Flotsom and Tidbits

• Bison vs. venison vs. lamb. Who wins?
  

• Took a walk today at lunch. It was windy and cloudy, but warm. Stuck Irresistible Revolution in my back pocket and read as I forged down the sidewalk, my newly longer hair flapping about like an agitated flamingo. Was not expecting a re-read to be this challenging. Was wrong. Am challenged and unsettled. We'll see where that goes. Had a BOB at Taco Bueno. I know, I know fat burritos are fattening. Also, delicious. Ordered it to go without a bag because I would just throw it away. The food makers gave me a bag anyway, but the manager fellow manning the counter saw that and debagged my food for me, hopefully to reuse for the next order. But who knows. I mean, what am I going to do with a plastic bag for one burrito? Make a wee parachute and get a lift back to work? That sounds fun, if a tad futile. Stopped at the Hyvee convenience store on the way back and got a diet Sunkist. Which has caffeine. Which I lovehate. And have quit, apparently. But, mmboy, alertness in the afternoon is delightful. That's my forth day in a row taking some small amount of caffeine. Shayne Wessel told me this morning that if I write more on the drug than off it, maybe it's worth being on, seeing as how I love writing so much. I'm not sure I know how to keep form over-doing it. I can't imagine being able to go back to teaching without the ability to stimulate my brain on those days I stayed up too late the night before.
  

• When I came back in, it took almost 20 minutes for my sight to readjust to being inside. Is that normal?

• Been catching up (on emulator) here at work on all those SNES games I never played as a kid, not having a SNES, or being good enough friends with anyone who had one. Final Fantasy VI (or III, depending on your nationality) has been my constant work companion for the last two weeks. Impressively epic story, especially for a ol' 16 bit system. Here's a sample: rediscovering that long-lost magic still can exist in a world that's been without it for centuries, singing in an opera in order to attract a roguish airship captain (actually had to memorize some lines of the libretto), redeeming past failures with new friends, losing your family to war and getting one last chance to see their spirits before they cross over to the afterlife, challenging the heart of a vast and oppressive empire, saving the world from destruction but not total devastation, getting depressed and attempting suicide in an isolated corner of the new and desolate world. And that's just the first half of the game. Also, this is time consuming and I'm lazy. Hence less blogging.

• Which leads me to the next item. Today is RSS Awareness Day. Which is a ridiculous thing to have an awareness campaign for, considering all the other more important things in the world that could a day of awareness. But RSS is helpful for catching my blog when it's updated, rather than furiously refreshing the page all day waiting for me to post. so that's nice. RSS is a way of aggregating and viewing continually updating websites all within a single other webpage, or reader. Kind of like getting an email every time a webpage updates. So, when my favorite blogs or news sites or comics (except Married to the Sea/Natalie Dee/Toothpaste for Dinner, dangit) update, it shows in my reader, and I can either choose to go to the website directly, or just browse in my reader. Here's a nice lo-tech video explaining it: http://rssday.org/. Jill just started using Google reader, too, and seems to like it

• Speaking of blogs, my brother in-law-in-law, Nicholas, a music fanatic, is starting a new blogging project where he listens to "Christian" and not music for a month each and records his moods. http://3030musicjourney.blogspot.com/ I've already subscribed to the feed.

• Just watched the documentary The Business of Being Born with Jill and Nick and Martha. You should see it if you're into well made documentaries. Some stats: When the film was made last year, more than a third of American hospital births end in C-section. New doula Kathy Weatherford says it's now 40%. That number could be 50% by 2010, based on current trends. Less than 4% of American home births end in C-Section. Now, less than 3% of births in the US are attended by midwife. The average in the rest of the "industrialized world" (Hi western Europe!) is 60%. We have the second highest infant mortality rate among those countries. All I'm sayin' is, somethin' ain't right there.

• I'm thinking about going back and re-proofreading and editing and tagging all my previous blog posts. Is this worth it?