I watched it this afternoon - you guys were awesome and I can't believe the result. Gorgeous!

The AC discussion reminded me that I had a new thermostat sitting in the hall closet waiting to be installed -- the old one was a programmable one, and it worked fine at switching things on and off appropriately, but had an unreadably tiny display and tiny buttons that were painful to push and at least one mystery button where you pushed it and it put the whole system into some kind of lockdown mode and you had to google every time to figure out how to reset it afterwards. And by "you" I mean "me".

The new one replaces all of that with a nice big backlit touchscreen. Installation took 3 minutes of labeling where the wires were connected on the old and hooking them up to the new one, and then 30 minutes of digging in the bottom of my underwear drawer to find where the packet of tiny screws disappeared to when I dropped it.

Need to see if I can find a repeat of the Scrappy show.

It's great that you have a boss who recognizes that "ridiculous and wrong headed" is cause to stop doing something, smonster.

I am indeed blessed. My boss and coworkers are a huge part of what has kept me in this job so long, in many ways.

Hallelu! I am home. Animals are being fed, and then I will feed myself. Waiting to hear if a cookout is still goin on. If not, I guess I will console myself with more Avatar: TLA and frozen treats. Unless you feel like company, Calli.

Your New Pet Wallaby

"Okay, fine, I know more than I've ever wanted to know about taking care of them. Why would I want one as a pet?"

Besides the "pet lawnmower" thing, they're just cool pets. They have good pet personalities. Pet personalities are important. Chimps, for example, have been known to eat people's faces off. In case you were wondering: that qualifies as a bad pet personality. Wallabies won't chew on your face so much as lick your hands and arms for minutes at a time. And before anyone in the back of the room raises their hand, no, they don't have some crazy alien acid spit, so: a rather good pet personality. They're social creatures, and will do well with other animals and people. They have big goofy feet, and tiny little t-rex arms, both bonuses.

...

There's also some behavior unique to wallabies and kangaroos. They like to play-box. Like Muhammad Ali boxing. You'll want to teach them not to do that as well. It's cute when they're little, but not when your fifty-pound adult wallaby wants your welterweight title while you're trying to watch Big Bang Theory. Also, they like water. They'll hop around in kiddie pools and things. If you happen to be taking a bath with the bathroom door not shut all the way, don't be surprised when you're quite suddenly joined by a hairy Australian...and I don't mean Russell Crowe. Unless of course you named your wallaby Russell Crowe...in which case, I don't want to know about it.

I only use air conditioning in my bedroom when I sleep, but then I like it pretty cool. So now I am sweating like a thing that sweats.... Had a lovely outing to the river and then cookout with my family, so that was good. I'm half considering going out to see the fireworks, but I doubt that will actually happen.

Use lower heat than you think you need. I think I set my stove somewhere between 2 and 3 for pancakes. (Otherwise, the pan gets way too hot and burning happens.)

This is what I have determined, after burning them this morning. I feel like I should make them again tomorrow, and I don't even like pancakes that much! I just want to get it right.

Holy crap, I just heard a crazy noise outside, and had to turn on the tv to see that it was some military jets doing a fly-by on the Esplanade. I wish I knew someone with a view somewhere that's not the clusterfuck of people out there!!

Calli - nevermind. I am becoming one with the couch for the evening.

Happy Cook-out Day, y'all. DH and I are celebrating by listening to the thunderstorm / hail going on outside. Thankfully we already grilled our steaks before the downpour. Hopefully the weather is holding up better in other states.

I finally watched How To Train Your Dragon today, which was adorable. I think I might need to own that one when it comes out on dvd. I saw it at the cheap theatre so I'm assuming it isn't out on dvd yet.

It's usually down to 82 by bedtime, which is sleepable with the ceiling fan.

I have to agree with Zen on this one. There's no way that I could sleep if it was 82 in the bedroom. Well, maybe with drugs. Really good drugs. And some alcohol.

We lived in Las Vegas for a year when I was in grade school. We didn't have air conditioning. I'm pretty damn certain that my insomnia issues started that year.

Now I'm watching the Pops and etc. do pieces from this Kennedy brothers thing -- someone wrote music for people to read stuff about and by them, basically. Anyway, I'm thinking about how Jack and Teddy, at least, were not good guys, but were still Great Men anyway. (We still think Bobby was a saint, right?)

Calli - nevermind. I am becoming one with the couch for the evening.

Yeah, sorry I missed your earlier post. I wandered away from b.org to the wilds of Gabriel-centric SPN fic for a while.