So New Orleans is going MENTAL about this evening's game (Saints football for those who are unaware)- the city's closed, schools are letting out early, offices are closing early (including both mine and Tom's), the Post Office is closing early... there's a parade in the French Quarter before the game too.

HAH! So now you know. I'm starting to get a bit twitchy, myself. We have plans with our local people. I have grandaddy's lighter on me (which by the way if you talk to Kara or Krissie, tell them that. Superstition makes them feel better too.) We're going to be with the same bartenders we were with when we won the Super Bowl. I'm wearing my fleur-de-lis and my Saints...underthings.

Okay, guy in the elevator, you are WEIRD. Moratorium on strangers talking to me for the day.

I tried to self-medicate my misery away with art supplies, but was thwarted by the small selection at the local art store. Which, I suppose is good. I have come away with nothing other than a new Sharpie. It could have been so much worse.

Okay, RoboPony is disturbing. What child would want THAT?

Seriously. Speaking as a former child who spent many, many years longing for nothing on earth so much as a real, living horse, if I'd gotten one of those things I would've been crushed. I had plenty of stuffed animals and Breyer horses already; I didn't need a really big mechanical fake horse, I needed a horse. That thing would've simultaneously creeped me out and pissed me off.

Of course, knowing me, I would have pretended to like it so as not to hurt the feelings of the person who gave it to me, and then I would have pretended to like it in private too just in case the fairy tales were right and the mecha-pony did have feelings and was now feeling rejected and despondent.* But I wouldn't have actually liked the damn thing.

*In my whole life I only ever outright ignored one toy, and that was the clown doll a stepgrandparent gave me right after Poltergeist came out. I couldn't quite bring myself to throw it out (it was handmade), but I stuffed it in the back of my closet with all my bravest and noblest stuffed animals on top and thereafter refused to acknowledge its existence.

It could have been so much worse.

Ooh - I have an antique one of those compasses.

I stuffed it in the back of my closet with all my bravest and noblest stuffed animals on top and thereafter refused to acknowledge its existence.

Sounds like the clown doll and Belinda would be a perfect match.

everybody move to New Orleans!

Working on it! Except for the part where I haven't since getting back. But I will! Which reminds me, we need to do some plotting via email.

And, because they deserve a separate post from childhood toy maunderings:

I am so sorry, Aims! All the job~ma in the world (and I'd put in a bid for all of you to move to the Bay Area, but (a) our economy sucks worse than MI's, and (b) if you come back to CA, I'm pretty sure Los Angeles has first dibs on you). And I'm glad everyone was miserable and crying. They should be.

And so very much getting better and healing and recovery~ma to bonny and Frank's nephew and lisah's friend's brother. And I'm so, so glad for Drew that it's a probable not-infection; I just wish to every power in the universe that they'd get a handle on what it IS and get you well and back home and back out in the world again.

And eloquence-and-brilliance~ma going out to Theo.

Thanks for the bday wishes, guys! Happy birthday, Nutty!

Aims, so so sorry you were laid off. I hope it ends up leading to a job you like much better!

lisah, I'm glad he was considered well enough to send home. I hope he continues to recover well.

msbelle, I hope mac gets into a better groove soon.

~ma for Liv, Trudy's aunt, Drew, ita (no painma) , Frankenbuddha's nephew, lisah's friend's brother

jobma for Theodosia!

Serial:

DavidS is descended from a long line of Rottweilers? But he seems so gentle!

Connie, [link] is a site for Irish - English translation with speech synthesis files to listen to. According to that, priestess is Cabóigín , but I'd be cautious. computerized translation and especially tricky when translating between languages as different from one another as Irish and English are. (I just started following an online Irish course this week so I got this site tip from them.)

Ouise, I did something similar. I brushed it with cold coffee (it's a devil's food cake and the recipe already has coffee in it). I wish, though, that I'd thought to put it in a tupperware container I had because the evaporating steam would have soaked back in again. Of course, I really wish I hadn't screwed up the timer so that I could have gotten it out at the right time. *facepalm*

I agree that the way Americans are taught to look down on "mere manual labor" is something to be ashamed of. And the tracking of practical vs. theoretical sucks too, IMO. I didn't find out until I was already at UCLA for a while that UC is theory-oriented while CSU is practice-oriented. What a crock. Although I didn't get to go there long due to guilt trips that made me drop out, what I liked about California College of Arts and Crafts (now CCA) was that they didn't enforce that divide. Nor were they as rigid about a divide between design and art as UCLA was.

And ~ma for bonny!