Well, yay! I doubt I'll see Colin and then I think, would he remember me out of context anyway?

Oh msbelle, that sucks in a big giant way. I'm sorry.

I had half of the academic decathlon today and I had kids I've taught on three different teams all competing. It was a little odd.

and also stunned that a kid his age could navigate through the purchase process

I would be, but the now 10 year old stunned me back when she was 3 with her mad web navigation skills. Brave new world and all that shit.

If you've got one-click set up it's not that complicated.

Didn't Connie's cat order a gun once?

Didn't Connie's cat order a gun once?

Yes, he did. Hubby had set up one-click shopping at the one site, Amon hit the Back button in the right combination, and voila, a new gun. Fortunately we were able to keep him from buying a yacht.

the spiced tea (chai)

I make desi chai with cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and cardamom (and I've tried it both with ginger and with black pepper), but it only really tastes like the stuff you get from the chai-wallah when it is made with buffalo milk.

The tea I got at various vendors (mainly textiles, but also other stuff) was sweet, but no cream, which was fine by me. It's got to have pepper and all the stuff you mention, but also a certain black tea flavor I've not been able to find. I'll keep trying, cause man, that stuff was awesome. It had the benefit of being warming when you didn't need warming, but somehow that made it cooling. I dunno. It might explain my cheerful lack of sleep during that trip.

Just shovelled off my balcony. If it weren't 11, I'd do my neighbor's too, returning the favor. But I'll wait until morning for that. Don't want to wake up his kid or freak him out.

Hahaha - Frogs 1, Science 0

Frogs Pee Away Scientists’ Attempt to Study Them

Researchers from the Charles Darwin University in Darwin, Australia (they really like Darwin there, apparently) thought they had schemed up a clever way to study how Australian Green Tree Frogs regulate their body temperature.

They surgically implanted temperature-sensitive radio transmitters inside the frogs’ bellies, but months later when they went to retrieve the frogs, the scientists found the transmitters scattered on the ground. Like so many great scientific discoveries, the researchers eventually went from “huh?” to “aha!” according to Nature News:

Researchers have discovered that these amphibians can absorb foreign objects from their body cavities into their bladders and excrete them through urination.

Oh, I'm really sorry to hear about Rip Torn, he named by the same agent who named Tab Hunter. Ahem, neither here nor there. I always think of Torn in Cross Creek--he was wonderful. And then I think of him in Beastmaster, and my giggles become unseemly.

Damn, so much Rip Torn goodness out there - Larry Sanders, Defending Your Life, Man Who Fell to Earth, whacking Norman Mailer on the head with a hammer on film for real and having Mailer thank him for it eventually. The list goes on. Sorry to hear his demons are getting at him. I wonder if it's more than just alcohol, given his age.