Friday Concoction

I have to make this short today. I need to get the pack (of wolves) ready for our conference with Madeleine's teacher, and Quinn woke up too late to take a morning nap. Right now he's crawling around, using baby sonar to look for me (he crawls a couple steps, yells "AAAA" and then waits for a response - my little baby bat). If I type quietly maybe he won't hear me. Quinn's namesake [Update: it should read opposite-of-namesake, but what's the word for that?] is coming this afternoon for a barbecue and we're going up the mountain in the morning. He lives in Okinawa and we only see him once a year, at the most. He and Jim were BFF growing up, and he's great. Hence the name thing.

Oh yeah - remember how I was going to leave the house on Thursday? I did. I went and had a giant coffee, an M&M cookie and a tangerine and sat in a coffee shop window and wrote and eavesdropped. It was heaven. Then I got my glasses fixed, bought Madeleine some purple nail polish and monkey Kleenexes and came home. I can't wait for next week! Babysitter Extraordinaire was awesome, the kids were fed and happy and we survived another Thursday.

One note before I get on with the Concoction: I'm very sorry if I normally visit your site and comment daily, but what with suppositories, Thursday Free Day and other interruptions I've only been able to occasionally catch up on my blogroll. I still heart y'all.

Now The Links

• I got one of these from Esereth and another from a friend. It's fun to drag Bush around.
  
• Here's a classic example of how breaking down humor makes it decidedly unfunny. Here's what real-live funny people say about writing humor.
  
• Yummy yummy. Let's eat some kidney-shaped babies.
  
• One final item... Did anyone watch Without a Trace last night? Somehow they've turned this show into a comedy. I'm serious. I laughed out loud at least 5 times in a show about the FBI tracking down missing persons. At one point Anthony LaPaglia was confronting an agoraphobic woman who had not left her apartment in 2 years. She had paid a hilarious Asian man to drag her out of her place, after which she tracked down the estranged mob boss dad of her secret crush slash female assistant, then traveled to the suburban bowling alley that kicked off her agoraphobia. So she's crouched in this little compartment where the bowling pins go after they're knocked down and LaPag crouches next to her and says, "Julie [or something] come on out of there." She says, "I can't. I'm an agoraphobic." And he says, "You're 15 miles from your house! You're the worst agoraphobic I've ever seen." Did that sound funny? It was really funny, I promise.
  

And...

Then (me at work, circa 1995)


Me (at work, circa 10 am) (isn't it funny when Madeleine does that bratty thing with her eyes? yes we all laugh and say How Charming!)


Wish me luck at the p/t conference and have a great weekend!