"All these things I should keep to myself
But I feel somehow strangely compelled...."

- Neil Finn, Sinner

Wow. As someone who works in science, for whom being in the outdoors was formative in choosing what I wanted to do with my life (in 5th grade, ironically enough), I was really hoping this was a bit of satire. Apparently not (although it does seem to be in the Offbeat OC blog). Girls are often discouraged enough from participating in math and science activities, without being barred from something that might make it, oh I dunno, fun? Thankfully most responders to her poll think she's "out to lunch."

What did helicopter parents do before cell phones were so widely available? My 4th and 5th graders certainly don't have them.

One of the comments irks me as well - although I might think twice about anyone I don't know having keys to my kid's room on an overnight field trip, it pretty much assumes any male chaperone is going to be a molester. Anytime runsamuck used to take the kids to the park, he would get those looks. It's gotten somewhat better since the kids started school, and more of the local parents know him, but boy, any male with long hair and beard (or for that matter, any male during broad daylight at the park) must be some psycho serial killer/kidnapper, never mind that his own kids are right there playing.

Grrr. My cell phone has gone missing. I only noticed Monday afternoon when it wasn't in its case on my backpack and thought then I'd left it on my desk. However, it wasn't there the next morning and searching through my backpack and lunch bag (ostensibly for lunch but winds up holding whatever I throw in it when I'm too lazy to stop and unzip zippers) produced a distinct lack of phone. Tried calling it in hopes of hearing it in a forgotten corner, but now it's rolling right into voicemail, so either the battery has run out or whoever picked it up turned it off. I hope I didn't leave on the bus. That means a trip to the transit authority office to check the lost and found, whether I did or not, I suppose. I'm not too upset about the phone itself; although it was fairly new, there's only $10 worth of time on it, so it's not like I'm getting ripped off there. I'm miffed I've lost the little glow-in-dark Naruto charm I got at Anime Expo last year and my little year-of-the-tiger charm. And I'll have to enter all those numbers over. Again, grrr.

Hmm, there is either something around here making an extremely high-pitched noise on the edge of my hearing, or I'm getting tinitus - entirely possible given the stuffy state of my ears right now. Really irritating - almost like a dentist drill or sonic cleaner, but much, much higher. Feels like it's grinding around in the center of my skull....

Hmm, my subscription here has run out. Dammit, I love having my thirty icons, and I've had an account here going on six years, but I am having my doubts lately. Not only are there now ads here - I joined originally because of the promise there would never be ads - but it seems like every few months the staff gets turned on to some kind of witch hunt. First it was the breastfeeding icons, and lately the whole you-have-a-certain-few-key-words-in-your-interest-list-therefore-you-are-a-purveyor-of-child-porn hysteria has really made me mislike giving Six Apart anymore of my money. Granted they admitted they screwed up big time, and did their best to fix it and amend their TOS; however, it's just left a bad taste in my mouth.

I realize I'm making a statement about these things way after the fact.

So, the plan for this weekend is drop all three kids off at John's mom's Friday after work my dental appointment (need a filling), then head down to San Diego to spend the night, get up bright n' early and line up for ComicCon tickets before it opens; hopefully, there won't be some movie star or director as a guest. I'm remembering VT's horror story of several years ago where she waited in a line nearly a mile long for over three hours. We've been wanting to go for years and have just never made it down there. I have several friends who go for the whole weekend every year.

I am a total doofus. It's next weekend, not this weekend. I kept looking at the dates and it never registered that it was a still a week away until I went to the website, and it was flashing in big capital letters, "7 DAYS TIL...." Grr, and Connie's going camping next weekend. What is wrong with me?

All the channels I have been watching lately have been running ads for these CDs of "Songs 4 Worship" and a couple of other similar albums. They repeat them so often, I find that the bits of phrases in the ad are getting stuck in my head, which is annoying because I don't even know the whole song. Not only that, but it's Christian rock, not that that's automatically bad, but I don't necessarily want to find myself humming when I'm at work.