Mom just called. She is trying to convince the docs to let her out of the hospital tomorrow so she can see CJ's show. If not, she wants me to find someone with a video camera. Sigh - not sure if I know anyone with a camera to loan.

But I'm profoundly not confident about a number of other things, particularly singing in public, and teh sexy.

If it helps, a friend was looking at my Flickr pictures and asked who the pretty blonde was.

Nora, I have finally written you back. My apologies for not getting back to you yesterday -- I was computer avoidy last night. However, now that I'm in the office, I'm work avoidy -- everyone should write me email!

Very sorry, Suzi, that I can't offer you a video camera (because I really want to see what he does, too).

Sparky, I haven't seen anything from you... don't know if it got lost in the ether or it's just taking its sweet time... a reply to the one I sent you last night, right?

Yup, Nora. A reply to last night's. In summary: YOU GO GIRL! You deserve it because you're fabulous!

Congratulations, Hil! You're distinguished!

vw, one of my sisters once came to visit me with two sets of house keys. The day she left, we found one set in the vegetable bin, and one in my dooryard. I consider this a miracle, since TWICE during that visit she left them on top of the car and drove off. Fortunately, we only had to dodge traffic once to recover them in those instances.

eta: The word of the day in my email, because I'm sure I can find a use for this one today:

floccinaucinihilipilification (FLOK-si-NO-si-NY-HIL-i-PIL-i-fi-KAY-shuhn) noun. Estimating something as worthless.

My pulling technique consists of flirting madly over the phone or the internet, or after a number of beverages, when my brain hasn't had time to jump in the way, but mostly of running away when people flirt back. And quite often of running away as a pre-emptive strike when I find people attractive, before they have had the opportunity to flirt or not flirt or indeed register my existence.

That actually sounds a lot like my tactic.

You know, it's been a bit of a while since the last smoochie episode. Time can make a girl shy. There's every possibility she's talking to her invisible friends, fying all over you, because you didn't kiss her and make her feel worth kissing.

I considered that. But then decided it wasn't worth thinking about.

Go to India

I've been to India three or four times. You can have one of mine.

I don't know that I've so much as seen a skunk, which I count as a great shame.

They're rather cute. You'd like them.

floccinaucinihilipilification (FLOK-si-NO-si-NY-HIL-i-PIL-i-fi-KAY-shuhn) noun. Estimating something as worthless.

Jesus Christ bananas.

People who have read The Name of the Rose, take note! I am giving myself props 360 pages in for finally making a leap of logic BEFORE BROTHER WILLIAM. When they're searching for the book after Severinus's murder, Adso finds the Arabic text, and William says that he caught enough of a glance to know that the pages Severinus was looking at were Greek. Now, he may have made this argument before, but at that moment, I thought, "But what if only those pages were Greek? That doesn't mean the entire book is in Greek!"

AND I WAS TOTALLY RIGHT. I pwn you, Brother William. This time.

Also, Stephen Colbert spoiled me in his Knox commencement speech. Damn you, Colbert.

horray for hil!

the ick is leaving me

germ-free hugs for everyone

I pwn you, Brother William. This time.

Brother William is totally your bitch.

I saw a baby skunk a few months ago around the corner from our apartment. It was nosing along the door to the alleyway next to somebody's garage, surrounded (at a respectful distance) by a crowd of cooing humans completely in the thrall of its teeny tiny cutefulness. Everyone guessed that its family was probably in the backyard at the end of the alleyway and somehow it'd gotten separated, but none of us actually lived in the house so we couldn't open the door and reunite it with its smelly but adorable loved ones. OMG so fricking cute.

In other ridiculous cute news, People just posted the first-ever picture of the Brangelina baby on their website, and it's utterly fucking ridiculous.

I've seen many, many babies less than two weeks of age. They're beautiful in that tiny-helpless-mammal way, but they're not cute. They're usually kind of red, or red-and-white splotchy, their skin doesn't quite fit yet, and they're still flummoxed by the cold dry bright world they've been spat out into, and they crane their necks and blink and look affronted and jerk their heads like snapping turtles. They're conceptually heartbreakingly beautiful, but they're not objectively pretty. They're just not.

But this tiny baby? Fucking ridiculous placid peaches-and-cream beautifully proportioned symmetrical cherubic Botticelli beauty. It's a triumph of movie star eugenics. It's an Uncanny Valley newborn baby. It's deeply creepy. I think I have to go stare at it again.

It's a triumph of movie star eugenics.

Or Photoshop...

I definitely pondered Photoshop, while goggling in a hopelessly enthralled manner. There was probably some color correction on the newborn-blotchy skin, but unless someone managed to Photoshop the entire damn baby all I can say is, this baby is totally UNFAIR.