The clouds are marching in.
It's really odd. A bunch of layers of clouds were coming in at once, at different speeds. Very very eerie.

My mother was interviewed for 20/20.

Wow.

Here's an article that explains about what the 20/20 piece is about.

If you don't want to read the article, a brief synposis:
In Nitro, WV, a lawyer and his wife wanted to clone their deceased 10 month old son. The kid had died during heart surgery, to fix a defect. The couple had hired a scientist and was paying her around $500,000. The cloning lab was in the old Nitro high school, where my mother and grandmother often play bingo. Nitro is across the river from St. Albans, my hometown.

There was a 20/20 crew in the school, interviewing people. One of the guys that runs the bingo game mentioned to the crew that my mother was on dialysis, and since obviously people with failing organs have some interest in cloning, they interviewed her. The piece will air on August 31st, at 10 pm EDT. (Basically, her stance was cloning organs = good, cloning entire people for the organs = bad. Since this isn't directly related to the topic, it makes me wonder if they'll air her. I don't know.

This is my family's second brush with national "fame." Awhile before the 1988 primaries, my father had a quote in Newsweek (and the Washington Post) about the potential candidates (something about how they're all like vanilla pudding, and unexciting.) I really wish I could find that quote. We threw away the Newsweek it was in inadverntently. Oh, well. Someday, I'll go through the Microfiche at the library to find it. I hate microfiche.

The whole issue with the people cloning their kid is very sad, I think. I mean, obviously, they're grief-stricken, and clutching at straws to try to get their baby back. But even a clone wouldn't be the same child, due to the whole nature vs. nurture. And if the child had a heart defect to begin with, wouldn't the cloned child?

Anyhow, everyone watch 20/20 for my mommy. :)

I'm currently waiting to buy Tori Amos tickets to the Nashville show. They go onsale at 10 am, CDT. I wasn't sure if it was 10 am EDT, or 10 am CDT, but it turns out to be the latter. Wish me luck.

Yes, Nicole, you can get the BB toppings at the grocery store. hehe. The ones I linked to below that were really cool were the almond dragées. SHINY ALMONDS! If I ever get married and have a wedding (and the wedding part's doubtful), I want those on my cake. And I will be at the one DC show. YAY! I feel like this is a passive-aggressive means of responding. heh. My cousin will be coming with me. We want to do something touristy one of the days. I'll email you about it later, when we figure out what days we'll be around. :)

The Super Donut clone from Sav-A-Lot was surprisingly close to the real thing. It had to be microwaved first. I think it is missing the nutritional aspect that's supposed to go along with the Super Donut, but Mmmm... tastes like one.

This weekend I saw Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. It was a sneak preview. I recommend that everyone go see ASAP. It's in wide-spread release on Friday.

I'm sick of clients that keep asking about the status of a project when they haven't given us the materials necessary to finish the stupid thing. I can't get it done if I don't have the stupid PDF. I'm unendingly frustrated lately. I think I'm suffering from a persecution complex.

Eh, that's all I have for now.

Beth's egg story rocks. I feel we have so much in common sometimes. She really wanted an egg, and I really wanted that celery.

Together, we would have had a grand meal of a plastic egg and a piece of green wood.

Another food story:
When I was little, we'd often have cupcakes in class for holidays/birthdays/etc., brought by your friendly local homeroom mother. Does anyone remember the little sprinkles you get for cupcakes (or cakes, I suppose), that were small, round, and metallic? They looked like little BBs. I was convinced they weren't edible, and I tried to warn my classmates, but they ate them anyhow. Of course, I know now that they are edible.

But I was convinced that they weren't.

OK, so after doing a bit of research, those little colored balls are called Dragées. I want to buy some.

In other news, Aleks has made me aware of a Super Donut clone available at Sav-A-Lot. You better bet I'll be journeying there after I take Anastasia to the vet this afternoon.

If you're not familiar with Super Donuts, I feel for you. They are delicious (and nutritious) donuts we used to get at school breakfasts. I've been looking for some for years. And... now, I may just have some.

Today was the presale for tickets to the Tori Amos show in Washington DC.

I could slap myself.

I get on at 10 am, and the Ticketbastard site was working fairly effectively. I enter in how many tickets I want, etc., and it pops up with "ROW E". I think, "OK, I'll fill out this info, and see if I can get anything better in an IE window."

I took too long to fill it out, and the tickets were all gone. I was very sad. Nothing even came close to that. It was only five rows back. I couldn't deal with that??? GRR.

I finally ended up getting some swank box seats. No rushing the stage, though. We're in Box 9, Row A. So we should be right on top of the stage.

But not right in front of it.

And let me briefly bitch about extraneous Ticketbastard charges. The tickets were $40 a piece.

The bill total was $99.90.

$10 a ticket in "service charges."

Bleah.

But I will get a road trip out of this, so that should be fun. :)

Another tree incident from my youth:

I was probably five or six, and playing in our front yard. I found a green stick that had fallen off a tree.
I decided that this was celery.
I go inside, and hand the stick to my mother. I insist she cut it up and put peanut butter on it.
She kept trying to tell me that it's a new stick that's fallen off a tree.
I kept insisting that it was celery.
I was very upset I didn't get my celery with peanut butter that day.

It's very windy outside. It's the kind of wind that makes the tree branches dance up and down, and sway, and look so incredibly cool.

When I was a little kid, I thought that the trees moving made the wind, not that the wind moved the trees.

I knew the trees weren't animals, and I don't know why I thought plants could move. And it never scared me. I just thought that was how wind was created. Because the trees moved.

Time to blog before I go home.

Right now, I'm looking for the quickest way to get between my place and Jay's. I'm going to try a new way, but I'm very skeptical of online direction finders when I'm looking for stuff in town. They don't know the traffic patterns, etc. It's worth a try. At least he's not 80 miles away now. That makes me happy.

His new apartment would be nice if they would have done some maintenance/cleaning before he moved in. They didn't clean anything, and the painting job was ultra-crappy. Really, I know it's cheap housing, but it's government subsidized. And I don't care if it is cheap, I'm of the ancient mindset that if something is worth doing, it's worth doing right. Just because these aren't luxury apartments doesn't mean they shouldn't be cleaned and presented with dignity. Ugh.

Anastasia has an infected claw, or something. Methinks we might need a vet visit soon. She seems to walk on it ok, but she doesn't set it down when she's stopped. So she's poised there with one paw daintily in the air. It's cute, but I know the poor thing hurts. Cats just aren't as hearty as dogs. They break too easily. hehe.

That's all for now. I'll write more later.

I've had too much caffeine.
I feel antsy.

Yet, I'm still tired.

BLEAH.

McDonald's Bratwurst: Bad Idea.

That's what I got for lunch. It tasted like nasty breakfast sausage. After about two bites, I put it down, and went back up to the counter. I had a hamburger instead.

Last night, I smashed my middle finger.

A half hour later, I rammed my elbow into a light switch. "Ow!" I thought. Then I sat down at my computer, and I was bleeding.

I'm a danger to myself. I should be locked up in a soft, padded room. :)

So what else is going on? This weekend Jay will be here to prepare for his move... we're going to go buy basic household items. He moves to Lexington the next weekend (and school starts a week and a half after that.) It's gonna be fun! I'm very excited.

Stupid apartment issue of the week: When the place Jay's renting the apartment from (We'll call them Stookbrone) had an apartment open, I had to run down a money order to them, for a deposit. When I did that, I made the money order out to the name of management company (let's call them Small Homes), and the apt. complex, Stookbrone. Small Homes/Stookbrone. Yesterday, the apartment manager called both Jay and I back. The bookkeeper wouldn't submit the money order the bank, because, "The bank wouldn't accept it." WHAT BULLSHIT! Any bank would accept a money order like that. What kind of idiot accountant do they have working for them? Evidently, one of the highest idiot grade. If you rated idiots like you rate alcohol, that accountant would be 180 Proof.

So anyhow, to continue the saga.. I go to the bank, so I can get a new money order. I had deposited money via the ATM the day before, and although it let me withdraw $100 then, it told me the funds were "on hold." I couldn't get out the money for the money order, and to make it worse, the bank manager going over all this is a chick we play soccer against. I don't want her knowing my personal finances (although I was relieved to finally realize where I knew her from. That was killing me. I knew she was familiar, but I didn't know how.) Finally, I went to the Stookbrone apartment office, and told them the situation, and that I'd be back the next day with the money order. Their office smells like dog poop. It's scary. I really hope Jay's apartment doesn't smell like that. hehe. (and if it does, it will be taken care of. Ew.)

And on another, unrelated note... it deeply saddens me to see people "grow up", and lose their sense of values. Often, we make decisions when we're younger, based on good logic (often, we don't. I'm not talking about those decisions.) We decide not to drink, or do drugs, or screw around for reasons: We know too many people that are drunk more than sober, who've got the short-term memory capacity of a carrot and are burnt out for life, or a friend who's pregnant at 15. We have family members who have used and abused drugs, and we know the genetic capacity to pass on such a trait. I just don't understand the decision making process that makes someone go from "I've seen how drugs have hurt my family/friends/friends' family/etc." to "Getting high... now that's cool." "Sex can wait until I'm ready" to "Hey, you, here, now." It's not easy to learn from others' mistakes, but I always am so pleased when it seems a younger person has done that. When all those good, valid decisions go out the window, it makes me sad for them. Not only have are they cheating theirselves, they're very possibly hurting themselves.

It's just like when you take a standardized test: Sometimes, the first decision is the best. You should always go back and review your work, but you're not going to change the answer unless another answer is better.

1. Which vegetable is orange and crunchy?
a) celery
b) potato
c) carrot
d) cucumber

Five minutes later:

1. Which vegetable is orange and crunchy?
a) celery
b) potato
c) carrot
d) cucumber

Kids, if your celery is orange, you've got problems.

Bad analogy OVER.