Heinie Flu

So, we're not supposed to call Swine Flu Swine Flu anymore because people are afraid to eat bacon and Egypt's slaughtering all their pigs. I bet those poor pigs don't even have a sniffle.

Apparently we're supposed to call it the H1N1 Flu. Well, that doesn't have a nice ring to it. SARS. Bird Flu. Swine Flu. Those are terms the media can exploit and people can get all up in arms about. H1N1? That's no good!

To me, if you pronounce it the way it looks, it sounds like Heinie Flu. And since one of the symptoms is a rather disagreeable bowel condition, it's kind of fitting.

I'm certainly not trying to make light of a very real virus that's affecting a lot of people. Well, I suppose I am in a way. But this is more about how the media is capable of creating unnecessary panic when it's simply not called for.

Criminy, upwards of a half a million people die annually from just the regular old flu each year. And while it certainly pays to be cautious when we have an official pandemic on our hands, I don't think the people in Duluth should be afraid to eat a ham sandwich.

And I just really feel bad for all those poor pigs in Egypt. So, the Heinie Flu it is.

Ouch!

I got tagged by HisLovf!

8 Things I Look Forward To:
1) Fridays. Every last one of them.
2) J waiting to greet me every night when I get home from work.
3) Hugs from my girl, Boo, Ben Ben and Nico.
4) Our next vacation, wherever and whenever that may be.
5) Time spent with friends.
6) Clean sheet night.
7) A new Stephen King novel.
8) Thanksgiving.

Things I Did Yesterday:
1) Went to work
2) Watched Tropic Thunder
3) Had a glass (or three) of wine
4) Ate pizza
5) Cried
6) Skipped a meeting
7) Went to bed early
8) Kissed my husband

8 Things I Wish I Could Do:
1) Get knocked up
2) Ride a unicycle
3) See my stepdaughter
4) Finish our patio project
5) Sing
6) Lose 30 lbs
7) Hire a maid
8) Publish a book

8 Shows I Watch:
1) Hell's Kitchen
2) Throwdown w/Bobby Flay
3) Good Eats
4) Family Guy
5) Krod Mandoon
6) Spongebob
7) iCarly
8) Man vs. Food

I Tag the following people! (Taking Lovfer's approach and just tagging the last five people who left comments. See what you get for reading my blog? Homework!)

Shannon
Carly
Mary
Gringa
Kerri

Random Fridays

1) I love my Spidey Man Mr. Potato Head (with Peter Parker parts!)

2) They say time feels like it passes faster and faster and you get older. As freaked out as I am already by how fast the weeks/months/years seem to be going, I'm afraid that by the time I'm 70 a year is going to feel like three weeks do now.

3) I'm peeved about how flexible the English language is becoming. I understand that a language is a living, evolving thing, but some of the slang that keeps getting added to the dictionary each year makes me cringe. (Muffin top? Really, Oxford English? I'm afraid to look and see if Camel Toe is already in there.)

4) Why does our government feel the need to put dire warning about not removing labels on pillows? Was there a big pillow massacre in 1933 I missed reading about in history class?

5) What ever happened to the metric system? And does my third-grade teacher feel guilty now about scaring us half to death that if we didn't learn it, we wouldn't survive our adulthood in the soon-to-come metric takeover?

Seatbelts and Sleepwalking

Warning: Please make sure you have your e-seatbelt fastened. I'm actually posting twice in one week!

Okay, now that we have that safety warning out of the way, let me tell you about my adventures in sleepwalking. I've been walking in my sleep almost as long as I've been walking while awake. When I was three my mom found me sitting in my chair at the kitchen table eating an apple in the dark at 3 a.m. After my house burned down at age 12, I had several instances where my dad caught me trying to escape from the condo where we stayed while our home was being rebuilt.

Sometimes I like to combine sleepwalking with talking in my sleep, which can be confusing for anyone who finds me. Eventually they realize that I probably wouldn't be talking about toy soldiers and angry parrots while conscious, and determine that I am, in fact, dead asleep while carrying on a conversation with my eyes open. Fun!

Yesterday morning I woke up and headed to the laundry room to grab a pair of jeans. I realized there was a light on in there, and assumed I had once again left the dryer door standing open with the light on. (I have no idea why I do this. Probably for the same reason I can load the clothes washer up, fill it with water, and then walk away without closing the lid.)

When I went through the door, I realized the dryer door was, in fact, closed, but the door leading to the garage was wide open. And the garage light was on. Strange. To add to the fun, my parents' mini-van is crammed in our garage right now while they're off enjoying a cruise. And the passenger-side sliding door was standing wide open. You know, the side where *someone* had to squeak past the back of the van and navigate around two bicycles in order to get to the door handle.

I checked in the van, and there weren't any apple cores in there, so I'm not sure what the point of the nocturnal excursion was. And honestly, maybe it wasn't me! I mean, I'm married now, so it could have been my husband right? Just because he doesn't have a history of sleepwalking that dates back to 1975 doesn't mean he's automatically innocent.

The good news is the battery wasn't dead on the van and *whomever* was responsible made it safely back to bed without wandering around the neighborhood in his or her underwear.

I hope.

Random Fridays

Okay, it's clearly evident that I'm no better at this blog thing than I was at journaling when I was 12. So in an effort to do a better job at this, I'm going to come up with a convention here and there. That way when I abandon my shiny new conventions in a week or three, I can feel extra guilty about not blogging. Awesome!

Which brings me to Random Fridays. I'm known as a font of useless information. As a result, I have a lot of very random things that rattle around in my skull during my waking hours. Well, sometimes it happens when I'm sleeping, too, but that would have to fall under "Weird Dream Wednesdays" or something like that. So I thought I'd try to capture a few of these each Friday and post them here. Feel free to add your own in the comments section!

(I say this like I think anyone's still reading this poor, neglected blog.)

1) Sushi doesn't taste as good when eaten with a spork.

2) With the proliferation of blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, et al, how many bazillion gigs of computer storage are being used to preserve such chunks of wisdom as, "I don't like mint toothpaste. Or parakeets."? (Or crap about sushi and sporks, for that matter.)

3) I have 58 pink Garmins on my desk right now.

4) I sometimes really wish I could talk to my dog. But if I could, I'd want her to have an off switch so I wouldn't have to listen to her talk about what her butt smells like for half an hour.

5) If everyone's using reusable bags at the grocery store now, what's going to happen to all the people out there working at plastic bag factories?



Okay, that's enough for now. I've got to go update my Twitter account with something really meaningful.

I promise not to mention sporks.