Happy February 29th!

Not much to report this time. Waiting for the baby to arrive. Walking around the neighborhood a lot. Shopping for a recliner that will be comfortable for a nursing mother. Mostly I just wanted to post on the 29th.

BTW: As per Jamie's suggestion, if the baby had been born today, we would have named him Lee Pierre. (Think about it, but not for too long.) Anyways, there's still time...

How about a song of the day? Muzzle of Bees by Wilco





Zam.

Jive Turkey

(Thanks to Dave and Camille for the birthday drumstick: it was delicious and strange-y!)

Miss, Hit

We missed the eclipse, what with us being in the wrong hemisphere and all, but Wired has some pretty cool pictures of the lunar event here.

Another space show we missed was captured on video:



Now that's the kind of work I like to see done with my tax dollars.

Total Eclipse Tonight... Except in Asia

Yeah. There's a total lunar eclipse tonight, unless of course, you live in Eastern Asia. Here's a nice graphic from NASA (click for the large, easy-to-read version). I won't be able to see any of the action, so you can do your own damn math to figure your best viewing time.


(Seriously: Korea is right in the middle of the S.O.L. zone. Oh, well.)



Also: I added four more designs to my CafePress shop. Look over in the sidebar for the links. There's no pressure to buy, I just enjoy sharing. Heh. Heheh.

Potty Mouth

We never thought about raising a child when we started raising the dog.

His name is Jack and he's a cute little bugger. Mostly, he's a good dog. When he's bad, however, he can be a real pecker-head. "Jack," we shout at him when he jumps on people, "off!" Yes. Here we are in Mokpo, South Korea, and if the neighbors could understand what we are shouting, they might wonder why they keep hearing "Jack off! Jack off!" being shouted across the rooftops.

When the dog is in the kitchen trying to raid the trash can or in the bathroom for a midnight snack of cat-poop, we yell, "Screw!" I think I picked up that one from Catch-22: Yossarian is trying to have a conversation with another character and a junior officer walks into the tent. "Screw," he says, hooking a thumb over his shoulder to indicate the subordinate should get scarce. Anyways, the dog hears "Screw!" and knows to get scarce.

The cat, though far more vicious, is much smaller than the dog. When the dog is sniffing his little kitty-behind or trying to get up a game of tag with the reluctant white devil, we tell the dog, "No cat!" This usually suffices to warn the dog that he's taking his life into his paws messing around with the feral feline terror. "No cat!" also works with any animal smaller than the dog: squirrels, chipmunks, birds, other small dogs. It's kind of a catch-all for "Don't be stupid. That thing will mess you up."

So, anyways. Little Gandalf will be here soon enough and he'll hear these things being shouted at the dog on a pretty regular basis. Pretty soon he'll be talking and soon after that he'll be interacting with others among his age group. Oh, my god. What will the other parents think the first time our boy tells one his little friends to, "Screw!" Or when another kid gets too close and Gandalf screams, "Jack off!" And how will Gandalf use "No cat!"? I can't imagine, but it should be embarrassing, I'm sure.





In other news:
I started my own CafePress shop. Click the banner below to look at the t-shirt I 'designed' using a nice public domain photo from the NASA archives. Mariner 9 is the first human-built spacecraft to reach another planet, so it deserves a t-shirt, you know.



Another visit to the baby-doc this weekend and hopefully a baby soon. Rachel is getting a bit antsy. I think her exact words were, "I am never going to be not pregnant." (She says this a lot, along with "David, rub my shoulders" and "I am going to kill you.")

Heat Death of the Universe

Korean pop superstars, Big Bang, were in town this afternoon for a handshake session with their Mokpo fans. Rachel sent me down to Skool, camera in hand, to document what we assumed would be madness. The reality was something less than Beatlemania, but greater than the release of, say, the second Harry Potter book. The kids were all behaving well: there were no tears, no screams, no hysteria. Many of the girls carried roses, presumably to give to their favorite member of the five boy boy-band. (Tae Yang may be the cute one, but Seung-ri is the funny one!)



Though the whole scene was kind of silly, I have to admit that one frigid NYC morning waited I for five hours to get INXS tickets.















Oh, and another time I waited for six hours to get Metallica/Guns'n'Roses tickets. (Faith No More opened!)







BTW: Read about the Heat Death of the Universe here- so you know just how very clever this post's title is.

Guess Who I Found!

I was on the road to Damascus Jamie and Leah's apartment...

















Haha. J/K! I'm still a heathen!

Send in the... WTF?

This is what I saw from the roof, this morning, while walking the dog:



We've seen the "clown" costumes before, but still have no idea what the hell they're all about. If anyone can explain the cultural significance of this display, please- please- leave a comment.




(Click for the large version.)