Soggy Saturday

It's a rainy Saturday, and its a TV Turnoff Saturday, and so we're poking around for things to fill the day. Amazing how much time TV takes. I suppose that's hardly an original observation.

Got a response back from a medical test I took, one that I have routinely and every time flunked ever since I found out I needed the test. I passed. Just by a hair, no future promises, your mileage may vary, but I passed. I was so delighted, I dropped a note to the woman who diagnosed it, lo, these many years ago, because she encouraged me to keep after it when it was obvious that I was just sort of hoping it would go away.

I read years ago a description of catalogues such as Crate and Barrel as 'yuppie porn', and I liked that description. Now I think that the things I read about bread baking, particularly if they use the phrase 'artisan bread' or 'signature bread', are high-budget yuppie porn. Me, I'm down here in the day by day, doing regular baking. At the moment, it's a loaf of French bread. I wonder what the difference is between that and Italian bread? In my neighborhood, not much. I just want it to come out with a dry, hole-y interior and a crisp crust. I'll leave it unsigned if I can just get that.

Virtual Monticello. Fascinating.

Reading more science fiction by the guy who wrote Chindi. This one, Engines of the Gods, precedes that one. It doesn't move along as crisply, and the person who was the lead character in that one has a continuing but not as forceful a presence, but I like it nonetheless. A little bit of that is that its keeping me from reading the terrorism book, which I want to Have Read. I guess thats immature of me, but what else is new.

New Star Wars coming out. Big whoop.

Looks like we're actually going to get the additional guinea pig for the daughter. Though she's had some problems lately, she's also been trying hard to make up for them, and the other day, she brought the subject up again. We made a scale model of her room, and it appears that by shifting some things around, we actually could squeeze another cage in. I know we're going to regret this.

She has the chance, by the way, to take a test to qualify to take a test to qualify for algebra in sixth grade, rather than eighth. Odds are, she won't make it -- only one out of four do -- but on the other hand, she likes math and scores in the 95+ percentile in testing. And either way, she'll end up in an advanced program in middle school. We are quietly giddy.

Still can't figure out why the damn laptop and desktop won't talk to each other. Found about five things that it could be, along with a nifty comment to the effect that sometimes networks just fail for reasons that have nothing to do with the network per se. Oh, joy. For someone who is a big believer in the concept that persistance will out, and a sneaking hunch that I know enough to be able to fix it, this is a serious downer.

Wish blogger had a syntax checker.

Enough for now. Back to the spaceship.