Someone Told Me It's All Happening

White Rabbits, none of which were on display at the Bronx Zoo today. But we went anyway, and had a grand old time as part of KPMG's Family Day event, brought back for the first time since the pandemic. We didn't really have a group gathering place, it was everyone for themselves, so as we'd arrived early to secure a good parking spot (after all, the place is like a 20-minute drive from us) we decided to hightail it out of there around 1:30 PM, exhausted but happy. I know for sure I'm going to ache tomorrow, but at least I get to work from home! Loads of pictures on Facebook, as Blogger limits that sort of thing.

Of Quaker Lower Sugar 44-Packet Boxes

Maple and Brown Sugar flavor, to be exact. Not only a serious go-to during colder weather, but the ideal sized box (once the packets are decanted) to hold our 2024 financial records. And so they sit in the corner, waiting for my W2 and whatever 1099s Robin gets, so we can do our taxes later in the winter. Still haven't caught up with my checkbook but I've done the "five things I need to do before the thing I need to do" so it's a start. Haven't felt like anything much today. Finished a pile of comics (DCs are in storage waiting for the giveaway once the weather warms a bit), watched way too much football, both English and American, because I couldn't really concentrate on anything, and tried and failed to nap a couple of times. Just a blah day. That I have to allow for this makes it no less frustrating.

Silly Site o' the Day

What a terrific but exhausting day! We met up with one of our comic industry friends, retired inker Phyllis, and her husband Richie for a day at the New York Botanical Garden. And I mean a day! We were there four full hours, and got to see a lot of the stuff Robin and I had missed when we just did the outdoor parts last month. Phyllis is very knowledgeable about horticulture, so I learned a lot too. And I was much more impressed by the Kusama art installations now that I've seen more of them. Maybe they can get Fábio Gomes Trindade for their next art attractions. Anyway, glad we're only a 20-minute drive away, as we're back and relaxing and I will most definitely not be going on the bike this evening...

Silly Site o' the Day

Lost track of time today watching this:



Half an hour's worth of nostalgia washing over me. Via Wil Wheaton, who puts it succinctly: "BRB, reliving my childhood." Although it's really closer to mine, I think. I remember about 75% of this.

Found Everywhere

Everywhere, that is, except my past. What I wouldn't have given for this kind of "it gets better" video when I was a geeky teen!:



But of course the technology didn't exist then. How lucky are we that it does now! Also great to see all the supportive male feminists!

On Mermaid Retention

Back when we lived in Brooklyn, Steve and I made it a point to never miss the annual Mermaid Parade, which we considered a kind of warmup to the Greenwich Village Hallowe'en Parade. Lots of fun and silliness (how could it be otherwise when it was coordinated by the Coney Island Hysterical Society, of which I was a member?), and a great way to celebrate the wonderful history of the place, even if you aren't particularly into performance art (which I'm not, as a rule).

So I was saddened to read this morning on Neil Gaiman's Tumbler blog how the Parade might not happen this year, for the first time in three decades. The main culprit, aside from the Parade having grown too successful making logistics trickier (am I actually a hipster that I attended way back before it got that crowded?), appears to be the lasting damage from Hurricane Sandy, which pretty much destroyed the Parade's main money generator, their museum and performance space. If you like this sort of thing and are so inclined, you might want to throw a few shekels into their Kickstarter. Their goal is $100,000 by the beginning of June, and so far they've only raised around $30,000, but they do have the Gsiman/Palmer Bump so maybe that'll make a difference.

The Coolest Gift

Thanks to everyone for a great birthday - once I got home from my 10+ hour day, that is. Over 90 greetings on Facebook, a great card from Rob's Dad, phone calls from my mom and brothers, a fun giggly evening on Firesign chat listening to my favorite album... I'm a pretty happy camper.



That's me at 53 with Robin's sparkly birthday card, kitty by my side. Night, all!

Ho'od Win?

Slinky Cat (via August):



or Roomba Driver Cat (via tons of folks)?



'Tis a conundrum...

Of Gum Wrapper Chains and Mom

We drove to Mom's yesterday, where she gave me this wonderful article about gum wrapper chains. I still have all of my gum wrapper chains, and am delighted beyond belief that today's teengirls are still doing it!

Also wanted to pass along this tasty photo of the Oysters Rockefeller I had at the nifty place we went out to eat:



And this photo that Mom took of me, Robin, my brother Jay and sis-in-law Kara:



I know I'm large, but I'm not kidding when I say the couch makes me look a bit larger still. Kara's quite svelte but you'd never know it by this. Ah well. The drive there and back was remarkably traffic-free for a holiday weekend, and we even avoided the Jersey rain!

The 'Net Doth Make Fools of Us All

I decided to put this in a separate post rather than embellishing on my earlier one. Here's what I've found of April Foolery:

• Heidi linked to today's Gmail goof.

• Ragnell sees the light and has converted to the cult of Frank Miller.

• Hey, good to see my buddies at ComicMix are publishing Superman comics!

• David Malki's gone hand-drawn, Ape Lad's gone blank, and Rich has wrapped up The Ten Doctors rather hastily.

• Sheila rounds up some April Fool's sites, and Mad Kane presents her first Humor Carnival.

• Rachel at Girl Wonder implores us to save the veggies.

• VastLeft recommends the ThinkGeek product ZapCam.

That's pretty much it, except for all the liberal bloggers suddenly deciding to vote for John McCain. Everyone knows that's not going to happen until their particular Democratic candidate doesn't get the nomination.

Do You Know Women Have No Sense of Humor?

"No, but if you hum a few bars..."

Unicycle bars, that is. I guess it takes balls to laugh at a guy on a unicycle.

"The idea that unicycling is intrinsically funny does not explain the findings," said Professor Shuster. The simplest explanation, he says, is the effect of male hormones such as testosterone.

You absolutely cannot make this up.

Robin's comment: the professor's entire findings appear to be based on men being more likely to snigger and point out the wanker on the unicycle.

Update: Amanda believes it's a wry hoax. I hope she's right.

Yet Another Twit

Yes, I've signed up. Like I have enough minutes in the day or something. Good lord, Twitters have RSS feeds too? Geez, that's scary... now I'll have to make a new Bloglines category too.

Save Bill Stickers!

Via Melissa, whose sense of humor seems to align with my own:



Pass it on!

Popping a Cap

So my Mom and I are IM'ing the other day - an MSN account came free with our re-installation of DSL when we moved, so I figured I'd check it out since that's what Mom and Dad have - and she said, "Have you tried MSN's games yet? There's one I think you'd really like, it's called BeSpelled." So I opened it, and it was... exactly... like... Bookworm. I played it awhile (okay, I got to level 24 or something, which is higher than I've ever gotten in the online version of Bookworm, so maybe it was a little easier?) and the only difference seemed to be that the character in the lower right hand box is some kind of little wizard with a spell book instead of a worm with huge glasses. So I downloaded the full trial version to see if any other differences existed, and no, it's pretty much the same right on down the line (even to the characters shown at the end of the levels, which of course make perfect sense in the context of a library theme but none at all in the context of a wizard theme). MSN has definitely licensed this from PopCap, and I wish I'd kept my initial registration information because you only get two trials and then you have to register, and I wanted to see if I could use the same reg for BeSpelled that I used for Bookworm, as the latter was only $20 and the former is like $25 more for essentially the same game. Ah well, maybe I'll order Scrabble Blast instead, it's kinda the same thing as well...