BTW - the technology is working very well.

And I love my DD13 more every day. She is wonderful. And I am the one she talks to. YEA!!!!!

Congrats FAR. She did move out, yes? Do you see me waving back at you?

""Cosmicomics"
by Italo Calvino
Synopsis by Kelly Evans

Each chapter of Cosmicomics begins with a blurb which sounds like the dry, tasteless extract of a physics, astronomy or geology textbook, describing how solar systems formed from nebula, the universe started from a point smaller than an atom, the orbit of the moon changed long ago, dinosaurs became extinct, space is curved, expands, etc. On each of these topics, our narrator, Qfwfq, immediately launches. His idiosyncratic voice, omniscient, blithering, self-centered, unerring, ridiculous, is recognizable, exactly consistent, no matter if he is talking about his life as a mollusk, a dinosaur, a moon-being before color, or life before there was form, when the whole family lived on a nebula, or in the point before space.

Most of Qfwfq's friends and relatives have unpronounceable names. Xlthlx, Rwzfs, Mrs. Vhd Vhd, the beloved Mrs. Ph (i) Nk0 (actually a special typeset must have been developed, now that I think about it, since my keyboard doesn't have all the options necessary to even write these names), Z'zu, De XuaeauX, etc. However, they, and he, have distinctly human foibles (neuroses, competitiveness, love triangles, gambling, boredom, incomprehension of their bodies and environment), although in most cases they are not human. And while Qfwfq tells tales of many different lives, seemingly beginningless, which seem to imply transmigration and transformation, all mention of death and birth is conspicuously absent."

-ol' 2long

2Long...

You're so cool we could keep a side of beef in you for a month!

From one geek/nerd/sci-fi affecianado to another. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Why is all mention of death and birth conspicuously absent? Because they are an illusion? Is it supposed to be a parallel to our existance in some way? ACIM says that birth and death are illusions, is why I ask.

okay, I retract the nerd comment...neither one of you are nerds.

>geek/nerd/sci-fi affecianado

It's okay.

I resemble that remark.

Ask the Wookie.

Oh.

Wait.

He resembles that remark too.

Him too Kimmy? Even the Wookie?

Both my brothers were sci-fi nuts growing up. You wouldn't believe the strange books and such we had laying around the house from those two. The oldest one double majored in Physics and Astronomy...PHD'd in Physics though. In high school the teachers were taking him out to dinner, just to have convo's with him.

And then they'd get me, lil sis, in there classes and wonder just where the ****** I originated. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> When God was handing out brains, I thought he said sprains & hid behind the door. Or something like that...got teased a lot anyway. LOL

Yeah. Even my Wookie.

He has more comic books than I do.

And that's saying something.

He missed the first hearing of the heartbeat of our son because he was standing in line for Star Wars tickets.

(can you tell my feathers are still fluffernated over that one?)

Yes, but hopefully he got really good tickets! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

We are snowed in Kimmy. Schools were all closed again today, and it's not looking good for tomorrow either. I'm actually still at work because I am dreading driving home...it is that bad. Most roads are closed. I can't even tell you how much snow we have gotten in the past two days.

SLH, are you reading?

Next week we are going to Fort Lauderdale for a week. Yay!

When God was handing out feets, you thought he said sweets and ordered two big ones. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Where is TT, she'd play with me.

Will you make snow ice cream?

My mom always made us snow ice cream.

I kinda miss it.

...and no matter what....

there is ALWAYS a rainbow.

You just have to find it.

...like it's snowed so bad...

BUT WE GET TO MAKE SNOW ICE CREAM!

"Everywhere I go
There's always something 2 remind me
Of another place and time..."

-GEICO "caveman" commercial jingle that's been going through my head all day!

I LOVE those commercials!!! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

-ol' 2long

I do too.

My fav is the one where he's in the shrink's office.

"It's my mom. I put her on speaker."

(giggle)

Or:

"Somebody got up on the wrong side of the rock this morning!" <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

-ol' 2long

No, we are not allowed to eat the snow anymore. Acid rain and all that, yanno?

Kimmy you had snow growing up? I thought you came from Appalacia. I bought all those books and went on a trip there...here I thought it was your kin folk. I'm serious I really thought that is where you grew up. I did try a few things in those books too, but I had to draw the line at drinking terpentine. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Schools closed again today. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />

My kin are from there abouts. My grandma was a coal miner's daughter (say that without breaking into song).

I was born in KY. Mom has a story about when she was teaching there the coal miners' all purpose healing aid was coal oil. One little boy in her class got a lead pencil broken off in his finger and all his mom did was soak in in coal oil. My mom had to twist their arms to get him to a doctor (he was running a high fever and his whole hand had swollen up). Poor baby.

We had snow in the big D area (where I grew up). Just enough to make snow ice cream.

;-)

"These bets, obviously, were long-term affairs, more than the others; not like some cases, where the result was immediately known. "You see that Sun over there, the one being formed with an ellipsoid all around it? Quick before the planets are formed: how far will the orbits be from one another?''

The words were hardly out of my mouth when, in the space of eight or nine--what am I saying?--six or seven hundred million years, the planets started revolving each in its orbit, not a whit more narrow nor a whit wider.

I got much more satisfaction, however, from the bets we had to bear in mind for billions and billions of years, without forgetting what we had bet on, and remembering the shorter-term bets at the same time, and the number (the era of whole numbers had begun, and this complicated matters a bit) of bets each of us had won, the sum of the stakes (my advantage kept growing; the Dean was up to his ears in debt). And in addition to all this I had to dream up new bets, further and further ahead in the chain of my deductions."

from "How Much Shall We Bet?"
by Italo Calvino

http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/calvino/calbet.html

-Qfwfq

I have a complaint to lodge:

What the heck is a 'crossover?'

I've seen ads for Sport Utes (Spoots) from Fjord and Chebby claiming to be 'crossovers.'

Is this like those pesky germans calling their BMWs (which I think I heard once, stands for "Break My Window") "SAVs" for Sports Activity Vehicle?

Yecch!

I believe in calling a shovel a shovel. And so I propose we go back to the beginning.

NO MORE MINIVANS! So, never mind VW invented the microbus before Chrysler called the concept a minivan so they could claim they invented it.

Minivans are really just station wagons.

And station wagons are just renamed depot hacks.

So, all you soccer moms out there! You knew years ago that it wasn't whether you could fit a 4x8 sheet of plywood in the back of your Mopar depot hack that made or broke the deal when buying a new vehicle! It's how many soccer players you can accomodate!

Depot Hacks! (I don't own one, but if I did, it would have a brass radiator and carbide headlights!

-Qfwfq