They're ba-ack!

...and this time they've added Ricky Gervais into the mix. Although, if the comments on IMDB message boards are to be trusted, we shouldn't get our hopes up for the new Christopher Guest movie.

Virtual Pumpkin Carving

First I bought Halloween candy. Then I ate a lot of it. Then my mom forwarded me this link to a site where you can carve your own virtual pumpkins and put a candle inside. Now, I can say, I'm definitely in the Halloween spirit.
Apologies, due to low light, the photos are a little blurry. But you get the idea.

My creations tend to have facial hair:


Then I tried a portrait. Daisy was the only model I had on hand:


After that practice, I tried for a real human face. My goal was Jon Stewart, and I think the hair almost works. By the time I got to the mouth, though, it looked a lot less like real life and started looking more like George W. Bush. But at least that's scary.

Arriving: Miss Daisy

After much discussion and negotiation, I convinced my landlords not to charge me the extra "pet fee", so I made a beeline for the animal shelter and picked out a cat. It wasn't an easy choice, because there were so many cute cats to choose from, but my mom (who was visiting) and I picked out a very adorable, calm and sweet adult cat, and today I finally settled on a name: Daisy. It's a nice, pretty name, in Spanish is Margarita, and this way, if I ever get a boy cat I can name him Catsby.

She's spent the past few days getting the lay of the land (ok, that took about 3 minutes) and scratching gently at all the soft surfaces. Having had cats starting when I was about nine, I should have known better, but I bought her some toys with bells in them and a soft cat bed, all of which she immediately eschewed in favor of the plastic ring off of the milk container and a cardboard box.

She doesn't like to hold still, but I was able to get a few pictures:

That's the way it was and we liked it!

I've been marveling (in a very old-fart kind of way) about the way college has changed in the 8 1/2 years since I graduated. When I walk around campus now, it seems like everybody's on their cellphone or listening to their ipod (so anti-social!)...and everything is online! Admittedly, even when I was in school the internet was up and running and beginning to tighten its grip on our lives, but that was nothing compared to now. Gone are the days of waiting in line at the library to use the copy machine in your two hours of alloted time with the reserve readings. Today's newfangled systems let us register for classes online, get our reserve readings and print them out, see our professors' class notes...and as an employee, I can check my vacation balance, fill out my W-2 forms and read the minutes of my last committee meeting. It's not so much the existence of these systems that amazes me, but how quickly it seems they were put into place. I can't imagine how much it cost to get them up and running in these past few years--and yet, my office hallway still looks like a 70s-era YMCA building.

But it's good to know that some things haven't changed. On my way home I was listening to the university radio station (one of two) and was pleased when a hard and electric song with lyrics like "we're gonna rock and roll forever YEAH!" was followed directly by the Indigo Girls' cover of "Tangled up in Blue". Ah, nothing like a complete musical non-sequitur to take me back to my WRBC days.

Hello! McFly!

Man, this movie is a classic.

1.21 jigowatts! Great Scott!

Are you kidding me?

So I walked into the grocery store this evening, and something seemed strange as I came in the entrance. Gradually I realized the entryway display had changed from its back-to-school theme, and I did a double-take when I realized the new display was...Christmas trees. Fake ones, with fiber-optic lights in the branches. Yes, it's Christmas at Wegman's.

And here I was thinking Halloween was next.