OmegaMom

Our snow on top of melting snow and ice produced a phalanx of icicles hanging down from the roof beside the kitchen.  I liked the repeating vertical lines behind and in front of the fluffy snow-draped firs.

For your viewing pleasure:  The Big Picture once again does a Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar for December; go enjoy the purty pictures and remember to check back each day!

For more viewing pleasure:  absolutely incredible renderings of a 3-D Mandelbrot set.  Think of a 3-D fractal…Mathematics made beautiful!  I particularly like this one, which the creator has described as “shell life“.

I am enjoying the new C-Pop singers–thank you very much for your suggestions!  Since the dotter is mostly into bouncy dance-type music, I will wander through them picking and choosing (no Deserts Chang, alas!  But I think she’s groovy!).  Fantasia is also a great idea.

To finish things up, here is the world’s very best Poker Face parody, called “NeutraFace”, starring bearded designer geeks having fun.  Enjoy.  (I now want to have bearded nerds emerge from my bathtub):

Here it is, the fifth of September, and we are well into autumn weather and colors here in Alaska.  This is Labor Day Weekend, three days off, and the Kozmik All has graced us with beautiful sunshine, sparkly clear skies, and (relative) warmth.  The dotter wanted to spend her time today watching TV.  I said, “No way, Jose!”, and dragged her out into the backyard to kick the soccer ball around a few times.

And then I dragged her on a hike.

Lately, she has been quite down on the idea of hikes.  All summer long, at summer camp, she avoided most of the hikes because her gymnastics class was scheduled in the middle of the day, ending after the kids were bussed off to wherever that week’s hike was.  When she did go, she pooh-poohed the experience.  My heart sank each time she did that–I love to go hiking, and she seemed to be deciding that Nature, and walking, and looking at the beautiful world around her was just BOR-ing!

Well, bah humbug, says I.  That’s no way to grow up!

So there we were, and it was a glorious day, and I pretty much told her to suck it up, we were going on a hike.

We grabbed the dawg, motored on up to Margaret Pass, where the Little Lady River runs, parked by one of the trailheads, and headed up the lower reaches of Gummint Peak.  The trail was wide and open, alongside a creek that joins the Little Lady River, with many little offshoots of the trail leading to the creek.  The dotter paused to look for rocks to throw:

The trail crossed a neat wooden bridge; I’m not sure why it was built that way, with the two parts:

Then the trail suddenly became small and narrow and steep, heading up a ridgeline very quickly.  I warned the dotter that we would have to come down the trail on our butts because it was so steep, but that only made it more attractive to her.  I tried to take pictures of how steep it was, but none of them showed it properly.  Here the dotter is clowning around on a rock on the trail ahead (and above) me:

There were oodles of fireweed in full fluff, and with scarlet leaves:

The fireweed are splendid wildflowers.  They bloom bright pink flowers all along their stalk, above green leaves; then, when they’re all done blooming, the stems to the flowers turn dark pink, the leaves turn scarlet, and the seeds covered with fluff burst open.  When the wind picks up, the fluff from the fireweed dances off into the skies.

When we got up to a bench on the ridge, we stopped, rested, rehydrated, and took pictures.  First, a vista:

I took the landscape pictures, then the dotter demanded the camera.  First she caught the dawg resting, looking Noble:

Then she did a self-portrait.  Note the faint orange mustache from her Gatorade:

She took a picture of me, but I’m not putting it in here, ’cause it shows my impending wattle, yuck.

Then we turned around and slid back down the trail.  The dotter wanted to go back up and slide back down, but I nixed that idea; the butt of her blue jeans was getting pretty damned grubby by that time, and I was afraid that any more grinding action would engrain the dirt to the point where it was impossible to ever get out again.

On the way up and back down, I was constantly clicking the camera, grabbing shots of autumn colors.  Some more fireweed:

Some berries (not edible, I think):

Purty fall colors:

Once we were back at the trailhead, we crossed the road to the Little Lady River, and played on the rocks and in the water.  The dotter collected a large number of speckled rocks, which she proudly proclaimed were river dinosaur eggs, and that the eggs needed to be right at the edge of the water to hatch, so that the baby river dinosaurs could just swim away when they hatched.

Then we went home.  On the drive home, the dotter informed me that she just loved hiking, and could we do it every weekend?  Har.  My nefarious scheme is working!

OmegaMom opens the door and peers into the bloghouse.  She’s carrying a feather duster, which she uses to quickly dust off the blogroll.  She tidies up the BlogHer ads, re-arranges a few Twitters, sits down on the sofa, and sneezes at the poof of dust that she stirred up.  She looks around, frowns, taps her teeth with a fingernail, and says, “Hm.  What we need are some flowers!”

“I think I’ll put some lilacs here.  It’ll make things smell so lovely!”:

“This spot here needs a close-up of some of our wild rose.”:

“Tsst, tsst, tsst…hm…what next?  Ah!  Let’s put some trollius over there.  That’ll make that spot bright and cheery!”:

“Now, to keep the wildcats away, let’s bring in the Leopard’s Bane.”:

“And I think I’ll finish the decorating by putting some sprigs of this mysterious blossoming tree right here.”:

Well!  It’s been a while, hasn’t it?!  Ahem.  I was brought back to my blog-ly duties by a plaintive email from my Unka Bill, who was wondering why every time he visited my blog and hit refresh, it was still showing May 27.  Um.  Well.  Yeah.  See, I’ve been busy enjoying the flowers and the sunlight and the rain.  And yard work.  And being chief cook and bottle washer for OmegaDad whilst he rebuilds the formerly-stable-soon-to-be-greenhouse.

Then there was the pizza party, when OmegaDotter’s friend A. came over to spend the night and we made homemade pizza.  He was a hoot (as he always is), and we had a grand time, though he and the dotter stayed up incredibly late.

Then I found a new author and series.  Um.  Seven books in about ten days?  That sounds about right.  I do love me some hot post-apocalyptic science fiction!

Then I got sick.  Not badly, but enough to put me in bed for a day and a half, sleeping it off.

And then I was turned onto Broken Picture Telephone, a game which is like the classic game of Telephone, except with notes and pictures instead.  I have been busily scribbling and writing notes for two days now.

Anyway:  HI!  I’m back!  Didja miss me?!

The dotter staged this picture of my big red lips beanbag “reading” a book; I barely cropped it at all.

So there I was, relaxing and reading a few blogs’n'boards’n'things late this evening, and I decided to do my recent hobby:  checking in at Alaska Volcano Observatory’s Redoubt website to see how things were a-cookin’.  Things were definitely a-cookin’, to the point that I kept checking in at the seismic webicorders as it became obvious that the volcano was really thinking of doing something this time.

And then, between one moment and the next, suddenly the color code of the volcano watch changed from ORANGE-”watch” level to RED-”warning” level, and the descriptor over to the side changed to “RED: Eruption is imminent with significant emission of volcanic ash into the atmosphere likely OR eruption is underway or suspected with significant emission of volcanic ash into the atmosphere [ash-plume height specified, if possible]. WARNING: Hazardous eruption is imminent, underway, or suspected.”

So I switched to Twitter to send out a notice to whoever might possibly be listening to my intermittent blatherings, and as I was typing, @alaska_avo sent out a tweet that Redoubt was erupting.

Now, before anyone gets worried, concerned, scared, etc., please be aware that this volcano is a hundred miles away, and it looks like a short eruption (seismic stuff has already cooled down after going off the charts).

But still…so cool to be able to monitor this stuff in real-time.

Here’s what the seismometer was doing at one of the seismic stations; the red square at the bottom left corner is an indicator that the seismicity was off the chart, unable to be measured by that seismograph, during those minutes.

My memory is not what it once was; this, alas, is the fate that awaits almost all.

To wit:  I chanced upon the film “Kindergarten Cop” at the local DVD-aria, in the “buy it cheap” bin.  I remembered it as being quite fun and cute, so purchased it.

The dotter pestered me to watch it this a.m., so we snuggled on the futon with the sun reflecting off the snow in the back yard into the family room, and turned on the DVD player.

Well.  Okay, then.  I remembered bits and pieces of it, all the ones with Arnie in the classroom.  What I should have remembered is that, even at his cutest and funnest, Arnie tends to have blood-and-guts movies with bad guys being beaten to smithereens in all sorts of odd places (such as a beauty salon).  That there are strung-out hookers and street sleazoids who use rather rank language.

So there we are, snuggled up, with “shit!”s and “asshole!”s and “motherfucker!”s being tossed hither and yon, OmegaMom wincing all the way and hoping its moving fast enough so the dotter doesn’t really catch them.  The dotter is requiring an ongoing explanation of the various shenanigans–who is doing what to whom and why–and producing a running commentary.  Then Arnie hits the classroom filled with 6-year-olds.

And the dotter turns to me with shocked eyes, and hisses at me, “Ooooh!  He used the ‘S-word’!”

I’m sitting there thinking to myself, “Shit!  Yes, he used the ‘S-word’ many, many times!  Damn!  She noticed!”

And she continues, sounding the forbidden phrase out: “Sh-uh-t uh-p!  We’re not allowed to use that in school!”

So there ya have it:  the various incarnations of the infamous Nine Words went right in one ear and out the other, but Arnie shouting–three times, very loudly!–”SHUT UP!” to the kiddies in his class roused the shocked Victorian in the dotter.

As an aside:  Really, I should remember for future reference that any Arnold Schwartzenegger movie is going to include blood, guts, gore, people being beaten, guns firing loudly, and, in this case, a terrorized mommy and child.  Um.  I did not win the Good Mommy award with this one; the dotter spent about ten minutes in my lap with a blanket over her head, asking when she could watch again.

• Ms. Vinegar Martinis asked me what kind of floofy drinks I like.  I admit a horrendous fondness for piña coladas, blended with ice, whipped cream on top, a maraschino cherry, and a little umbrella.  Another floofy drink I like–a hangover (har!) from when I was a wild-n-crazy young 20s-ish gal living in gay-town Chicago–is the Golden Cadillac.  Flavored margaritas, such as peach or mango, get a thumbs-up from me, as well.

  When we were living in Small Mountain University Town, on hot summer days, I would take the dotter off to the local outdoor swimming pool.  After an afternoon in the sun, we would stop at Baskin-Robbins.  One day, I noticed they had a flavor called Coco-Nutty.  Nom nom nom.  The next time we visited, I combined it with a scoop of lemon sherbert.  Nom nom nom, squared.  It was the ice-cream equivalent of the piña colada, and became my staple there.

• Noreen asked what the elementary school Sock Hop was like.  Let’s see…First off, the dotter’s elementary school has a new music teacher, Mr. L., who looks like he just got out of college from getting his music education degree.  He is, IMO, quite kewl; at the Christmas concert, for instance, he had forty fourth- and fifth-graders all playing in time and in tune on recorders.  Nothing too fancy, but it was quite an accomplishment.  Anyway, he seems to be the driving force for many newer musical adventures at the elementary school front.

  The Sock Hop featured all the lady school teachers in poodle skirts.  Oh, yes!  And a few of the girls.  My fave ’50s dress-up, though, was the stocky young man in the fourth (?) grade who had greased his hair, was wearing a muscle Tee, blue jeans, and a black leather jacket.

  When we arrived, the music blasting out was 80s rock-and-roll.  OmegaDad and I eyed each other dubiously; this was not sock hop material to us.  However, soon enough the DJ (Mr. L.) was rolling out fifties and sixties faves, requiring serious Twist and Swing action.

  There were hot dogs and chips, and a malt shop featuring root beer floats.  All in all, grand fun.

• Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa:  Shortly after we returned Buffy, our formerly broody hen, to Le Grand Coop, we had to remove Angie, our Brahma, due to the other hens pecking her legs bloody.  So Angie has been in our garage for a few weeks, recuperating.  Yesterday morning we returned her to the coop.

  I had thought the peckage was the result of Angie molting, and thought nothing of checking up on her.

  OmegaDad checks the chickens late at night, before bedtime.  I was reading in the dotter’s bedroom, finishing off Godel, Escher, Bach, when I heard OmegaDad muttering, “Shit!  Shit!” outside the room.  When I emerged a few minutes later, I found him downstairs in the office, on the computer.

  “So what was all the muttering about?” I asked.

  The sad tale came out:  He had forgotten that Angie had been returned to the coop, so had not checked during the day.  When he got out there, he discovered her beaten and bloody; the other hens had pecked out all her leg feathers again, and pulled out almost all the feathers at the base of her tail.  I went out to the garage to view our poor beat-up hen, and it was just gross; she looked like ground beef.  :-(  And I felt terrible, because I hadn’t thought anything of it, and felt like it was my fault she got beat up.  Anyway, Angie is back in the garage, recuperating again, and if we can’t figure out a way to get her back into the coop without the other hens savaging her again, we are going to have to find a new home for her.

• Unka Bill grumps about the PINKage of modern-day small girls.  I totally agree.  In fact, when the dotter was a wee one, she had very little–if any!–pink attire.  She wore cute little yellow outfits, and green outfits, and denim onesies, leggings in a variety of colors, cute little dresses in bright colors.  Alas, in the past two years, she has been quite firm in what she wants to wear.  The Borg has assimilated her.  All I can say is that most girls emerge from the PINK phase at some point in time…I hope the dotter goes Goth, or Emo, because she looks mighty fine in black.
• When the weather got cold, OmegaDad retreated from the ongoing construction around the north forty, and took to experimenting with baking.  We now have homemade bread on a regular basis, and homemade cakes, and (today) homemade brownies.  Our bank account has thrived as a result, but so has my weight.  I am eagerly awaiting the return of spring, not just for the sunshine and warmth, but so that OmegaDad will return to construction and stop feeding us luscious baked goods.  All the blue jeans I purchased early last fall, which were too big on me then, are now fitting quite snugly.  This is Not Good.

Later gators.

So Joanna tagged me with the 25 Things meme.  Right now, I am fresh out of ideas for a blog post, and this was handy, so…

1. I broke my leg in the Grand Canyon and got a helicopter flight over closed airspace as a result.
2. I wanted to write best-selling historical romances as a living when I was in high school.
3. I still bite my fingernails.
4. I went to four different colleges before I got my degree.
5. When studying higher mathematics, I got to the point where I would do proofs in my dreams.  Some of those proofs actually turned out to be solutions to homework problems I was stuck on.
6. I have lived in Chicago; Prescott, Prescott Valley, and Flagstaff, AZ; Orinda, Lafayette, and San Leandro, CA; Lubbock, TX; and here in Alaska.
7. My earliest memory is of flying to visit my grandmother in Florida with my parents.  I was very small.
8. Before I had LASIK done, my eyesight was something like 20/600 in one eye, and 20/700 in the other.
9. When I was a teenager, I wanted to have five children, like my aunt and uncle.
10. I like floofy mixed drinks.
11. I have a knot on my left arm where I was caught between a wall and some girls’ room lockers that friends and I were pushing over in seventh or eighth grade.
12. I can recite The Jabberwock from memory.
13. I hate white chocolate.
14. Yesterday I learned that the part of the guitar’s neck where you are supposed to press down on the guitar strings is not the metal bump of the fret, but between the metal frets.
15. I am supremely lazy.
16. I abruptly dumped my very best friend, with no explanation, when I was around 20 or 21, for what I still think were very good reasons.
17. I have fallen in love three times.
18. I spent three weeks writing (long-hand) in a blaze of creativity while I was in my last bout at college; I was writing so much and so fast that it gave me a case of carpal tunnel syndrome that recurs now and then.  It ended up being about ninety pages on the computer.  I still have it on a hard-drive that is currently inaccessible.
19. I am a wuss and back away from confrontation on a regular basis.
20. I have phone-phobia, which was a problem when working as a magazine writer.
21. We lived near Cabrini Green when I was growing up.  I believe it has since been torn down?
22. Our house was set on fire by teenagers walking home from school in the alley behind us.
23. I save cards and letters others send to me.
24. Sometimes I like to watch golf on TV; it’s soothing.
25. I will be fifty on my next birthday.  This is bothering me.

Your turn!  You’re tagged!  Write it up somewhere and post a link in the comments!

Today I:

• Kibbitzed over the dotter’s shoulder while she played Farm Mania.
• Spent about an hour “helping” her do gymnastics.
• Snuggled with her while she read GrannyJ’s latest letter (a few weeks after we received it).
• Helped her type an answering letter.
• Played Farm Mania myself.
• Spent too much time reading Twitters.
• Got ridiculously defensive when boss asked if he and coworker could help with the website revamp.  Why?!  Partly because I’m trying to get rid of years’ worth of accreted code schmutz and I don’t want to have to explain each and every step, partly because I’m trying to develop a “style” using the stylesheet and I need to write it down before passing it on, partly because…?
• Reveled in daylight when I was driving the dotter to school–we’re gaining five-and-a-half minutes each day, woot!
• Tried very hard to keep away from depressing here-comes-the-Depression websites.
• Read the memo from school about What To Do If The Volcano Blows.  (Yes!  We got an official memo about it!)
• Spent all day in my pajamas–driving the dotter to school, working six hours, helping with homework, playing, hanging out, eating dinner–and didn’t feel guilty about it, though did make sure not to turn on the video when we had a Skype meeting at work.
• Dipped in and out of Godel, Escher, Bach, which I am enjoying immensely, even though it’s–at the same time–immensely slow going.
• Suppressed any sneaky moments of gloom-n-doom.
• Determined that Wall Street is sorely in need of a good overall PR person, or else a bunch of sadly lacking common sense.
• Tried to figure out if I agree with the various incarnations of the stimulus plan or not.
• Felt amazed, astounded, and somewhat affirmed and proud that the dotter’s recital of friend S.’s tendency to peek at her math work at school and copy it ended up with, “That’s bad.  She’s not learning it.”
• Felt equally amazed, and very happy, that the dotter said about her latest assigned book from school, “I want to keep reading–it’s like TV in your head!”

I am finding that simply getting out of the house each day, and doing a little bit of exercise, plus a heapin’ helpin’ of commiseratin’ commentary from my readers, has helped keep the blues to a minimum for the past few days.  Fingers crossed that this continues!

But suffering from a sinus infection which has decided to grace me with an ongoing headache that makes me nauseated and have sparkles in front of my eyes.  Sort of the pseudo-migraine of the sinus world.  Ugh.  So I finally had OmegaDad swing me by the doc-in-the-box and am now outfitted with antibiotics and decongestents and hopefully I will be feeling more like a real live human being tomorrow.

I have some ideas for posts, but nothing is gelling.  Right now, it’s just amorphous ideas drifting through my head; a paragraph or two plus an idea of where it will go, but nothing that is coalescing into anything worthwhile putting down on paper (or putting down on the screen).

Ugh.

Anyone want a Christmas card & letter from me?  Email me. 

OmegaDad is sick.

I French-braided the dotter’s hair.

The dotter and I went off to the Bounce Haus and bounced our heads off.  In other words, the dotter wore me out.

I also discovered that my bladder control is dreadful.  There is nothing more quietly embarrassing than realizing that if you jump up and down in a bouncy castle–like you should–that each time you hit the bounce floor, you leak.  This is not a realization I shared with the dotter.

The dotter and I went off to the St0ne C0ld Creamery and chowed down on ice cream.

The dotter and I then went to El Cheapo Hair Salon.  The dotter who a day ago insisted she didn’t want any kind of haircut now insisted she have a “very tiny” trim.

After months of not having a hair cut–and my hair growing down to my shoulders and flattening out as it always does–I relented and returned to the same ol’ same ol’ haircut I have been getting now for about 20 years.  I read bloggers who are going off to hair salons and getting new hairdos all the time.  This makes me envious.  My hair is thin, wispy, fine, flat.  If it’s longer than a few inches, my face starts looking horse-y.  If I get a perm to solve the flatness issue, one side will be perfect and the other side will be frizzy.  Or else I will end up looking like a poodle.

But hope springs eternal:  every few years, I find myself growing my hair out in the hopes that this time, it will morph into a glorious mane, full of body and wave, bouncing enticingly off my shoulders.  And every time, without fail, I reach a point where I look into the mirror, heave a heavy sigh, and say, “Oh, dammit, let’s just chop the whole lot off.”

Now my head feels light and airy, and the slightest breeze makes the short hairs stir about in interesting ways.  It will take a few days at least before I become accustomed to it.

We will not discuss the ongoing alien effect, wherein what used to be deep mahogany brown locks floating down to bedeck the plastic salon cape are now wildly speckled and striped with white.  That’s not related to being forty-mumble years old; it is, obviously, some creature from light years away who is now living in symbiosis with my scalp and sucking the vital juices from my hair follicles for sustenance.

Okay, I have a few posts in mind, but right now I just want to pass on something that Pretzel passed on to me.  It’s in the spirit of earworms:  Once you pass it on, hopefully it’s not stuck in your own mind anymore, eh?

Boomshine!  A bubble-bursting chain reaction game.

Go forth and waste time.  I just want you to know that I made it to 336 points.  Woot!

(Posts in mind:  OmegaDotter builds a house…A review of a kid’s sex ed book…fear and loathing on world equivalents of Wall Street…cold weather…)

Which science fiction character are you?

Jean-Luc Picard

An accomplished diplomat who can virtually do no wrong, you sometimes know it is best to rely on the council of others while holding the reins.

There are some words which I have known since I was a schoolboy. “With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.” These words were uttered by Judge Aaron Satie — as a wisdom, and warning. The first time any man’s freedom is trodden on, we’re all damaged.

Jean-Luc is a character in the Star Trek universe.

Onto “real” things:

I want the election to be over with.

The dotter and I spent a few hours this afternoon making jack-o-lanterns, ghosts, witches, cemeteries, etc. to hang in the windows.

I have the first parent-teacher conference of the school year this Thursday.  Ms. Nices is…well, nice enough…but I’m not so sure I’m thrilled with her as a teacher.  Not dismayed, either, but not thrilled, the way I was with Mrs. Shoelace (who could Do No Wrong).

Soooo…is the economic mess “contained” yet?  Wanna place bets?

Miss Cellania passed a Proximidade Award on to me; it is, it seems, to thank another blogger for being there as part of one’s circle of blogging buds.  The rough translation of the description is “This blog invests and believes, the proximity. [meaning, that blogging makes us 'close' -being close through proxy]. They all are charmed with the blogs, where in the majority of its aims are to show the marvels and to do friendship; there are persons who are not interested when we give them a prize, and then they help to cut these bows; do we want that they are cut, or that they propagate?

“Then let’s try to give more attention to them! So with this prize we must deliver it to 8 bloggers that in turn must make the same thing and put this text.”

So…of course, I can’t give it to Miss C., because she gave it to me.  I’ve known Miss C. online for…oh, lordy, at least (OMG can it really be?!) six years.

I found PAGent on one of my cruises through the “next blog” button on Blogger, waaaaay back when, about three years ago.  But I can’t give it to PAGent, because she gave it to him, too.  Bah.  PAGent, consider yourself Proximidade’d squared, okay?

I’d give the award to Lizard, but even though she had a blog that she used to write on now and then (Grumpy Old Bitches), she hasn’t written there in an age.  But I’ve known Lizard for at least six years, too.

Soooo.  Moving on to folks who haven’t gotten the award, and who do have blogs:

GrannyJ.  Of course.  Hi, ma!

Johnny.  He won’t do anything with it, ’cause it’s like a meme and he doesn’t “do” memes.  But I want to give him props for just being himself, and always having an interesting perspective on things.

Lorrie at Clueless in Carolina.  She’s had a lot of stuff going on lately, but she’s always entertaining to read.  And she’s part of the Miss C./Lizard/Carol-Anne/etc. group that I’ve known for six or seven years.

Speaking of Carol-Anne…Yet another from that group…

Blog Antagonist, at Blogs Are Stupid.  I’ve known BA online for seven or eight years; we started off at iVillage’s Current Debate board, moved to another board which blew up in a horrendous, awful mess, and then she started a blog to sneer at blogging.  Much to her surprise, she enjoyed it.  Much to her surprise, she got readers.  Much to my pleasure, she’s less likely now to use $10 words when $2 words would do.

Kate, over at Escaping Suburbia.  Kate hasn’t been posting a lot lately.  Bad, bad Kate.  She does awesome photos, one of which is finally framed and hanging on my office wall, a blast of color to help me combat the drear of winter.  I’ve known Kate online for eight years; we started out on the iVillage Adoption Debate board, which, at the time, was awesome.

Julie, at Using My Words.  Julie is another of the iVillage escapees.  She is passionate and compassionate, and always strives for justice.  I still remember the help drive she set up for the Katrina refugees who had ended up in her area.

Ms. Vinegar Martinis.  VM is tart and funny.  Yet another from iVillage.  VM, you need to just ditch the PTA, girl!

PretZel, at Pretzel’s Place, is a crazy lady.  I think it’s seven years for PretZel.

Jozet, at Halushki.  OMG, you must, must, must read Halushki.  What, you don’t?!  Well, do.  She just did this thing on eggs.  With a video, no less!  It’s great.  She’s great.  She needs to post more, but I think she’s not feeling funny too much these days.  Another iVillager.

One more!  One more!  (Oh, yeah, it’s supposed to be eight and this is number ten.  But hell, I just have to do another.)  YouKnowWhereYouAreWith is a poet.  With a daughter from China.  Who happened to live in Arizona, while I was living there.  We hung out together a few times, and I was looking forward to more, but then she moved away from Arizona.  :-(  Oh, well, I know she had very good reasons for the move.

Oh, blast.  Let’s make it eleven, why don’t we, ’cause I’ve got to mention Kate over at High Altitude Gardening.  I found Kate, too, while doing a “next blog” sweep of Blogger.  Her philosophy is that her blog is her “happy spot”, so it’s always cheering to read one of her posts and admire her flowers.  And now I’ve got yellow hollyhock seeds to help brighten up my summers here, thanks to her.

…and my brain is fried, and I just think it’s neat.  Shamelessly taken from Miss C Recommends:

Also, just FYI:  OmegaDad did not design the Grand Edifice himself; it was a kit.  But he worked hard and did a good job, and the kiddo likes it, so that’s what counts.

(Edited three times because I am tired and my brain is fried…)

Dear Very-Distant-Coworker:

When I sent you the email asking you a whole list of questions about how many copies of a particular document you received, I didn’t want a reply of “Yeah, I received a bunch.”  I asked you who you received them from, how many copies you got, and when you received them because (whaddasurprise!) I wanted answers so that I could track down the problem at our end.

Sincerely, OmegaMom-the-support-person

Dear Coworker-of-OmegaDad’s:

When he sent you the email stating that he would be in your town to do training, that he needed all people there for training, and asking what would be a good week for this, he did not need a two-page reply outlining all your difficulties, listing everyone’s schedule for two months, and a request for special trips to train Joe, Moe, and Schmoe.  Please don’t get angry when he replies quoting his original email and repeating that he needs all people there for the training.

Sincerely, OmegaMom-the-spouse-who-likes-to-see-her-husband

Dear L0we’s:

Please train your cashiers to use the L0we’s part number, rather than the manufacturer’s part number, when entering data.  That way, we won’t be told that parts that we know are in stock are out of stock and now on special order.  Oh, also, you won’t charge us for special ordering.  And we won’t have to deal with the front desk or the head cashier to get a credit.  Which we can’t use anywhere else.  Which might have been nice to have in our bank account, instead.  Hey, maybe you can start offering, say, checks to people for such overcharges?

Also, this time around, please be sure to deliver when you say you’re going to deliver.

Also, this time around, please be sure to deliver everything we ordered, which was in stock when we ordered it, rather than surprising us at delivery time by not having everything we ordered.

Does this make sense?  Good.

Thank you, OmegaMom-and-OmegaDad-about-to-embark-on-another-chicken-coop-for-smaller-birds

Dear Fruit Flies:

This is a declaration of war.  Die, die, die!

Sincerely, OmegaMom-the-lousy-housekeeper

Dear Kozmik All:

What have I done that I should deserve this ongoing itchy scalp?  The doctor’s antibiotics are not helping.

Sincerely, OmegaMom-the-itchy

Zooillogix today featured Martin Amm’s fabulous macro photos of bugs in nature, specifically the “wet bugs” pictures.  You have got to see these photographs.

There was a partial lunar eclipse on last Saturday, and the Astronomy Picture of the Day featured a way-kewl time-lapse photograph of the event this week which shows just how big the earth’s shadow really is.

Read all about the work, devotion, trials, and tribulations of a state-fair champion pumpkin grower working to grow this year’s entry.

Remember my parable about vakseens?  Respectful Insolence takes notice of today’s news about how the number of measles cases in the U.S. so far this year is the highest since 1997.

A compare-and-contrast duo:  Back in April, Lenore Skenazy was taken severely to task by NY Times readers for her story of allowing her 9-year-old son to ride the NYC subway all by himself!  Oh, the horrors.  So she created the website FreeRangeKids, posted the column again, and now has 440+ comments.  Today, in a weird sense of deja-vu, I read the post “Riding the subway–to school?” on ParentDish, all about kids 8, 9, and up riding the…wait for it…NYC subway all by themselves to go to and from school.  The semi-approving post has had all-of-three semi-approving comments.  Where’s the outrage there was for Skenazy’s column?  Ironic.

Speaking of judging others’ parenting styles, check out CrabMommy’s tale of being dressed down for dressing down her tot in public.  I am so glad I was able to wrassle OmegaDotter out of various stores while in full tantrum mode without anything like that happening to me.  I seem to recall one time when I hauled her out of Costco under my arm, plopped her into the carseat in the car, slammed the door, and sat out on the hood of the car while she completed her tantrum, and got actually applauded by a few passersby who had seen the whole scene erupt.

Thankfully, that didn’t happen very often, and is now a thing of the past.  I seem to recall it being closer to her fourth birthday than her third, but that was long ago.  Yay!

Readership:  I probably won’t futz with the RSS feed, mainly because I’m too lazy.  Har!  But also because, if even one of my readers finds partial feeds inconvenient, it’s not worth it to me.  (Ahem.  See my halo?  I think I’ve shown it off before.  It glitters, y’know!)  Of course, the same day I was lamenting low readership stats in a half-concealed plea for people to please visit my blooooog (and so many of you took pity, thank you!) someone “Stumbled Upon” me, and I immediately got a big boost for the day.  Isn’t that ironic?

OmegaMom drifts off, humming Alanis Morisette to herself.

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.

Nothing major going on, no great thoughts shakin’, just hanging out in the sun…ahhhhhhh.

The chickens are loving the new coop.  The babies are loving their new digs in the "temporary" coop.

Our new tractor mower finally got put to use…then we promptly bent a blade on one of the (thousands of) rocks in the yard, which we discovered as OmegaDad cut a lovely swathe through the front yard where one side of the mower cut the grass 3 inches high, and the other side scalped the grass down to the ground.  Oops.

The wild roses are blooming, with lovely big pink five-petaled flowers peeping out of the greenery.  The roadsides hereabouts now have lupine blooming, too, and it’s a totally different lupine than I’m used to.  The lupines here are deep violet, with white tops; the lupines in Small Mountain University Town were blue all the way through.

In the news…

California started offering gay marriage licenses this week, and the state is looking forward to a boom as gay couples from across the country fly out there to get married…because California’s law states that these marriages are valid in other states.  (I’m not sure how it works, but that’s what I’ve heard.)  Coming this fall:  California constitutional amendment vote on a "protect" marriage amendment.  Which, as John Scalzi points out, would invalidate all those marriages being made.  Ahhh, the warm embrace of Christian fundamentalist love.

Fox News, trying to be hip, became tragically hip by accident when referring to Michelle Obama as "Obama’s Baby Mama", not realizing that "baby mama" is for unmarried moms.  Or did they?  After all, this is the network that has regularly let slip "Osama" in place of Obama, had an onscreen person seem to advocate assassinating Obama, and called the loving fist-bump that Michelle and Obama exchanged when he locked up the nomination a "terrorist fist jab" (first suggested in .  Oy!  Every time, of course, they backpedal.  I’m sure they mean well.  Really!  But for another point of view, let’s go back to Scalzi for an excellent rant.

The AP decided to start sending cease-and-desist letters to bloggers for quoting from articles and providing links.  A "quote" to them is five words.  Eh?  Whatever happened to "fair use"?  Bloggers, needless to say, are up in arms and talking boycotting AP news, using other news aggregators instead.  There was a meeting wherein AP, "backing down", offered to let bloggers use quotes at a per-word price.  A five- to 25-word quote would cost $12.50.  Oy!

The Phoenix Mars lander, at the Martian pole, scooped a hole in the ground and found "white stuff".  I look at the pictures and am taken back to Lubbock, TX, and environs, where half the places you dig, you’ll find satin spar gypsum.  In layers.  Alternating with red dirt.  Like the picture.  Alas, I can’t find any really decent pics online, though I know we have plenty in our boxes.  We also have some lovely specimens that you have to handle extremely carefully, or it will break into pieces.  Really interesting stuff.

Ah!  Forgot two items:  Boomerific has lost her home to flooding in Iowa; as a result of a "flood" of offers for help, they have set up a Target registry for replacing items lost in the flood.  And Karen (of the Nekkid Ovary) has had her lovely daughter Chloe Ellen.

Just a moment to thank all those who have helped to protect our nation.

Our veggie beds are all filled with dirt and planted with seeds and plants.  OmegaDad, realizing what a tasty treat he had just set out for various varmints, is off to Lowe’s or Home Debit to get some orange construction fencing, which is reputed to scare moose.  Or he may end up with moose repellant.  (I never thought I’d be googling that phrase, but life is full of interesting surprises.)

This week is Ballet Recital Madness.  Tuesday evening is the full run-through.  Thursday is the dress rehearsal.  Friday and Saturday are the performances.  Luckily, the schedule is not as bad as I originally believed; someone in charge had sense enough to tell the littlies to come later.

I signed up as a backstage mommy for dress-rehearsal day.  That was before I knew that it was the Longest Day.  I will know better next year.

And if I ever complain about one of the dotter’s teachers, please remind me of this story and ask me whether it’s as bad as that.  I am far too mellow today to take that one on, but just let me say it left me speechless.

(Because Kris asked!)

And the poop is now returning to its normal look and texture.

I love living in a time and place where we have such things as antibiotics.  They’ve saved my sanity (numerous sinus infections) (numerous child-with-a-need-for-antibiotics occasions) (numerous husbandly illnesses of one sort or another).  And now they’ve pulled the dawg out of bloody hell and back to his normal self.

In other words, when the plumber arrived to fix the water heater (I still say "hot water heater", so sue me), the dawg had to be confined to the bedroom, where he yelped and barked and generally carried on.

You will be interested to know, no doubt, that Whirlpool Corporation performed a recall on the thermocouple assembly for our particular model of water heater after being hit by a lawsuit.  The lawsuit was not because of a possibility of explosions in the middle of the night.  It was not because of a possibility of gas leaking through the household in the middle of the night.  It was not because of the possibility of phalanges breaking and sending gouts of water through the basement/garage in the middle of the night.

No.  It was because people were sick and tired of finding out, after the hot water disappeared due to a bad thermocouple, that Whirlpool had deliberately designed this model (and others) so it required a specific, left-threaded thermocouple.  Unlike all the other water heater manufacturers had happily gone to "universal" modules.  In other words, "easily replaceable" modules.

Unlike our water heater’s thermocouple module.  Which had apparently angered a multitude of homeowners and plumbers to the point where they sued, because the homeowners and plumbers wouldn’t be able to get the right piece, and the homeowners and plumbers would fiddle, twiddle, and twist the incorrect piece until it fit.  Which was kinda dangerous, in the long run.

In short:  No hot water since Sunday morning.  One phone call to plumbers this a.m.  Plumber dude with eyebrow stud arrives.  Plumber dude removes thermocouple only to discover it’s this weird left-threaded dingus.  Plumber dude goes to Lowe’s to get one-and-only-remaining-left-threaded thermocouple in 60 mile radius (which Lowe’s gave to him gratis as it was a demo model).  Plumber dude returns.  OAORLTT turns out to be defective.  Plumber dude consults with dad.  Dad arrives.  Dude and dad spend time peering at various parts and cussing out Whirlpool.  Dad calls his Sekrit Source.  Sekrit Source says to call Lowe’s, as it’s the only source.  Lowe’s, when given model number, informs plumber dad that it’s our lucky day and they have the replacement unit waiting for our particular model and serial number, and it has been waiting since the recall.  Dad and dude go to Lowe’s.  Dad and dude return.  New thermocouple unit goes into water heater.  Hey presto:  hot water.  AND!  Dad and dude charge us for only one plumber, one hour, because that’s all it should have taken to begin with.

Woot.

No doubt when the moose returns to eat more of our Nice Green Grass in the middle of the "night", when we are doing our best to sleep through the gloaming, the dawg will bark his head off and keep us awake.

Such are the modern miracles of medicine.  At least we’ll be able to shower in the morning.

Last night, while cleaning up bookcases to go into the family room, it occurred to me to wonder–when did the first person decide that smearing smushed up dried honeycombs on wood was a Good Idea?

I mean, really–what on earth prompted someone to do that in the first place?

It’s similar to something else I’ve wondered:  Who was the first person who decided that horseradish might be actually good to eat if it were ground up and mixed in with other foodstuffs?  What possessed this person?  One of my most memorable experiences was when my mom handed me a chunk of what we both thought was celeriac root–carefully cleaned and peeled–and I took a great big honkin’ bite.  It wasn’t celeriac.  It was horseradish.  Let me tell you:  horseradish, in its natural state, is not, repeat not, edible.  I chewed for about five seconds.  At which point, my brain told me, in no uncertain terms, that I was being poisoned.  It was ghastly.  Surely I’m not alone in that?  So what prompted some genius, in the long long ago, to decide that it might be okay if it were used sparingly?

Why is it that I suddenly have nothing I want to say?

I’ve been encountering some good discussions around the blogosphere.  They pique my interest.  I want to discuss them when I read them.  But then, a few hours later, I open up the ol’ bloggin’ software and am confronted with a blank page…at which point my brain goes blank, too.

Part of it is that we’re being very homey right now.  The house is slowly, slowly falling into place; more and more boxes are unpacked, curtains are up, bookcases are out and books soon to be placed in them.  It’s feeling like our home suddenly.  I still feel sad about leaving the old house, but am happy about having more space, and more closets (closets!!!  OMG!  I could just swoon with the joy!).  We have also–somehow–managed to stay on top of the creeping mess here, so things have their places and get put back/away, rather than accreting like a giant midden heap in various spots around the house.

We have light.  In fact, so much light that it is making me feel very odd and out-of-focus.  Twilight at nine p.m. should mean that the weather is almost hot and the flowers are blooming and the grass is green.  But right now, we still have snow in the backyard and ice in the driveway (and in the afternoons, a lovely thin layer of melting ice on top of the slick ice, which resulted in one of our cars slooooowy sliding backwards down the driveway…luckily I noticed this in time to move it back up to a non-icy spot!).  We have birds congregating around the bird feeder, but no greenery.  We have sunshine all day, but no buds on the trees.  My body keeps saying, "Sun!  Woot!  But…but…dude!  Where’s the ’spring’?!"

Then there are the various "just living" things.  Taking the dotter off to gymnastics class.  Doing teleconferences during the day.  Taking the dawg out to do his thing.  Planning a vegetable garden.  Putting up artwork.  Doing the laundry.

Anyway, right now, I open the blog, want to post something pithy and pungent, and find the P&P quotient in my brain has plummeted.

Give me some ideas!

I love cauliflower.  Tender, delicate, tightly woven off-white buds covered with butter or shredded cheddar cheese…yum.  However, we don’t eat it very often.  Mostly, we just don’t think of it.

OmegaDad got a hankering for tempura recently.  So he purchased mushrooms and broccoli and zucchini and cauliflower, hauled out the boneless skinless chicken breasts, did some research on Teh Google, and prepared a luscious tempura meal last night.  The batter, alas, was somewhat starchy, so only the zucchini (being full of H2O) came out with the perfect tempura crust; everything else was slightly chewy rather than crispy.  But add some sweet-and-hot sauce, some teriyaki or char sui sauce, and we were dipping fiends.

Then tonight we had steak and noodles and plain ol’ cauliflower with butter.

An hour later I came to the realization of just why we don’t eat cauliflower very often.

Actually, if I had been thinking, that realization would have struck me last night, when I was wandering around the house wondering just what was causing my unusual bloatiness, with disturbing thoughts of how the maternal side of the family has a tendency towards uterine cancer (one symptom of which is sudden onset of bloatiness).  Yes, I do have a slight leaning towards mental hypochondria–why do you ask??

But tonight, when my abdomen distended outward like a taut balloon within an hour after dinner, my brain finally acknowledged the two-by-four that was thwacking against my head.  I knew the eternal truth:  I love cauliflower, but cauliflower does not love me in return.

Believe me when I say "distended outward like a taut balloon", I am not exaggerating.  OmegaDotter, when presented with the evidence (see photo), gasped and said, "Omigod!  Mom!  You look like you’re pregnant!"  Then she poked at my tummy and watched with interest as her fingertip bounced off.  OmegaDad made a smart-alecky remark about how he wanted to know who the parents were if I were pregnant.  I merely marveled at how quickly those lovely, tender florets of the veggie had transformed themselves into a veritable explosion of gas in my gut.

As the dotter and I did our normal bedtime routine, first she asked her "one question" (why did the cauliflower make me look like I was pregnant? entailing a quick discussion of food, digestion and gas), and then she kept bouncing up from her pillow to look at me and ask me if I was going to fart or burp now.  When I did, she’d bounce up again to ask if all the gas was gone yet.

She thought it was hilariously funny.  It took her a while to go to sleep.  She kept snickering.

As I sit here hours later, still producing copious amounts of gas, I don’t think it’s funny at all.

Which is, of course, why I decided to share my intestinal distress with the myriad of intimate strangers who will arrive here guided by Teh Google when they search on "cauliflower gas" or "cauliflower farts" or "cauliflower burps" or some such combination.

I’m sure they (and you) will be happy to know that someone has done a scholarly mathematics paper all about the fractal factor of cauliflower and broccoli.  What the hell is a "fractal factor"?  I’m not quite sure (I think it has to do with how many times the patterns repeat themselves, and I leave my readers to dig through the various references to figure it out), but this delightful piece of information is a mighty testament to the wonders of the intertubes and the weirdness that can be scholarly mathematics…

We got the prescriptions Friday night.  I took the first batch on Saturday morning.

Three hours later, I was getting quite…woozy. 

Sunday, I took another batch.

I had found information on a "Holiday On Ice" show at the ice skating rink attached to the Big Mall in Big City.  So we were driving in to Big City to see the show.  I was woozy again.  I closed my eyes.

Y’know how, when you close your eyes tight, you get flashes of light and patterns and sparkles?  But normally you have to close the eyes quite tightly for a while to get that…

There, relaxing in the car, with my eyes lightly closed, I was getting quite interesting versions of the flashes. 

There were also visions.

Yes, really.  Visions.

The best one was a highly detailed little Santa who appeared in the middle of my vision, then spun backwards, shrinking, until he vanished with a little flash of stars.

Then there were the neon-like straight lines that marched upwards from the bottom of my eyes on up.

Lemme tell you, it was quite interesting.  I never fell asleep, but listened to OmegaDad and dotter chattering, and watched the light show.  But when it came time to "wake up" in the Big City, my eyes felt glued shut.  The eyelids were heavy.  It was a chore to open them.

The "Holiday on Ice" show turned out to be a recital by ice skating students.  But, oh, it was too cute for words.  I could easily turn out to be a recital junkie.

On the other hand, I don’t want to become a medication junkie.  The worst part?  The part that scares me the most?  Was that by the time we got home, I wanted another dose.

Um.

Nuh-uh, thanks very much.

So I tossed the Lyrica into the garbage can and got online to research the stuff.

Apparently, a "drunk feeling"/"inability to concentrate" was a side effect felt by about 12% of the research guinea pigs.  There was, hidden away in the fine print, a little blurb about how a particular group thought it gave a "good high" and that it would probably have a market on the street.  There was also a warning that it might be addictive.

Eeep!

Apparently, Lyrica is one of the very few medications out there that helps with nerve pain; regular painkillers like aspirin or Ibuprofen don’t work.  If my nerve pain were constant, I could see wanting to take the stuff.  But, as it is, the nerve pain is highly intermittent, and I’d much rather try back exercises and stretches and yoga to control it as opposed to getting addicted to this medication.  This is the first time I’ve tried something and actually been scared by my instant reaction, the desire to take more.  It’s a pretty creepy feeling.

So, like I said, into the garbage with that prescription.  I think I’ll have a little talk with the doc and tell him to warn people when he’s prescribing this medication.

A few years back, OmegaDad rented a car while on a business trip (”The boys and I were playing poker in Nebraska City…”) (inside family joke).  During this trip, he apparently scraped the bumper while parking.  Our insurance covered it, but it was a small hassle, entailing various faxes back and forth and a letter or two from the rental company.

So this trip, when OD rented the car for the week, he signed on for the various insurance charges, hoping to avoid any further hassles.

Y’see, in his innocence, he thought the charge was a flat, one-time fee.

He mentioned that he had signed up for them with his one-day rental to get back to Phoenix on Tuesday, but didn’t say anything about the one-week-and-one-day rental…

Picture OmegaMom in the large super-rental facility in Phoenix.

First, take a moment to picture OmegaMom trying desperately to locate the car keys which had been in her hands mere moments previously…luckily, I discovered them buried in the dotter’s backpack, where I had hurriedly been tossing various dotterly accoutrements from the back seat.  Har.

Then, picture OmegaMom glancing at the printout from the nifty hand-held car-rental gizmo from the patient and helpful rental car dude.

Picture OmegaMom’s jaw dropping and eyes popping when she reached the bottom line.

$737.18?!?!

Dear God in heaven.  Surely there was a mistake?!

We sashayed up to the little “Customer Service” kiosk in the dark underground cavern.

The nice lady there said, “Well, this line is for this, and that line is for that, and this line here and that line there and that third line in this other place is for the insurance.”

I sat down this a.m. with the receipt and did some kackle-ating.

Note that some of these charges are taxable!

I was expecting to pay somewhere around $300…and, sure enough, after my kackle-ating, it turns out that, without the insurance damages (har!), the car would have cost $330.67.  Or thereabouts.

In other words, more than $400 went to those “helpful” insurance coverages.

Gasp!

Rest assured that this will not happen again.  I know that our insurance covers this stuff.  The hassle of dealing with it ourselves, through our insurance company, is more than worth $400.

Holy moly.  I am so glad that we have $$ in the bank and it’s not the disaster it would be if we had, say, been gallivanting to the southwest on a budget.

(Thanks to Scott for pointing out that it was Dylan Thomas, not John Donne, who penned “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”.  I whapped myself on the forehead for that one.)

Jess asked about the T-shirt the dotter was wearing in the previous post.  The T-shirt does, indeed, say, “I’m the BIG sister”.  The T-shirt has no meaning in our family, alas, though we’d really like it to.  Someone at summer camp had the T-shirt.  The dotter liked it.  That someone handed it over to the dotter, because that someone’s mom had spilled bleach on it and the bleach had eaten holes in it and who cared, right?

When birthmother sensitivity goes bad–OmegaDotter to OmegaDad in the car last night, conversing about her birthmother:  “Oh, yeah?  Well, I’ve got her in my heart, dork!”  Okay, to really grok that last item, say it with a typical kids “neener-neener” tone to it, then top it with the emphatic “dork!”  OmegaDad and I busted up laughing in the darkness.  Then I informed the dotter that we don’t call people “dorks”.  Like that’ll stop her (”He did it first!”).

The “ACK!  Run away!  Run away!” department:  OmegaDotter has taken to decorating her “i”s with flowers when she writes.  She’s learned this perfidious practice from some older kids at after-school care.  She is very careful and detailed.  This is too, too cliché.  I will try to get a picture.

Tomorrow we head off to Arizona!  Yes!  For sunshine!  And my grandmother’s 104th birthday!  Yes!  And I’m excited!  Yes!

A lot of the cool kids are doing bullet-style posts recently.  Since most of them are doing NaBloPoMo, they get a pass from me because the daily posting drains the creative well dry very quickly.

I, on the other hand, am doing a bullet-style post because I’m just plain lazy.  No NaBloPoMo excuse from me, as I’m not participating.

• It’s 4:00.  The sun is setting in a few minutes.  The sun rose today at 9:10 or thereabouts.  According to the U.S. Naval Observatory, we’re supposed to have 7 hours and 17 minutes of sunlight today.  Well, yeah, I suppose we did.  There were no clouds, so we saw the sun today.  That was nice.  But the maximum altitude of the sun hereabouts was 10 degrees.  Ten.  Sort of like having sunset all day.
• I don’t care that Hilary Clinton had someone planted in her audience lob her a planted question meant to point out some of her stands on certain issues.
• I equally don’t care that FEMA had a plant in their audience at a press conference to ask questions guaranteeing that a few things got mentioned.
• I further don’t care that John McCain didn’t lambast one of his supporters when she asked, “How do we beat the bitch?” when talking about Hilary Clinton.  I thought “Can someone translate that for me?” was a perfectly good way of saying, “Yo!  That’s not nice!”
• I’m afraid to open our gas bill.  I don’t want to know what a month’s worth of heating costs, especially given that it will be much higher in the next few months.
• Context is important to me.  If a person writes an article in which she makes a comment to her adopted daughter that could indicate she has a savior complex and thinks China is a land of indentured orphans, I’d like to know what kind of relationship she has with her daughter.  If it’s one kind of relationship, it’s an in-joke about what some people say about adoption; if it’s a different kind of relationship, it’s snide and insensitive and denigrating.  Given the remainder of the article, I lean towards the former…but a helluva lot of folks in the blog world are leaning towards the latter and a kerfuffle has ensued.
• On the other hand, if angry comments on the article coming from adult adoptees were censored, that sucks.  In my read of the article yesterday, though, it looked like many of the originally censored comments were in.  ?  I don’t know.
• Thanksgiving is next week.  How the hell did that happen?!  It’s far too soon.
• And that means Christmas isn’t far behind.
• My carefully crafted code to dive into the “raw data” from a downloaded web report was foiled–foiled!–when the people who created the report went and changed the column names on the raw data tab of that report.  Grrr.  Now I have to do some figuring on how to check those column names beforehand, and have to stash them in a table so that the next time they decide to get fancy with column names, we’ll be able to catch it right away, instead of wondering for a few weeks why no new data was being imported.  Let me just say:  Duh, OmegaMom.  On the other hand, why the hell did the folks change those column names?  Raw data=stuff that gets used somewhere.  Not raw data=stuff that you can fiddle with all you want.  Or at least let people know with a popup the next time they cruise your web reports.
• Boots, snowpants, and snowgloves arrived yesterday from LandsEnd.  OmegaDotter is happy.  Winter parka is back-ordered.
• Will discuss way-kewl interfaces tomorrow.  And way-kewl prosthetic devices the day after.  Or maybe combine the two.

When we moved in, we signed up for the local cable company’s Super Duper Way-Kewl Ultra Deluxe Combo Package with SCREAMING INTERNET (INTERNET…Internet…internet…internet!) (that’s meant to be read in the way that the “SCREAMING U.S. 30 DRAGSTRIP!” echoes sound on those radio ads).

The SDWKUDC package included local phone service.

But local phone service wasn’t available here yet.  (Though it was coming!  Soon!)

So I signed us up for local phone service with the local phone cooperative.

Then, in late October, after weeks of intermittent droppage of internet connections while the cable company upgraded all the cable lines between here and Big City, I got a call from the cable company.  To wit:  local phone service was now available, and did we want to start it up?

Well, yeah, considering that the local phone cooperative is incredibly expensive.  Incredibly.

So the nice gal set up a day and time to do the switchover, and I had to confirm it with her supervisor, repeating everything I had just said to gal #1, and then had to confirm it with an outside contracting company, repeating yet again the stuff I had said to gal #1.  I do understand why it’s necessary.  Really, I do.  I had friends and family who were automagically switched from one phone company to another without their knowledge during the era of those aggressive telecomm company tactics, and it’s a scummy thing to do.  But do we really need the customer to repeat the same information three times?  How about recording the conversation, playing it back to Joe Customer, and asking Joe Customer, “Did you say this of your own free will and are you sure you want to switch?”  Much simpler.  I was forcibly reminded, in any case, of the tendency of computer programs to repeatedly ask, “Are you really, really sure you want to do this??”

The day of the switch comes and goes, and even though I’m totally devoid of phone networking savvy and still wonder how it got switched over from phone company cabling to cable company cabling without some nice hunky young technician coming to the door and having to switch cabling doodads, it seems to have worked.

I just got a phone call.

“Hello?  Mrs. OmegaMom?  This is Polly from ABC Cable?”

“Hi, Polly…”

“I’m just calling to be sure everything is okay with your phone service since we switched you over?”

Now.  Just let that particular sentence stew around in your head for a moment.

She just called me on the phone to see if everything is working okay…with my phone.

Hello?!

Does this strike anyone else as just a bit non-functional?

Like, how are they going to know if I didn’t answer the phone because I was in the bathroom or out of the house or–gasp!–the phone isn’t working?!

Gah.

But I got a whole bunch of my Dianne Wynne Jones books and have been reading.  When I’ve not been glooming about the greyness and the snow and the chill and the dark.  And the length of time it’s taking to get the *#@! relocation company to get off its ass and getting frantic about the offer expiring and blah de blah de blah…

I’ll try to pull together a halfway decent post soon enough.

The weather forecast calls for cold and snow.

And cold and snow.

And cold and snow.

Not too cold yet, though.  Twenties and thirties.  We have had two snows so far, last night’s giving us about four inches at the house.

The dawg loves the snow.  He barrels about in the snow, shoveling it with his nose and flipping it into the air.  Then he bounces around, pees, poops, shovels some more snow, and bounces some more.

The sun is coming up at about 9:10 a.m. and setting at 6:15.  At Small Mountain University Town, the sun is rising at 6:42 a.m. and setting at 5:38…we’re now off by an hour of daylight, and rapidly decreasing.

We had our first parent-teacher conference today.  Mrs. Shoefetish and Mrs. Brian assured me that the dotter was doing quite amazingly well academically.  We actually got a “report card”.  Goodness.

In terms of the kindergarden curriculum question, the report card specifically looked at kids being able to name colors, shapes, count to five, know their first and last name.  They’ve gone through six letters of the alphabet.

The dotter was praised for her creativity; she likes to make “books” during free time, and apparently the other kids at her table are so taken with the books that they’re starting to make them too.

MIL called this evening; in an attempt to keep the dotter quiet while OmegaDad spoke on the phone, I pulled the dotter aside to do some drawing.

Somehow this morphed into us doing clapping games.

You remember clapping games?

I learned one new one; we raced through Pattycake; we did “A sailor went to sea, sea, sea”, though neither of us remembers the specific clapping pattern; and we ended up laughing uproariously at each other.

That was fun.

Lest you think that all is fun and games with the dotter, let me say both OmegaDad and I were amazed that the dotter got exemplary marks for “following directions” and “behaving appropriately”, and just nodded our heads and rolled our eyes at the “still learning” “score” on “respecting the rights and property of others” category.  I am now beginning to suspect that the dotter is Miss Sweetness and Light at school and saves up all her snarkiness for us at home.  Man, oh, man, can she whiiiiiiine!

But this evening was quite fun.

We are still waiting on the finishing touches of the relocation company buying our house.

Grrr.

As soon as that check hits our bank account, we are out buying OmegaDad a car of his own.  Or OmegaMom a car of her own.  Or whatever.  This one car dealio is driving both of us nuts.

Also as soon as that check hits, I am picking up the phone to call the local blind installation company so we can get some insulated cell blinds put in.  And drapes.

OmegaMom has a blank brain today, so it’s time for a bunch of quickies.

• Surely there’s more to this story than reported?  Can one be charged as a terrorist for having a copy of a book?  I shudder to think of the things in my parents’ library; dad was both into chemistry and into things that go boom as a young lad.  Dad’s pictures that alternate from a Rasputin-lookalike to an excellent facsimile of a skinhead would just make the HSA agents quiver like bloodhounds…
• An excellent description of a newly adopted child with attachment issues and how the parents coped and broke through to the child.  (Warning:  requires registration, but a very moving and well-worth-it listen.)
• A recent MSNBC front page featured two stories closely juxtaposed:  “Is Your Child Ready For a Credit Card?” and “Feeling the Middle Class Economic Crunch?”  Hm.  You don’t happen to think those two things just might possibly be related, do you??
• The dotter is being Gloria The Firehouse Dog quite often lately.  She sits and barks at the kitchen door.  OmegaDad put his foot down when she carefully brought him one of my Tevas in her mouth.
• Figlet asks “What did we do pre-Google??”  ProjectNiHao says, quite plainly, that it was a nightmare finding things pre-Google.  PNH and Theresa both have dealt with similar sock issues (Theresa had an ingenious approach of turning the socks inside out, though that would only work with non-patterned socks), and Courtney says that Laura at 11D is having the same issues with her son.  But, back to pre-Google–or, more properly, pre-Internet–times:  I read an awful lot more books then.  And went shopping.  Outside.
• We are having real homework now.  It’s no big whoop, just copying zeroes, ones, and twos, and answering questions about what to do if there’s a fire (it’s Fire Safety week).