Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

Me, reading from Fundies Say The Darndest Things (you should watch the video of “dramatic readings” from posts on Chrisian websites) to Caitlin:

several million years for a monkey to turn into a man. oh wait thats right. monkeys dont live several million years.

Nefarious, shouting from the background:

HAhAHAHA! Nothing lives a million years! Except a parrot!

(She knows that parrots can live longer than humans, but I think that beyond that, orders of magnitude in the millions are a pretty abstract concept to a five year old.)

Unfortunately Nefarious’s favorite bedtime stuffed animal was forgotten under a blanket from her visit to her mother’s. A couple others have met this fate, so I wasn’t too worried about her ability to handle the loss, but still, it does upset her so we went to find a replacement. That came in the form of “Miss Sunshine D. Pinky”, an immense and very soft doggy that has joined the imaginary canine family as the other dog’s mother. My brother had a very similarly gigantic dog as a kid, which if I remember right was given to him after a minor surgery of some sort.

The two birthday parties that Nefarious attended this weekend were both highly enjoyed, but were stylistically at the opposite ends of the chart. The first was a low key girls-only party with a half-dozen girls, at the birthday girl’s house, being a faux tea party hosted by her mother. Really sweet, and the take-home goody bag included a framed picture of the girls at the party, which I thought was a very special touch. The second party was much larger with dozens of kids, hosted at a giant commercial indoor playground where they bowled and played laser tag (a big hit), and got brand-name take-home goodies like a Bob the Builder sticker book and a bunch of candy.

Nefarious has been looking forward to her upcoming sixth birthday party which her mother has been promising her she’d throw for her since the one she did last year was a big success, but those plans changed at the last minute so I’m scrambling a little to put a birthday party (that lives up to the hype) together quickly. I’m thinking that I might just host it at High Park, and have a big play and hide-and-seek party there with some helpers like clowns or magicians to make it especially thrilling. Can’t go wrong with that!

Speaking of High Park, yesterday when we were at the park (hoping in vain to find an ice cream truck in light of the warm weather) they were building something there, a big plywood structure that looks quite flimsy so I’m guessing it’s for a movie but I’m not really sure.

I’ve really been enjoying reading The Book of Three — Nefarious’s bed time has been pushed back much later than usual as we plow through it (which actually works really well anyway). Not that I didn’t like reading kids books and Fairytopia-muzak, but it’s great reading stuff that I enjoy as well. We’ll be finished this book tomorrow, and then we start The Black Cauldron.

Other that that… I’ve pretty much given up on doing my cooking blog, but I made a great meal of tortellini with asparagus and pesto, and while I was doing that it took about 18 hours to fully scan my ailing drive for bad sectors. Argh! Luckily almost nothing of value was damaged. I lost a small part of my email inbox, but because I use gmail it’s not particularly hard to redownload anything that got damaged. Thank dog for the cloud! And yes, my computer really is this dirty — which I suppose makes how long it’s lasted me even more of a miracle.

Oh, and we get our keys for the studio tomorrow. Woo woo!

As soon as we’re moved in, work begins on the submarine.

Anyway, enough rambling.