5 Things For Today

1) Thanks to everyone who sent their love and well-wishes for my big guy, WonTon, who went under the knife yesterday for skin cancer removal. He looks like of like Frankenstein's Monster, with a large cut down one side of the neck, and to smaller ones dotting other parts of his head, but he's hale, hearty, and healthy. MaiTai, on the other hand, is having trouble figuring out why WonTon doesn't want to play with her.

2) I woke up this morning with one of the worst headaches I've felt in a very long time. The only ones I can think of that were worse were over six years ago, when the pain was so bad that my parents rushed me to the hospital, and I don't remember much about those days except blinding pain. It's gone now, subsided to a dull ache. Blessfully quick, but I have to keep my eye on it I guess, just in case.

3) How long should one cook steak on a grill? I have a rather thick piece, a good rub to go on it, and time to cook it all today, but the last time I did steak I charred the outside while the inside was still too underdone. By the time I was done with it I had well well done steak. This is not acceptable. Hints or tips would be greatly appreciated.

4) If you don't read kimmaline, I think you should. She's kind-hearted, intelligent, funny, and simply amazing. Today she recaps three very important stories in her life, all of which are really one story in the end, and I got kind of teary eyed. Like I told her, though, it was the headache, really. And just for the record, the reason I fought through the headache to even get out of bed was because I had a feeling she wrote, and I love reading her stuff. Yeah, I think she's that amazing.

5) I don't know, I kind of like the result of this test, except that it makes me female...

Nymph

You're down-to-earth, but you refuse to let reality drag you down. Level-headed and a bit optimistic, you search for the silver lining in your storms and are a warm entity when the sun shines on you.

If you fall to darker thoughts, you can be manipulative and hurtful. You don't hold grudges often, but when you do, they last a long time.

-Thoughtful
-Posessive
-Caring
-Lonely
-Hopeful
-Lost

What type of Fae are you?

In Which The Little Man Rants

You know what really pisses me off these days? Children's television. That's right, I'm angry about the shows that children are force-fed during the morning hours before mom and dad go to work and hand the kid over to the babysitter. Hell, I'm mad about the TV the kid is forced to watch when the babysitter "needs a few minutes" and sticks that little spawn in front of the nearest media source.

I remember learning when I watched TV as a kid. I remember that Big Bird taught me that it was okay to have an imaginary friend like Snuffalupagus, and that it was okay to be a Grouch, as long as you were pretty big hearted with people. I remember at a very young age thinking how silly it was that Big Bird couldn't figure out that the alphabet wasn't supposed to be said as one big word, but as individual letters, and the song he sung was fantastic.

I actually remember learning. Like the fact that I could spell flabbergasted (okay, I looked it up on dictionary.com, but I had it right) by the time I was 5, knew what it meant, AND could use it in a sentence. I know it surprised my parents, and while they always thought of me as one of those "gifted children," this flabbergasted them to no end.

I blame the TV I watched.

Now, I turn on the television, and what do I see? People singing songs about how everyone in the world has to be nice, and share, and oh isn't the color red pretty, can you say red? Red. Oh, don't try to spell it, that's too hard for someone your age honey, don't worry, you'll learn to spell when you're a big girl, won't that be nice?

Insipid is the first word that comes to mind. What are they teaching the children? Mediocrity is all that I see these days. It's reflected in school classrooms when people pass children to the next grade even though they can't read yet or don't know what 4+4 equals and they're going into the fourth grade. It shows through in school sports when "It's okay to lose" and "We don't keep score because that way everyone wins" have become virtual team slogans. The team mascot is "Mike, the perfectly average guy!"

Life imitating art, or art imitating life. It doesn't matter, I blame it all on the kids shows that we see on TV that don't challenge the children to grow and become all they can be. I blame it on the parents who are okay with their children being uneducated as long as they're happy. Most of all though, I keep the blame on TV. If they didn't cause the problem, they sure aren't doing anything to help it go away, and are in fact exacerbating the issue.

And yes, I learned exacerbating by the time I was seven. Et tu, TV?