You know what’s more fun than writing my nanonovel?

Collecting facebook flair. I have well over my 34 required peices. And they are all so cool.  Seriously cool.  Which means I must be seriously cool to have thought of hunting for them, right? And then, having hunted for them gazing adoringly at them isn’t a sign of weakening mental status, and it’s not a sign of serious procrastination right?

Like an ardent art fan at a great museum, one would only be expected to gaze adoringly at the works of art. To ponder what they mean, to be grateful that someone created them and to remember fondly all of the things they bring to mind.

So there you have it. If you can’t stand it now and must see my flair, add me as a friend on facebook and admire away.  You deserve it.  If you are opposed to facebook for any reason or wouldn’t want it generally known that you are my friend I’ll offer you a little taste of my flair here.  Just one caveat, it makes me look like a much bigger sci-fi fan than I really am. Or maybe it just makes me look a little television obsessed.

A sample of the flair I have that is mostly text:

Drive Shaft

I hate Bryce Larkin

What’s your problem with hard to believe?

Go Away, I’m Reading

You’re invited to my Riverside Supper with Riparian Entertainment

Burn the Land Boil the Sea you Can’t take the Sky fromMe

Babette Ate Oatmeal

Mohinder…First he Got Hot then He went Crazy

Fredder

Now for some word pictures:

Tardis

Baker Street

Cubbie Bear

00000

Dharma

Lukes

Jospeh

Richard Parker and Piscine Patel

Firefly

And yes, this post was just another way to use facebook to avoid that ever widening gap between my and nanowinner status.  And now, to continue the avoidance I am off to see if a flair search for Cleggy brings up anything good. Surely it will.

Now drink your coffee.

Apparantly I didn’t.

Our house was a good buy.  Decent location, not super small by my standards.  And with a nice big yard that  I don’t seem to go in much these days.

And I don’t go in it much because of the trouble I’ve caused inside.

Our house was once a miniscule ranch.  A previous owner had a few dollars and some sense and built an addition. So now it is an L shaped ranch. We have been fighting the tacky factor inherent in that design with nice paint and well planted landscape.  I’ve tried to distract viewers from the addition roof line with tasteful design.  Currently our curb appeal rates “satisfactory” with me. It will move up to “highly satisfactory” when we get the board and batten shutters up.

The addition also created an awkward traffic flow inside the house.  We agreed when we bought it that it would be easy to fix and well worth the effort.

So the original house plan had three bedrooms at one end of the house, with the “Master” (the bedroom with a 3/4 size closet instead of a 1/2 size closet) on the back yard side.  The addition is a new master off of the original master bedroom.  The new room has patio access, full bath, double closet with an organization system built in,  and a nice little nook I turned into a sewing space.  Now, “Master suite” is the technical term for this room, but Daniel and I moved into one of the tiny spaces with half pint closets. The girls sleep in the other small room and the big suite is now a cozy family/tv room.

The akward space –the previous master bedroom is currently a den.  The family that added the addition just stuck the addition on and left the other bedroom a closed up bedroom-like space that you passs through to get to the real bedroom.

In our world of open concept homes this weird closed off space had to go. Or change.

We have one of those hall bathrooms in the front of the house with a kind of long hall in front of it.  You know the kind, it T’s into the regular hall and has a coat closet.  It’s a handy closet.

The wall that makes up this bath/hallway space is also the wall that makes up the corner of the passthrough den.

It has been my plan since we moved in to knock that hall wall and the adjacent doorway out to open up the den.  It would make the flow of traffic more comfortable. It would bring the sunlight from the south facing window in the den into the hallway and it would make our house seem more intentional.

The layout of hte house would then be: Walk into the front room, you are also facing the dining room and kitchen.  Turn right, walk down the hall way. First door on the Right, small bedroom. First door on the left, hall bathroom.  Door at the end of the hall, small bedroom.  Comfy, open space with southfacing window is the den. Second door on the left, Master bedroom.

So, I took the matter into my own hands. That is to say, I took the splitting maul into my own hands and began knocking the dry wall off of it.  I have to say, the sunlight into the hall is all I hoped it would be.

Daniel urgently requested I talk to a professional before I knock the studs out, just to see if they were load bearing.

It’s funny, I swore they werent’ for good reasons. My mother in law swore they were.  It turns out she was right.  But by a fluke.  We have a tressle roof that supports its own weight. For half of the house. And then tha bedroom half is supported by the walls. I guess, just because they wallls were going to be there anyway, the builders figured, “why not?”

I’ve got my sunlight now. But I’m still waiting to hear back from the respected professionals about how much the new support beam is going to cost us.  I know their labor is $90 an hour for two men.  They said they wanted to price the beam and get back to me. They said they could do the job Tuesday. They didnt’ have any problem just putting the beam in and then letting Daniel and I do all of the finish work.

Do you think it could take more than two hours to do the job?  I’m scared it would be more than a three hour job.  Really scared. I plan on using my October babysitting money to pay for it, and that would cover a three hour job if the beam isnt’ too much money. And yes,  that is the same pay check I was going to use to buy the dishwasher.  And some new blue jeans. And socks for all the girls that live in the house.

It felt so good knocking the drywall down and pulling away the first of the nonessential 2×4’s.  (fun note, they are from 1960, so they acutally are 2×4! Daniel laughed and said they just looked so big!) It felt so good that I am trying to be happy I started the project. However, if the fix-it men quote the job at half a day or something like that I will have to live with the studs for a little while.

It can’t hurt, Daniel would say. After all, I have plenty of practice living with a big stud.

I just found this humorous.  Very funny actually.  Here’s a snippet.

Darwin’s theory

David Deamer, emeritus professor of chemistry at the University of California at Santa Cruz, said ahead of his presentation: “It is about 140 years since Charles Darwin suggested that life may have begun in a ‘warm little pond’.

“We are now testing Darwin’s idea, but in ‘hot little puddles’ associated with the volcanic regions of Kamchatka (Russia) and Mount Lassen (California, US).”

Understanding how life emerged on Earth within 1,000 million years of its formation is a fascinating scientific problem Prof Ian Smith, University of Cambridge

“The results are surprising and in some ways disappointing. It seems that hot acidic waters containing clay do not provide the right conditions for chemicals to assemble themselves into ‘pioneer organisms.’”

Professor Deamer said that amino acids and DNA, the “building blocks” for life, and phosphate, another essential ingredient, clung to the surfaces of clay particles in the volcanic pools.

“The reason this is significant is that it has been proposed that clay promotes interesting chemical reactions relating to the origin of life,” he explained.

“However,” he added, “in our experiments, the organic compounds became so strongly held to the clay particles that they could not undergo any further chemical reactions.”

That’s just a small part excepted from her article.  Why’s it so funny to me…

I thought we had dealt with the spontaneous life issue already…

And scientists seem to think clay is an integral ingredient for life.

So does Genesis.

My *spoiled cook* rep was very encouraging. She called once a week to make sure I was inviting people and feeling good about the party. She reminded me that I don’t have to feel bad calling people to come to my house to visit, laugh and eat good food. That’s a shout out to her–Hoo-rah! for Jodi! She really is good at her job.

And yet I am allergic to letting money out of my hand. Therefore calling people to come to a shopping party makes me feel like I am calling people to come to a picnic in a field of ragweed.

I’m so thankful for all of the sympathy I got on the phone call anxiety that I wanted to give an update about the party. Then something else happened that I had to share too.  They relate.

First, the party. I made my phone call invites the scardey-cat way, calling when I was fairly certain no one was home and leaving messages.  Then Jodi mailed out invitation cards. And last, the day before, I called most everyone back and left a reminder message.  Three people I was sure were coming didn’t.  Two people I didn’t expect to come did. There was a total of eight of us there. But we were eight very fun, very loud and laughing people so it felt nice and big and cozy.  For a fundraiser, it wasn’t a great turn-out. Our total donation, including two internet orders, will only be about $40.  But for a home sales party, thrown by me, we did pretty good. I can’t remember ever having one of these shows and selling almost $400 of merchandise.

That’s the facts and figures of the event.  The heart of the matter was made clear to me early in the morning. Jodi told me again and again, if you love something, if you are passionate about it, calling your friends and aquaintances is just no big deal.  My fundraising and development mentor back in the working days (me? with phone call anxiety, a F & D gal? Hah!)  Said the same thing.  Passion is the key quality of a good representative.

Yesterday afternoon Betty from the grade school I desperately want my girls to go to called.  She said, “The district has approved a second Spanish Immersion Kindergarten for Harney. Please come down and register Eleanor. We are accepting anyone who applies, no matter where they live.  We need at least 28 students to offer two kindergartens.”

“Eleanor will only be four in July.  Do really want me to register her?” I asked, thinking I am so funny.

Betty was disappointed. I’ve been hanging around Harney Elementary at Parent meetings and story times, because I want Norah to go there in 2009 so badly.

Betty said “*sigh* No.  My granddaughter is four. You’d better not try to get her in yet.”

But, we both knew that two classes this year makes two classes next year more likely. And since I am out of boundry, I need two classes to guarantee a spot.

I offered to spread the word to my friends and she was very grateful.

It’s what I did next that is so reamarkable to me. Without even a hestitation I picked up the phone, the phone book and called everyone I know that a) has a new kindergartener this fall and b) has not expressed a disdain for bi-lingulism (yes, some otherwise bright people I know have been that foolish.)

I called all of them! I promoted! I shared stats and info with passion. I am chock full of stats and info about bi-lingual education in general and Harney’s program in particular.  I am chock full of passion about making our kids smart.  Then, in one last effor to promote the program, I called the director of the pre-school Norah is enrolled in for next year. I told her, “You don’t know me, but…”

I told her how I know their school, how I got the information from Harney, and why I thought she might like to know. That she might like to tell the parents of the kids graduating out of her program. At first, she was polite and sort of stand off-ish. But after only a moment she realized my message was short and it was just free info about education that might help someone else. Then she was much more effusive and grateful.  She thanked me very much and told me she does have kids already headed to Harney whose parents would definatly want to know about the room in the Spanish classes. Just a side note, Harney will have regular kindergarten for up to two classes, if that is how many parents prefer, and up to two immersion Spanish classes (the kids in those classes will stay in immersion until fifth grade).

Well, thats about it. There is the thing that I care enough about to bother friends, aquaintences, and strangers.  Frankly, it is time that America joined the rest of the modern world got a twentieth century education system.  After all, its only a century late. (On hundred points for you if you live in a town that already has bi-lingual education–like Portland, across the river.  Ten Thousand points for you if your kids are in it!)

I haven’t been particularly academic since the kids were born. I’ve wanted to be. I think about learning things. I even bought a Spanish text to help me brush up. It is telling that the thing I read (apart from the Bible) that made me think the most recently, was the tag on my tea bag.

Long ago, in an attempt to annoy my then-boyfriend, now dear husband Daniel I claimed I was an ascientist. Get it? Like an athiest? I don’t believe in science. The truth behind the jibe is that I don’t believe that science is infallable, that the scientific method can prove everything it claims to prove or that the current powerful scientific community is trying to actually use the scientific method to push its religion.

Most science is faith based. You have to first accept that the scientific method is the best way to study something (which, in many cases it is) and then you have to accept that it can be applied to all things natural (which it cannot) and then you have to accept that whatever answers the scientific method produce are true. Which they are not. Science is constantly disproving old theories. So much so that I have a hard time trusting any new theories. And where a theory cannot be actually proved through that vaulted method scientific it is called a law. Evolution anyone?

It takes a great store of faith to buy a mindset that is internally inconsistent and constantly changing. It is also very perturbing that the powerful in the scientific community shut their eyes, stick their fingers in their ears, and completely deny any aspect of faith in their work.

And then there is this guy:

John von Neumann

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“von Neumann” redirects here. For other uses, see von Neumann (disambiguation).

John von Neumann
John von Neumann in the 1940s
Born	December 28, 1903(1903-12-28) Budapest, Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy
Died	February 8, 1957 (aged 53) Washington, D.C., United States
Residence	United States
Nationality	Hungarian American
Fields	Mathematics
Institutions	University of Berlin Princeton University Institute for Advanced Study Site Y, Los Alamos
Alma mater	University of Pázmány Péter ETH Zurich
Doctoral advisor	Leopold Fejer
Doctoral students	Donald B. Gillies Israel Halperin John P. Mayberry
Known for	Game theory Von Neumann algebras Von Neumann architecture Cellular automata
Notable awards	Enrico Fermi Award 1956
Religious stance	Converted Roman Catholic; previously agnostic; born to a non-practicing Jewish family

John von Neumann (Hungarian: margittai Neumann János Lajos) (December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian born American mathematician who made major contributions to a vast range of fields^[1] including set theory, functional analysis, quantum mechanics, ergodic theory, continuous geometry, economics and game theory, computer science, numerical analysis, hydrodynamics (of explosions), and statistics, as well as many other mathematical fields. He is generally regarded as one of the foremost mathematicians of the 20th century.^[2] Most notably, von Neumann was a pioneer of the application of operator theory to quantum mechanics, a member of the Manhattan Project and the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton (as one of the few originally appointed — a group collectively referred to as the demigods^{[citation needed]}), and a key figure in the development of game theory^[3][1] and the concepts of cellular automata^[1] and the universal constructor. Along with Ede Teller and Stanisław Ulam, von Neumann worked out key steps in the nuclear physics involved in thermonuclear reactions and the hydrogen bomb.

The tag of my tea bag said this:

“In mathematics, you don’t understand things, you just get used to them. Johann von Neumann (1903-1957)”

Daniel likes to tell me about the crazy circular reasoning that geologists and anthropolgists use to date their finds. One says that the fossils have this age because they are found in a strata of dirt that is this old. The other says that the dirt is from this era because the artifacts presnent in the strata are from that era. This was the way his profs taught him in college.

Like mathematics, I think this is something you just have to get used to. Circular reasoning is internally illogical and unacceptably in any polite conversation.

The February edition of Town Hall magazine has a great article called Darwin’s Dominance: Evolution’s Glass Ceiling. This article is a short look at the challenges that scientist who wish to study the theory of intelligent design face. The main argument evolutionary biologist use to dismiss intelligent design is that there is an absence of solid research behind the theory. According to the professors and scientists interviewed for the article someone who pursues the study of intelligent design will be refused funding, blacklisted, and out of a job. The people who demand research to back the theory also make the research impossible. I am very excited about a new film called Expelled that was to be released this month. It is a full length documentary about this topic.

I wish I could put a billboard up in times square with von Nuemann’s quote. A man much smarter than any of my previous science or math teachers who admits, on my tea bag that this is the stuff of faith, as much as any other religion is.

Daniel gives scientists the benefit of the doubt on many issues. He believes that the method they use is infallable if used appropriately. He gives off a vibe that sciencey folks are smarter than the word nerds of the world. My original beef was with him assuming his professors were smarter than mine and the field of biology more academic than history. As annoying as that was, it lead to my little joke. Ascientism may not become the next big movement, but a heavy dose of skepticism applied to science would do it a world of good.

The newest thing that gets me through the day is Create TV, the PBS answer to HGTV and TLC.  If it were more fun, I’d really be a zombie.  If you miss Bob Ross and his bizarre affection for strange, small animals, you can still find him on create. Tree Urchins (squirrels) in his pocket, baby chimney sweeps clinging to his shirt, and all the rest of the strange band, ready to teach you how to turn an innocent canvas into a mock-black-velvet masterpeice.

But the really demented things on this station are the so very authentic cooking shows.

A nice lady called Lidia showed me how to cook an interesting casserole.  First saute your sliced onions until they are transluscent. Then layer them with potatoes, tomatoes and sardines. Just chop the heads off of the fish and layer them in.  Mmmm. Fishy.  Then cook it.  I suggest cooking it until it turns into a pan full of blackened charcoal that you can bury under the house until it turns into diamonds.

Similarly Mary Ann taught me how to make a casserole with onions, potatoes, tomatoes, and mussels. Mary Ann thought it would be a great surprise for your guests to leave the mussles in the half shell. So you layer the onions, potatoes, tomatoes and sea shells and serve.  Your guests will be delighted! Imagine with me: “Hey! What fun! I broke a tooth! Thanks Mary Ann! I totally didn’t expect that!”

A nice Frenchman who shall remain nameless…because I forgot his name…made Russian Salad.  It looked pretty good. Tuna from a jar, instead of a can, mixed into homemade potato salad.  With homemade mayoniase. So if you aren’t terrified of salmonella like I am, go for it! And if the raw egg doesn’t make your stomach turn, just plate the thing up like the Frenchman did. He took a nice round mold (like a tuna can with the top and bottom removed) and patted it full of Russian Salad. Then he spread the top of it with beautiful? lovely? umm, hideous? salmon roe.  When you remove the mold you have a gelatinous tower of potato salad covered in slimy little pink fish eggs. Did you know slug eggs look just like fish eggs? They do. So if you are out of salmon roe  you are welcome to the slug eggs that live in my lettuce patch (or will as soon as I plant it.)

I recomend the Russian salad as a starter, with the two casseroles served at the same time. For the salad course please serve Lidia’s fennel salad. It’s just what this meal calls for.  Slice you fennel nice and thin (this tastes a bit licoricey if you are wondering) then add cut oranges slices done up that fancy way where they don’t have any membranes.  (Yumm, membranes!) Next, add the dried olives. I know I always want dried olives at the movies, when I am eating my licorice and drinking orange soda.  Go ahead, add the whole bowl. Who doesn’t love dried olives? Now drizzle on some of that extra virgin olive oil.  When you plate it, be sure to add some more evoo.  After all, who wants a fresh, crisp salad when you could have an oily mess instead?

Now you are ready for dessert. This gem is thanks to Ming and his celebrety guest chef. There is nothing really disgusting about it, except when you imagine how you stomach would feel after you are a nice hearty serving.  I expect it would feel like you filled your stomach with concrete. Concrete made out of sugar and lard. But I am ahead of myself.  This is just bread pudding. Made with glazed donut holes. And evaporated milk. But don’t hold back–serve it with some rich creamy whip cream.  Thank goodness this was Ming’s recipe and not Lidida’s. She would have us drizzle it with just a little more evoo for sheen.

I would skip the wine when serving this meal and offer pints of alka seltzer instead.

When we were newlyweds we were young and poor. Two weeks before the wedding I graduated college. Through lack of planning or vision of working life in America I had just earned a degree in History. Useful, no? No. I was working part time at a non profit and Daniel was finishing up his apprenticeship.

But we were two people with two incomes (ha!) and had some standards for living. Daniel drew a circle on the map with his workplace in the center, anything within the circle was bike-able, therefore a place we could live. I wanted…hardwood floors. Oh yes, because style is important. I also didn’t want to live in the basement of a stylish house for $800 a month. Even then I wasn’t willing to pay a premium for address.

We found a sweet little apartment with hardwood tucked back in a very nice neighborhood for just under $600. A good address and a savings too. Perfect. That’s how we started anyway. I was on a mission to leave my mission work as fast as I could. So I got another part time job that made more money and learned to drive a stick shift. Pretty important since I was now a traveling salesgirl.

That apartment, in spite of its style and address was a big mess. It lacked sufficient insulation for a place under so many fir trees. It grew mold and mildew at a moments notice. Despite my hard scrubbing we didn’t get all of our deposit back because the landlady didn’t check the apartment out until four days after we left. By then it was a grimey and mildewy mess again.

Eventually (another two jobs later for me) we saved up a small sum and put it down on an “inexpensive house.”

That was the smartest money decision we have made together, and possibly the only smart one I had made to that point. We found ourselves a first time home buyer’s grant and our mortgage payment was the same as our just under $600 rent. And somehow during that process we were able to pay off the last of our car loan and our last little student loan.

And now, thanks to that great inflated home market of a year ago we were able to put (drum-roll please) $70,000 down on this house. Thanks to one more job change (Daniel’s) we were able to make the slightly higher payment and taxes on what is a bigger mortgage.

While I live in a place I truly love now I would have done almost every single thing differently in the process to get here.

I would have kept the job at the nonprofit and gotten a second job at anywhere, Taco Bell, Wal Mart, anywhere. We were trying to save all of my paychecks and live on Daniel’s. That is not so easy on an apprentice salary of $1600. But I would have. I would have doubled my income and lived entirely on his. He stopped being an apprentice later that year anyway.

If I had doubled my income at that time, by working a second job instead of just finding a new not satisfying job, we could have saved $15,000 a year. (Yes, double nothing still isn’t much.)

But if we had saved that much, by the time we bought the first house we would have had $35,000 down. Two times the $15,000 plus the first time home buyer’s grant.

We bought our current house from friends of ours. They had been renting it out for three years because it didn’t sell before they moved to Phoenix. If we had waited to buy a house until this one went on the market the first time (just a year later than we bought our other one) we would have had $50,000 to put down.

It kind of sounds like the first way to do it was the better way, right? Because we had $70,000 to put down on this house instead of just $50K. However, If we had bought it when it was first on the market, our current mortgage would have been $45,000 less, because the price of the house was that much less. And we would be three years closer to paying it off.

Technically we are in a really good place. Our current loan is comparatively small and our payments are not horrific. But wouldn’t it be nicer to have a loan that was actually small instead of just comparatively? Or have payments that were the same as our old rent, instead of “not horrific”?

We are trying to make up for lost time, for that time when I was under-employed or not hard enough working or whatever. And we are trying to do it on one salary. Someday I will work again. God willing it will be when my kids are both in school full time. I want to be around for them and don’t want to add the cost of daycare or sitters to our budget.

Whenever that great date comes, the day I have to work again we will put our mortgage as far behind us as possible.

Ever since I wrote it down in an earlier post, the idea of mortgage free by forty has been haunting me. I want it. I think we can get it, if we plan more carefully and work harder than we did in the past.

The borrower is slave to the lender. I can’t wait until I am only slave to God.

Their was a chill in the air last night, in the house. And outside it was a cold, cold freeze. But we were snuggled together, flannel sheets and many wool blankets. Sometime around too early in the night Lucy woke up and joined us to snuggle down and she kept me even warmer.

Something woke me in the night. Probably her wriggling in the blankets. And as I lay in drowsing in bed I listened to the night noises.

Our house whispering with sleeping electricity. And wind beating on the walls outside. And then the unusually loud and hard to recognize sound that my mind vaugely labled “computer.” And then the loud grinding rattle of a bedroom door knob that a small child is trying to open but can’t seem to grasp.

I wrapped my arm around the baby and suggested to Daniel that he ought to take care of the Norah problem.

He slid out of bed. In a brief moment he was back, crawling under our blankets. Norah hadn’t cried about having to go back to bed. In fact, Daniel hadn’t whispered any comforting words to his sleepwalker either.

“Was she okay?” I asked, confused.

“She was sound asleep. I don’t know what made that noise.”

This was just last night and I can feel the tremors of terror on my spine as I write it. If Norah was safe in bed, who rattled the doorknob with such ferocity?

Around thirteen I harrowed my soul like so many other Christian youths by reading style=”font-style:italic;”>This Present Darkness and Piercing the Darkness.

Frank Peretti sent uncountable shivers down my spine over the last 17 years, because of those two books. These particular books fill that gap between Stephen King and Janet Oke. The world the way God sees it, but not from the perspective of innocent prairie girls falling in love. These tell of the ongoing battle between the army of the enemy, those angles of darkness, and the Lord’s Army. We may know that the Lord’s Army wins in the end, but Peretti’s images of the battle and of casualty and war wounds is horrifying. The books were enthralling and leave me today looking twice into any shadowy corner. When everyone in our house had read them they were tucked up far into a corner closet and even mom and dad left the lights on around the house. For a little while.

And so something in the night, a monster of the darkness? A ghost child? Was rattling my doorknob, not able to get where he was going, getting frustrated, unhappy. There was no way I was sending Lucy back into her empty room alone.

Feeling like a child, and yet honestly scared I asked Daniel: “What do you think it was?”

“Sounded like the printer. Like it was falling off the desk of something.” He responded phlegmatically.

“Yeah, I heard that. But what about the door knob noise?”

“Eh? It didn’t really sound like a door knob to me.” And then he rolled over and went to sleep.

I rolled the idea of printer noises around in my mind. Yes, I had been only half awake. It could have been printer noises. But…why was a demon ghost child trying to use the printer? I pictured the printer and the computer and thought hard about it. I thought, “The printer has buttons. What pushed the printer buttons?” And out of the dark terror of nights at my old house, the one we just left came another demon hoard. The Mice. Could it have been? Could the printer have been activated by two ounce mice scampering across my keyboard? Was that better than ghosts?

It was the first time in my life I hoped sincerely that we had mice.

This morning Daniel had a new report. He heard The Noises again around the time Norah joined us in our bed. He examined the printer and found it was falling off the desk. Funny the kinds of noises I am willing to agree that a falling printer makes.

I was sitting here at the computer checking my email and scanning things for mouse dropping when he told me. And I was resting my foot on the shelf. That shelf down at the bottom of the desk where the printer sits. Where, on many occasions I have had to rescue the printer because I kick it off the shelf as I mindlessly read blogs and tap my toes.

I feet better about it now, I think. Circumstantial evidence points to me as the mouse, or the ghost, or just the culprit if you will. The person who tapped the printer to the edge of its home so it could slowly slip off the shelf during the night and make unearthly noises.

Sure. It was the printer. I’ll just keep telling myself that.

A flying handle bar mustached fly gadfly barfly with more bars.

(Translation: a well dressed, bemustached, shallow and flighty man who parties a lot, carries an ATT phone and happens to be traveling by air.)

And what did you and your spouse talk about last night?