Not All Who Wander Are Lost

Still No Cure For Hairy Palms

First the carcinogenic irony kicked into high gear with the possibility that cell phones might cure cancer. Now, from Reuters via fark comes an inevitability: Scientists Discover Frequent Masturbation Lowers Risk Of Prostate Cancer. On your mark, get set...

1. Makes me wish I was a doctor. Imagine trying to fill that prescription!

2. You too may live to hear the phrase "If only he had masturbated more when he was young..."

3. Two words: Health Class: "Now, class, today we're going to learn about the joys of masturbation.

4. The Fundamentalist Christian Coalition must now figure out how to spin NOT having prostate cancer as divine retribution. Yeah, good luck with that one, guys.

5. I hate to say it, but I'm suddenly no longer jealous of women for having to do those breast self-exams all the time. This is even better.

That was too easy, and I'm sure there's more, so c'mon and add your own by leaving a comment below. Then, just like they do it on Fark: Rinse. Repeat. Wipe hands on pants.

Admit One

On the car radio this morning The River is heavily promoting the Green River Festival, touting tickets available through the festival website .

The website says that, although online ticketing is now over in order to ensure that tickets get to purchasers before the festival comes and goes, pre-festival tickets can still be purchased at three stores in the area.

We had other errands to do downtown waiting until something else came up, and it had stopped raining, so we loaded into the car with the camper in tow, as one of the errands involved getting some guy to realign the propane spout and regulator on the camper grill, and the guy on the phone had just said oh, bring the camper like it was no big deal.

I like errands. I spent ten minutes marvelling at the vast breadth of possibilities and the resultant implied array of possible carpentry needs in the nail and screw aisle (no dirty jokes, please) while Darcie shopped for yogurt with the baby, bought the last two day-old ham and cheese croissants in the Greenfield Coop, found a tiny watch battery for my suddenly-defunct carbiner watch in a jewelry store and semi-secretly checked out a few birthday presents for Darcie (August 9th, when I'm in Bangladesh, so the present better be GOOD if you know what I mean, nudge nudge, wink wink, checked out a minor car accident on the way back to meet darcie and Willow in cafe Kokos, where I sat in a rocking chair and drank a cold latte quickly while the baby got impatient.

And then, finally, there we are at the World's Eye bookstore. Darcie's in the back with Willow looking at the board books (well, Willow's really just pulling 'em off the shelves without opening them, but everyone's happy). I go up to the counter:

Me: Do you still have tickets for the Green River Festival?
Woman At Counter: It costs $30 for Friday night and all day Saturday, or $40 for just Saturday.
Me: Okay, I need...wait, what?
Woman: Most people just buy the two-day one. You could give away the Friday ticket.
Me: *stunned* Um, okay. Two.

The day you realize that the world doesn't need to make sense is the day you are free to enjoy the universe. Today was especially enjoyable -- pressureless but vaguely deliberate, timeless yet somehow a day where those few nagging things all get accomplished at once. Saturday promises to be exquisite. And, although I wasn't planning on it, I might go Friday night anyway -- after all, even though it's a Zydeco eve, an odd teaser for the fullday/nextday Folk and AltRock line-up (Patty Griffin! They Might Be Giants! Slaid Cleaves!), it is, weirdly, more than free. Anyone up for a concert? They're so eager for an audience, they're paying people to come.

One Week To Falcon Ridge!

Barabara wrote yesterday, asking for scheduling input for our volunteer gig checking in the performers, press, and volunteers (it's a great gig -- five hours a day nets you free camping, festival entry, and food all weekend). Then Davey, our festival buddy ('cause you should never go in without a buddy), emailed with pix of his cute new Favorite Niece. Complete performer/stage schedule was finally posted today.

It's beginning to look a lot like festival time, and I feel fine.

14:59 And Counting

The final word on Blair Hornstine comes to us today from the Harvard Crimson. Poor brat's under siege: Harvard's rescinded their offer of admission, citing her recent newspaper plagiarism, and the Moorstown school district where she won and then failed to deliver valedictory honors is "investigating the integrity of Hornstine’s academic coursework" in preparation for further "discussions." She'll get no sympathy here, just a firm desire to put this story to rest and get this whining selfish prig out of the news already. Sorry, Blair: your fifteen minutes are up.

Willow's One

There'd be a picture of a birthday cake here, but on the dial-up it takes too long to download the pix, so just pretend there's a cake in this spot, okay? Thanks.

Late into the night and up again at nine to make this house into a home or by God die trying. From the last few hallway-lining boxes to shelves, walls, and cabinets went books, pictures, clocks and knick-knacks; I spent most of the evening, for example, in the bedroom, deciding what clothes to fold and which to store in red plastic bins, and most of the morning on kitchen minutia while Darcie hung and rehung pictures.

Finished by noon, with time to spare I went out in search of candles, sponges, a tablecloth. The latter took five stores to find, so I treated myself to a stuffed dog and cat for the baby, and a card with a dog and a cat on it -- guess what her favorite animals are? The balloons, red, blue and yellow, and a couple of those mylar stars that say "Happy Birthday," poked the back of my head as I drove, blocking the rear view; I almost killed some old lady merging onto the highway on the way back.

The festivities began late, as is their familial wont; Ginny arrived just before four, starting the flood that would fill our newly minted home. Matt and Alicia had to work, as did Darcie's brother Josh, but that just left us enough room at the table for the rest of the immediates: my siblings and parents, darcie's parents and sister -- and us, of course, and the guest of honor, the girl with the reddish blond hair only now growing in long enough to cover her scalp, the suddenly walking one year old Willow Myla. My girl.

For most of Willow's life, she's been the center of attention much of the time. But birthdays are special, and not even deliberately so: from the moment everyone showed up, something happened, and Willow was suddenly the eye of the storm -- no mean feat for a small tempest herself.

From the moment she met each one at the door, buzzing merrily on her new dimestore kazoo, she loved it, and so did we. She danced to the Muppet Show theme song on cue, walked from grandma to grandma and back again, threw rasperries at the air purifier all the way across the room at supper. She loved the play piano the Jesse and his girlfriend Jasmine brought especially, dancing and singing in perfect pitch; I'm sure we can all grow to love the four classical and four nursery rhyme songs it plays, at least for long enough to matter.

Willow went to bed early, and minor small talk and reminiscence centered mostly on international travel memories -- Bangladesh ilooming on everyone's mind. It was wonderful to see everyone even if they were somehow a bit less there for ME this time than usual.

But I remember, one year ago today, what life was like the moment the hole I discovered I had had in me all my life without knowing suddenly filled. And I know Willow isn't the only miracle that made today and all its promise fulfilled. So, when everyone had gone, I thought a while, and cleaned the dishes, and lay down next to Darcie in front of the TV, and thanked her for Willow -- for helping her reach this godwilling first of many, making her the good-natured genuine, generous child she is. I remember, you know -- I remember that Darcie is the life of us all here in this new home, the key, the lynchpin. I am thankful for Willow, who fills my heart -- but I am thankful also, and some days more, for the wife and mother whose love has made us whole, a family.

May I always remember to honor she who gave birth and gives life to my daughter on her birthday, and on every day. Happy Birth-Day, Darcie. I love you, too.

Sitting Here In Limbo

Well, let's start with thanks to EricJ of Webraw who moved us a bit in an attempt to get the blog at least somewhere for a while. Yay, Eric!

I'm obviously a bit backlogged on blogposts -- there wasn't much point in blogging when no one could see the blog (when a blog falls in the forest...). And there's much to tell -- from Saturday's long excursion down to Connecticut for boat show, steam train and steamboat ride just ten miles up from the mouth of the old Connecticut River, the same river that passes between our two school campuses, albeit 200 miles upstream, to the preparations for Willows birthday celebration this afternoon. In between in no particular order: shopping at the white trash supermarket, unpacking and more unpacking, a visit from Virginia and new friend Ryan (or is it Brian?), meeting the new Associate Head of NMH as he moves in with his family just down the street from our new apartment, and a late morning/early afternoon spent in Brattleboro, complete with free-with-the-family-discount coffee at Mocha Joes, a delicious brunch at an outdoor cafe down the street net to a big old hole where once a bridge spanned a tributary into that selfsame Connecticut, and, for some odd reason, clowns and a mime wandering the streets completely in character.

Of course, the most blog-relevant news is the saga of trying to get back on blogspot, which is turning into a very odd and ultimately entertaining mess. At one point I even tried sending a help request to everythingIcouldthinkof@blogger.com, which brought an actual response from the infamous EV himself, telling me that I needed to write such problems in control.blogger.com, as it "really is the best way" -- despite the fact that I have a help message in that same space from six months ago that has yet to be answered. I even know what the problem is -- I seem to have messed up the password between blogger and blogspot, and, due to a server refresh here at school, have lost the password I need to get back to FTP access for publishing at the old space. It would take five minutes tops for an admin at blogger to check on my password and send it out -- or even to just change it to a nullset, so I could get back on to change it myself. But alas -- we're here instead, and again, at least we're somewhere, which is better than nowhere...

Ah, I love chaos.