Library Thing...
A good thing. Started out trying to list as many of my books that I could think of without checking the shelves. Now I've used up most of my 200 freebies. And I keep finding more books...

Can't Get Enough of that... cicada stuff. Now the younger family members understand why we started calling Golden (aka Sugar) Crisp cereal "cicadas" for the way they would cling to a toddlers pajamas when eaten as finger food.

Cicada Mania
Your one-stop exhaustive resource on everything cicada. Planning a wedding? Looking for a keychain like the one you gave grandma 17 years ago? This site has it all.

Urban Chicken Movement
I'm not ready to join.
But it is nice to know it exists. When I'm ready...

A-Ha!
We're invited to a Saturday Night Live theme party in honor of a college friend's 50th birthday. The kids assumed I would go as the Church Lady, but that's a little too obvious. Reflecting on the fact that my year of JEOPARDY eligiblity is almost up, I think I will just make this pic into a sign and wear it around my neck.

What? No pheochromocytoma?
Today's quiz was way too easy. At least for those of us who watch way too much "House," read way too many medical articles or have had way too many brushes with disease.

I. Saw. Them.
I was outside at lunch time.
The cicadas are here.
No sounds - yet. But they were on the sidewalk; big red eyes and orange veined wings. I hope the boys have one in the bug jar by the time I get home... Now I wish we had several of those jars, with the magnifying lids, so we could try to catch the little guys in their stages of development.

Five Princes Quiz
Well, floss my brain. I thought I'd do better than 20%. If I hadn't been something of teen anglophile, I'd really have been lost.

Just thought I'd show off some of Fran's garden and camera handiwork from last year.
You know, just in case we're all eaten by the cicadas. (OK, so the nice bug lady said adult cicadas don't eat at all. They still make a mell of a hess.)


*There appears to be a technical problem with Bridget and the giant sunflowers. Neither Bridget nor the flowers appear bigger than a postage stamp.

They're Back!
The girls who were fascinated by them 17 years ago aren't so fascinated this time around.
But half of the kids were too young to have any memories or weren't even born.
I think this calls for a little bug study unit.
The time is right! The place is right! (This doesn't happen everywhere. It sure didn't where I grew up. Which is probably just as well, since I was a child who would have cancelled my social calendar and taken to my sick bed with whatever disease would work.)

From the St. Expedite Files…
My high school alma mater is about to graduate a world class procrastinator and one heck of a scholar. (He wore down the principal until he let him officially form the mock club, which staged a Christmas food drive in April and was constantly pushing back the date for its meetings. )

That's Right!!!

Miz Booshay presents...
A Friday Feast a laInside the Actors Studio.
It’s fun.
Pretend James Lipton is sitting across from you and hanging on every word.

What is your favorite word?Meretricious
What is your least favorite word? Awesome. Everybody says everything and everyone is awesome. That means nothing is. Awesome - another innocent victim of word inflation.
What turns you on [creatively, spiritually or emotionally]? Life
What turns you off? Over emotive divaesque drama-queen b*ll s**t.
What is your favorite curse word? F**K, I guess. I don’t say it much, which is prudent. That word is also succumbing to work inflation. And since I appear to be too prissy to say it, it packs a whallop when I do. I do use “son of a bitch” a lot.
What sound or noise do you love? little sounds, babies gurgling, birds chirping, Lake Michigan lapping at the beach
What sound or noise do you hate? S-T-Y-R-O-F-O-A-M! I need to be sedated to remove my Christmas village from the protective packing. Car alarms and babbling morons in the cul de sac at 2:00am are pretty low in my esteem, too.
What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? None. Well, Queen of England, Broadway singer/dancer, clothing designer, interior decorator...
What profession would you not like to do? Plumbing. Cleaning. Anything involving that which I would prefer not to touch.
If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates? “Well done, good and faithful servant.”


Last week my sister called to tell me that she literally spoke with Betty Crocker. Calling General Mills with a question on package directions she went thru a series of about 14 voicemail prompts which led to a line answered by a woman who said, “This is Betty Crocker!” I’m sure she was. At least for the duration of her shift.

When I told the kids about this, there question was, “Did she scream and hang up if Betty Crocker said ‘moist’.” Because we all know Aunt Karen’s least favorite word in the world is moist. Mine was pus. Mouthing these words when our parents weren’t looking was a favorite way of tormenting each other. I still will work ‘moist’ into a conversation...just because.

I think our doppelgangers appeared in the Quiet Life combox. One woman can’t stand moist and another despises pus. Awesome.

May Crowning Tsking
The day when the eighth graders pose on the church steps, process in for the May Crowning and the ladies working in the rectory pause from their work to tsk about the dresses. The tsking changes nothing. I’m sure the school tries to encourage more modest attire. I would hope that the parents wish to have their 14 year old daughters processing into church appropriately, dressed, i.e. not like an underage Vegas lounge singer.

On days like today I am glad that purchasing dressy attire for young ladies is no longer a part of my agenda. I think my last traumatic experience was finding a non-scandalous dress for Martha to wear for confirmation. And that included maternal and fillial hyperventilation, a near fainting incident (mine) in Target, ending with purchasing a light over-jacket to salvage the ensemble. So I know what it’s like out there. The market place is not on our side.

That said, I still envision a May Crowning with less exposed flesh. The least reason being the comfort of the young ladies. The eighth grade boys were not suffering in the cool morning air, what with their button down shirts and blue blazers. But their female classmates have learned young when it comes to suffering for appearances. Shawls? Pashminas? A thermal blanket from the Red Cross? Something? Anything?

When Bridget entered the St. Patrick’s Day Parade Queen competition in Chicago, the rules were explicit in forbidding formal wear and cocktail attire and overexposed backs and shoulders. And if they had disqualified the girls who ignored that direction, it would have been a small contestant pool. I can understand her impulse to remove the shrug over her sleeveless dress, but I admire her observance of the rules. As you might imagine, her father and I sat in the audience doing a lot of tsking.

While I’m tsking...Last May I did not make my May altar in the living room. I was recovering from surgery, the house was in chaos and our lives were in flux. Rick said, “Don’t worry...you can have a nice May altar next year.” Well, here we are. I’m feeling great, the house is in chaos and our lives are in flux. The St. Isidore Foundation is still storing equipment in my home. I can’t get close enough to my statue of the Blessed Mother to move it. (Not without risking breaking the statue, some delicate computer equipment or a miscellaneous bone.) I can’t clear enough space in the living room for the May altar. The best I can hope to do now is to finish packing away the Easter decorations. The are stacked on the hutch in the living room - and a few other places - and I can barely get close to them. You know, what with the chaos and flux and all. Tsk. Tsk.

Killing time at/with The Office
Not that I would. Well, maybe a little. I did my daily MentalFloss quiz (80%), just to keep my brain fresh. And digressed to read the feature on Office Fest 2007.

Meet Angela & Kevin at the local Radisson’s Signature brunch, or catch up with them at The Mall at Steamtown…
That sounds like fun. I’d like to meet Angela. She reminds me a lot of ‘work’ me. (I do so admire Jim…if I could only learn how to suspend a co-worker’s calculator in gelatin…)

FINE ART FRIDAY
Two Bouguereau mothers.
Compare and contrast.

Alma Parens 1883


La Charite1878

His lone perk is that he gets a seat by himself in the front row.
It’s nice to know that I, too, have flown “pope style.”
That was a funny trip. Imagine running into old neighbors in the Houston airport. And having their jaws drop as they saw me seated in seat A1 in first class. They couldn’t have been more surprised if the pope were seating there.

From John Allen at NCR(eporter) via Amy Welborn.

Ellyn's Idea of Creative Publicity


A lazy, middle-aged concept of a youth-oriented promo.
Oh well...it's a start.

Just a note...
to family and friends. I never purchased any body parts from Brian Sloan. Everything we have is plastic.

According to eBay's Web site, "humans, the human body, or any human body parts" are banned from sale, with certain exceptions. "Items that contain human hair (such as lockets) as well as skulls and skeletons that are used for medical purposes may be listed on eBay," the policy states. "eBay does not permit the sale of Native American skulls, bones or other Native American grave-related items, as the sale of such items may violate federal law."

I have something of an inquisitive nature - hence the evening we spent with a 'real' skull that was visiting from the UIC dental school. But I think a problem with human parts sold for medical purposes on eBay is that a legit purchaser cannot know a part's 'provenance' and a seller with a legitimately acquired part has no way of knowing what purpose a purchaser may have. I think plastic is the way to go. And there is more than a bit of injustice in the skulls of Native Americans being accorded more respect than other skulls.

(That being said, there is an exquisite beauty in a real skull. For example, years of liquid pressure etch a pattern in the cranium. So, if you get a chance to respectfully examine a real skeleton, I would suggest that you not pass it by. We are wonderously made...)

Brian Sloan was also selling mannequins. I wonder if he will be liquidating his stock. (and I did not mean that as a bad pun) A mannequin might have the je ne sais quoi that the living room needs.

Good Kitsch/Bad Kitsch
If I like it, it's good kitsch. If it has big eyes, it's bad kitsch.
e.g., from this week's New Yorker

18!
It was eighteen years ago today that our family joined the Church. So the way I figure it, Rick has now been Catholic a third of his life. The numbers don’t crunch so neatly for me…but it must work out to more than a third, right? Oh well, happy anniversary to us.

(I am ashamed to admit that there was a time I didn’t remember the date of such a wonderful event. I just remembered it was in early May, sometime before Chuck’s birth. Now that I handle the sacramental records in our parish, I come across the entry in the baptismal and confirmation registers all the time…and always with a certain sense of amazement. And thereby have committed the date to memory.)