Pajama Day

And, thank God, today was the final day for School Pictures. A break in the routine is fun, for sure, but it's also very tiring. I'll be glad to have a fairly normal schedule tomorrow.

This year we decided to use a local photographer rather than the national chain folks we'd been using before. I think we made the right choice. Kip & Tammy were totally, totally awesome. They broke it up into two days (elementary to sixth grade yesterday, seventh through eleventh today) and were very organized and good-natured.

Crazy Hair Day

The Bird's Nest... or perhaps The Tumbleweed? I heard it described as both today. I think it was effective, in either case.

Peace and love and all that

It was "Hippie Day" today. Every day this week is a Spirit Day, since this Friday night is our Homecoming game. The above photo is me with one of my art students. She doesn't normally dress like that; however, she IS a very talented girl.

The most courageous person at the UN last week

Bibi Netanyahu.

An excerpt from his speech:

Yesterday, the man who calls the Holocaust a lie spoke from this podium. To those who refused to come here and to those who left this room in protest, I commend you. You stood up for moral clarity and you brought honor to your countries. But to those who gave this Holocaust-denier a hearing, I say on behalf of my people, the Jewish people, and decent people everywhere: Have you no shame? Have you no decency? A mere six decades after the Holocaust, you give legitimacy to a man who denies that the murder of six million Jews took place and pledges to wipe out the Jewish state. What a disgrace! What a mockery of the charter of the United Nations! Perhaps some of you think that this man and his odious regime threaten only the Jews. You're wrong. History has shown us time and again that what starts with attacks on the Jews eventually ends up engulfing many others.

That bunch of tinhorn nincompoops won't listen. Why are my tax dollars continuing to pour unhindered into this corrupt and anti-democratic organization?

I'm stealing a recipe from a friend

I think my friend got it from Cook's Illustrated. At any rate, it's just too yummy not to share. It's called:


Buttermilk Coleslaw with Green Onions and Cilantro (serves 4)

1 pound cabbage (about 1/2 medium head), red or green, shredded fine (6 cups)
table salt
1 medium carrot , shredded on box grater
1/2 cup buttermilk
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
2 tablespoons sour cream
1 small shallot , minced (about 2 tablespoons)
1 tablespoon minced fresh cilantro leaves
1 teaspoon lime juice
1/2 teaspoon granulated sugar
2 scallions , sliced thin
1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper

Instructions

1. Toss shredded cabbage and 1 teaspoon salt in colander or large mesh strainer set over medium bowl. Let stand until cabbage wilts, at least 1 hour or up to 4 hours. Rinse cabbage under cold running water. Press, but do not squeeze, to drain; pat dry with paper towels. Place wilted cabbage and carrot in large bowl.
2. Stir buttermilk, mayonnaise, sour cream, shallot, cilantro, lime juice, sugar, scallions, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and pepper together in small bowl. Pour dressing over cabbage and toss to combine; refrigerate until chilled, about 30 minutes. (Coleslaw can be refrigerated for up to 3 days.)

---------------
Notes of tweakage:

*I just use the 1lb bag of shredded cabbage that you can buy in the Wal-Mart produce section, and it already has a few carrots in the mix, so I leave off the carrots. If you do add more carrots, be sure they're grated really finely.

*I use 1/2 cup of sour cream and 1/2 cup of mayo as well as the 1/2 cup of buttermilk. Just make sure that you pat dry the cabbage pretty well so it's not too soupy when you're done.

*For the onions in the recipe, I just slice up several green onions really, really finely.

*I use the entire bunch of cilantro and chiffonade it.

*I just slice a Persian lime and squeeze both halves into the mix; I don't measure it. For me, it's hard to have too much lime in anything, though. I'm pretty much a lime fan. Usually I use Key limes, but this time around I had a Persian lime languishing in the fridge drawer, so I used the whole thing.
---------------

This stuff is incredibly yummy -- even if you're not a fan of regular coleslaw.

I have tasted it; I don't actually eat much of it because of the mayo, which has corn syrup in it. If I were to make my own mayo, which isn't that hard, I could easily consume lots of this stuff. And I do NOT like coleslaw, as a general rule.

Awesome quote

Saw this over at Tracey's place and decided it was just too good not to post it here, too:

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell. I believe that the most lawless and inordinate loves are less contrary to God’s will than a self-invited and self-protective lovelessness … We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as a way in which they should break, so be it. What I know about love and believe about love and giving one’s heart began in this.

C.S. Lewis

Happy Caturday!

Blogging has suffered, I know

I've been coming home completely exhausted in the afternoons, and after I get supper fixed and all my doin's done, I've been going to bed at 8pm or thereabouts. I'll catch up eventually and start blogging again, I promise. :) This week is the end of the first grading period, so I'm buried deep in grades and papers and works of art.

Next week: Homecoming! Which means we have a Spirit Day every single day. Watch this space for fun pictures.

Book recommendation

I just finished reading this book --->

and I was profoundly moved by it. I can highly recommend it to anyone who parents or who works with children in any capacity. Dr. Perry has some real insight into the minds of childhood trauma victims and the aftereffects of their abuse, neglect or trauma.

He's a big proponent of love and of understanding how the human mind develops and works in conjunction with relationships.

Read this book. Today.

Are you serious?

From across the room just now, Rick says, "There's a boll weevil on this coffee mug."

Me: ?!?

Rick: Yep. Look.

So I looked.


I didn't bring the DSLR home with me this afternoon, so I only had my little Canon point-and-shoot, hence the poor quality of the closeup. But that certainly looks like a boll weevil to me. Why he's sitting on a coffee mug on my dining room table, however, I cannot begin to guess.

Haircut Saturday

While we were all there last Saturday, Mom got out the clippers and trimmed up Isaac's hair, then turned her focus to my brudder-in-law, Brino. Talk about trusting your mother-in-law! It ended up looking pretty decent, too.

I have been cutting Rick's hair myself for well past a decade now. While we still lived in our hometown, he went to the same barber he'd always gone to since he was small. After we moved to Iowa, however, he bought some clippers and told me it was now my job. So I learned how.

I refuse to cut Martha's hair; she gets hostile if something isn't to her liking, and she seems to enjoy whacking on it herself, so why get in the way of that? The only one (besides me) who gets professional trims is Alice, because she's got such straight, thick, Asian hair -- it's very unforgiving. Even the professionals usually get it wrong; I haven't found very many folks who can do a good job on hers.

What I saw on a walk in my mom's neighborhood yesterday

Ornamental sweet potato blossoms
Ornamental Hyacinth Bean (thanks to one of my commenters for the correction!)


Texas purple sage (Salvia leucophylla)


Agave americana


Three Giant Swallowtails (Papilio cresphontes) on my mom's lantanas

Eastern tiger swallowtail (Papilio glaucus), also on my mom's lantanas

The butterflies seem to be extremely fond of my mom's abundant lantanas, and it's always a treat to go out into the front yard and see huge butterflies of so many species dancing attendance upon the yellow flowers.

We went to visit with my dad, who's currently undergoing treatment for multiple myeloma. We don't often visit with him right now because we don't want to expose him to any germs, but yesterday everybody seemed healthy -- and we all miss not seeing Pop and spending time with him and with MamaSue.

Get well soon, Pop. We're praying for complete, long-lasting remission.

And now for something REALLY bizarre

As we were driving along the highway yesterday afternoon, I spotted this on the side of the road:



What the heck is this? I've never seen anything like it.

I'm pretty sure it's one of the Calvatias, but which one, I have no idea. It sure was weird. From what I've read, it's also edible, but we ain't takin' any chances without a 'shroom expert along with us to verify.

It was definitely cool-looking, regardless.

Fairy Rings!

After a week of soggy weather, the fairies have been dancing on lawns all across north Texas:

Notice how the toadstools are making a nice little circle all around this Crape Myrtle?



These toadstools are called Green-Spored Lepiota (Chlorophyllum molybdites). They're the number one most common cause of wild mushroom poisoning in the United States.

A fairy ring, traditionally, was the circular pattern of toadstools left behind after the fairies and pixies danced on your lawn in the middle of the night. If you sit inside the fairy ring at night and sleep there, the fairies are compelled to leave and never return.

This particular kind of fairy ring doesn't harm your lawn, but you'll want to be sure to keep little children and pets from ingesting any of these poisonous fellows. Other types of fairy rings *do* harm your lawn, though there isn't a great deal you can do to control them other than removing the dirt they're growing in, because they're coming from an underground mycelium. The mushrooms you see are just the fruiting body of a much larger underground organism.

Regardless of all the science and folklore, I love seeing the fairy rings popping up all over. Either way you look at it (scientific or magical), it's evidence of the unseen.

I was always fascinated by the dishwasher lady, too.

Personality inventories

My Big Five scores:

Openness to Experience/Intellect
High scorers tend to be original, creative, curious, complex; Low scorers tend to be conventional, down to earth, narrow interests, uncreative. You typically don't seek out new experiences. (Your percentile: 41)

Conscientiousness
High scorers tend to be reliable, well-organized, self-disciplined, careful; Low scorers tend to be disorganized, undependable, negligent. You probably have a messy desk! (Your percentile: 3)

Extraversion
High scorers tend to be sociable, friendly, fun loving, talkative; Low scorers tend to be introverted, reserved, inhibited, quiet. You probably enjoy spending quiet time alone. (Your percentile: 9)

Agreeableness
High scorers tend to be good natured, sympathetic, forgiving, courteous; Low scorers tend to be critical, rude, harsh, callous. You tend to consider the feelings of others. (Your percentile: 74)

Neuroticism
High scorers tend to be nervous, high-strung, insecure, worrying; Low scorers tend to be calm, relaxed, secure, hardy. You are generally relaxed. (Your percentile: 22)

Smile and the world smiles with you? You bet.

Who fills you up?

If any of the people I encounter on a daily basis -- whether it's strangers, friends or family -- are less than welcoming to me or do anything that I perceive as rude, whether I'm correct with that perception or not, it impacts the level of love I am able to show them.
...
What I've learned from all this is that having the desire to show Christ-like love to the world around you isn't enough; to actually do it, you must first stop needing the world to give you something -- anything -- first. I don't think there's anything wrong with appreciating the good feelings that come with pleasant social interactions, or even kindly letting people know when they have done something hurtful, but it's when we ("we" meaning "I") start deriving our strength from other people that it becomes a problem.

This idea is actually something I concluded a few years back as well. I tended to withdraw and reject others based upon what I presumed was a rejection of me. What I began to realize was that, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, those people were just experiencing their own troubles and weren't rejecting me at all. In fact, I figured very little in their world. Even people who I spent a lot of time with, these people also had lives and issues and things they were feeling and dealing with -- things that I had absolutely nothing at all to do with, nor was I even aware of them.

What I realized was that they were also basing their "love" on what they were receiving from ME... and that if I adopted the old bromide of "bring a smiling visage to the glass," I would be further along in developing positive relationships with others. If I smiled and said complimentary things AND MEAN THEM, even to people who might be behaving rudely, it might just turn their day around and cause them to feel better about themselves. This, in turn, would make my own life more bearable.

It works. If I walk into the school office and say, "Hey gorgeous!" to the secretary, she smiles and says something self-deprecatory, but down deep it matters to her. And it makes a difference. People who feel appreciated can then give appreciation... kind-of like back when I read The Five Love Languages and the book talked about "filling up a person's love tank," meaning that if someone felt truly loved, they could then effectively GIVE love back.

I made up my mind that even though I didn't always "feel" loved, I knew that I was, and that I wanted others around me to know that they were, too.

One reason this is so easy for me, though, is that I am a classic attention-deficit personality, and I can't remember if you were rude to me earlier. I couldn't hold a grudge if I tried, because in about thirty seconds I will forget what you said or did. Hey, having ADD isn't all bad, let me tell you.

Look! A skwerl!

Kids are weird

Isaac's new favorite food: Pepperoni & ham sandwich, smashed flat:


Yes, he insists it's not the same if he doesn't smash it.

No mayo, no ketchup. Just a whole bunch of pepperonis, a slice of ham, and Mrs. Baird's white bread.

Ahhhhh... now THAT'S satisfying...


Especially when a wad of pepperonis comes out in one bite.

A spiffy lil' gift

A friend of mine sent me a nifty little thang this week: a "flowering tea" pot:

Looks like an ordinary glass teapot, right?


But what is that little funky ball thing down in it?



Whoa... that's just weird:



Hey! I really can boil water:



You boil the water, then let it sit for five minutes to cool a wee bit, then you pour it into the teapot:



Wow... what's it doing? Blooming?



Well, yeah, kind-of:



See, that ball thingy is tea leaves surrounding some lovely flowers, and in hot water it "blooms" into a funky flower:


It also comes with that awesome glass insert with thin slits in the bottom which you use as an infuser for loose teas (which I use pretty much exclusively these days). Those slits in the glass are miraculous in and of themselves and probably make up the bulk of the cost of this item -- do you know how hard it is to make thin little cuts in glass that don't make the vessel crack in two? I'm sure there's some great machine that does it up snip-snap without issue, but still! As someone who has worked with cutting glass, I'm fascinated by those little slits. Hey, I guess I'm easily entertained.

Anyhoo -- what a nice gift! I will use it daily to make my pot o'tea now, replacing the old plastic thing that's tea-stained and gross-looking that I've been using.

UPDATE: By the way, the tea pictured in that photo? It just might be the nicest jasmine tea I have EVER drunk, and I've had lots and lots of jasmine tea. It's perfect... not bitter... everything that truly excellent jasmine green tea should be. From now on, all other jasmine teas will be measured by this batch, because it's just wonderful. WONDERFUL. Good jasmine tea is akin to a spiritual experience for me, anyway. This might be nirvana.

Seen over at Michelle Malkin's place

The BEST picture from the DC Tea Party Protest weekend:



From Michelle Malkin's blog (a must-read spot). She makes the libs just about as mad as Sarah Palin, for many of the same reasons.

ZOT!!! (not!)

Schools count on lightning alarms to save lives

The Lewisville school district is trying to remove the guesswork out of when to call off a game because of approaching storms.

The board approved spending $450,000 this summer to install lightning sensors at all 66 of its campuses.

"Our board took a large initiative throughout the district to make this happen, just for student safety," said district spokeswoman Karen Permetti.

The sensors are mounted near playgrounds and stadiums. Administrators say they work and sound much like tornado sirens; when electrical activity is detected within ten miles, alarms sound and lights flash to warn people nearby.

Pfft! I wish Ballyhoo had that kinda dough lying around. Of course, we ain't anywhere near Lewisville-size. But still!

Anyhoo...

At last night's Friday Night Lights victory (yep, my boys won, 41-20, in case you didn't read my tweets), the principal spent the evening on the sidelines holding a little box which was, apparently, a lightning sensor.

As you can see below, the skies were rather ominous during the early moments of the game, but the lightning sensor never reported anything nearby. The rain never came, miraculously, and we played the whole game without delay.



The humidity was at around 600%, however, and the plague of crickets was nearly devastating to those of us in the bleachers. I'm quite certain I came home with one or two still lodged in my hair, and I will probably find a couple of dead ones in the bottom of my purse the next time I clean it out.

Never Forget: Balewa Albert Blackman

Balewa Albert Blackman

age 26

Killed in the World Trade Center, September 11, 2001
Employee of Cantor Fitzgerald
Resident of New York, N.Y. (USA)

Balewa Albert Blackman worked as an accountant, but that was the least of it. "He liked a lot of different things," said his sister, Susan McMillian. Which explains, sort of, how a man with an undergraduate degree in biochemical engineering wound up working as a junior accountant at Cantor Fitzgerald by day and as a D.J. at small clubs -- jazz, rhythm and blues, hip-hop -- at night, which "was just something he did on the side, because he loves music so much," Ms. McMillian said.

Never one to take his sidelines lightly, Mr. Blackman had also been training since August in a Navy Seals-type fitness program, which involved getting up at dawn and getting used to swimming with fins and running in boots. By the end of the program, Ms. McMillian said, her brother, who stood about 5-foot-5, would have been able to complete a 500-yard swim in under 10 minutes, 100 push-ups in 2 minutes, 200 situps in 2 minutes and a 1.5-mile run in under 9 minutes.

"He liked the idea of not just doing the physical work, but also learning how to think like a Navy Seal person," she said. "He liked things that are conditioning for the body, but also conditioning for the mind."

Balewa Albert Blackman was Jamaican.

Keisha DePass wrote of Blackman:
I went to college with Balewa,. I thought about him today. I remember how much he stuttered when he was anxious; I remember he had crush on my roomate; I remember how much trouble he would get into in chemistry class; I remember how much he would make me laugh. I remember a lot about Balewa. To his family I want them to know he is missed..

Marie Turock wrote:
I went to college with Balewa - he was in one of my Communications classes. I had a dream about him last night (9/14/05) and decided to Google him today. I am lost for words - I had no idea he was in those buildings on September 11. I don't know what sparked the dream, but all I know is that I was thinking about him and wondering what he was doing. My thoughts are with Balewa's family and friends - I cannot believe that such a wonderful and unique person is no longer with us.

Kimberly Keith-Shropshire wrote:
I also went to Cornell with Balewa. Although I do not recall having classes with him, I remember him most for playing video games in RPU and how passionate he was about it. We strive so hard in life to beat the odds, get a good education and try to make something better of ourselves. At times, it may seem in vain, but it is all God's divine timing. I know you are and will continue to be missed.

Never, never, never, never forget.

Hula honeys

Today's Spirit Day had a distinctively Hawaiian flavor. Here's me with one of my awesome teacher pals:

One fun fact about today: both those grass skirts are mine. You see, I bought them last year, and one skirt by itself wouldn't go around my middle.

Dad update

They're keeping my dad at Baylor for at least another night, if not another couple of nights, just to be on the safe side. I am soooo grateful for the prayers and encouragement of so many of you guys.

He was diagnosed last year with multiple myeloma, discovered when he was being Xrayed for knee problems. He recently had a total body irradiation treatment which killed off his entire immune system, and then received a transplant of healthy stem cells from his brother Carroll.

Those stem cells are doing their work, but in the meantime, Dad is very susceptible to all sorts of infections that would be inconsequential to you & me, but would be devastating to him.

Again, thank you for praying... and for continuing to lift him up in prayer as you are so prompted. You have all been such a blessing to me.

Are you sure?

Prayer request

For those of you who are so inclined, would you please pray for my daddy? His immunity is very low right now and his temperature just went up to 101.5, so mom is taking him back to the hospital and he might have to stay. Please pray that they're able to catch whatever infection is there, and catch it fast before it has a chance to do damage.

Thanks.

Vertebral Views

Six views of a vertebra.













Fascinating, isn't it?

You're welcome.

Cute little boys

This is one of my very favorite pictures of Isaac, with his pal Nathaniel in Iowa. I think they were about four years old here, on the playground at the elementary school where we had church services. The photo has been on the fridge this whole time, so it's a little messy-looking now, which is why I went ahead and scanned it to make sure I had it in a more permanent form.

Good morning!

It's probably a good thing you're not, sweetie-pie.

Typical Alice.

Size 12 anyone?

I put all my size 12 pants and jeans into one lot of 8 and posted them on eBay.

I hate the national sports commentators

Why does it seem like whenever ESPN carries an OU game, the commentators spend the game hatin' on my Sooners?!?

I feel sick to my stomach over my boy Sam Bradford's sprained shoulder, but this little redshirt Landry Jones from New Mexico is stepping up. Good kid. Needs to lose the pencil mustache, but if he pulls this game out, I could learn to love the look.

TwitPic!

SarahK "twitpicked" me back in July and I missed it! But I love the frame she picked out. :)

Crazy Sock Day

Last Thursday, before I suddenly began to go downhill with a nasty cold, this was my get-up for Sock It To The Dragons spirit day. I figured I'd wear as many of my crazy socks as I could, but since I only have two feet, I pinned the rest to my shirt.








You like, no? I even wore makeup for the occasion. I started wearing makeup again, since the weather isn't viciously hot enough to sweat it off by the time I get to school in the mornings.

This was taken early in the morning, while I was on parking-lot duty, before the first bell. By third period, I had begun a rapid descent into germ-ridden delirium and I went home. And stayed home the next day, too.

I don't like missing school, but I decided to heed everyone's warnings to STAY HOME IF YOU ARE SICK, and I was glad I did. I literally slept all afternoon on Thursday, all night that night, and off and on all day Friday. And I slept all night last night. I'd say that was a pretty good indication that I was sick.

This morning, however, I was scheduled to be a course monitor for the cross-country meet. I figured I'd go, particularly since I missed getting to take pictures at last night's football game in Chico, and since being a course monitor is easy because I just take my folding chair and park my sneezy self in it for the duration. And it gave me excellent access to photographs (which I posted to my Flickr account, should you be interested in viewing them).

I sure am glad Monday's a holiday, even if it is a Commie holiday. I need the recovery time.

Caturday Caption?

Put your caption suggestion in the comment section.

Sick

Stayed home from school today. I got up and got dressed, but felt absolutely wretched, so I called in for a sub.

Sick, sick, sick. I hate being sick.

I can't even go see my Daddy over the holiday weekend because his immunity is, like, zero, thanks to all the cancer treatments.

I went back to bed all morning, got up and ate a little bit of rice with furikake, and now I'm tired and I am going to go back to bed again.

Stuff I'm selling off to raise $$ for this Broadway excursion I'm taking in November

Know anyone (female) who wears a size 18? Here's some jeans she might like.

And here's a gorgeous 18-inch green glass platter by Sasaki. It originally sold for $150.

More stuff to come. I will probably list some artwork as well.

When I'm not feeling like complete pigpoop thanks to some rotten little snot-nosed kid who shared germs with me.

Keptyn, we are under attack!

Boy, THAT came fast... and sudden. I woke up in the middle of the night with a sore throat, got up and got dressed and went to school as usual, and by third period I felt so bad I couldn't do anything but crawl back home and crawl into bed.

I just got up from the nap and I still feel pretty bad. No way am I going to make it to the middle school or JV football games this afternoon.

Dang it. And today is my best opportunity for good football photos because it's still light enough to capture motion. Drat.

Birthday plans

Okay, so my BFF calls me up and suggests maybe we should try to score tickets to see Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman on Broadway this fall for my birthday.

Holy cow! I like the way this girl thinks.

Well, the tickets for "A Steady Rain" are hard to come by, so we had to grab some pretty fast. But now we're in debt.

So we're going to start selling stuff on eBay to raise the cash to do this.

If you're interested, here's a link to the first item up for bid. I will post all the other stuff as I get it uploaded.

The Permanent Ear-Worm?

The lovely distortion in my hearing -- and the accompanying upsurge in my constant tinnitus -- flared up again today.

When I went to the ear/nose/throat doc a couple of months ago, he ran some tests on me and suggested that the pattern of my hearing loss was consistent with early-stage Meniere's Disease.

The more I read about MD, the more convinced I am that this is, in fact, what I am experiencing. I don't have the severe vertigo, although I have been having brief dizzy episodes for years and hadn't given them a second thought. I do seem to exhibit a pretty hefty degree of tinnitus that comes and goes, and when it's at its peak I also experience pretty severe distortion of sound. All music sounds wrong to me, off-pitch and sour, when this flares up. When it gets really really bad, everyone sounds like a robot talking instead of a human.

I also have the sensation of fullness that they describe, as if my ears were full of water or something.

I'm grateful that I don't seem to have the terrible vertigo problem that a lot of Meniere's sufferers experience. A momentary swirly-dizzy sensation is certainly overcome-able... getting thrown to the ground periodically is less so. I wish I didn't have the hearing loss and the tinnitus, but I am thankful that my hands still work. If I completely go deaf, I will miss music dreadfully, but I will still be able to paint.

Got Shot?

Got my flu shot this afternoon. It was the first day it was available in this area, and I absolutely do NOT want to get the flu... not this year, not any year.

It doesn't protect against the H1N1, but I, too, have heard the bad stuff floating around about the impending H1N1 vaccine -- that it's not been sufficiently tested, that it can make me sicker than if I actually got the H1N1 flu, etc. I still don't know if I'll take the H1N1 shot when it becomes available.

Nevertheless, I figured it was better safe than sorry with regard to the regular old seasonal flu thing, so I went to the CVS near my mom's house, where they have one of those cool MinuteClinics and a nurse on duty who dispenses those lovely flu shots. She did a great job; I hardly felt it at all.

Usually I treat myself to a flu shot for my birthday in November. I'm considering this a very early birthday present this year.

Plus, I am forming the germ of an idea for what I want to do for my actual birthday in November... and it involves the two smolderingly-hottest actors known to womankind. More information will follow as the idea develops.