basically sound.”  Given his track record, that’s not exactly confidence-inspiring.  Nor is the contrasting testimony of Bernanke before Congress.  Nor is the fact that IndyMac bank was taken over by the FDIC this last weekend–the second largest bank in U.S. history to get that honor–and that the government also had to prop up Fannie May and Freddie Mac at the same time.  Rumors are a-swirlin’, as is the SEC, which has subpoenaed more than 50 hedge-fund managers and analysts, looking for evidence of market manipulation.  Good luck with that; from my reading, the rumors are popping up like mushrooms, and not (seemingly) as manipulation, but as frantic “OMG, is my stock going to tank?!” as the Dow Jones keeps deflating, one step forward, two steps back.

In political news, Chez asks whether the Left has lost its sense of humor.  Or, actually, he asked a month or so ago, and now feels that he has confirmation.  I’m with Chez on this one.  I mean, c’mon, folks, one look at that New Yorker cover and you can tell it’s a cartoon, right?!  And, um, correct me if I’m wrong, but cartoons are supposed to be…um…funny, right?  I thought it was hilarious–it was a perfect send-up of all the fear-mongering.  You might also check out his dissection of the recent Jezebel.com hoorah.  Chez is interesting; very New York, very acerbic (sometimes too much so), often narcissistic, and a good source of new or obscure music.

On the science front, Scienceblogs has a concerted pre-release review fest of the new “mockumentary” about global warming, Sizzle.  The reviews are quite mixed.  There’s a certain amount of backstory here, wherein communications specialists say scientists need to “frame” issues properly to get their concerns/ideas/beliefs before the public in a persuasive manner.  In the old days, we used to call this “PR”.  The “framing”, I mean, not the review fest.  Even these days, people would call the review fest “PR”.

In the meantime, I’m going away to find me a guar-an-damn-teed method of moose eradication.  Ya, you betcha!

ETA:  Well, dayum.  I totally forgot about this one:  Disgruntled S.F. city IT dude locks entire IT administration out of computer system, and is currently in jail for this.  I’m trying very hard to ascertain whether it’s just the IT admins who are locked out, or if everyone is locked out–the story doesn’t quite make that clear.

We had sunshine today!  Woot!

Aaaaand….

Yes!  That’s right!  The dotter now can ride her bike without training wheels!  Double WOOT!

In the meantime, we have re-applied the super-duper moose-away called “Plantskydd”, which is (ew, yuck) ground up and dehydrated cow blood.  It worked before, it can work again; we just need to be sure we re-apply it to the veggie garden and the perimeter of the yard every four to six weeks.

Yesterday evening, we thinned out the spinach and pak choi and hong tsin choi and Swiss chard and beets, and had a whole mess of baby greens.  This, of course, cooked down into a small mess of baby greens.  They were awesome to eat, tender and tasty and lovely.

So today I was going to wax rhapsodic about our veggie garden.  There was a planned chortle about how nice and big our broccoli plants were getting.  A close-up or two of our tender tiny carrot plants.

Earlier this morning, the neighborhood dogs were going nuts, howling and barking and generally being noisy.  I couldn’t see what had set them off, so marked it off as a puzzle.

Then, later, I was sitting in my office, reading my blogs, and OmegaDad wandered in to tell me, “Keep an eye out for any moose; I saw one up the hill at the neighbor’s house.”  Aye, aye, sir, I responded.  He headed off to take a shower, and I popped out the kitchen door for a smoke.

Then…Then my eyes alighted on our veggie garden.

Things looked…different.

I thought to myself “Moose?  Garden?  Time to check things out,” and headed down the back stairs towards the garden.

As I got closer, I could see evidence of the massacree.

Moose tracks and shorn plants:

A discarded plant:

A row of cabbage plants with the tasty tops munched off (they were not yet “heading”):

Cropped and dumped brussels sprout plants:

Now, I’m aware that it could have been worse.  We still have lots of tiny spinach, beets, chard, lettuce, etc.  Our peas, in the back, were undisturbed.  There were some plants that had been pulled up, roots and all, so they have been replanted.  And most of the plants that were eaten can regrow.

But I was just damned angry.  If a hapless moose had been anywhere in sight at that moment, I might have done something stupid, like charged it in a red haze.

Damn moose.

While I was out taking inventory of the damage, I heard loud, angry shouts and stomping and thumping from the neighbor across the street, so I am assuming that the moose made the rounds and visited other yummy plant buffets.

Every place I’ve lived has its own localized weather terms, and though the terms may overlap a bit–like circles on a Venn diagram–most of them are specific to the area.

Chicago weather forecasters spoke of “lake effect” snow and of “cold fronts”. 

Lake Michigan was big enough that its moisture and temperature acted as a barrier to certain types of weather.  On certain cloudy days, you could see the clouds scudding eastward (or northward if you were on the south side), only to hit the air right above the shoreline, at which point the clouds would stop and either dissipate or else slip northwards or southwards along the shoreline.  On snowy days what would happen is that the air would absorb moisture from the lake and dump great loads of snow near the shore…you could well have days when there was a foot or two of snow near the lake and only an inch or so further west.

During the summers, there was a regular cycle of weather.  You’d have a day or two of crystal clear weather, when the sky was a vivid, limpid blue and everything seemed outlined and in absolute focus.  Then, you’d have a week or so where the atmosphere became more and more humid; the skies would fill with feathery clouds that sort of faded out into hazy light blue.  Then would come the wretched, hot, humid days, when just walking through the streets you felt like you were swimming, the air you breathed seemed only a droplet or two away from breathing water, and not even the faintest hint of a breeze disturbed the simmering sultriness.  The skies would grow cloudier and cloudier, darker and more ominous.  Then small breezes and sudden gusts would sweep in from one or another direction every once in a while to break the leaden heat.  But when the cold front hit–ahhh.  Suddenly, the teasing breezes would turn into a sustained wind that grew, and grew, becoming more and more urgent and fierce, and then the cold front would hit and the temperature would drop 10 to 20 degrees in minutes.  You could actually feel it sweeping through; there were times when you could be on one side of the street and it would be hot and sultry, cross the street, and be abruptly chilled.  The wind would start tossing the huge old trees like straw, the sky would get even darker, thunder and lightning would break loose, and–often–the storm would break.

In Lubbock, the big term was “dry line”; you also had “tornado weather”, which you had in Chicago as well (remember those overlapping Venn diagrams).  The two terms were intimately related; the “dry line” is an area stretching from south of Lubbock northward through Oklahoma and Kansas, an almost static area where the dry winds down from the Rockies would slam into the moist air drawn up from the Gulf of Mexico.  The two combine into an almost standing line of storm fronts ranging across the Plains, and the combination is what produces lots and lots of tornadoes.

The weathermen didn’t use our term, which was “Wrath of God storms”–winds barreling eastward across New Mexico, collecting more and more dust, which showed up as a looming, tumbling brown cloud beneath dark skies to the west of town.  Then it would unleash a mixture of dust and mud and torrents of rain right against your windowscreens.

In Small Mountain University Town, I learned about “red flag days” and the “monsoon”.  A “red flag day” is when the relative humidity is low and the wind speed is likely to be high, a perfect combination for combustion in tinder dry forests.  The “monsoon” was the summerly seasonal shift from hot and dry to cool and moist (though in the Valley of Death, it was hot and moist, and pretty horrid).

I don’t remember the specific weather terms in the Bay Area.  Just lots of mudslide and flood warnings and fire danger days.

One term that is specific to this area is “ice fog”.  An “ice fog” is when the air is so cold that the moisture in the air crystallizes out in the form of a fog of ice.  No fun to drive in, believe me, though it does result in some awesome rime frost decorating the trees and shrubbery.

Another local term I recently heard used was “sunny breaks”, as in “mostly cloudy with sunny breaks in the late afternoon”.  A “sunny break”, aside from sounding like the perfect name for a bubble-gum pop band, is apparently a teeny tiny break in the clouds so that the sun can shine through for a short while.  We had sunshine last Friday and Saturday…we’ve had chilly grey days since…and then yesterday and today, we’ve had “sunny breaks”.

I’ll take what we can get.  At least the pansies like this weather, and are growing quite nicely.

There are a few culinary disasters in my past that still make me wince, like the time I made a birthday cake for my mom using baking powder instead of baking soda (or was it vice versa?).  Another time relates to biscuits.

The No Exit Cafe in Rogers Park was a semi-hippy/semi-Bohemian kind of place, where people played chess or Go while sitting around, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and listening to folksy acoustic music played by women with long curling hair parted in the middle and held back by tie-dyed scarves folded into headbands.  My cousin K. was very fond of the No Exit, and for a period made a point of hauling me there along with him and his latest girlfriend.  For some reason, that Thanksgiving I was not doing a family do, and K. invited me to join in a community Thanksgiving meal at the No Exit.

In my innocence, I figured that I’d bring biscuits, because, well, hey:  biscuits.  Plain.  Simple.  Easy.  Right?

The cooks in my audience are howling with laughter now.

Of course, it turns out that biscuits–plain, simple, easy biscuits–are distressingly easy to make badly.  There are females in many families who are spoken of by descendents in reverential whispers when it comes to biscuits, because they know The Biscuit Secret. 

I did not know The Biscuit Secret:  my contribution to the feast was a bowl full of beautiful golden hockey pucks:  hard, rocky, flavorless.

Sigh.

That was enough to make me swear off making biscuits forever.

Perhaps I have learned by this time to never take something I’ve made for the first time to a potluck or gathering…

A few years ago, OmegaDad announced to me that he was on a quest to learn to make biscuits.  I wished him well, but was dubious.  His first batch was very similar to my original batch.  But he persevered, making an occasional biscuit batch now and then.

Tonight we had “breakfast for dinner”.  Bacon, scrambled eggs, biscuits, butter, apricot preserves.  Notably not a “healthy” dinner; I could feel my arteries slamming shut as I chowed down. 

The bacon was perfectly crispy, falling into bite-sized pieces with the merest crunch of one’s teeth.

The scrambled eggs–which are one of the things I do cook very well–were light and fluffy and gently seasoned with Italian seasoning.

And the biscuits–ahhhh, the biscuits.

Each biscuit had, on one side, a dainty little split beginning.  I would insert a fork at the split, and the biscuit would fall open like a flower, with a faint puff of steam rising into the air.  A little pat of butter, and then a tablespoon of apricot preserves, and I would open my mouth to a little bite of heaven.

OmegaDad’s biscuits, these days, are a piece of culinary artwork.  Delicate, fluffy, delicious, they are meltingly wonderful, and I can’t stop at one.  They are comfort food at its peak, and I hope that the dotter will be able to pass on to her children and grandchildren that she learned how to make biscuits from her father, who had the Best Biscuits Ever.

The first reply to my angsting about OmegaDotter maybe joining the gymnastics Tiny Team was Johnny’s:

But….if it’s her DESTINY?

Johnny being Johnny, I can’t tell if he’s being serious, or commenting on some people’s tendency to think in terms of DESTINY, or just poking fun at my angst.

Seriously:  I don’t think it’s her DESTINY.  Frankly, I think her DESTINY is to become a chef or an artist.  Or maybe just a salesman.  Or something.  ;)  But I do think she has a talent and a love for gymnastics.  But I don’t want her to end up like Z:

I was your daughter back when I was that age. And I joined the team.

20+ years later: I have had 10 surgeries, one for a broken back, all for orthopedic issues caused by or exacerbated by gymnastics. When I look back, it is not fondly.

As a child, I loved jumping and flipping and tumbling - and I was good at it. I could do a backhandspring by myself at the age of 6, a back tuck less than a year later. I chose to join the team, and become a “serious” gymnast - it was not something my parents forced on me. But once in, things changed. Gradually, but inevitably. Gymnastics changed from something I loved and looked forward to, into something I had to do - every day, for hours on end. It became my life, and though I grew to hate it, I didn’t know how to stop it because it was all I knew. My parents, I know, would have supported me no matter what, but I just didn’t know how to tell them I wanted to stop. After all, I was good. And I’d chosen it. And it would get me a scholarship and an education, so… I couldn’t just quit, could I? (I remained a gymnast until my injuries sidelined me at the age of 18)

And then I broke my back. On top of the foot and knee injuries I’d already been suffering through. And that ended it. And as much as it sucked, I was relieved, too. It was over.

So: my admittedly completely biased perspective? I’d try to keep it as fun and light as long as possible. Then let her choose. And always keep checking in on her to make sure the choice remains the one she wants… (I wouldn’t advocate taking her out mid-way through a season she’d adamantly committed to in the beginning, but at the end of each one, have a serious discussion about the next one)

Also? Every gymnast I know got injured. Some more seriously than others, but I don’t know of one yet who hasn’t spent a good portion of time on crutches. Yet another thing to consider…

Trust me–I consider it!  A lot!  (Angst.  Lots of angst.)  I worry about pushing her into something she really doesn’t want to do, but she does it because she thinks we like it, and keeps quiet about her anxiety because she wants us to be happy and love, love, love her, and blah, blah, blah.  I worry about her getting injured, and Z’s tale is eye-opening.  I worry about the cultural pressure in gymnastics to stay tiny and lean towards anorexia (like YouKnowWhereYouAreWith says) (which is, of course, another angst-y thing).  I worry, like Blog Antagonist did, whether putting her on a “team” will turn something she loves into a chore.

In terms of “destiny”, though…well, what if she is really good?  What if she keeps on loving it?  What if she keeps getting better and better?  What do we do then?! 

And on the other hand–well, there’s Johnny maybe poking fun, quietly saying:  Hey.  It’s not like you’re setting her life in stone by doing this.  She joins the team, she has fun, she learns stuff, and maybe it works out, maybe it doesn’t, and in the end it’s no big deal. 

To top it all off…well, this is all foreign territory for me.  Truly foreign.  I am about as athletic as a three-toed sloth hanging in a tree, slowly peeling a banana and munching on it while staring off into space.  My preference has always been to just hang out on a sofa or snuggled in bed and read.  My experience as a child was being the one who was always chosen last to be on the team; my only inkling of athleticism was in early high school, when a buddy and I discovered that you could play badminton hard, and we took to pairing off during phys ed and running across the court and slamming birdies over the net at each other while most of the other girls were tip-toeing around and daintily bouncing birdies oh-so-gently off the racket.  I have no experience at, say, being on a team.  Or being the mother of someone who is on a team.  It’s a time commitment, is what it is, and probably a you’ve-got-to-volunteer kind of commitment, and there may be driving off to kiddie gymnastics meets and what-not.  (Trust me, I’ve read BA’s posts on being a baseball mom, and my main response is “omigawd, that’s a lot of work!“)  I’m lazy at heart.  In the middle of winter, I want to be curled up on the sofa reading (see?), not coping with icy roads on the way to Big City for gymnastics meets.

Angst, angst, angst.  Trust me, Johnny, I’m rolling my eyes at myself about this navel-gazing.

We’ll probably give it a whirl for a year, see how it goes.  At least it’s not too terribly expensive; it could have been horses.

I’ve been fairly quiet about the dotter and gymnastics.

I originally put her in a beginning gymnastics class last fall because it was one of the things her occupational therapist had strongly recommended as a channel for her need to bounce, thump, tumble, move.  Before we left Small Mountain University Town, one of her buddies had hauled her along for a “friends’ day” at her gymnastics class, and the dotter seemed interested.

Shortly after I put her in gymnastics, it was obvious she loved it, so I decided to add a second class per week.

Last spring, her teacher approached me and strongly suggested that I move her into an intermediate class.  It was late in the teaching year, so she didn’t think it would be good to just move her then and there, but as soon as the summer session started, in she went.

It’s been pretty obvious to OmegaDad and me that the dotter has a natural talent for gymnastics.  When she focuses, she’s “on”.  And fellow gymnastics parents, watching from the sidelines with me, have made comments.

Then there was the time that one of the main coaches substituted for the dotter’s beginning teacher and shepherded her out to manage a nosebleed in the bathroom.  While we were there, she stooped and murmured to my dotter, “OmegaDotter?  You’re really good at this.  How’d you like to be a star?”

To be honest, that really freaked me out.  Fer cryin’ out loud.  She’s only six, dudes.

It so happens that the Tiny Team trains at the same time she’s taking her intermediate class; the TTs are 5, 6, 7 years old.  They had a tryout a few weeks ago, and I thought about having the dotter try out for the team, but decided that I’d wait.

Well, maybe that waiting is over with…Mr. Jay, coach of the Tiny Team, cornered me after the dotter’s class.  “You’re OmegaDotter’s mom, right?”  I allowed as how I was.  “Have you ever considered having her join the team?”

Um.  Yeah.  So.

He made it pretty clear that I could just put her in; he emphasized that even though the kids are doing a lot of work (we’re talking three three-hour long practices per week), they have fun and goof off and are silly; he suggested that we might consider “trying it out” for the remainder of the summer session, or just join up in the fall.

On the one hand, I really think it’s good for her.  It helps her focus.  She loves it–she’s always tumbling and doing cartwheels and practicing handstands and begging for help doing bridge-overs and backwards bridges at home.  Being able to do it on a regular basis, getting the confidence that being able to do the more complex things–these are good.  The discipline would be good.

On the other hand…damn.  She’s only six, dudes.

I have always admired the smooth, sleek elegance of French braids, but they intimidated me.  Surely something that looks so…classic…must be difficult to do.  So when I had long hair, I contented myself with (occasionally) doing regular braids, and merely wisted from afar at more snazzy dos.

Then the dotter arrived in our life.  For the first few years, her hair was too short.  Then, when it became longer, it was the central point of the Hair Drama, in which mere combing became torture for both of us.

Somewhere along the line, we both learned how to cope with the hair combing, and suddenly it was no longer torture.  And her hair was long.  New vistas of hair fiddling opened up before me, and I was able to rediscover basic braids, variations on ponytails, buns, and twists.

But still, French braids seemed an arcane art.  In her preschool, the dotter had one teacher who was adept at French braids, and she would occasionally arrive home with her hair sleeked into the lovely style.  I would admire and ooh and ahh, and secretly seethe with jealousy that Miss R. (who was young and cute and perky and beloved by the dotter) also had this feminine mystery down pat.

I tried once, following a how-to from the internet, and it looked clumsy and messy.  My plan was to keep practicing, but there was never time in the evenings–when an hour or so spent dealing with frustration would seem okay.  And then the dotter had the incident with the bubble gum, and her hair was shorn, and there was a hiatus on hair-fiddling.

But now her hair has grown out again, very suddenly seeming long enough to do things with.  We’ve been doing ponytails and basic braids again, and one of her camp counselors sent her home one day with a French braid.  So I decided this evening to try again.

As you can see, it’s not “smooth, sleek, and elegant”.  The part is ragged.  The hair joins are rumply and fumbled.

And her bangs, which she is determined to grow out, are every which way.

BUT…it’s a start.  She liked it, and wouldn’t let me take them out and re-do them.  Somewhere along the line, I suddenly realized how to grab the new hair without getting my fingers tangled up, and it became easier.  Once I get the finger movements down, then I can concentrate on making it smooth.  And then I can try a one-braid design.  Or two braids merging into one.

The dotter, by the way, was thoroughly engrossed in Hann@h M0ntana on YouTube, a rare treat.  We now have a movie of her dancing to “The Best of Both Worlds”, which, alas, is stuck on the other camera, because I can’t seem to find the proper USB cord, and can’t find the third camera to dump the memory chip into (we do have the proper USB cord for the other two cameras, but the second camera, which I have the cord to, uses the other kind of memory chip…wasn’t all of this supposed to be easy and plug-n-play?).

“Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.”

In the world of fantasy, magic is a mainstay.  Ya gots yer elves, dwarves, wizards, Deep Ancient Evils, warriors, nice nerdy dudes or dudettes who were just living their lives being sucked into a vortex of terror and history, yadda yadda yadda.  And laced through everything is magic.

On the whole–except for elven realms–the magic sets the magic-wielder apart, separates him or her from the mainstream of his culture.  Great power brings great responsibility.  Small power brings mischief.  The Joe Sixpacks of the fantasy worlds eye magicians and wizards askance, probably imbued with the feeling that, hey, if I had magic, I’d use to do give Glenna-down-the-street a whoppin’ case of warts and fleas…so surely–surely–Mr. High-And-Mighty Magician is gonna Do Me Wrong if given half a chance.

In most fantasies, magicians and wizards and suchlike are just plain born that way.  It’s a talent.  Like playing the piano.  Or making artwork.  Or being able to get on a podium and have 50,000 people chanting “Yes, we can!”  You’ve either got it, or you don’t, but if you’ve got it, you’ve got to train it.

These are the norms.

I’ve recently read two fantasies that explore the question of “what if the Price Of Magic were outrageously great?”, and the repercussions of the price.  One went the expected way:  the Price Of Magic is searingly tragic, forever exiling you from mortal humanity, turning you into a snobby elitist who regards mortals as something akin to mayflies.  The other went a totally different path:  Magic is a tool of…something (gods?)…that uses you, and you are physically transformed into something that makes you an object of scorn and pity in your native milieu.

Feast of Souls, by C.S. Friedman, is the first, and the first of the Magister Trilogy.  To work magic, you burn up your life force.  If you’re a nice person who has compassion for the world, you use up your life force and *boom* you die.  If you’re not a nice person, or you have an infinite hunger to keep living, you’ll start using other people’s life force.  (Not a spoiler, since the review on Amazon says this already.)  You become cold, aloof, willing to play with mortal’s lives, countries, history as if it were a toy to amuse you.  You can’t let anyone know what your source of power is, because they’d hunt you down and kill you like a…well…a serial killer.

But, really.  Yeah, yeah, it’s a mighty moral dilemma and all that, and C.S. Friedman does her usual amazing job at telling a bang-up story that grabs you and drags you along.  But, in all honesty:  it’s a price that lots of people would see as tragic but worthy.  You mean I could do magic forever, live forever, so long as I’m some sort of weird psychic vampire that never sees his victim?  Ya sure!  Okay, maybe it’s not as easy as all that, but it’s still monumental, tragic, and in a weird way, empowering.

Then you have the central premise of the Soldier Son Trilogy, by Robin Hobb, which is totally different.  First off, you don’t get to choose to be a magic wielder–the Magic chooses you.  And if you don’t do what It wants, It lays waste to your life, separating you from everything you love, pushing you into paths that It wants.  So first off, you lose your volition.  You don’t get to play around with the magic and become a mysterious, all-knowing figure that wanders the world, solving problems for mere mortals, providing solemn wizardly advice or sage wizardly protection to those who can afford your fees.

If that weren’t bad enough, it makes you fat.  Not a little bit.  A lot.  Because the Magic requires a lot of fuel.  And you find yourself loving food, glorying in the sensuous textures, frantic for food.  But in your world (just like in ours), it’s quite socially acceptable–in fact, almost required–to be scornful of those who are fat, judging them as wastrels, gourmands, gluttons, lazy folk who aren’t willing to take the time and effort and responsibility to keep themselves in trim condition.

We’re talking being the butt of everyone’s jokes, scorned, harassed by your family, dumped by your fiance, outcast, seen as an ineffectual fool by the world at large–all the while you’re coming to grips with being yanked away from your life.

This approach is not seen as tragic but worthy.  In fact, the reviews of the Soldier Son Trilogy are pretty dismal, which I found an interesting reflection of our culture.  My supposition is that not only do the characters in the book find the fat hero worthy of scorn, but so do the readers.

It is a slow series.  There are no “right” people, no “wrong” people.  There’s a clash of cultures, neither of which is wholly admirable (it is a twist on the European colonists marching across the Americas and driving away or killing or assimilating the natives).  The hero is–understandably–pretty obsessive about the whole thing and frequently wildly depressed, because he, too, considers being outrageously fat as being worth less.

I’m eagerly waiting for the second book of Friedman’s trilogy (I love her writing), and waiting–almost grimly–for the third Soldier Son book to come out in paperback.  I just thought it was interesting how they approached the question of paying for the power in such wildly different ways.

(As an aside, it makes me wonder why the idea that “magic has a price” is so ingrained in our culture, and, so far as I can tell, in others as well.)

That’s what I am.

To the mosquitoes.

OmegaDad, on the other hand, is not.

This is hugely frustrating.  I can remember, as a child, the same thing occurring with my father.  My mother and I would be eaten alive, and dad would be bite-free.  Now, as we hang out in the yard, the mosquitoes find any nook and cranny that isn’t slathered with Off, and take yet another step on the journey of life, sex, and death.

I suppose it’s a small consolation that I am providing the seed money, as it were, for yet another generation of voracious insects.

We’ve been quietly (or not so quietly) enjoying the yard this Fourth of July weekend. 

First, there was the Quest for Lilacs.  One of the things I remember most of growing up in the Chicago area is that springtime was a time of lilacs.  You’d walk down a street and encounter a huge old lilac plant, and the scent would be strong enough to make you stop, close your eyes, and lean into it, breathing deeply through the nose.  Sometimes, it was so alluring that you’d walk right up to the lilac bush (almost a tree), and bury your head in the blossoms.  With the eyes closed, your senses would focus on the scent and the soft caress of a springtime breeze and the hypnotic sound of the bees hovering around the flowers.

It turns out that this area of Alaska is prime for lilacs.  This does not surprise me, as–aside from the mountains, which are, admittedly, kind of hard to ignore, and aside from the spruce, which are also hard to ignore–the surroundings here remind me most of the Midwest.  So early summer is Lilac Time here, and I’ve been wisting after lilacs, yearning for some of our own.

The morning of the fourth, we ventured forth to nurseries.  Closed, alas.  We finally went to Home Debit, which was open and had lots of lilacs for sale.  The problem was that they were labeled “various”.  I had a plan; I wanted a lavender lilac, a pink one, and a white one.  After examining all the lilacs in search of some label related to color of blossom, I finally sent OmegaDad off on a quest for a helpful sales associate.

The helpful sales associate quoth:  “Anything that says ‘syringa’ is going to be purple.”

The helpful sales associate was full of shit and we knew it.  For evidence, I give you a Google image search for syringa.  Note all the different colors.  We debouched to Lowe’s.

Lowe’s didn’t have any lilacs at all.  Pout.

So we went off to Freddy Myers, not expecting anything at all.

Lo and behold, we found our pink, purple, and white lilacs.  All, by the way, labeled as “syringa“, which is not surprising, given that syringa is the Latin name for…lilac.  (I am still rolling my eyes at the clueless sales associate at Home Debit.)

Then OmegaDad and I spent a while working on the chicken ark.  A chicken ark is a portable coop for outdoors.  More on the ark in a later post.

Then OmegaDad and the dotter headed off on a search for fireworks, and we did some observational research on less-than-noisy fireworks for next year’s celebration.  Why get quiet fireworks?  The neighborhood is full of dogs, including our own dawg, who I discovered, when I returned inside after our relatively quiet fireworks in the backyard, cowering under my desk, as far back as he could go.

On Saturday, OmegaDad and I spent quite a while with his newly constructed soil sifter, him digging dirt where the garden is going to go and sifting it, and me ferrying the wheelbarrow full of rocks over to the veggie garden pathway.  Over and over again.  And picking up rocky detritus.  And exposing my skin.

Did you know Off wears off fairly quickly?

I do now.

I spent most of today doing laundry and scratching.  Hands?  Check.  Feet?  Check.  Arms?  Check.  Neck?  Check.  Scalp?  Check.  Even one quick bite in a previously undiscovered hole by the pockets of my sweats which some swift, incredibly fit mosquito found was not covered with Off.  There were enough bites and enough of a reaction that I spent half the day in a haze of light fever and misery.

OmegaDad claims it’s because I’m sweet.  Har.  Very flattering.  I’d rather not be sweet; frankly, at this point, I’d like to be poisonous as a virper to mosquitoes, and watch them fall, twitching in insect misery, at the slightest penetration of my skin by a proboscis.

I found a thing called Wordle via Unhindered By Talent.  Wordle allows you to create word clouds in lots of pretty colors, fonts, and styles, of any web page or chunk of text you are interested in.

So go and play with it!

Tomorrow I might just inflict the titles of papers at the permafrost conference upon you.  I thought they sounded fascinating.  OmegaDad’s quick-down-and-dirty summary of the conference:  “We know it’s warming; that’s old news.  All the new news is how much, how fast, and how to measure it.”

“There was a farmer who was a weak man.  His wife was very rich.  They bought a farm and they named it ‘Harry Butt’.  A few years later, they had a son who they named Crack.  One day the farmer couldn’t find his son, and he called the police, and he said, ‘Hello?  911?  I’ve looked all over my Harry Butt and I can’t find my Crack!’”

At which point, the dotter busts up laughing like crazy.  For a few minutes, she can’t speak, she’s so giggly.  And I get giggly just listening to her giggle.

A joke.  A real life (old and hoary) (and somewhat discombobulated) joke.

Then there’s:

“I know a song that gets on everybody’s nerves,
Everybody’s nerves,
Everybody’s nerves.
I know a song that gets on everybody’s nerves,
And this is how it goes:

I know a song that gets on everybody’s nerves…”

Which goes on and on and the musical theme never resolves and it’s like fingernails on chalkboard, all of which amuses the dotter to no end.

Then there’s:

“Did you know that the man who is the president made us get into a war?  And there wasn’t really a reason?  And people died?”  (This led to a quick recap of 9-11, thousands of people dying, Afghanistan, Iraq ["A rock?  Why'd we take a rock to war?"], why people would do such a thing, and presidents that systematically gut constitutional checks and balances, all in terms a six-year-old would understand.)  “I don’t think he’s a very nice president.”

(I have to admit I was extremely surprised that she got this version of GWB, especially hereabouts.  I would have assumed that GWB would be portrayed as heroic.  It was interesting.)

Then there’s hopscotch, jumprope, four-square, a wild variety of clapping games that have variants I don’t know but that I’m learning as quickly as I can, dissecting owl pellets (”Did you know that owl pellets are owl vomit?!  Ewwwww!  But I found a whole jaw bone!”), gold rush stories, mosquito bites galore, learning to shoot a bow and arrow, and the latest crush, a boy named C., though Mr. Zane, one of the 18-year-old camp counselors, is almost as good as C.

OmegaDad sent me an email late yesterday night, which read, in part:

“Your url without the www takes me to… Uh… Ads for certain enhancement products.”

I quick like a bunny pulled up the ol’ bloggerino and did a “view source”.  Sure ’nuff, a boatload of hidden links plus a little script that sent folks from Google off to never-never land.

So I bit the bullet and upgraded WordPress; it seems that older versions were being hacked.

Please, please–let me know if you get siphoned off to “ads for certain enhancement products”!  Just drop me an email at omegamom at omegamom dot com.  And for those who did get hijacked…um…I’m sorry!

Edited to add:  Well!  I thought I had found them all, but much to my dismay, there was another set of hidden links, which I have now removed.  Hopefully all is well, and hopefully that stuff got added before I changed the password…