Astarte has a new tag.

::preens::

Did I tell you about the peacock and the ostrich? Don't worry it's not a parable. Actual zoo story.

Dude.

What an amazing day.

I need to sleep for an hour, and I don't think that's happening until tomorrow sometime.

Dude.

(waving at PC)

Man.

Day.

Did I tell you about the peacock and the ostrich?

Nope. Tell. I'm packing.

Hey, Deb! Sorry I forgot to announce your tag before you left. I thought I had. Huh.

I hope to catch you on tape tomorrow night if I miss you in the morning!

Oh, and as long as I'm wrestling mightily with Word, any ideas on why Ctrl+~,N isn't giving me the "n" with "~" on top that I need to make words like senora and senorita look right? Because it claims that's the shortcut key, but nothing happens when I do it. And when your novel is set in Spain, even if most of the characters are English it gets old quickly to have to to do insert->symbol every time someone would logically be a senora instead of a Mrs. or a ma'am.

Nope. Tell. I'm packing.

Shouldn't you be UN-packing?

We took Emmett to the zoo a lot as a little poot. SF Zoo has a few pens with mixed critters. The peacocks were let to roam loose so they could be any old where. I knew from reading Flannery O'Connor's letters that it was actually a pretty rare day when you got to see a peacock fan out its tail in a full mating display. As it happens, we were visiting on a day when the peacocks were Hotte For Peahen. So there was much peacock strutting, and fanning (absolutely stunning, of course. The ultimate in mating displays. ::waits for billytea to show up and contradict him:: ) And everytime we saw one, I tried to impress this upon Emmett (who was 2ish at the time) by having him say, "Thank you, Peacock!" whenever we saw one doing the full fan.

Anyway, we were over by some large mammal pen - some kind of antelope, I think. And it had an ostrich in there too. And one of the peacocks landed in the pen, and started putting on a show. Doing the full fan display, shaking it out, preening and walking. It caused much Oohing and Ahhhing from the crowd.

And...well, the ostrich got jealous. That's really the only way to describe it. It charged up to the edge of the pen, scaring the peacock away, and then the ostrich began to do the big walk, and fluff out its feathers and strut back and forth, all the time fixing us with a beady, and surly glare. And yet, it was obviously also doing the full display thing. It wasn't an angry display - it was, a "Hey, check out out this avian action!" display. Except - the effect was horribly comic because the Ostrich was Butt Ugly.

That's all. It wasn't all that eventful, but I just clearly remember the ostrich's wounded pride and absurd strutting and showing off.

Susan, it's working for me. Are you making sure to hit Ctrl (shift key) ~, release, and then hit n?

I hope you get some sleep, Deb, and are able to say "Famous Flower of Serving Men" on camera several times.

Dammit, I'm an idiot.

t smacks forehead

I left out the shift key.

note to self: all future characters will be from countries without diacritics.

Why doesn't English have any diacritics?

vcr is set, satellite box is set, alarm is set. All I need to do now is go to sleep.

Nope. Still awake. Okay, sleeping now.

.

Nuh-uh, nope, eyes still open.

You just wait. Forty minutes before the alarm's set to go off, I'll crash, not hear the alarm, the vcr will malfunction, and I'll both miss and not successfully tape Deb's makeover.

Gonna go try sleeping in bed. Maybe horizontal and dark will help.