The only thing worse...

...would be raccoons on caffeine!  Those nimble little "hands" of theirs can open locks.  The world would be theirs for the taking!

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ARS link fixed

Why is it inevitable that if I don't double-check a link just to be sure it's okay, it'll also be the only one that won't work?

Wasp Wars

One of Anthroslug's recent posts made me ache in sympathy.  I'd missed the original post where he'd written about being bitten on the hand by a meat bee, and in the update he'd posted a picture of that very swollen hand.

We've had a few encounters with those things ourselves.  They've chased us away from our food at picnics in several different states, and one summer we had a nest of them in the backyard that was not nearly far enough maybe 30' from our back door.  We'd always heard them referred to as "ground bees" down south, but "meat bees" does describe them pretty well.  They're vicious little bastards when hungry or annoyed.

Initially, we took a live-and-let-live stance, but about the fifth time they chased me out of that half of the yard, we decided enough was enough.  The risk of one of the kids being badly stung was just too great.  Athos is allergic to wasps, so the job of emptying most of a can of wasp spray into the entrance hole fell to me.  We'd heard that wasps don't fly at night, so we planned our attack for well after dusk.  Folks, we had bad information.  Those flying f***ers WILL come after you in the dark!  

The good news is, I didn't trip or smack face-first into a tree in my headlong flight to safety. I'm sure the local ER staff would have found the story highly amusing if I had, though.  Stupid people tricks can make their day.  Like the adage says, It's only funny until someone gets hurt . . . and then it's hysterical.

It was time to escalate the chemical warfare.  Gasoline went down the hole next, EPA rules be damned.  Unfortunately we couldn't follow the gasoline with the application of a lighted match because of the 6' wooden fence panel the nest was situated almost-but-not-quite-underneath.  Good sense prevailed for once, and we decided neither the neighbors nor the fire department would be particularly happy with us if they had to help extinguish a bug BBQ gone awry.

Result?  Ground bees, 2; homeowners, 0.

So we broke down and called in a professional extermination service to get rid of them.  The guy they sent said something to the effect of "no problem, this will be easy", reassured me that he'd been stung before and it wasn't a big deal if it happened again, grabbed a mostly-empty small hand-pumped sprayer, and proceeded to hit the wasps with just enough insecticide to thoroughly piss them off.

I really did try to warn him.  But he, being The All-Knowing Pest-Control Professional, didn't see any reason to heed the advice of a mere homeowner....

The wasps boiled up out of the ground and came after him en masse.  Now, I've been stung before.  It's not my idea of a good time, quite frankly, so Ol' Paranoid here was standing well away, watching from a safe distance.  But I was still close enough to see that if the wasps weren't intending to remove their assailant from the gene pool, they were doing a damned good impression of it!

The first half-dozen or so stings seemed to make Mr. Pest Control realize the error of his ways.  He fled the yard, announced "I'll be back with more poison...", climbed into his truck and drove off.  We didn't see him again until over a week later, when he showed up with a pumper truck and a full-body bee suit.  Turns out the stings he'd received the first time had turned him into a Michelin man look-alike and he'd spent 4 or 5 days in the hospital on IV antibiotics and antihistamines.

He suited up, dragged the sprayer hose around to the back yard, rammed the nozzle down into the hole, and pumped damned near everything he had in the big insecticide tank into the nest, at pressure.  

There was no sign of insect activity anywhere near the nest, so a couple of days later we dug the thing up.  I wish we'd taken pictures.  The nest was much bigger than we'd ever imagined and so incredibly detailed we were almost (but not quite) sorry we'd had to destroy it.  But at least we knew for certain that our troublesome wasp colony was gone.

Most of the vegetation within a few feet of the nest was gone, too; it all turned brown and died in short order, leading me to wonder just what exactly was in the toxic brew saturating the ground there.  Some days I wonder if the next owners ever managed to get anything to grow there....

Now I know I'm lost in The Twilight Zone

Squidboy voluntarily folded some bath towels I'd pulled out of the dryer and dropped onto a table to deal with later in the day.

He also offered to iron them.

This is NOT the same kid who left for Basic Training at the end of October....

One more pic, with drill team marching

And a somewhat better shot of the mural.

Graduation at Midway Ceremonial Hall, Great Lakes

The left end of the hall, with about half of the 12 graduating divisions:

Center right hall, with about 3 divisions in shot:

Hall center, with mural of the Battle of Midway (sans grads):

Right end of the hall, sans grads:

There were 12 divisions graduating, with approximately 80 sailors per division.  We're talking just shy of 1,000 young adults standing proud and tall out on that floor, and there was easily room for three or four times that number without having to intrude on the area where they'd set up the stands.  Compare the size of the people or the doors to the building itself, and you'll get an idea of the scale of this place. It's mucking HUGE!

I do have some better shots, but specific individuals possibly could be identified from them, so they're not going to be posted here.  Privacy issues.  Might get into security issues as well, although this was one of only three places on the Base where photography was not only permitted, but encouraged.  The other two permissible areas were outside of the hall, facing it, and at the statue of The Lonely Sailor, which we didn't get to see.  It's a closed base, so civilians aren't exactly encouraged to go wandering around.  Even the newly graduated sailors aren't permitted back inside the gates once they've left.

We met all sorts of interesting folks from all over the country (and some from elsewhere!) who'd come to watch their sons and daughters, wives and husbands, or grandchildren pass-in-review.  Most of them were nice folks.  Although there was one woman we encountered outside, who I very badly wanted to bitch-slap.  There were a bunch of us standing around waiting for our sailors to retrieve their seabags from the barracks, and she had her camera out, trying to get a shot well away from Midway Hall.  Well, one of the men (dunno if he was Navy or Marines) working security put his hand up and told her no pictures.  She lowered the camera, turned away from him, gave me a grin and said: "I took it anyway!"

Stupid f***ing cow.  I'm just sorry she didn't get hauled off by the MPs and have her camera confiscated.  At the time I was too shocked to say anything, but now I wish I would have.

"Spider"

Scalpel posted a YouTube video called "Spider" to his site today.  It was very well done, but isn't exactly suitable for all audiences due to the shock factor.  I would not suggest watching it if you don't like sudden surprises or have health problems that a sudden surge of adrenaline could worsen.  Impressionable young minds probably shouldn't be exposed to it, either.

Easy way to help the ASPCA

I just found out that dogpile.com is doing something pretty cool: Use their site to do your online searches, and they'll donate part of their proceeds to the ASPCA!  Click here for the info.  And it doesn't cost you, the user, anything.  Looks like a win/win situation to me....

Who'd a thunk it?

So there I was, folding kitchen towels on the dining room table, and Youngest Son comes over, says "Give me that, Ma", and essentially grabs one out of my hands.

And why did he do this?

"Your edges aren't dressed!"

At which point he proceeded to fold the towel for me, military style, edges aligned and corners squared.

"Never thought you'd hear those words from me, did you?"

Well, quite honestly, no.

Something else I never thought I'd see:

He's learned how to iron.  And was even doing it voluntarily!

Who is this industrious young man, and what has he done with my son?!?

Squidboy is now a legitimate Squid!

Youngest Son graduated from Navy Basic Training on Christmas Eve morning, so on the 23rd we drove more hours than we'd counted on though snow and heavy traffic (will have to post a pic of that clusterf***k later), and saw far more wrecks than I hope to ever encounter again. Semis on their sides are NOT a good thing. The roads coming home the next day were better for the most part, but we still got into some nastiness. More semis off the road, more accidents (including a four-car pile-up on an on-ramp that had happened shortly before; no apparent injuries, tho' - everyone was out of the cars and walking around), a lane of traffic that was shut down on the interstate so an overturned semi could be winched out of the center ditch by a couple of heavy-duty wreckers, and a mid-size SUV that had run up an embankment and then flipped back onto the roadway onto its side.

Other than the going to and coming from, the trip and the graduation ceremony were all right.  It could have been very weird, but turned out okay.  See, his girlfriend went with us. You have to bear in mind that we'd never met her until we picked her up at her house Tuesday morning, and it wasn't until shortly before he left for Basic Training that he even told us her name! So us spending two days with The Girlfriend, and she with The Parents, was potentially a rather uncomfortable situation for all. Well, damned if it didn't work out just fine!

She's cute, she's sweet, she's smart, she seems to be very down-to-earth and sensible, and once we got her to open up a bit, we discovered she has a good sense of humor.  I like her.  And I approve of her, even if the kids don't really need my approval.

But most importantly of all, my son lit up when he saw we'd brought her with us. That tells me all I need to know. If she makes him happy, I'd try to be nice to her even if she were some high-maintenance airhead bimbo. And thank the gods, she's not!!

Some people may think I'm nuts (and maybe I am; you'd have to ask my shrink about that), but I told her I like her.  Don't know that it makes a difference to them, but it may.  Sometimes just knowing that The Mother likes The Girlfriend can certainly make a young man's life much easier. (Unless they gang up on him, of course, and then he's quite thoroughly screwed! LOL) I don't know exactly where Youngest Son's relationship with this young lady will end up, but I will be go to hell if I'll be the kind of Boyfriend's Mother (or MIL) that I've dealt with for all these years!

You see, after 24 years of marriage to her son, I have yet to hear those words from my MIL. When she found out Athos and I were engaged, her response was somewhat less than enthusiastic (her exact words were "We should have seen this coming"), and when he got him alone she told him, "I see you've chosen her over me."  WTF?!?  I wasn't aware that it was a one-or-the-other choice!

She snubbed and insulted me at every opportunity before we got married, publicly turned her back on me at the wedding rehearsal dinner, and continued making it obvious to everyone that she considered me an interloper for way too many years. (Things are somewhat better now; at least we have what could best be referred to as an armed truce.)  Making her a grandmother just two years after the wedding didn't make things any better between us, either; she wasn't old enough to be a grandmother, according to her, and took it out on me.  Never mind that her son bore half the responsibility for such an event!

And what kind of vicious person tells an first-time expectant mother, "Don't get too excited, anything can happen"?!?  I kid you not, those were her exact words to me in the second trimester.  I got the feeling she was actually hoping something would go wrong.  Maybe she thought a dead baby would precipitate a divorce?

The only thing keeping me from telling her to shove her attitude up her ass and refusing to set foot in her house ever again was my FIL.  He never treated me like anything but his own flesh-and-blood.  We lost him 6 years ago, on Dec. 23rd, and I don't think any of us will ever stop missing him.  I certainly won't.  RIP, Dad....

Handicaps

There's a heartwarming story over at zootoo.com: 'Hind' Over Matter:Paraplegic Cat Learns to Walk.  It's amazing how readily animals will adapt to situations that could traumatize a human.  I suspect many of us would consider losing a limb, a hand or a foot, or an eye to be a life-altering event.  (I know I certainly would!)  We consider our intelligence to be superior to that of our four-legged companions, yet they are often far superior to us when it comes to adjusting to life with a physical handicap.  Maybe it's because humans know what "should" be, while they exist in a world of what is.  Whether or not they are able to comprehend just what it is that makes a handicapped creature different from others of their kind, I have no idea; that's a question better left to scientists and animal behaviorists.  I can tell you that I have yet to encounter a handicapped, but otherwise healthy, creature that behaves as if it is wallowing in self-pity.  Instead, they just adapt and get on with it.

Why do I say this?  Experience.  See, over the years, we've had a number of handicapped cats: Edward, who'd been injured before we adopted him and had to have a badly infected rear leg amputated after the shredded ligaments refused to heal . . . Gabby, who came to us with half of her front paw missing . . . Butterscotch, who lost an eye to glaucoma . . . T.C., who'd been hit by a car and had a hind leg that would no longer bend after the shattered knee joint fused  . . . Charm, born with skeletal and joint deformities that might've prevented her from ever walking.  (She walks, runs, and navigates stairs quite nicely all on her own, thank you.  She also bosses her humans around - and is damned good at it too!)  None of them let their handicap be a handicap, if you understand what I mean.  Edward could get from one end of the house to the other faster than I could.  That missing leg kept him from jumping up onto the kitchen counters, but that was about it.  (Put a chair next to the cabinet, though, and he was up there in a flash.)  Gabby never noticed that she only had half of a front paw with which to grab food off of my plate; she only knew that she could do it.  And Butterscotch and T.C. kept right on doing what any "normal" cat would do.

Charm's the only one who can't quite do everything the others can - but that's why she keeps us around!  She tells us when she wants up on the sofa or the bed, or onto the ledge of an open window so she can sun herself and enjoy a warm breeze . . . in winter she leads me to the fireplace and lets me know she wants up in her chair (which used to be mine until she appropriated it grumble grumble) . . . she calls for us to carry her up the stairs if she doesn't feel like climbing them herself.  And climb them she can, make no mistake about that!  Her back legs may not work quite right, but her front legs and chest muscles are damned strong and give her an advantage over the others at times.  They also come in handy when it comes to bullying and intimidating the dogs.  They may be much larger than she is, but they fear her - and have somehow never even noticed that the soft little paws she smacks them with have no razor blades in them!

Attention caramel corn fans!

Epi posted her mom's caramel corn recipe on her site - with pictures, even!  It's a good, reliable, tasty recipe.  Heck, even *I* couldn't screw it up too badly, and I usually do not have any luck with candies, other than fudge.  Oh, and just as an additional testimonial to the recipe's worth . . . my hubby's been munching on it, and he doesn't like caramel corn!  Guess he does now that he's got the good stuff available.  Thanks, Epi!

The accompanying instructions and commentary are a treat, too.  Go check it out.

I'm an onion:

I have layers!  Of clothing, that is.  And it's a chore to peel and then re-layer when the call of nature comes.  But it beats freezing off body parts I might miss....

Don't you love that scene from the original Shrek when Shrek's trying to explain Ogres* to Donkey?  The first one's still the best of the three movies, IMHO.

*Am I the only one who thinks that word looks like it's wrong even when it's spelled correctly?!?

More medical humor

Epijunky has found another gem:

Oh, but I do love her blog!

Winter sucks

Found this in my email this afternoon, courtesy of a friend. I keep
wondering if I'll get home from work one day and discover this has
happened to our dog:

Could happen, for all I know.  It's been damned cold (some of you might disagree, but this ol' gal would be happier if it stayed above 40F all winter!) and we're going to be getting a lot more snow in the near future, according to the weather people.  As in, over a foot of the stuff before the weekend's over.  Yeah, it's pretty.  Yeah, it's going to give us a traditional Dickensian white Christmas (and a white New Years, and a white Valentines' Day, and maybe even a white Easter), because at this point it won't be disappearing before Spring.  Yeah, if it's going to be cold, having a good snow cover helps protect the plants.  And the septic tanks.  And the water well heads....

But it still sucks.  Maybe moving to the Conch Republic wouldn't be such a bad idea after all....

Speaking of well heads, one of hubby's coworker had his well head freeze up recently, so he got a couple of buckets of warm water from a neighbor so he could thaw it enough to get the water flowing again; wrapped it with heating tape and insulation; and upended a trash can over the whole mess.  Great plan.  Sensible plan.  Except at the same time he also managed to create a nice, safe, warm winter retreat for every field mouse in the vicinity.  I'm sure the hawks and owls will appreciate having fat, juicy mice waiting for them when the Rodent Snow Lodge gets opened up in April or May.

Medical humor - drink alert!

My friends know I have both a warped sense of humor and an interest in most things medical.  Hence the doctor/ER/EMT blogs I regularly surf.   Well, today GruntDoc put up a link to Dr. Wes' blog entry,  "Paracetamoxyfrusebendroneomycin".  After watching the video twice (there are two versions available), I really don't think I can improve on Dr. Wes' observation,

"Be prepared to laugh. Hard."

Version 1:

Version 2.  This one is more developed and probably isn't appropriate for young children or work environments. (Unless, of course, you're actually *in* medicine.)

Quote for the day

After watching me splutter in irritation and frantically try to undo an "undo" command that went bad, Athos observed:

"There ought to be a CTRL+ALT+WTF key."

That'd be a really useful item when it comes time to administer the "three-fingered salute" to a balky computer.

Of kittehs and kids

One of our cats was up on the kitchen counter this morning (where's he's not supposed to be, BTW; not that any of them think rules apply to them) and was sitting there with on forepaw raised.  I didn't know if he'd hurt his leg or paw, so I started talking to him.  Athos started chuckling and said, "You're talking in Kitteh to him."

Well, um, yeah.  I'm a mom for chrissake!  It comes naturally.  Baby talk and Kitteh (or lolspeak) are basically just different dialects of the same "language".  I can't do the baby talk thing with the kids anymore (unless I'm deliberately trying to annoy the hell out of them), so it's either use it on the "four-legged children" or save it up for the grandchildren we hopefully won't be welcoming for several years yet.  Our preference would be for the boys to become self-supporting, with stable jobs (in this economy?!?); add daughters-in-law to the family; and THEN give us grandchildren.

You know, the traditional lifestyle model.

The one we followed to keep from being permanently disowned.

Only life doesn't always go quite the way one hopes or expects it will, so I'm not going sit here and spout any crap about tradition should always be followed, because equating "tradition" with "right/correct/proper" can be A Really Bad Idea.  The practices of both slavery and back-room abortions could be referred to as "traditional" simply because that's the way our antecedents did things, but I don't think any rational individual could argue that such "traditions" shouldn't be relegated to history books and the WTF were they thinking?!? file . . . and never practiced again!

But somehow I got off topic.  This post was supposed to be about lolspeak.  Although, oddly enough, even that is slowly making its way into the realm of "tradition".  Did you know that there are lolspeak wedding vows available?  How much more traditional can you get than *wedding vows*?!?  Apparently a lolspeak Bible is in the works, too, for those who wish to read and reverence the words of Ceiling Cat.  For pure mind-warping amusement, wander on over to the PAWS Universitee Library to check out the lolspeak adaptation of The Odyssey.  (Yes, I'm referring to the one many of us slogged through in high school English or Literature class.)  It's . . . unique.  And if you want to learn how to actually learn lolspeak as a second language, you aren't left to your own devices: There are classes.  Seriously.  Even I can't make this stuff up!

But back to Kitteh language.  Athos adopted a proper British accent and went off on a rather entertaining spiel about how cats probably listen to thier hoomans their humans speaking lolspeak and would like us to know that they actually speak The Queen's English perfectly well, and so on.

So what do I find later?  This:

more animals

Kismet in action.

Why the printer won't work

One of my wonderfully warped, fellow crazy cat lady cat-owner friends sent me the link to a very funny cat-vs.-printer video.  What a hoot!

Unfortunately, I can't get the video to load here and I don't know why.  I've been having a LOT of trouble that way lately.  It's getting to be extremely frustrating (gawd knows I have quite enough frustration in my life right now thank-you-very-much without blogger headaches too), and since I don't happen to have any valium in the oh-so-handy 55-gal drum size on hand, I'm afraid you're just going to have to click here to watch it....

Unhappy bird!

I've been having a helluva time getting this to load from the LOLcats site, here, so I had to go to "plan B" to get it here.  It's been one of those days....

Actually, this pic been pretty representative of my mood regarding work lately.  The Enforcer has it in for me.  Fine, I can play dominance games if that's what she wants.  But I think she may discover that she's picked the WRONG person to pick on.  I won't kiss her ass . . . but I damned sure will piss all over it if she pushes me any harder!

Great pic

Beautiful, isn't it?  I found it here.

"Why Mom Drinks Rum"

I don't know how many of you read Holly's blog Why Mom Drinks Rum.  She has a wicked sense of humor and an in-your-face style, which I rather enjoy.  I only found her recently, so there's a lot to catch up on.

Well, last night I ran across a series of posts that she calls "The Mommy Dearest Files".  You can find Part One here.  I have to warn you, though: This is not warm-fuzzy feel-good writing.  There's nothing humorous about it.  If you have issues from childhood abuse, or are already depressed, you may not want to go there.  It's very powerful -- and well worth reading.

On a lighter note, I can happily recommend several of her posts to get you started if you're looking for humor: "Attention Seeking Fur Missile", for cat people; "Here They Come Again" for those of us who get fed up with Christmas cards . . . and other things; "Therapy-erapy-erapy" for us moms; and "Is that normal?" for anyone who's ever been sick and had a chipmunk--  Oh, never mind.  Just go read, and you'll understand!

Mondays....

In case I hadn't mentioned it before, I'd like to state for the record that I hate Mondays.  I might be able to like them if they didn't almost invariably lead to four-more-days-just-like-it, but no, Mondays do seem to set the tone for the entire work week.  And friends, I have to tell you that I find this disheartening.

I changed departments about 6 weeks ago, so theoretically I'm still under the authority of a single department head (aka "Manager A"), as well as the company owner (who gets to order me around by virtue of the fact that he signs my paycheck).  The reality is that I seem to have gained three more people who think I'm their bitch too.

This is not good.  I'd dearly love to be able to shoot them the bird blow them a resounding raspberry and just ignore them, but it ain't happenin' as the saying goes.  All three are in a position to make my life a living hell miserable if they so choose.  And trust me, if I don't follow their orders, they will choose.  There's a reason I think of them as The Enforcer, The Bitch, and The Predator.  The first two I have to deal with daily, and at least for now, we seem to be practicing a little deterrence theory in lieu of actual détente.

And just what does any of this have to do with Mondays, pray tell?

It's very simple: Those are the days I usually get loaned out to another dept. head.  (Let's call him "Manager B".)  He's not the problem; he's easy to work for/with and the job duties I perform while under his direction aren't onerous.  The problem is, that's the day The Predator has the most opportunity to order me around as she pleases once the company owner leaves the premises.  She leaves Manager A alone (a wise decision on her part), but she doesn't mind playing dominance games with Manager B.  In fact, she and the other members of the Bitchy Estrogen Brigade (aka "BEB") show damn little respect to or for him most of the time, and it really ticks me off to see a nice guy treated so shabbily.  Hell, the BEB seems to think *he's* their bitch too, despite the fact that he's on the same level as they are in the corporate structure!  The owner really ought to put a stop to such crass unprofessionalism, not that anyone there cares what I think....

Now, I could understand someone further up in the company hierarchy reassigning me if I were standing around with my thumb up my arse, but when I'm obviously working?  And following Mgr. A's order to follow Mgr. B's directions, like I was Monday before last?  And she's not even in my so-called chain-of-command?  Not acceptable!

I know, I know, I could've told her to *piss off* as politely as I could manage (although considering past encounters and the brusqueness with which she'd addressed me, those would probably have been the exact words I'd have used) and then later taken the matter to the owner for an executive decision.  Unfortunately, she has the owner's cell and home phone numbers and I don't, and with him gone much of the time, she'd get to make her case for public insubordination and rudeness by phone, well in advance of any opportunity I would have to present my side of the issue.

I have a feeling that before long, the owner's going to find me in his office, telling him things he doesn't want to hear.  Yet again.

Oh, the things you can find!

You know how it is.  You're wandering around the 'net, bouncing from link to link, not really looking for anything specific so much as just exploring the terrain, so to speak.  It can be a whole lot of fun or very frustrating (depending on how many dead links show up), but is a good way to screw off be able to claim you're doing "research" when what you're really doing is delaying (or avoiding completely, if you get lucky!) some bullsh*t assignment doing something else.  Some of what you'll run across out there is pure dreck . . . much more of it is fun/interesting/useful . . . and occasionally there's a real gem to be had.  What I found falls at least into the fun/interesting category, if not higher.

Not that anybody cares, but what started today's cyber-wanderings was a curiosity about just what the heck "OpenID" is, because I knew absolutely zilch about it.  The info at blogger led me to the OpenID site, which linked to Sam Ruby's OpenID for Non-SuperUsers, thence to protocol7, where I found the link to this:

Fun, isn't it?  Check out the artist's site, with more info here, and commentary/discussion here.  I'd suggest downloading the hi-res scan of it for closer examination and/or printing.

Today's bonus?  I found something geeky my computer-nerd son hadn't seen before!  Now if I can just resist the childish urge to go na-na-nuh-na-na at him.  LOL

Miscellaneous stuff

* Congratulations to our buddy "Big D" at TCG!  His sister gave birth to a healthy baby boy on  Tuesday and made him an uncle for the first time!  He was seriously hyped about it when we spoke yesterday.  I'm betting that kid is going to be thoroughly spoiled by his Uncle D!

* We got 2 short letters from the squid-kid yesterday.  We'd been spent the summer trying to convince him to visit our family dentist for a check-up, but noooo.  So guess who got his wisdom teeth yanked Thanksgiving weekend?  He says the vicodin and 800mg ibuprofen they gave him afterwards are really good....

* I love it when I can tell someone something that'd freak most people out, and the response is a relaxed "yeah, okay, whatever, no big deal".  My current supervisor at work is pretty damned mellow.  It's going to make working for/with him a lot easier if things get weird.  (No, not "weird" in that sense -- get your mind out of the gutter!)

* Our bathroom ceiling's leaking again.  It's done this off and on for the past 2 or 3 years, and we've tried to fix it, but no such luck.  There's a vent tube up there that keeps leaking because of the way it runs.  The warm, moist air from the bathroom hits the cold metal of the tube and condenses before it gets exhausted to the outside . . . and then trickles back down the tube and drips out at the bend.  One of these days we're going to have to climb up into the attic and figure out a different way to run the thing.  I just hope a certain someone gets it done before the sheetrock gets soggy and collapses again.  Last time he tried patching it with Durham's.  Stuff's rock-hard and weather-proof once it dries.  We've successfully fixed everything from siding to a table with it.  Ceilings that repeatedly get wet, however, don't seem to be good candidates for that kind of fix.  I'm tempted to start taking bets on how long it'll be before the hand-sized Durham's plug breaks away from the drywall and hits the floor....at which point I'm going to hire someone to come in and replace the whole damn section with blueboard whether Himself likes it or not!

I'm an idiot

I owe a HUGE apology to a dear friend who happens to be a sweet lady, a talented writer, and a culinary pro: Cynthia Bowan.  She's been writing food columns for quite awhile now, in both print and electronic mediums, and I thought I'd written about her before now.  Mea culpa!

Anyhoo, some of her older columns are available online here and here. There's lots more available, stuff I wouldn't advise missing (blatant plug) including her newer writings, but those links are MIA at the moment, dammit.  She also publishes at CynthiasCornerCupboard.  

Cyndi, honey, if you're reading this, please please please post more of your links in the comments section!

One of these days I hope/expect to see a cookbook bearing her name on the market, too....

Food porn!

I just found Taste with the Eyes, and am glad I did!  Go check out the recipes and the beautiful photography.  Drool alert!  Time to cover your keyboard with a towel!

*sigh*

I just realized I have 5 blog entry drafts in the file, some of which have been waiting to be finished for days.  I'll get them done . . . eventually.  Right now, tho', I'm writing Squidboy a long letter.

Speaking of the young'un, he didn't call over the weekend, and we were mightily disappointed.  Well, turns out the holiday screwed up the schedule at Basic -- he called on Monday instead.  When his dad was at work, so he didn't get to talk to our son.  Hopefully, he'll be able to call this coming weekend and talk to his dad.  But the Monday call worked out: Technogeek and I were both home, and it was the first time the two brothers had had a chance to speak to each other since Squid shipped off to Great Lakes.

The latest:

* The worst of Basic is over, now it's more routine for him, and he does sound far more relaxed and a whole lot less homesick.  But he's says he's (in his own words) "going stir-crazy being stuck in one compartment for 20 hours out of 24!"

* He's planning to take leave after Basic is through.  Graduation's Xmas Eve day.  Lovely time to be traveling, with a good chunk of the country on the move for the holiday.  Meh.

* But he may have to stay in the Chicago area "on hold", whatever that means in military lingo.  For us it means we'd be staying in Chicago for awhile in order to visit with him.

* Ordinarily the Navy would pay to ship him to his next duty station (submarine and "A" schools in Groton, CN), but since he's taking leave either he or we will have to pay for his plane ticket.

* His plane ticket will have to be out of ORD (not the major airport nearer us, dammit) since we won't know if he'll be staying in Chicago or coming home until Week Six of Basic, when he gets his orders.  That's the week before graduation.  He has to have a copy of the itinerary for his Petty Officer by 8 Dec or he might not *get* leave.  Inconvenient for us, but necessary for him.  So we may be driving him back to Chicago around the New Year; it'll be much cheaper than a plane ticket from Closer Airport to ORD.

* This also means we won't have any idea whether we'll need a hotel room for one night or a week-plus, not until the week before we actually drive down there.  This doesn't bode well for making reservations.

* We also have to make plans for someone to take care of the cats, the dogs, the birds and the fish if we'll be gone for awhile.  The diabetic cat will be boarded at our vet's so she can receive at least one dose of insulin a day -- but our vet and her office manager need to know how to plan, too!

I just hope I'm in better shape before Squidboy's graduation.  The thought of all those hours in the car, all the traffic we'll be dealing with, and all the people we'll be crammed in with for the ceremony, would be making me twitch even without the returning depression.  BTW, have I ever mentioned how much I really really hate big cities and crowds, even at the best of times?  Good thing I have a terrific therapist to keep me grounded.  After I talked to him yesterday evening, his office called to say he's "found an opening" for me in his schedule tomorrow.  Knowing him, I suspect that's the polite version of  "I'm *making* a spot, get your arse in here!"  Not that he'd necessarily phrase it that way to a patient.  Professional behavior and all that.  LOL  Good guy.  Very much appreciated....

Attention fellow geeks and Star Wars fans!

Orac, over at Respectful Insolence, has made it impossible for me to accomplish anything useful for the rest of the evening.  I just saw his "What holiday does a Sith Lord celebrate..." post, and I'm going to be laughing my ass off for the next hour or so.  Then I get to have the fun of introducing the other two resident geeks in the household to them!  Very funny stuff!