okay, I took the quiz again and got...

And the test had different questions. I think maybe I'm a Great Golden Danetriever.

woof!

Because silly quizzes are fun.
What Breed are You?

the circle of life

I took some pictures of my sister Melody's family over the Thanksgiving holiday, and this is a silly pose I made them do, but I like it.

da boy is back in town

I'm sure it's a weird, unjustified paranoia, but I can't post about David LEAVING town until he's back. I think in the recesses of my mind I imagine a stalker who would come harass me because they know I'm alone, and I just can't deal with that possibility. Anyways, we drove him to the airport early early (as in leave the house at 5 a.m. early) Thursday morning and he flew out to TN, where he packed up his computer programmer & his roommate, and then spent all of Saturday and Sunday driving across the country (and a lot of that time driving across Nebraska). He arrived late Sunday night. He was pretty wasted, because due to physical limitations, neither of the other two guys can drive.

farewell, Orion

My sweet ratboy Orion died this afternoon. He has been doing poorly the past month, but was hanging in there until the end. He had been in a cage by himself for a while as he tended to start fights, but the last month we had him back in the big cage, and I think that really helped him last this long. He even ate some macaroni & cheese at lunchtime. Give your furry friends a scritch in his memory tonight.

Orion was named for the "star" on his face (more correctly called a blaze). Also, all of my rats have been named after cities, and Orion is a city, though off hand I can't remember where.

literary Wednesday

David & I just finished listening to Stargirl, read by John Ritter of all people. We highly recommend the story. And I found out tonight that there is a SEQUEL, which makes me ridiculously happy. It was one of those stories I was sad to finish as I loved the characters so much. So, hooray! We have requested the CDs at the library.

movie review Monday

David & I went on a DATE Saturday (wonder of wonders!) and went to see Stardust. I give it double thumbs up. It's kind of a Princess Bride sort of movie--romance, swashbuckling adventure and humor all wrapped in one. I highly recommend it. I think it's one I'd like to own, as it is good family fare.

finally...

another fabulous Mindy. I say this because all of the Mindys since Mork & Mindy tend to be ex-girlfriends or the known hoochie. What's a Mindy to do?

From Teen Girl Squad Episode 12:




It's a terrible thing to lose your Mindy cred.

why you shouldn't leave your dog in the car with groceries

We went to Target to get some groceries and household items, including 3 cheese pizzas for our party tomorrow, and then I decided to go to Costco. I had the food in the back of the car, but since it's not a real trunk, there was nothing stopping Daisy from hopping back there and helping herself to the cheese. I discovered it when we came out of Costco and was not amused. At least they were $2.50 pizzas instead of $10 pizzas. And she only got into the one. So I cut off the doggy-half, and we cooked the rest for lunch.

sigh...

found in the yard today

Okay, so this isn't a picture of OUR garter snake, but it looks just like it. I was being a leafherd (which means I was corralling leaves into a pile) and I found him by the fence. Noodle was absolutely delighted, as she's wanted to find a snake since we moved into this house. David & I had each seen one in the yard in the past year, but Noodle hadn't. So now we're trying to determine whether we should try and keep him through the winter. I guess garter snakes like earthworms, which I would not have guessed (Thanks Dean!). So, we'll see. I have a tank that we could use, but we'd need a heat lamp, substrate, and of course determine an appropriate food source. If we can resolve the food issue, I'm not opposed to keeping him, as snakes don't require much in the way of cleaning, and that's my big issue with pets right now. Between a litter box, a rat cage, and a rabbit cage, I'm kind of at my max. Noodle really is enjoying the little guy, though.

dontcha love silly quizzes

Take the Quiz here!

Thanks Karen,for the link!

oh youtube...

you never fail to entertain. (Provided you are willing to wade through all of the UNentertaining junk.)

The Hauntening

(While adding the labels for this post, I had a fingerslip and typed "youtuber." I guess that would be videos done by potatoes, for potatoes.)

thought for today

I learned a long time ago, Reuven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. he can fill that tiny span with meaning,so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant...A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life. It is hard work to fill ones' life with meaning...A life filled with meaning is worthy of rest. I want to be worthy of rest when I am no longer here."

-The Chosen, by Chaim Potok

so true

SNL

Saturday Night Live today was unusually funny. We tuned in because Feist was performing, but the whole show was hilarious. Brian Williams was the guest host, and it was fun to see him in a different environment. But our favorite part was a Publisher's Clearing House skit where they showed past (fake) winners, and one woman ran out her door and grabbed a shrub out of its pot and shook it around while screaming, "MONEY!!!" If I knew my way around the digital video world better, I'd find it and share it with you. Maybe David will find it later.

And I do, really truly love Feist. In a platonic, music-appreciation sort of way, of course. She rocks.

sweet little box car

We got our wonderfully fabulous Scion xB back from the body shop yesterday. (It had a run in with a tree branch in August...plus two loooong cracks and two small cracks in the windshield that had accumulated over the past year and a half). Our rental car for the past two and a half weeks was a Dodge Magnum, which, while being cooler than a sedan, was still an evil car. If you didn't open the doors ALL the way, they would slam back into you. The second day we had the car I got my ear slammed by the door. And, while I got better at remembering, I got slammed in the back the day before we returned it. Hmph. Also, the windows are really high and the visibility is poor. But the thing does have a sweet, ginormous trunk. The thing looks like a hearse, and if you fold down the back seats, you can fit a coffin, or a long folding table in there, which we did. The table, not the coffin. I kept hoping I'd have a need to haul more stuff, but besides a couple of boxes of food storage, I didn't get to utilize it much. Anyways, good riddance!

So, last night driving home from getting a movie, David noticed that the car was really pulling to one side. Weird, we thought. The shop must have messed with the alignment. This morning, it was really bad, so half a block from our house we pulled over and tada! The tire was flat. It had a screw in it. We went down to Les Schwab Tires and happily they were able to plug the hole, and did so for free! Yippee!

Oh, and on the way to Les Schwab, we were in one of the turn lanes of a two lane turn, and got ran into the gutter by some unkempt guy in an SUV. We blared on the horn and narrowly missed getting smashed. That woke the guy up enough to get back into his lane, and then he got into the center lane and turned into a restaurant. Pretty good chance he was drunk. Luckily we all came away unscathed.

clouds

I love clouds. And I love cloud-printed stuff. One day, when I was single and interning in D.C. and had recently been dumped by the guy I thought I was going to marry, I was hanging out behind the Smithsonian being introspective and depressed and all that, and I looked up and the sky was filled with the most amazing clouds. I can't remember exactly what they looked like, but it was one of those moments when you feel like God and the universe are mindful of you and, more than that, actually care about you.

This afternoon before I made dinner, I went outside and looked up and saw this:

It stretched from horizon to horizon. Pretty incredible.

Halloween

Here's the kiddos at our homeschool Halloween party yesterday. They had a blast, but Spud was none too keen on keeping his costume on. Unfortunately the nose-picking one is the best of the shots before he started taking his costume off angrily. Actually, there was one other moderately okay one, but honestly, the nose-picking is more representative of his true character lately!

The kids had fun trick-or-treating, but Spud was not nearly as into it as Noodle was at his age. He made it a couple of streets, then asked David to take him home. And he had to be accompanied up to every door. And from the first piece of candy from the first house, he was never without something in his hand (& mouth) to eat. When Noodle was 3, she finally "got it" and ran from door to door, scarcely caring if we were even without view. Maybe next year.

cats do the strangest things

Here's Minnie (the same cat who snuck behind the dresser drawer) in Clive's desk. She hung out there for a good 15 minutes. Go figure.

why I haven't been blogging...

I washed this mountain of laundry in one day last week. Whew! Folding it was quite a herculean effort on my part, but thankfully David helped out. Amazingly, this pile didn't sit around for a couple of days waiting to be folded, as clean clothes are wont to do around here.