Asparagus pee, Gooblek & Other Neat stuff

We’ve just gotten back from dinner at the Trattoria Trecolori, and I am blogging to you live from the 5th floor of the Hotel QT, right around the corner from Times Square.

We’re here for the annual Book Expo America convention at the Javits Center this weekend and some other business around The Big Apple.

Today was travel day, Sacramento to Denver to La Guardia. We had a spectacular view of the city coming in over Manhattan – skyline, central park, the whole ball of wax. Pretty impressive. The Lady Janet was listening to the captain’s radio on the headphones, and the controller told him, “Past the Verrazano Bridge, past the Statue of Liberty, up the Hudson River,” and the pilot replied, “Got it. Bridge, Lady, River.” If you have small children and watch Dora the Explorer, this might sound strangely familiar, in a slightly disturbing way.

I will post more with pictures tomorrow.

I finally figured out how to get the movies to stream on our new host – turns out you can’t stream the avi’s that our camera creates, you have to use a tool to convert them to wmv’s. Check ’em out:

Homosassa Manatee

Palm Beach in Aruba

Emily makes a Sand Angel.

“We live as though the world were as it should be, to show it what it can be.”

— Angel, from the Fox TV show by Joss Whedon

Well, we’re gonna have to try this one: Starting a fire with a can of Coke and a chocolate bar.

I am posting this here only because it’s the same fraternity that I am a member of – I was never a frat boy, but I did join Pi Kappy Phi fraternity’s Alpha Omicron chapter shortly before leaving Iowa State for California pastures. The worst the members did to us pledges was to lock us out of our rooms while we were visiting a different chapter and freeze all of our underwear together in a 30-gallon trash can full of water that they put in the walk-in freezer. Excite News – Hazing at Berkely.

Well, this is interesting. Several states are suing the Bush administration over funding issues with programs required by the No Child Left Behind act.

(As you may remember, I ran for our local school board last November because of budget problems in our district that continue to threaten our elementary schools, and I think this is a good sign of things to come.)

I was never a big fan of the recently late Mitch Hedberg, but that was only because I’d never heard of him. There are some jokes over here that are really quite funny, and I highly recommend reading through all of them, but my favorites are probably:

I used to do drugs. I still do drugs. But I used to, too.

I think Pringles’ initial intention was to make tennis balls. But on the day that the rubber was supposed to show up, a big truckload of potatoes arrived. But Pringles is a laid back company. They said “Fuck it. Cut ’em up.”

My friend said to me, “You know what I like? Mashed potatoes.” I was like, “Dude, you have to give me time to guess. If you’re going to quiz me you have to insert a pause.”

This is interesting – I took a grammar/usage test that I saw over on Maya’s blog, and I noticed as I went through it that there were several things that I say differently after 20 years out West, vs. when I was a kid growin’ up in Iowa, towit:

Kid in Iowa:

Your Linguistic Profile:

75% General American English

15% Upper Midwestern

10% Midwestern

0% Dixie

0% Yankee

Now:

Your Linguistic Profile:

65% General American English

20% Yankee

10% Upper Midwestern

5% Dixie

0% Midwestern

I should also mention that there were some questions in this test that didn’t have an accurate answer for me, like I tend to say “Gym shoes” now vs. the “Tennis Shoes” that I grew up with or the “Sneakers” that they provided as the only other option.

This is cool. Elwood “Woody” Norris has invented a couple of neat things. The link to an article about him in Popular Science appears to be broken, but here is a link to his website.

I continue to be astounded by these stories of “miraculous” appearances of the Virgin Mary in the most unlikely of places.

Perhaps I need to go reread William James’s essay The Will to Believe.