On a less serious note
Yes, I concede that things have been a little stiff-backed around here lately. Had to get the serious stuff out of my system.
A summary of what's been going on lately just to catch you up to the present:
The squirrels in the park have dispersed greatly. I wonder if there's been an ethnic purging or some other cataclsymic squirrel event (CSE). BittenByDogSquirrel did run up and ask for a nut, but all her friends were nowhere to be seen.
I was approached by a very friendly gay Nigerian man with an extraordinarily roundabout invitation to join him at the nude beach the following weekend. (I swear these things don't occur to other people I know). I tried to politely turn him down, but as he was too shy to actually come right out and ask anything directly, there was nothing to straightforwardly decline, and I was left in this awkward position of simply trying to change the subject or leave. It was a brilliant life lesson, actually. Since my early teens I'd assumed most women (like cats) are well-meaning yet utterly psychotic, mostly because of interchanges like the following:
For the first time ever, I found myself wanting to say something similar. Well, not the well-hung part, but just the oh-my-God-this-guy-is-so-awkward-how-the-hell-do-I-get-out-of-this part. I had all these sudden flashbacks of the times at junior high dances when I would shuffle over and stare at the floor and mumble at some girl for a while, and expect her to somehow be swept off her feet by this display of gallantry, if she were even interested in the first place, when in fact I was . . . well . . . might as well have been talking about whether people at the nude beach notice if you get physically aroused and if they care and what it would be like to look at your dad's genitals while lounging around on the beach (and yes, that was part of this guy's presumably well rehearsed but much-better-in-theory-than-in-practice spiel).
David and Pam were in town this week, and I met them for some dinner after work. They met my cat, and were utterly perplexed by the fact that rougher is better as far as cat attention goes with him (and yeah, I'm not even going to comment on resonances between all the anecdotes in this post — draw your own conclusions for your own giggles, people, and don't blame me for them). "I'm not going to make him mad am I?" "No, only if you fail to scratch him at least hard enough to penetrate the sensory insulation of his eighteen layers of body fat, no." He then wanted to go home with them. My cat is an attention whore — that's all there is to it.
I finally broke down and ordered an iBook. I get an Apple discount through work. My old laptop was made in the stone ages (it's a PII 233MMX, if that gives you any idea), and takes about 23 minutes to boot up, among other things. I wanted something small and portable that I could throw in my bookbag and have to work on when I wanted. And no, my work laptop isn't the same. So anyway, arrival date in about a week. I'll let you know how the child-rearing goes after we're done with delivery.
A summary of what's been going on lately just to catch you up to the present:
The squirrels in the park have dispersed greatly. I wonder if there's been an ethnic purging or some other cataclsymic squirrel event (CSE). BittenByDogSquirrel did run up and ask for a nut, but all her friends were nowhere to be seen.
I was approached by a very friendly gay Nigerian man with an extraordinarily roundabout invitation to join him at the nude beach the following weekend. (I swear these things don't occur to other people I know). I tried to politely turn him down, but as he was too shy to actually come right out and ask anything directly, there was nothing to straightforwardly decline, and I was left in this awkward position of simply trying to change the subject or leave. It was a brilliant life lesson, actually. Since my early teens I'd assumed most women (like cats) are well-meaning yet utterly psychotic, mostly because of interchanges like the following:
Matt: Do you know where there's an ATM nearby?
Woman: My boyfriend is an advertising executive!!! And makes two hundred thousand a year!!!
Matt: Um, a bank then?
Woman: And he's tremendously well hung!!!
Matt: Uh, I'll just find something on my own then, thanks. . . .
For the first time ever, I found myself wanting to say something similar. Well, not the well-hung part, but just the oh-my-God-this-guy-is-so-awkward-how-the-hell-do-I-get-out-of-this part. I had all these sudden flashbacks of the times at junior high dances when I would shuffle over and stare at the floor and mumble at some girl for a while, and expect her to somehow be swept off her feet by this display of gallantry, if she were even interested in the first place, when in fact I was . . . well . . . might as well have been talking about whether people at the nude beach notice if you get physically aroused and if they care and what it would be like to look at your dad's genitals while lounging around on the beach (and yes, that was part of this guy's presumably well rehearsed but much-better-in-theory-than-in-practice spiel).
David and Pam were in town this week, and I met them for some dinner after work. They met my cat, and were utterly perplexed by the fact that rougher is better as far as cat attention goes with him (and yeah, I'm not even going to comment on resonances between all the anecdotes in this post — draw your own conclusions for your own giggles, people, and don't blame me for them). "I'm not going to make him mad am I?" "No, only if you fail to scratch him at least hard enough to penetrate the sensory insulation of his eighteen layers of body fat, no." He then wanted to go home with them. My cat is an attention whore — that's all there is to it.
I finally broke down and ordered an iBook. I get an Apple discount through work. My old laptop was made in the stone ages (it's a PII 233MMX, if that gives you any idea), and takes about 23 minutes to boot up, among other things. I wanted something small and portable that I could throw in my bookbag and have to work on when I wanted. And no, my work laptop isn't the same. So anyway, arrival date in about a week. I'll let you know how the child-rearing goes after we're done with delivery.