I took video of the baby birds and their birdhouse. Mama wren was very put out with me, and yelled quite a bit. I was just on the outside of my patio door at the time. I can't win though, the wrens yell at me even when I don't go outside. This morning I opened the curtains and got a good scolding that I could hear very well through the door.



Here's Anna in a Chipotle bag just for the sake of all cats in paper bags everywhere:

George Carlin Talks About "Stuff"

Like many people my age (probably) the first time I saw George Carlin was in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Probably when I was 12. So he's funny, and then a couple years later you realize that he was even funnier before that! He was funny before you were born! He was that awesome.

"Desperate Times" works thanks to its performers - Kansas City Star

"Desperate Times" works thanks to its performers - Kansas City Star

The last paragraph:

"The bare-bone production employs minimal props and scenery, although lighting designer Margaret Spare at times provokes an impressive sense of atmosphere."

Neato.

Sesame Street - How Crayons Are Made

I always loved watching this, even though it's the orange crayon.

Surprisingly painless

I went to get our car registered today. (Oh yeah, we bought a car.* ) I drove downtown, parked about 3 blocks away from the DMV, and put 2 hours worth of quarters in the meter just in case. My mom had to wait 2 hours to get her new license, so I figured I'd be safe and not have to walk back to the meter. I walked over, went in to the office, saw about 30 people waiting in the drivers license area- and one waiting in the vehicle registration area. It took me about 5 minutes, and I spent most of that waiting while the nice lady typed stuff into her computer. Other than forking over $900 to the state, it was a snap.

* The new car is a 2006 Corolla, Indigo Ink Pearl. That's a fancy ass way to say dark blue.

Re-reading is fun

I've started reading the Wheel of time again. There will be a new book out this fall, which is quite a feat since the author died before finishing it. Luckily for those of us who want to see the damned story end- they hired someone to finish the last book. Robert Jordan had already written much of it, and left detailed notes on the parts he didn't write. At one point he vowed it would be wrapped up in one book even if it was thousands of pages long and had to be shipped with its own cart. Despite that, at this point, it will be published in 3 parts. Since I've already read 11 books in the series, (12 including the short prequel,) I don't mind reading 3 more, even if they won't be as long as the others.


These pics are from Striving to be Delicious. If only the cover art from the actual books was this good. They suffer from the generic crappy fantasy novel disease, where they are poorly painted and you usually can't tell who the people on the cover are supposed to be. It's not because the author didn't provide descriptions, he described everything in the books in way too much detail. So much detail that after reading thousands of pages, many of us readers just skim large portions of text. I think a lot of people gave up on Jordan around the 5th or 6th book partially because the details got to be too much, and partially because he showed no signs of wrapping up any plot threads, and even kept adding characters. Not me though, I like reading long fantasy series. It's paid off, exciting things happen in the 11th book... finally.


Right now I'm halfway through the third book. That puts me about 1,920 pages in. That just leaves about 7765 pages to go before I get to read something new!

It almost makes a person wish George RR Martin would keel over so someone could finish a Song of Ice and Fire. I mean, Robert Jordan's dead and he's still gonna finish his series.