That’s right, a Garden Jawa!  I finally have something that will scare away all those pesky little droids that I find in my garden!

I had actually forgotten that the garden jawa had shipped, so it was a nice surprise for me when I opened the box.  I like it, Candy was expecting the jawa to be bigger. By my poor reckoning skills, I’d say that the jawa is about a foot tall.  And it’s pretty much what I expected.

When Candy got home form work, we headed out on a mission of bibliocal proportions.  Our first stop was at a Half Price Books, where Candy found a few books to add to her overwhelming collection   From there we made our way to Book People where we attended a reading/Q&A/book signing that featured Cory Doctorow.  I had a very good time, and got my copies of Little Brother, For the Win and The New Space Opera 2 signed.  Cory is a super nice guy!  A week or so before the signing, I emailed him with a noobish question (if he was only signing his new book, or older ones as well) and he responded really fast, and wittily. During the Q&A someone asked him “Besides your work, who else should I be reading?”  He answered the question with a list of about four or five authors, that I had not heard of, and unfortunately forgot.  That is, until I emailed him this morning, and got a wonderfully prompt (within minutes) response listing:

Kathe Koja’s forthcoming UNDER THE POPPY
Jo Walton’s forthcoming AMONG OTHERS
Mary Robinette Kowal’s SHADES OF MILK AND HONEY
Clay Shirky’s forthcoming COGNITIVE SURPLES

Which I will be adding to my wish list.

After the signing, Candy drove us to her “Happy Place”, Half Price Books, which again was a bust for me but Candy managed to find a few more books.  After that we had a late dinner at Chuy’s.   All in all the whole night was a lot of fun for me, I got to be a fan boy and had some delicious Mexican food, all the while in the company of my excellent  wife

Now the cat’s can accurately record in their bathroom journal what time that took a shit!  Candy was bewildered. As she eloquently put it “There is a fucking clock on the cat’s shitter!?”

Why, yes, yes there is a clock on the cats shitter.  And I’m sure that Loki, Moxie, and Nellie will use it to the fullest to plan their day/night.  Since cats do everything on a strict schedule! Now they have a clock that is exclusively for them.

  

“In the words of another reviewer, the “Bodygroom” is Shaft, Beanbag, and Starfish safe.”

I will admit that they have a disclaimer at the beginning of the review “If you are easily offended, stop reading this review now.”  But that cracked me up.

So I had to send it to Candy, which led to this exchange on IM:

me: this cracked me up in the first review “In the words of another reviewer, the “Bodygroom” is Shaft, Beanbag, and Starfish safe.”

Candy: is the starfish what i think it is

 Candy: do you have all 3 of those

Candy : lmao

me: yes

Candy: everyone was looking at me cuz that made me giggle

Hotel desk clerk, sounding annoyed: "Is that how you are answering the phone over there?"

Me: "Uh, yeah"

Hotel desk clerk: "Whatever, I need to see if you guys have a room for someone."

Me: "You do know that this is my apartment, right?"

Hotel desk clerk: "What?"

Me: "The number you called, it’s my phone at my apartment, not a hotel."

Hotel desk clerk: "I’m so sorry, have a nice day."

I set a somewhat lengthy outgoing message on my answering machine:
"You have reached (phone number, I forget the whole thing) THIS IS NOT A BUSINESS.  If you are trying to reach a business, check the number and try again." I got a lot of hang ups after that.  About a month before I moved (and disconnected that number) I decided to change my outgoing message to "Speak".  This lead to me coming home to the same number of hang ups on my machine.  One day there were two were hang ups, then on the third message an older gentleman was saying "Hello?" and on the fourth it was the same gentleman saying "Listen, damnit, I just want to get a room there, stop playing games.  All I want is to rent a room!"

And to think when I got that phone number I figured it would be easy to remember!

It is somewhat like a man cave at work because my office mate and I don’t turn on the lights, unless we have visitors, or need them to do non computer work.

I checked on weather.com to see if it was raining where I work, and got the following information:

What the hell does that mean?  Are they using the magic 8 ball of meteorology or something? I was tempted to refresh (the digital equivalent of shaking the magic 8 ball) and see what it said.  I probably would have gotten “reply hazy, try again.”  It just struck me as funny that Showers were in the vicinity.

Carlin had, for lack of a better term, a way with words. He once said “I want to tell you something about words that I think is important. They’re my work, they’re my play, they’re my passion.” I believe that they were also his art.  He was a word artist of the highest caliber.  The way he thought and talked was amazing.  Sometimes he came across as coarse or possibly offensive, but he was always funny.  Using his words as a rapier to pierce thought the absurdness of life and point out the funny truth.

 A true comic legend, George Carlin will be sorely missed.

I’m sure he’s having some good laughs wherever he is.

R.I.P George

We closed on December 20th and moved in the 2nd week of January. The first week of January, Candy and her parents put down laminate floors. I had to work most of that week, and from what Candy says, it was a good thing I wasn’t around to see her have to deal with her mother. But as she said when I came home from work each day “No one is dead, in jail or even bleeding.” I did help some with the floor, but the credit goes to Candy and her parents, as they did 90% of the work. They put down laminate in every room except the kitchen, utility room and the two bathrooms. When all was finished, it looked great! When someone asks about doing it, we tell them “yes, it does look great! If you want to do it in your house, hire someone to do it!”
We decided that we would hire movers to only move “the big stuff” the couch, beds, bookshelves, etc. So we moved boxes and boxes and carload after carload to the house, and at the end of that, I think that next time (which I hope is many many years away) we will pay some one to move all of our stuff.

Now for my excuse on why I haven’t updated the blog (other than being lazy) since Jan 21… I started a new job Feb 11th. I’m now working at Texas State University in San Marcos. I really like it, the only problem is the 60 mile commute each way.

Listening to Pantera – I’ll Cast A Shadow on Far Beyond The Great Southern Cowboys’ Vulgar Hits! when I wrote this

So today, I was in the restroom, sitting in the second stall, when I hear someone come in.  I think nothing of it.  I will note that for the most part I’m not very loud when I’m on the toilet.   I don’t pay much attention to the guy whizzing or washing afterwards.  What gets my attention is that as he leaves there is a loud CLICK and I’m suddenly crapping in the dark.   Now I was about half way done when I was plunged into darkness.  When I say darkness, I mean it was dark.  The restroom has no windows, only that one light, and after a few minutes, I could vaguely make out a strip of light that was the bottom of the door. All I could do was sigh and finish my business, in the dark.  I was not about to try to get up and turn on the light, as that would require 1) stopping in the middle of what I was doing (not something I wanted to think about) 2) fumbling in the dark to open the stall door, 3) walking over to the light and turning it on, praying no one walks in and sees me with my pants around my ankles shuffling to or from the stall to turn on the lights.  So I finished in the dark and hit the lights before I washed my hands.  I wonder who had turned out the lights…  I’ll never know, and honestly it doesn’t matter, it was just an annoyance.

Rest in peace, you took part of my soul with you, Queue.