So, who loves Boosterthon?

Rocky Horror Picture Show Reboot!

Lady Gaga and Adam Lambert need to be in a reboot of RHPS. Here's the Facebook page where you can give your opinion on that - and if you like the idea, where you can suggest additional cast members, plot scenarios, etc.

Hoping Richard O'Brien, who wrote the original 1975 RHPS and played Riff Raff, will like the idea and want to get involved.

GS cookies! Find some near you.

Goodness, the time flies.

We're most of the way through Cookie Season '11 now. I've posted a link to this year's new Cookie Booth Locator, courtesy of Little Brownie Bakers (one of the two official GSUSA cookie bakers; the other is ABC).

This year's flavors are the same as last in our Council:
the Fab Five - Samoas, Tagalongs, Trefoils, Do-si-dos, Thin Mints;
the Timely Three - Lemon Chalet Cremes, Thank You Berry Munch, Dulce de Leches

Girl Scout Cookies & the weather

It's Girl Scout Cookie time again! We had a booth last Sunday and sold over 170 boxes in four hours. Same spot this Sunday, two and a half hours, only sold about 60-70 boxes :-< I figured we probably wouldn't do AS well as last week, but thought it would go a little better. Another troop that had a booth last Saturday (different location near us) sold 240! My second kid's troop's booth is next Saturday, at the location where that other troop did well. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Last Sunday was the first weekend for cookie booths; was warm (40s-50s), sunny, pretty much the first nice weekend since all that snow and before most people's cookies had been delivered. This Sunday was windy and chillier, sunny/cloudy, and lots of people have gotten their cookies delivered to their homes already. But we've had booths a few weeks into the cookie sale other years and have sold 100+, sometimes on cold days and sometimes on nice days. Neither rhyme nor reason...

That said, we have LOTS of cookies left, of all eight flavors! Hopefully we'll get a lot of catchup orders but it looks like we'll need to do some walkabouts (go door-to-door with cookies in a wagon) or sign up for a third booth. And hopefully it'll be WARMER from here on out.

Be Thankful

The world is crazy, but we all have something to be thankful for. Try to find yours.

While you're thinking, here are some causes to consider supporting - financially, in words, or both. They'd all appreciate it.

The Ice Skating Calendar: buy these fabulous, funky calendars to directly support one ice skating coach's son's autism therapy.
http://iceskatingcalendar.info/

LABMED: an organization that helps adopted/fostered Labrador Retrievers by providing funds to cover their medical needs.
http://apps.facebook.com/causes/237321/84356412?m=e56504ed
I've sewn blocks for their auction quilt several times, including the August (yellow sky/red sun) block in this year's quilt.

Fairfax County Public Schools, Fairfax County Libraries, and Fairfax County Park Authority.
All are on the chopping block this budget round. The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors - who doles out the money - could make it so elementary school languages, band, strings, and full day KG would be eliminated; so parks would have to charge new fees and reduce staff; so libraries would have to close one day a week, cut back on services, and lose staff. There are a number of groups that have sprung up to protect these important programs and departments and to keep Fairfax County a top-notch place to live, work, and go to school, but a lot more help is needed and support is welcome from all over.

Opinion article about the school budget cuts in the Washington Post
Facebook group "Save Fairfax Band and Strings" (FACE)
Facebook group "Save the Language Immersion Programs in Our Schools!"
and FLAGS (Foreign Language Advocacy for Grade Schools)
Friends of the Reston Regional Library's recent blog post about the horrible budget situation, with a link to a petition to sign in support of the libraries


Thank you for helping when and where and as much as you can. Here's to a safe Thanksgiving that's as happy and relaxing as possible.

Wordzzle attempt #3

Seems my week 80 attempt (the previous one) wasn't at the right time. Let's try this one.

Raven's Wordzzle challenge (week 81 by Raven's count):
http://ravensviews.blogspot.com/2009/09/saturday-wordzzle-challenge-week-81.html

> The words for this week's ten word challenge were: dangerous, engine, sullenly, bespoke, evergreen, bauble, medicine, freight, destined, tinsel And for the mini: carbon, feelers, outright, ballet, fizzing

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You just don't wear an evergreen bespoke suit to the ballet. Not if you're trying to impress your date, not unless you check with her first. Not even if she's your girlfriend. All the baubles and flowers in the world can't help a certain sartorial stumble.

Charles Barkley or Michael Jordan, they'd look outright fine in a suit this color. Dangerously confident. I had them in mind when I chose the fabric for my own foray into custom menswear. I saw the beautiful, oily raw silk on a high shelf and was sure Sonya would love seeing me in it. Her favorite color is green and she's always saying how she wishes I'd wear something more interesting and adventurous than the plain suits I usually wear to my bank job. I had this made just for her and put it to one side of the closet for the right occasion.

Sonya was everything I'd been looking for, an all-in-one package, but we were taking things slowly. No clocks ticking yet. This was to be an anniversary outing, our six-month celebration. I put feelers out before setting up our evening - do you want to dress up to celebrate, would you rather see a ballet or an opera, are you OK with a meal afterward so we can recap the show. Aye all the way. Great - pick you up Saturday at seven. I can wear the suit! This is the big day!

Saturday, September 19th. I take my allergy medicine. Put extra care into cleaning up and getting dressed. Got my snazzy new suit on, wallet and tickets in my pocket; cell on vibrate, keys in hand; I'm ready. Off I go. Buy her a nice white corsage; rev my engine outside the florist's - gotta make my car feel like she's having a special night too - and go to pick her up. I'm happy, smiling, corsage in my outstretched hand. I'm destined for a great evening with this great woman. Knock-knock!

She opens the door with her hair all done up, sparkly jewelry, nice makeup, huge smile. She's clearly been prepping a lot herself and I can't take my eyes off of her radiant face, inches from mine. I lean in for a kiss as she glances down. Now her smile is fizzing away. She's glaring at me sullenly. What? I'm clean, I'm dressed neatly in my new suit, I smell good, I'm not late. I'm pretty sure I love her enough for that big Someday. "Might as well get us a freight load of tinsel!" she shouts and bursts into tears.

Only as she steps back to slam the door do I get it. It's an old problem, one that should have its own carbon date.

Her dress, a new and very flattering one, is made from the same green silk as my suit.

Another Wordzzle!
http://restonfriends.blogspot.com/2009/09/wordzzle.html

> The words for this week's ten word challenge were:Charitable, alligator, tribute, drunk, slave, preparation, carrots, mountainside, propeller, lark For the mini challenge: chisel, worship, suicide, organic, plus

~~~~~~~~~~
Much easier than the first challenge I tried! I can get this set into just one paragraph. Not a friendly one, but here it is ;->
~~~~~~~~~~

"How charitable of you, my drunk slave, to worship me properly! For I see your preparation of a pot of alligator stew with organic carrots plus the tongue of a lark is now boiling. In appreciation for your tribute, I shall chisel your name on the mountainside. Your suicide? Why yes, that would be acceptable. I'm very hungry today. Do hop in."

Meditation farm?

Getting deeper into Facebook and YoVille, etc. The link is to my entry for the YoVille "farm room" contest.

My first thought - since their current theme is Mafia vs. Police - was to do a body farm, but I haven't the play money for that. I already had the bathroom they give you set up as a meditation room since I don't care if my game character has a toilet; that plus the freebie bouquets I've saved up and some plants that were already decorating other rooms and here you have it: my Meditation Farm.

Please post - here and/or on YoVille - & LMK what you think.

Friends of the Reston Library's weekly writing challenge

My first entry is below the line of tildes (~~~).

Where I heard about it:
http://restonfriends.blogspot.com/2009/08/wordzzle-saturday_15.html

The original source (Reston library page links back to this):
http://ravensviews.blogspot.com/2009/08/saturday-wordzzle-challenge-week-76.html

For the challenge: superlative, flea market, falling leaves, disinformation, who was that masked man?, keeping kids out of trouble, I'm a believer, bonnet in the attic, staff, generation

For the mini: deep in the forest, government, charming, heirlooms, flabbergasted

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'm a believer in keeping kids out of trouble, so I regularly go to the flea market they have Saturdays at the old barn down the road from us and look through some other generation's heirlooms for charming toys, not-too-sharp but old-fashioned tools, and funky old clothes. Things like that. The staff is composed of volunteers from the town's historical society. They have great stories to tell about some of the items but the kids aren't all that interested in the shopping part and they prefer surprises, so they stay home with their mom. She's very tolerant of all this but just doesn't get as excited as the rest of us. Someone in this family got the calm gene. It was clearly recessive. Anyway, when I get home, usually relaxed from the fresh air on the walk, I clean up my finds and put them into these trunks we keep up in the attic. When the kids get rowdy we send them up there with a purpose and they'll hunt through the detritus to create their own, themed entertainment.

I'll say stuff like, "Josh, chill already! Go upstairs with your sister and put on a play. There's a new bonnet in the attic I think you'll both get a kick out of." The bonnet I had in mind was an old ratty velvety thing with big long ostrich feathers and bows everywhere. I found it the winter before last. You'd think some old, stuffy lady wore it to the opera - except that carefully centered on every bloody bow was a campaign button for the local dogcatcher. Some of them had pictures of the guy holding cute little dogs. Lots of them had hearts drawn on with silver ink. So maybe some old, batty lady wore it to her son's campaign to become dogcatcher. My daughter Josie loooves dogs and Josh would get a laugh out of its absurdity, so I bought it. Thirteen bucks. Worth every penny - it's been a hat, a basket, a mask, a hunchback's hump, and a disco ball. Not so old now. Jess does like that part - the performances.

One time last autumn I found a pristine Lone Ranger lunch box from the '50s and hadn't even opened it up to look inside when some greedy antique dealer snatched it OUT OF MY HAND and ran it off to the payment desk. Ugh. Hate those pushy types. I was flabbergasted but it wasn't like I had a personal stake in the matter - I don't collect lunch boxes or anything; I just thought it was a fun show - so I shrugged and let the box go. For my own amusement I stomped home (as if a thwarted villain) through the falling leaves muttering, "Who was that masked man?" I hoped it turned out to be full of dried-up snot. Or government documents marked CLASSIFIED - DIRECTOR - EYES ONLY with sections blacked out and it would freak the dealer out but would turn out - upon closer inspection and after frantic, sweaty, palpitating moments - to be a pile of mimeographed charts from some textbook interspersed with pages of amateur radio call-signs. Classic grade-school-maturity disinformation campaign. I'd feel vindicated. So at lunch that day I told Josh & Josie the classified bit as if it had really happened. Had them hook, line, and sinker for a good long while before I laughed and told them I'd made that last part up. Got hit with a few pillows, but they repeated the story to their friends. I've found some suspiciously phony papers in the attic since then.

My current favorite find, which the kids also love, is this '70s yearbook I found this spring. All hippies, every page, I swear. Peace signs and tie-dye shirts; the whole bit. Even on the teachers. We like flipping through to read the weird signatures and captions and to guess at what the heck was going through the administration's mind when they had it printed. Josh now wants to tie-dye everything he owns. We've indulged him here but his dress shirts are off-limits until AFTER he has worn them for an actual event. Never thought I'd have to say that out loud, but I did. Josie loves the long hair on the guys and uses the pictures of long-haired male teachers in the book to remind me that I could grow mine out some more. And more. And more. She wishes, but I'm nice about it. I'll pull one of my curls as straight as it will go and tell her, "OK - it's longer!" She likes that. I was a little kid in the '70s, so the whole hippie bit is pretty alien to me as well. The page of Senior Superlatives has categories like "Hairiest Chest/Legs" (yes, the legs winner was a girl), "Longest Trip" (from the photo, this wasn't exactly referring to road trips) and "Grooviest Van" (we do have a minivan with some crumpled wrappers, like the winner, but ours doesn't have shag carpet and lava lamps and beaded curtains and even the kids don't ask me to add these). One particularly memorable picture shows a group of half-naked, muddy kids doing some kind of rock worship deep in the forest. They were kneeling with their heads down in a circle around this one big rock; their hands were on each others' bare shoulders and bare backs; their butts were up in the air. Maybe they were looking for teeny-tiny 'shrooms. I hope they found some, because they don't look very comfortable in that position. The caption wasn't very helpful - "Junior class field trip to Albertson farm." Probably the yearbook editors goofed up or were goofed out when they put this page together. Could be "field trip" was code back then for 'shrooming, and Albertson was some specific drug. Or they could have been performing "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Dunno. So for this, like everything else I bring home, we make up stories.

Have to finish up today's shopping quickly. It's hot as all get-out today and is only going to get worse. More importantly, I have to hurry home because today is my wife's birthday and the kids are making lunch for all of us. Jess doesn't know it yet - I think - but I've been buying antiquey things for her too. I have a special trunk in the back corner of my workroom. Those old ladies may have been batty but they did a mean trade in silk and lace underwhatevers, and there are a few I can't wait to see on my Jessie. Not right away, of course. I have a nice pair of 14K earrings (also from my favorite shopping site) to give her at lunchtime, in front of the kids. But hopefully tonight Jess and I will make up our own stories with what's in her trunk, and maybe she'll get excited enough to make a few trips to the flea market herself - for my birthday.

Happy Birthday, Sweetie!

Mentally controlled bionic arms: great for amputees; how about for those with birth defects?

9/14/2006 article:
This man had used his arms for years before he lost them in an accident and got prosthetic arms - one "regular"; one thought-controlled.
Man's bionic arm provides hope for GIs

9/17/2006 article:
This woman lost an arm in a motorcycle accident and is learning to use her new thought-controlled bionic arm.
Bionic arm puts life in reach

Read about it!

The Mistress' question:
Will this technology work for people, such as thalidomide babies, who never had arms or legs to begin with? One would assume it would, if those people have the shoulder nerves (or, alternately, hip nerves) mentioned in the article.

But can we learn *their* language?

Kosik the Korean elephant has learned to mimic some of his trainer's words. He seems to be trying to communicate; next step is to test whether he really does understand "sit", "lie down", "no", "yes", and a few other words in Korean. If he does, will he teach us those words in his language?
S.Korean park features talking pachyderm

Beautiful underwater SF: who knew?

Just west of the Golden Gate Bridge is where the outflow of San Francisco Bay is deposited. Using high-tech equipment and procedures, scientists have been able to show that this underwater area is dominated by... sand dunes! Huge ones, some of the biggest in the world. The computer-generated representations of the dunes are breathtaking.

The original article is here:
CITY'S BEAUTIFUL BUT HIDDEN SAND DUNES

UCSF study: too much fructose, not enough fiber the keys in childhood obesity

We've seen it for a long time. UCSF sees it. When will manufacturers stop adding sweeteners to kids' food and start using more whole grains?
Science Daily: "Childhood Obesity Caused By 'Toxic Environment' Of Western Diets, Study Says"

Don't feel dumpy enough? Try getting carried around like a sack o' potatoes...

Another sport new to the Mistress, even more off the wall than underwater golf:

Wife-schlepping, a *championship* fought over by Estonians and Finns (and others)... Yay, Vikings!!!

Estonians reign at wife-carrying championships

Why has this not been in a Monty Python skit or movie?

Zamboni lovers, unite!

Another recent oddity, but a useful one:
Vermont inventor has made himself a very clever snowblower/Zamboni for use in backyard skating rinks.

If you have $30K to spare, you can order one now! The Mistress wishes she could :->
Bambini Revolution

The gentleman also offers temporary (seasonal) skating rinks for backyard or commercial use. These start at about $500 for a 10'x20' liner system for home use and go up to $500K or thereabouts for a large, refrigerated, commercial-grade one.

Cucumber x Cantaloupe: who knew?

One of many odd stories of late:
Cucumbers and cantaloupes can cross-pollinate to produce tasty, edible, hugely elongated, bumpy-skinned fruit...

Houma couple’s garden surprises them with a 'cuculoupe’

The Doll Lady of Sylacauga

This is the sort of person our children should aspire to be. Not financiers, not day traders, not people who try to win at everything.

For two decades, she has used her skills to make a library even friendlier for the children and staff who use it. How? By making dolls and artwork for the library.

What a doll! Sylacauga woman spends countless hours making dolls for B.B. Comer Library

Not everyone has as much time and skill as Christine Keay, but most of us have a little something we can do close to home. What have you done this year?

Haiku of the day: rain (ame)

The Mistress has been doing lots of Japan-related things of late, so please enjoy a haiku she made up this afternoon for a munchkin's amusement.

Rain on the windows
'Spring showers bring May flowers'
Too bad I can't breathe

What do dolphins call each other?

Scientists monitoring dolphins have determined that dolphins have names for one another and use them even when that dolphin is not present.
Just call me Dolph

What would be more interesting to know is this: what sorts of names? Bignose? Can't-Swim? Brownspot? Fast One? Four-Leg-Friend?

Six Degrees of Kevin Everyman

Invading foreign countries and then rebuilding them because that money couldn't possibly be better used improving our own schools, helping our own poor, stopping genocide, or feeding the hungry around the world: not enough.

No Child Left Behind: enough to "use" valuable classroom time and trained teachers in teaching to the test without financing this; otherwise, not enough.

Welcoming lobbyists and profiteers to the White House and government chambers: common enough, but not enough.

Claiming to love our country, but trying to pass laws against natural human diversity: not enough.

Getting rich off of gas prices: not enough. This is just the on-ramp!


The latest?
Six Degrees of Kevin Everyman's phone calls:
NSA has database of domestic US phone calls: report

Do you really think this will be enough?