R&R

I'm back from a little trip. I went away for a couple of days to relax. All by myself. It was weird but good and I might write more about it.

I can offer the following advice--midweek, midwinter, mid-coast. You can't go wrong. I didn't relax this much. I've never relaxed this much. But the seals know where to go to hang out. Fo'shizzle'seal.



Midweek, midwinter, mid-coast. Repeat as needed.

Sinking

We have a really nice plumber. He's handsome and chipper and after installing a toilet for us admired its beauty. I like a person who gets the aesthetics of what they do.

Saturday we went to the grocery store and afterwards Honey cleaned out some suspicious food from the fridge. Some of the suspicious food was pasta. I merrily disposed of it by slamming it down the disposal and whirring the disposal around. On the second whir, gross water began to back up into the sink.

Honey and I both had flashbacks to the apartment we lived in before we bought our house. It had a really problematic disposal and we often had to get the building manager to come deal with it. Our landlord liked to quote some municipal/state/federal code that said that he only was responsible for getting water INTO the apartment and we were responsible for getting it OUT. In other words, he wanted us to deal with the crappy disposal he didn't want to fix.

Well, now we knew we were responsible for all directions of flow. We plunged. There were old straws in the sink. Who put them there? Can't say. Not us. We removed the trap. Got water all over the world. The sink stayed stopped up. Saturday of a holiday weekend.

With hope in my heart, I called the plumber yesterday, hoping he might not observe federal/state/municipal holidays. He called back this morning.

We've been eating cereal and frozen food that can be microwaved. We've been rinsing dishes in the half bath where we keep the cats' litter box.

Turns out that you shouldn't put pasta or other starchy foods down the disposal. At least according to the internet. And since everything on the internet is true...

I'm in plumber zone. He was going to come by 10. Then he called and said he couldn't. I went to work. Now, I'm meeting him at 2:30. It will all be worth it. Functioning kitchen sinks are good good.

I'm going out-of-town tomorrow and Honey has a tendency to eat cereal for dinner when I'm gone. A non-functioning sink will insure that she does that and only that. So, I'm going to meet the handsome plumber and pay him a lot of money to fix our problem. They say there are those who have more money than sense. Now where did I put my checkbook?

News from the other side of the pond

The British government is debating whether or not human/rabbit hybrid stem cells are ok to create. I guess you use a rabbit embryo and create a stem cell from it with human cells. Folks are a little worried about the implications. Babies with big rabbit ears being the obvious place to start worrying.

The Chester zoo in Northwest England has a female Komodo dragon named Flora who laid fertile eggs just before the first of the year. Here's the thing about Flora. She's a virgin. And they checked and she's the sole parent of the eggs. It's not the first time it's happened in England, either. Sungai, of the London zoo, had babies all by herself last April. Sister dragons are doing it for themselves, I guess.



That's Flora.

In other news out of England, if you're feeling low and bleak, I would not recommend you go to Children of Men. It doesn't matter if you have good Mexican food before you go to see it. It will still be bleak and depressing. It's a good movie, just not an uplifting one. Someone in Children of Men should have talked to those two Komodos or to the rabbit people. The "no babies" premise/problem would have been shot all to hell.

On this side of the world, 12 baseball writers didn't vote for Tony Gwynn to go into the Hall of Fame. Um, why? What about T.G. makes him anything other than a HOFer?

I like the Hall of Fame announcements because it always makes me feel like baseball is coming.

Speaking of sports and the U.K. Posh Beckham is coming to L.A. to play soccer err football err soccer for the Galaxy. It may now be time to move to San Francisco.

In a positive move, the first female Beefeater to guard the Tower of London will start in July. She doesn't have her uniform yet, but when she does, she'll look like a woman wearing this:



So, to outline this for you:

Rabbit babies
Virgin dragon babies
Bleak movie--no babies
Baseball
Beckham
Uniforms

Follow all that?

Cheers!