Randomday

More than the usual randomness today.

I don't care what color the dress is.  Let's just establish that right off.  While the civilized world debates the color of a dress that has been passed through photoshop a few too many times, the Islamic State is committing genocide in the Middle East and Putin is working on combining the less-attractive characteristics of Stalin and Hitler and resurrecting the Soviet Union, but with less noble ideology.

And I am rather torn up about Leonard Nimoy.  I need to play Civ4, just to hear his voice narrating the newly discovered technologies.

We will be hosting our first ever Latin Olympika at Cedar Tree next week.  I'm not the one organizing it but I've spent all day for the last two Saturdays putting test material together.  Last week was the Level I Certamen; this week was the four individual subject tests in Roman Culture, Roman History, Derivatives and Mythology.  They were a little more fun to put together because I wasn't so worried about having to follow a certain specific format.  I have no idea if they will be too hard for the students though.  Unfortunately all this special event planning puts me behind in the data entry of regular grades.  Sometime I have to catch up.

The squeamish part of me (which is pretty significant) is still recovering from a secondhand account of Peter's morning, which involved the execution/culling/euthanasia (not sure what is the right term) of an unwanted goat for a friend, and a lingering smell of goat when he came back home (plus he brought back a horn as a trophy... ew!)  Steve says he doesn't know what goat smells like.  But I do.  When I was 4 or 5, we had an old-fashioned country doctor who said I was allergic to cows' milk and should drink goats' milk instead.  (I think he got kickbacks from the farmer).  We went to the goat farm once a week to pick up my milk and I remember drinking it most of the way through kindergarten until it became too difficult for my parents to get, or something.  I could tolerate it, but I never liked it.  My feeling on the matter is that if I really am allergic to milk, I will drink soy, almond, coconut or just plain water rather than going back to goats' milk.  But I doubt I was ever allergic to cows' milk.  I think it was just because I had tonsillitis several times that year.

This afternoon as I was driving out of the driveway, a raccoon was calmly climbing into the spruce tree as I went by.  Now there's an animal I'd like to see put down.  Broad daylight, bold as could be.  Unfortunately all I could do was yell at him and tell him he's not welcome in our yard.

I shopped at Goodwill with Tertia for a bit, then had to leave to pick up Quarta from where she was learning to make stage hairpieces for the upcoming Sherlock Holmes play.  On my way out of the parking lot I was flipped off by a couple of baby boomers who were apparently dissatisfied with the way I backed out of the parking spot.  As near as I can reconstruct it, they were at 4:00 and I have no way of telling who started backing out first because when I heard a little horn tooting I looked at the guy at 8:00 who was farther out than I was but I had to move before he could anyway, and there was a pedestrian at 6:00 that I had to let past too.  So by the time I had righted myself and was going forward Mr. Rudeski was giving me the finger, and when I turned right out of the lot and they screeched left at the same time (so they hadn't really lost any time even if I had held them up), Mrs. Rudeski was doing likewise. I guess they deserve each other.

Daniel is on Spring break, which he is spending with his roommate's family in North Carolina.  I wish it wasn't so far away or so expensive to bring him back.  They've had incredibly cold weather in Pennsylvania.

Yesterday we went out to the Saigon Restaurant and had a really nice meal -- everyone liked everything, and we shared around family style.  Salad rolls, beef curry in peanut sauce, pork with vermicelli noodles, shrimp chow fun, pad thai, garlic chicken and a big bowl of pho, which inspired a lot of punning.  Don't make a faux pas while you're carrying your pho.  Plenty of leftovers for tonight, which was nice.

Tomorrow is a fellowship meal at church and I made a double batch of pflaumenkuchen.  It may be winter in Pennsylvania but the daffodils are starting to bloom here, and Steve spent a lot of today pruning the grape vines and shrubbery.  There have been a few days this week where I haven't needed to wear a sweater, although it's probably better to keep one handy even so.