fox

My in-laws came this morning to pick up the prince, as they customarily do on a Sunday; and my mother-in-law had a canister with a fine powder in it and asked if we had any interest in some cornmeal, to which I said "Um, probably?" and she headed back to ask Himself; and my father-in-law handed me a tupperware container and said "Happy Mother's Day," and what was in it was a bib we lost five and a half years ago. We got a set of three as a gift when he was born: one dark with guitars, one I can't actually remember but the photographic record tells me dark with animals (elephant, giraffe, hippo, bird); and one light with owls, my favorite, the cutest one, which disappeared some time that fall.

They didn't have it at day care; the in-laws didn't have it in their house; I tore our house apart and couldn't find it. We concluded we must have dropped it at some point on the way back from a road trip we'd taken when our friends renewed their wedding vows (because one of them was terminally ill), so it was somewhere on the ground along the New York Thruway or something, alas, never see it again. I tracked down the Etsy seller, who was on a break (and in fact seems to have stopped Etsying; after a while I stopped checking), and I tracked down the fabric and bought a yard of it so I could re-create the thing myself—not that I ever have done, because I could probably manage the sewing but I was intimidated by the snaps, but I could, and somehow that was enough. The kid has been out of bibs for more than twice as long as he was ever in them, of course, but every year or so I'd catch myself thinking "I ought to sew up that fabric" and never did.

IT IS BACK. It was in their car apparently this whole time. In the armrest console compartment, which apparently they never use. I cannot describe how delighted I am. (My mother-in-law said "Meh, she's going to give it to the Goodwill, what's the point," and my father-in-law said "No, she's a sentimental softie, she'll want to see it again," and he was right!, and I am so pleased right now.) (I mean I'm also pleased that in fact I didn't lose it out the back of the car at a highway rest stop. But mostly I'm pleased that I've got it.)

http://xkcd.com/1155



So okay: detailed directions from my present metro area to my childhood home are not difficult, but thanks to a little goofiness w/r/t the interstate system they can sort of seem that way. (There's a couple of times where you are required to change from one numbered highway to another by remaining on the road you're on, which is the exact opposite of intuitive, I think. Also there's a time where you are required to remain on the numbered highway you've been on by exiting and navigating some local roads and getting on a different highway, because Breezewood.) So I told the Gentleman Caller that once he was headed out of town, he should stay on the highest even-numbered westbound interstate available to him until a particular exit in Ohio after which I would give detailed directions. (And it is so! 270 ends at 70. You pick up 76 at Breezewood; for a while 70 and 76 run together, and when they separate, you want to stay on 76. At some point 80 joins 76, and when they separate, you want to stay with 80. Is it or is it not a piece of cake?)

He thought this was an amusing feature of the path from here to there. My mother, when I pointed it out to her as I was telling her how to drive home, didn't think it was amusing at all, and made me write down directions in a level of detail sometimes including which lane I thought she should be in. Good thing we're not all alike. :-)

Is it fun? I don't know. But I noticed some time ago (and have just been reminded, because the credits just ran) that everyone with a credited role on Psych below the two leads has a name ending in -son (or -sen). Granted that's only four people, but check it: Roday and Hill; Omundson, Lawson, Nelson, and Bernsen. The four of them could be some sort of Copenhagen law firm.

Yeah, I've taken my medicine already, and it's probably time to go to sleep.

I am invited to a wedding at an aquarium.

For dinner I am asked to choose between pork and fish.

I will have to think hard about whether I can bring myself to eat fish at an aquarium.

Here's what happened yesterday.

( large-ish image of text, so not shrinking to preserve readability. )

( What that is, is a proclamation from the governor of Ohio. )

Now.

I don't, as I said, actually follow or care that much about basketball. And I'm certainly no fan of John Kasich[1]. And I'm pretty sure proclaiming that the enemy of my enemy on the basketball court is my friend isn't the best use of the governor's time - though I'm also sure this was written by a staffer (one who doesn't believe in the Oxford comma, but what are you going to do) and the amount of the governor's time wasted on it was probably about fifteen seconds. Of greater concern is whether Folks In General will take it as it's meant and go "right on" or whether they'll go "JFC, Cleveland, move on already"; but maybe when you know you're a laughingstock the only thing to do is go ahead and embrace it? I don't know; the city of Cleveland doesn't have a whole lot of sense of humor, some days.

Nevertheless, this pleased me in a particular way. :-) Got me right where I used to live, heh. (Of course - what are the privileges of being an honorary Ohioan? If I were a Mavs fan, I'm not sure I'd want it. But see above re: taking it as it's meant, I guess.)

( [1] )

The Post's weather blog has an item about how the nastiness of the winter storm is staying north of here and all we're getting is rain - under the headline "do your homework."

:-D

Today's xkcd is, as far as I'm concerned, dedicated to ellen_fremedon. :-D

Between this morning and just now when I opened my notebook to record a couple more things on my grocery list, I had forgotten a funny thing that happened in class -- but now I remember it, and I will tell you. (With that kind of setup, how could you not laugh?)

The lesson included a dialogue about travel, which besides the traveling vocabulary included subjunctive and conditional forms of verbs -- if I had a lot of money, I would go to Europe in an airplane -- and the professor at one point stopped what she was doing and fetched over her laptop and searched for a bit and then triumphantly showed us what she'd been looking for: a news item about a new Yiddish language GPS device. OMG. :-) It's apparently programmed with (unsurprisingly) mikvahs and kosher restaurants and whatnot, but honestly, I immediately thought of the GPS thingies that talk to you, turn left ahead, take the next exit, recalculating route, and the first thing that came to mind when considering a Yiddish GPS was that I'd put in the destination, and the box would say "Why would you want to go there?"

Sentences you never thought you'd hear your own voice say: "But of course it doesn't matter how true it was -- we don't shove people in their lockers and hose them down with contraceptive foam."

Good times!

This morning when the alarm went off I was briefly confused.  "Why would I have set the alarm last night?" I thought.  "Today is Saturday."  I knew this because I had a rehearsal last night with orchestra, which happens on the Friday before the Sunday concert.  Rolling my eyes at my auto-pilot alarm-setting tendencies, I reached over, turned off the alarm, and settled back onto the pillows.

Thirty seconds later I realized that we also have orchestra rehearsals on the Wednesday before the Sunday concert, and although I was already -- already! -- back on the downward slope of falling asleep, not on the upward slope of waking, I was able to exert enough mental energy to remember that oh, god, today must be Thursday.  Miraculously, I managed to reset the alarm for like five minutes later and thus avert complete disaster, but I still hit the snooze more than the average number of times, because the whole waking-up process was fubar by then.

1.
me: I am looking for a voice teacher.
T the Chorus Master: Here is a list. Try this person!
me: [calls Voice Teacher Number One]
VT#1: [calls back a week later to say she's on her way out of the country but will call me when she returns, approx. July 2]
weeks and weeks: [go by]
me: [calls VT#1 again]
VT#1: I can't take any new students just now, but I will e-mail you within a week with some other suggestions.
weeks and weeks: [go by]
me: So I sent my e-mail again, and I've heard nothing, so I kind of give up on her and am coming back to you for more advice. Unless you have some sort of bat-signal you can activate to persuade her to return a person's e-mail.
T the Chorus Master: I do not have a bat-signal, but thanks for letting me know she's so swamped, and I'll stop sending people her way. Here are some other names.
me: [tries some other people, without success]
VT#1: So sorry to be so long getting back to you! Here are some other suggestions.
me: Do you know any of these people?
T the Chorus Master: Sorry this is turning out to be such a drag. Try that person, we know her!
me: [calls Voice Teacher Number Two]
phone: [rings and rings and rings and rings and rings and does not go over to voice mail or answering machine]
me: Just to keep you posted, I did finally call VT#2, and couldn't leave a message, but I will try again, because I am Determined!

all of which I mention as a setup to the comment I got last night at rehearsal:

R the Director: T has been keeping me up to date on your efforts to find a voice teacher. I'm so sorry it's been so difficult for you. But what's a bat-signal?

:-D

I just called VT#2 again and did get a machine this time, so I left a message, and e-mailed both R and T to keep them posted (since R asked that I do this) - and while I was at it, I included a link to the Wikipedia entry on Bat-Signal. :-D


2.
A curling friend I think I have positively identified as sosovirtuoso was telling us that his Chinese family name has to do with winning, but specifically winning through perseverance; and that his Chinese generation name has to do with a type of tree; and that his Chinese given name means more or less "man, person, individual".

"Huh," I said. "A man who carries the day, with trees. So what you're saying is that your Chinese name is MacDuff."

Game, set, match to Fox, I believe. :-)

When I was a kid, my mother went through a phase where we -- the whole family -- had to clean the house every week.  Whether it needed it or not, is how we thought of it at the time.  Tidying, scrubbing, vacuuming.  Waxing the wood floors, I shit you not.  It didn't last long, because even she couldn't sustain it, but there it was.

And yet here's me, doing laundry before I'm out of socks, because it's the weekend.  Swept (but didn't mop), scrubbed, dusted (dusted!), vacuumed.  I love having vacuumed; I love how it fluffs up the carpet and, of course, makes the loose hairs go away.  (My hair is down to my waistband, okay, so it falls out all the time and clumps all together and makes tumbleweeds if it goes too long.  I do not allow it to go quite this long.)  I feel like I would love to get a better vacuum, because sooner or later the bag on my vacuum is going to fill up, and changing it is a massive pain in the ass, so having a bagless would be better -- but the vacuum I have works fine and I'm not trying to spend hundreds of dollars on a new one.  But still.

Anyway.  Going to make the bed, and then shower, and dress, and fetch the laundry.  It feels good, but at the same time very weird, to be this level of domestic.

"Maybe he'd have gotten a PhD in linguistics", eh, Asif?

[not sure whether to laugh or cry]