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Tomorrow, my doctor will get to know me very intimately via the wrong end. For those of you who haven’t had colonoscopies, you’re not missing anything by way of a fun time. I guess I won’t feel much except groggy because they put me under general anesthetic and when I wake up, I’m somebody’s girlfriend…

To make matters more fun, there’s this whole procedure that you have to follow involving fasting all day, then drinking a few glasses of something that might make you vomit (they have specific instructions for if you DO vomit), and then pretty much spending the entire evening in the bathroom.

Glad mine has Wi-fi!

Sometimes….*sigh*

Me: Ellen, i said STOP.
Ellen ignores me.
Me (angrily): What part of STOP didn’t you understand?
Ellen: Um..The ‘P’ part?
Me (wanting to be angry, but busting out laughing): Don’t push it, kid.
Ellen smirks and falls silent.

When did I lose control?

All time favorite book Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is being, finallly, made into a real movie. Of course, it’s years after the wonderful author Douglas Adams died suddenly, and tragicallly, but hopefully it will still be good, and true to the original. I guess there’s even an argument that if he were alive and working on it, the Hollywood leeches would try to force him to change things to better fit Hollywood, and now that he’s gone, there will be such an outcry if the slightest license is taken that it will be more accurate and less Hollywood. We’ll see…

But, that’s not what this post is about (well, a little, but obliquely). Apparently, the screenwriter responsible for translating Adams into film has a blog and interviewed himself. Haven’t read it yet, but I’ll get to it tomorrow.

Weird.

I like the rare instances when I do something clever, no matter how unimportant. So here’s something I did today. Maybe it will be useful for you in the future.

I had some cold Dim Sum to warm up. I think the microwave does a crappy job, and getting out the bamboo steamer is a pain. I looked through my pots and pans and found an egg poacher that I bought for almost nothing at williams sonoma and I used that. Filled the bottom with water, put the dim sum in the little pans, cover it and it’s nice and moist but easy to clean and great for one person.

Just a thought.

I come upstairs and Ellen’s in the tub, crying. Talking to Kim, I find out that she had given her a hard time when she wanted her out of the tub, and she told her that she could get herself out (as opposed to her helping her out of the tub). Now, she’s perfectly capable of getting out by herself, and she was tired of standing there and getting lip.

So she gets out of the tub, wailing, and I push her off to her room, angry at this outburst. Her response, while weeping (remember, she’s 6…):

“I wanted Mommy to help me out, but she didn’t even give me the opportunity…” *choked sobs*…”It’s not fair! She just refused to help me!”

Now, I’m listening to this diatribe, and trying SO hard not to crack up, but I couldn’t. I started smirking, which just made her louder, but I just couldn’t help it. God, I can’t wait to hear what she comes out with as a teen when she actually has a real vocabulary.

Opportunity??

Wednesday morning, 6:10 AM. Wife and I are asleep. Windows open. Beautiful evening/morning out. Suddenly (or suddenly to me) there is a swell in the ambiant noise. Something is happening. Yes, it’s…BIRDS. Hundreds of birds. Talking. Singing. Eating. Commuting. Who the F**k knows what hundreds of birds do other than MAKE NOISE.

Wednesday morning, 6:15 AM. Stumble out of bed. Close windows. Turn on A/C. Try desperately to get more sleep.

G-d Damned birds…

There’s an article in today’s NY Times about the Brood X Cicadas, and essentially how they’re NOT locusts (which are grasshoppers, BTW). This paragraph caught my eye:

Consider the difference in attitude in two novels, wildly different in location and in artistic value, but both with locust scenes. Dr. Lockwood quotes from “On the Banks of Plum Creek” by Laura Ingalls Wilder:

“Laura tried to beat them off. Their claws clung to her skin and her dress. They looked at her with bulging eyes, turning their heads this way and that. Mary ran screaming into the house.”

In “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe, African villagers react differently when the flying cloud blocks the sun.

” ‘Locusts are descending,’ was joyfully chanted everywhere, and men, women and children left their work or their play and ran into the open to see the unfamiliar sight.” The villagers gather the locusts, roast them and dry them in the sun and eat them for weeks. The same insects are a scourge to farmers and a boon to gatherers. Plague and bounty. Tragedy or popcorn from the sky. What I am looking for, and have not yet found, is a shirt that bears a message sometimes applied to cats, or whatever animal displeases the wearer. It works fine for cicadas, even if you like them.

“So Many Cicadas. So Few Recipes.”

Ew.

To those of you following the plight of the noisy sparrow and the battle of the Nest under the A/C, it has apparently been won by the persistantly sleep deprived daddy. Although the prior solution, a block of wood that sort of blocked the entrance to the A/C didn’t quite work (ok, it didn’t work AT ALL), the new solution, a full Poland Spring bottle slid into the track beneath the A/C seems to have. This morning, for the first time in 3 days, no bird. Ah, precious sleep.

Now, I just need to get home from work before 12:00 AM and it will be perfect.

Saturday: Woken up to the incredibly loud sound of birds outside the window. Kim’s and my eyes shoot open at around 6 and with difficulty, we get back to sleep.

Sunday: Again, 6 AM, birds are SCREAMING at us. No sleep. So, that afternoon, I open the A/C partition (it’s a window A/C, so there’s that accordian-style blocker to keep it in place) and sure enough, there’s a bird’s nest UNDER the A/C! The loud birds weren’t outside the window, they were in the room, usnig the metal A/C as a PA. So, out goes the bird’s nest, in comes a block of wood to keep the little creep out.

Today (Monday): Bird is back. I don’t know what he’s doing, but the damn thing, on a day where i can actually sleep in because I’m working late, is screaming at me again. This time, I smacked the partition, sending him flying. I’m going to catch him and eat him next, I swear. I’m exhausted because of a 2 oz. sparrow.

Grrrrrrrrr….

The site’s been down for about a week when, i THOUGHT, my OS X installation died. After trying this and that, I ultimately reinstalled, and that failed. And then it failed again, and long and short, all of my problems were more than likely caused by one l’il ole’ bad RAM chip.

But, who would have guessed.

In any case, I’m back up! Thanks for waiting. 😉