Laurel and I went by the complex office today to pick up my Pentel order (a half-dozen of my preferred style of retractable-tip pencils found at $2.50 each!). Before finding that in the package room, one of the nice staff found we also had a parcel from Amazon.com.

It wasn't ridiculously big (28x16x6"/71x41x15cm) but it turned out to be heavier than it looked. I wasn't going to leave it there because I'd forget about it by the time Vogon got home, so I lifted with my legs and carried it back home while Laurel skipped around ahead of me with my padded envelope of office supply goodness.

When I got upstairs, I pulled on the label to see the packing list. Guess what it was? A bench grinder stand.

Next time I will look at the label first. Sheesh.

Random interesting things that have happened in the past few days:

- Laurel's best friend from kindergarten and first grade has moved back to the area and lives in an apartment complex across the street. We had a last-minute play date on Friday afternoon. Kept her until 9 PM with her mother's blessing. Since the VogonDad came by that evening, she joined us for dinner, which leads to the next point...

- Los Lupes has a new Addison location in the former Joe's Crab Shack on Belt Line. They have mariachi night on Fridays; if you go, take earplugs.

- We got Squeaky a soft-sided carrier that's machine washable. The latter attribute was used almost immediately, as he christened it as soon as the car started moving to head home from PetsMart. He was fine riding loose in the car there and happily rode around in the cart, where he enjoyed eyeing little dogs in other carts and watching the birds.

- A second grader 'sang' the Star Wars Imperial March to me in meows yesterday while I was sitting in the school lobby filling out after-school program paperwork. He was waiting for his mom, who picked him up late following car trouble. Kid's probably a smart cookie, he has the same second-grade teacher as Laurel had.

- saarlander got the luv & bass (a bunch of DJ Rap singles, the reissue of A Propa History, podcasts and her free mailing list tracks from this year) I mailed to Iraq and left me the sweetest voicemail message. I think he says "thank you" in it four times in barely 30 seconds. I would be totally envious of his wife if he wasn't my best friend.

A few days ago, the mail included a big envelope from the Texas Education Agency (TEA). I guessed that it might be Laurel's 2006-2007 Reflections entry, which had been displayed in the state exhibit.

I was surprised to find the envelope contained two copies of the 2007-2008 TEA Events Calendar accompanied by a letter informing us that Laurel's artwork was featured in the calendar along with that of other students from throughout the state. Opened it up, skimmed through the introductory pages and found her Reflections entry photo as the August 2007 calendar page image. Now the entire state can see my behind! Whee.

( Laurel holding the calendar open to the page with her art, 63.3 kb .jpg )

I haven't been reading LJ lately because I've been pretty busy in between being sick. Hopefully today's warmth and sun burned out that lingering cough so I'm not feeling like the weather when the next cold front comes through.

Trish, I'll e-mail you in the next few days to discuss food now that I'm not feeling like a walking cold incubator. I've finally gotten caught up on the things I was behind on in January so I am ready to plunge headfirst into kitchen time. A good reason to use my stand mixer is good by me too. (:

The photo Laurel entered in the 2006-07 Reflections Program has advanced to state judging. You can see her in council results (scroll down to McKamy) and area results (scroll down to Photography). I am ridiculously proud of my jiffypickle!

Who sent the SmartLab Weird and Gross Challenge book? It was mailed from Oregon so I have a few guesses, but it's still a very giggle-inducing item to find in one's mail.

edit 10 Feb: The package was from Parent Hacks editor Asha Dornfest. I was a featured ParentHacker in early January and it was a token of appreciation for answering the interview questions. Woo swag!

Earlier this month, eilonwy made me a penguin. I retrieved its parcel from the mail today and thought all afternoon about its name.

I pondered and shook my head to make my brain cells rub together faster and sniffed glue ate dinner before I saw multiple exclamation points and it came to me: POKEY!

We get a seemingly endless variety of mail addressed to names that are not ours. Usually they're 'close', like a random first name with either my or Vogon's last name, or are simply mis-sent to someone who has the same street and apartment number as ours on a different street.

Lately we've been getting more and more envelopes from the Texas Department of Public Safety, which oversees driver licensing, addressed to a Juan Torres. I'd been writing "addressee does not live here", "address has had same occupant for five years and has no idea who addressee is" and things like that before returning them, but they keep coming. I wonder why this guy is using our address for his driver's license.

I finally opened up one of the letters a few weeks ago and found out the guy owes several hundred dollars in annual maintenance charges to the state for having been caught driving with either no license or no insurance.

In today's mail, our mystery man got a jury duty summons. It's not for the county we're actually located in, but one adjacent to ours.

Since I already opened it up and it asks the addressee to fill out and return the juror questionnaire within ten days, I plan to write a nice brief letter pointing out that:

1. the mailing address is in [our] County, not [adjacent] County;


2. the addressee does not live here and has not in the past five years; and


3. we have no idea who the addressee is anyway, but they might want to talk with the Department of Public Safety because they're looking for him too.

The UPS guy just dropped off a package from Amazon.com. After reasurring Vogon that I did not know what it was, I told him to open it in case it was a surprise.

He made excited noises and told me some of it was for Laurel and the rest was for me.

Laurel is reading Sideways Stories from Wayside School RIGHT THIS MINUTE, despite my reminders that it's 26 minutes past bathtime and she has to be in the bath by 2030.

Vogon keeps stroking How We Became Posthuman, which toddler_hiway charged me to read awhile back.

Me, I'm just bouncing around because I can read Probable-Possible aloud ad nauseam ANYTIME I WANT!

I'm unable to Postulate How!

Huge ridiculous hugs and sloppy kisses to revme.

Holly, did you get the Class of 2002 reunion package in the mail from MBC yet?

I was a little unnerved by the Sarah scarf (1LT Sarah Small '02 died while serving in Egypt) but I'm really tempted to skip the memory book form and return the memories form with frank but vaguely disturbing things. It'd be a pretty good reflection of my experience there, which would have completely sucked if not for all the great PEG students I met.

...And maybe attach a photocopy of the directions on how to skin a squirrel from my vintage edition of Joy of Cooking because I print it for replying to mailings with a prepaid reply envelope.

We had to resort to putting the TENS unit on my shoulder yesterday to get that knot out that made itself a nuisance over the weekend, but I was feeling *much* better in time to take minutes at my monthly pack committee meeting.

Miscellaneous good things that have happened since then:

• We tried out Firehouse Subs, our new local sub shop since the departure of Quizno's. They have an impressive hot sauce bar and I'm still amused that they have a sandwich called a New York Steamer (corned beef and pastrami with provolone and condiments, served hot). Laurel was won over by the dalmatian print table tops and so enthralled with the plastic fireman's helmet that comes with a kids' meal that she now wants to be a firefighter for Halloween.


• We ran into a bunch of Vogon's former coworkers at lunch today. It was good to see them and I heard an anecdote about a customer doing something with a report they didn't understand and calling support only to be told they had "changed a tire and caused the transmission to fall out". Hee.


• At the post office (rebelle1 and moment_of_me, your patterns went out today) I scored a book of Gee's Bend Quilt stamps, which made me think of blueeyed, who recently saw the quilt exhibition.


• On the way home from the post office, I heard a helo noise different from the usual traffic reporting ones and looked up to get an eyeful of our local flight museum's recently acquired Bell 47. I had the M*A*S*H theme stuck in my head for the rest of the ride home.

Our regular UPS guy delivered my new tent and sleeping bags today, so Laurel and I are squared away for our first overnight campout next month. The enclosed camp chairs bring our household total to four, meaning we finally have one for each of us and an extra to share. Hooray!

Thanks for the heads-up on the product we chose, discordian.

Yesterday was a big mail coup for Laurel: educational software titles I bought at Broderbund's summer sale (including Kid Pix, which she's wanted all year) and a HUGE box of books from revme. Holy moly, man, you didn't tell me it was /that/ big! I swear it weighed half as much as the kiddo while I was carrying it home from the mailboxes. How much do you want for it?

We see a pretty limited collection of fauna visit our second-floor container garden. On an average day, I'll see several doves, some small birds that look like starlings, and perhaps a robin. Today I saw something big and colorful: an Eastern tiger swallowtail. When I told Vogon there was a giant butterfly on the patio, he went outside and his face lit up like he was a little kid. I hope to see it again tomorrow and take photos.

Valentine the mantid gets credit for spotting it first, as she fixated on something outside the window while I was handling her. I thought it was a bird until it rested on the lime tree and I could make out that it was a butterfly nearly as big as both my hands put together! The Wikipedia article isn't kidding when it says the butterflies can be as big as 12 cm across.

Tonight's our first PTA meeting of the school year, which means my Scout uniform's summer holidays are over. I pulled out my most-often-worn shirt to remove last year's patrol badge and sew on my new Circle Ten CSP. (I won't tell you how many Denver Area CSPs I have.) And in other PTA news, I officially take on the role of Hospitality Chair this Friday. No comments from the peanut gallery on that. (:

I bought cards for the May birthdays in my immediate family back in April and had them stamped, addressed and penciled "mail by [one week before birthday]" on the envelopes so I got them out on time, but Himself's birthday slipped my memory until last week.

Laurel and I picked out a belated birthday card on Saturday, but I didn't get it out in the mail today. Since I had the extra time, I decided to make up somewhat for the lateness by sticking a five-dollar bill in his card and wrote "Here's a little something to celebrate with. Don't spend it all on hookers and blow." I figure he'll either laugh or ignore it.

On Monday, Vogon only put in a few hours at work and told someone on the phone that he was taking the day off to take care of me because I was sick. I was confused because I've got self-care for sinus flareups down cold. Today, he's actually sick. *snerk*

When did Mother's Day cards became so complex? With six cards to buy for far-away relatives, I bypassed the more expensive cards to get the 99-cent Hallmark cards to embellish at home before mailing them. I nearly peed myself laughing when she wrote in her aunt's card, "Get married with [uncle]!". (They got married almost two years ago; she *really* liked the party.)

Miscellaneous links:
- How to Cut a Pineapple from the simplehuman blog (simplehuman_rss);
- The Wee Fairy Doors of Ann Arbor, Mich., brought to my attention by npr_junkie;
- Hide and Creep, a horror-comedy with zombies and rednecks, has its television premiere on Sci-Fi tonight; Carol of drinkatworkblog's brothers Chuck and Chris are in it. Go watch, it's funny. BRAAINS!

We got a UPS notice on our door today of a package at the office.

After waiting to be helped, the package handed to us had been shipped by FedEx last month (!) and was from Laurel's Grandma Betty.

The package turned out to be Christmas gifts from her, Denice and Grandma Dorothy (Laurel's great grandmother) that hadn't made it up to Evergreen when Betty visited during our trip. After much crinkling of paper and pulling on ribbon, Laurel unwrapped a Kelly doll, Barbie doll clothes, a mini spirograph, and several books: Buttercup, the Clumsy Cow, The Moon Maiden, A Princess in Boxland, and Scaredy Cat.

Laurel is walking around now saying "I got more books! SWEET!".

Laurel was very happy when she returned home today -- the UPS guy was relieved too, after carrying two heavy boxes (33 lb and 18 lb, respectively) up to our door. My Tattered Cover haul, many of her Christmas gifts, a bunch of sewing patterns and some other stuff is in them. (:

My new phone is following those packages by a few days so I have that to look forward to as well. (In order to replace my brother's phone Dad had to migrate his line to Cingular from AT&T Wireless, so he went ahead and migrated all the lines on the family plan to Cingular.)

Hooray for packages!

...

Moving on to interesting tidbits in reading and cataloging, because if I had to pick just one hobby, it would be Cataloging Everything:

• today's post in dewey_blog enlightened me that sudoku should be filed in the DDC classification "793.73 Puzzles and puzzle games, not 793.74 Mathematical games and recreations."


• catalogablog turned me onto LibraryThing, though I'll be buying a lifetime membership if I start using the site since free accounts are capped at 200 books. Are there people who own that few books? Do I know these people?


• Do you think I should do the 50bookchallenge or something similar this year? I enjoyed reading several of you as you kept track of the books you read last year and I don't archive the "currently reading" bit in my userinfo so you can only see what I'm reading right now.

And on that note, do any of you have an opinion on whether I link books mentioned here to Amazon.com or to Open WorldCat, which would let you see the book's availability at nearby libraries? Unlike catalogablog, I've never done the Amazon associate program so I don't get any financial incentive for linking to Amazon; I just do it out of habit because I've had their URL syntax memorized for a couple of years.

Good news on two fronts:
- A copy of Laurel's medical records from the pediatrician she saw for her 15m-3y checkups arrived in the mail at no cost to me. Now I have my own copies of everything except for her first 8 weeks.
- Apparently my pharmaceutical order had already shipped when I was playing e-mail tag with one of their CSRs, but it looks like they split my order since the package only contained ephedrine. I should find out whether they'll be shipping the ephedrine/guaifenesin next month since my interpretation of the initial e-mail I received from the CSR was that they can only ship one item every 30 days containing ephedrine.

I went to the first PTA meeting of the school year last night and boggled at how many people brought their kids to the meeting. I knew beforehand from the school PTA's website that the meeting was followed by a meet-the-teacher program, but I didn't find out until later that students were encouraged to show their parents around their classrooms. I marveled at how small all the furniture was in her classroom, looked through her writing workshop folder and talked with her teacher, who's sending home a business card in the next few days for a pediatric ophthalmologist. (Laurel's due for another evaluation of her amblyopia and this will save me the time I would have spent cold-calling doctors from WebMD's doctor finder.)

While I was there, I picked up copies of the required forms for school volunteers and talked with the school's Cub Scout pack Cubmaster. He was thrilled by the interested adult volunteers that he'd talked to that night and chuckled when I asked if they have a separate adult division for their Pinewood Derby. (I don't mind if you laugh at that. I was really envious as a kid when my brother got his derby/regatta kit and my Girl Scout troop did "girl" things that I felt uncomfortable doing when I wanted to go do the fun stuff the boys were doing.)

I am ridiculously excited about the volunteering opportunities here -- it will fill a niche in my life that I'd had automagically filled through my community connections in Evergreen.

Vogon's feeling under the weather today and I had a few errands to run, so we gave him some quiet time and walked out to run errands. I feel silly now that I was afraid to cross Trinity Mills with Laurel for so long. She's a champ at telling me when the crosswalk light changes.

( The highlight reel includes a few new-to-us movies, fun in the shipping store, and new things from the grocery store I've decided to try. )

We had our daily moment of Zen on the way home, not counting the guy that slowed down on Midway and stared at us. As we were approaching our complex, we saw a dachshund walking down the alley about ten feet away from us. Laurel dropped her bag, which had her hat and DVDs in it, and yelled "I LOVE YOU WEENIE DOG!". The dog just looked at us for a minute, barked a couple of times and ran to the back door of the nearest house. I'm glad Laurel didn't want to take it home.

After we got home, Laurel was thrilled to find a package from her Grandma Dorothy, Himself's paternal grandmother, and we opened the magnetic paper dolls my folks sent since she wasn't interested in watching a movie yet. She's never been quiet for so long when she's not getting into trouble. I am humbled by their ability to find things for Laurel that she loves so much she'll use an indoor voice while playing with them.

For Sass and Baroness, a little Ovid: Perfer et obdura; dolor hic tibi proderit olim. [Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you.]

We did a little grocery shopping today and came home with egg nog and S'mores bars, so my inner foodie is happy. Vogon's tomato-basil soup with Jack cheese melted on garlic artisan bread helped too. (; I have to remember to pick up a citrus-based cleaner to get the remaining lip gloss stains out of Laurel's sheets next time we go out. We have Goo Gone, but I really don't have the patience to treat each spot and I hate the residue it leaves.

Our regular UPS deliveryman told me I hit the jackpot today: four packages. Laurel and I have our winter coats again, I have a set of craft books I asked Mom nicely for (they're a great reference; will post more information on the series later), and lots of things I may post about later. To distract Laurel from the unwrapped holiday gifts, I set her up with a fleece hat, mini harmonica and her Tickle Me Elmo Surprise, which Vogon flinched away from. The red evil has returned. *cue ominous music*

Claiming first post rights since I'm awake right now and he's not: new music goodness. After we tasted the finished soup, Vogon was napping intermittently when he sat up and said "I want to buy a record." He left with intent to find a Harry Connick, Jr. album he remembers fondly (and surprisingly, one I don't have) and another album that I can't remember the name of at the moment. The few minutes he expected to be gone turned out to be significantly longer, but he came home after the UPS dropoff with everything but. We're listening to the Creamfields now, so I'm so blissed out that writing about the rest will have to wait for another post.

On that note, I <3 iTunes. It's much less finicky on my old box (which meets the minimum Windows requirements, but not by much) than Winamp 5 and it's much faster for me to navigate bleary-eyed.

Interesting things in today's mail: credit card offers for Laurel, me, and a Martha [VogonLastName], a signed copy of To the Last Man I Slept with and All the Jerks Just Like Him (thanks Gwen! thanks chicklit!), a please-donate letter from The Smile Train (how'd I get on their mailing list?) and a mystery box from Amazon.com.

Confidential to revme: Vogon opened the box in case it was a surprise and grinned when he saw who it was from. He's promised to wrap the contents to go under the Christmas tree, provided Biko doesn't stake out the entire tree skirt for herself. (;

After updating/editing last year's card list and adding in the folks that responded to this year's ObHoliday Card Post, my current card list is below. If you want to be included, reply to this post; comments are screened so you can include your address.

I haven't decided yet whether to have wallet-size photos printed to include in the cards, but I'll send them to anyone who asks.

I'm not sure whether to send cards to all of Himself's relatives. The only ones I've even seen or heard from this year have been his parents and paternal grandmother. I also feel like I should make separate prints of a photo of just Laurel for them, which would be extra work for me. I'm already making 4x6" prints to frame for Himself, his mother and paternal grandmother. Input welcome.

( The list... )