Ant Wars

Our apartment was invaded a few days ago by an army of ants. They surrounded and demolished the sugar container, snuck behind enemy lines into the dishwasher (to get at the aforementioned sugar container), went vertical into the cupboards, and have taken over the kitchen counters for their central command. We are at war people. So Joy has released all weapons at the little buggers, and has not ruled out the bug-fog "nuclear" option, if necessary. We have poisoned the food supplies (we are playing dirty) and are awaiting results.


Shock and Awe was never so artfully disguised.

A Fundamental Question

True or False: was Noah's Ark big enough to hold the dinosaurs? This was a question on a test in Creation Science at Liberty University. A student from Brown went undercover as a student to Liberty (Jerry Falwell's brainchild) and then wrote "The Unlikely Disciple." He took the core curriculum classes at Liberty and this was one of his test questions.

I admit, I've been puzzling over this one for 2 days. If I were an evangelical fundamentalist, I might think that of course it was big enough! God made it big enough for all 1.4-30 million species we currently have, so why not the dinosaurs? But then again, if the dinosaurs fit on the ark, they would be with us today. But maybe dinosaurs are remnants of the Garden of Eden, and as a final punishment to mankind after kicking us out of the garden, we also lost these fantastic species to the flood? On the other hand, does that mean that I believe that the people before Noah lived at the same time as the dinosaurs? Wouldn't running from T-rex's and feasting on brontosaurs merit a couple of verses in Genesis? Not to mention, there were other cultures there during earth's 6000 year history and surely they would have written about or drawn a dinosaur? So I'm going to answer......True! No wait, False! No True! I never get T/F questions right.

Facts I Would Rather Not Know

Thanks NPR for this gem about the Skull & Bones secret society: Magog is the nickname reserved for the most sexually experienced member of the society. Who was Magog in the 1940s? George H. W. Bush. (Now's an appropriate time for a full body shudder.)

Incidentally, George W. Bush couldn't decide on a nickname, so he was known as "Temporary."

Using the Power Of Journey for Good - Not Evil

Such is the genius of Glee! So this is kind of a commercial for Glee (a new show on Fox), but I've had their a cappella version of Journey's Don't Stop Believin' stuck in my head for 2 days now. I even broke down and bought it on i Tunes. The classic move on the show comes when a high school teacher plants some pot on the high school quarterback to blackmail him into joining Glee Club. As everyone knows, whatever the popular kids join will become popular (if you blackmail them, they will come...). I really hope this show doesn't get cancelled, because a cappella never sounded so good.



I admit, I'm kind of jealous our Madrigals in high school were never this good singing Puttin' On The Ritz. If only we had the quarterback!

Fun Facts About Chinese

Chinese has anywhere from 7 to 14 major language groups and perhaps over 8000 distinct dialects if you consider that nearly every county in China has it's own dialect and there are over 8000 counties. Oh, and people with different dialects by and large can't understand each other. Why is this a fun fact? Because when a hysterical Chinese patient ends up in the ER with no one to help translate, it means your day is going to suck.


And they tell us English is complicated!

Speaking of the Chinese, this article has some awesome gems about China's response to the H1N1 flu. Basically, this poor guy from Virginia goes on vacation to China and ends up spending the whole time quarantined in a hospital because his temperature was 98.9 F when he got off the plane. Did I mention his name sounds Mexican? And everyone that took care of him was dressed in full biohazard suits - even though he DID NOT HAVE THE FLU.

The best lines are these: "Patients get three meals a day -- their choice of Chinese cuisine (mostly chicken and rice) or Western cooking (chicken and rice prepared a different way)." And, "A hospital official asked him to sign papers acknowledging that he had been treated well..."

Now a picture of 2 quarantine victims escaping a Chinese flu ward:

Martha, Martha, Martha: My attempt at home decor

For those of you not fortunate enough to see my actual room after I painted it a delicious Cinnamon Whip contrasted with Rhythmic Blue...Congratulations! You can now feast your eyes on this color experiment gone wrong.


So taking the initiative (after only 9 months) I have repainted to a beautiful, bold Bicycle Yellow.

Visitors! Dave Comes to DC

Dave and I had a great time doing some of the traditional DC sites over the last weekend in March. True to form, it rained. Here's a quick rundown of our itinerary:

March 26: American History Museum - After wandering for 45 minutes looking for parking in the rain, Dave and I both decide we need more time at the museum! Then burgers and peanuts at Five Guys (delightful!).

March 27: Capitol Tour in the new visitor center (which was very nice with plenty of gold leaf and marble to totally justify the $621 million price tag). Dave admires the painting of our Mayflower ancester sitting in the capitol rotunda, and we get a nice education on Representatives Clay, Webster, and Calhoun in the leadup to the Civil War. For lunch fried Saltenas from little El Salvador in Alexandria.


After that Mt. Vernon! Also completely redone and totally worth the price of an annual pass. The Mt. Vernon Ladies Assoc. are pretty well connected if the quality of their Washington movies are any judge. I foresee an HBO miniseries in the making! As Dave commented (several times), George Washington was a stud.
Dave in George Washington's Front Parlor
The squirrels going to town in the pig trough at Mt. Vernon

March 28: Ford's Theatre was also totally redone and now busier than ever. We discoved a problem with their timed tickets as ticketmaster only distributes tickets on the hour, but tours are supposed to take place every 30 minutes. So the ranger decided he was only going to answer random questions, not give a talk. However, we outsmarted him with the question: "Please walk us through what happened the night Lincoln was shot." And he gave his speil anyway (horaay us!). After that we spent the rest of the day back in the American History Museum, which again was just redone. I'm happy to see the Colbert painting has found a happy home. On the way back to Alexandria, we walked over to the Iwo Jima memorial and then visited the new 9/11 memorial at the Pentagon.