Channelling my inner busy bee this morning so I can publish these takes before a certain someone whose name rhymes with "Meejah" scoops me.
GeoGuessr. Have you seen this thing? Sweet Baby Jesus in a golden fleeced diaper, this thing is THE BOMB! And even if people don't actually use the phrase "THE BOMB" anymore, GeoGuessr is so cool that any faded slang you apply to it is instantly re-cooled up.
The gist of the game is this: you're plopped into the middle of a random GoogleEarth image. By looking around, moving up and down the road, you need to find clues that you can then Google for information on where exactly on the planet you are. Once you know, you stick a pin on the map, and get points for how close to the actual location you guessed.
I hold the high score for being PRECISELY on the PRECISE spot on the planet the Google dude was, but I was so excited, I messed up the screen shot. So you'll just have to be satisfied with the screen shot of another good one:
2.
This article from my hometown newspaper. You may have heard that Detroit was broke and some government appointed advisor guy got called in to see what he could do with the steaming wreckage, but this just makes my stomach hurt.
I don't really think it'll fly, because as the article points out, there are dozens of practical problems with selling off a museum's art collection, but it's the abstract problems that hurt me the most.
I grew up with the museum. I have fond memories of going with my friend Dana, of occasionally getting Ken to agree to go with me, of being crazy excited when the King Tut stuff came through. In a city like Detroit, which is often shown in shorthand in images like this:
it is so important to remember that it also offers masterworks from Matisse, Van Gogh, Chagal and the famous murals of Rivera.
It is, on a smaller scale, the same response I have when people say, "If the Church really cared about poor people, they'd sell all their artwork." Detroit, like the Vatican, holds this art in trust for the world, and it isn't theirs to sell.
3.
When we still lived in Mississippi, and itty bitty Joaquin decided that he would wear nothing on his feet besides cowboy boots, Ken took him into a proper country boot store one day and bought him a pair while Lotus, Gabriel and I waited in the car.
They came out, little toddler Joaquin actually frolicking with delight at the boots on his feet. His joy was so palpable that it somewhat dulled the horror when Ken told me he'd spent $40 on the boots.
OH MY GOSH FORTY DOLLARS ON A PAIR OF BOOTS FOR A THREE YEAR OLD?
He tried to calm me by pointing out the fact that boots of that quality would truly be able to be passed down to any further children we had, which, since at the time we only had Gabriel coming through the ranks, wasn't a huge selling point.
But, with the perspective of time, I see he's right. That $40 investment was, in fact, passed down to Gabriel, who outgrew them in good enough shape to be passed down to The Jude.
Only thing is, the left boot got lost. And there was wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Then yesterday, Gabriel came tearing up the stairs, holding something above his head triumphantly, and yelling jubilantly, "I FOUND IT! I FOUND IT!" and sure enough, it was the left boot! And The Jude hadn't missed his chance to wear the Donaldson boots.
4.
We're going on vacation this weekend with the Martins, which I may have mentioned once or a thousand, and I still haven't started packing. I have to line up a neighbor kid to walk the dog, feed and put up the chickens, and bring in the mail. I have to clean my stank house which, thanks to the four days of rainforest conditions we've been experiencing, is now uber humid and smells like a combination of sour milk and the Farmington River. I need to download audio books and charge up Ken's laptop and print actual paper maps since Ken broke our GPS and a hundred other things.
But most importantly, we have to go get Joaquin a new party shirt.
The party shirt is a big deal to the Donaldson males. It's their uniform for fun. When they see their daddy put on his Tommy Bahama (thank you, Ebay) and head to the deck, they know there's no more chores, no more schoolwork, and they run to put on their party shirts and have some fun.
The middle boys just got new party shirts (thank you, Ebay) and can't wait to wear them on vacation. In fact, it's hard to tell what they're more excited about- seeing the Martins, going to an amusement park, or wearing their party shirts.
5.
Speaking of chickens (I really was. Go back up four paragraphs, and you'll see I mentioned them briefly), a woman Ken works with raises chickens, and so she said she'd bring in some fertilized eggs for us to put under our broody hen to see if she can hatch them.
Ken came in to work on Tuesday to find a plastic shopping bag wrapped around an egg carton, containing eight potentially fertilized eggs. Hands down, the strangest thing he's ever found on his desk. He came home, dropped them off, and went back to an egg-free workspace while I slipped the eggs under Starfighter. The hen then made several very contented sounds and settled right down to the business of incubating.
So, sometime around June 9th or 10th, we'll see. There will either be adorable baby chicks that my kids will always fondly remember, or there will be rotted eggs in the henhouse which my kids will ALSO remember, but less fondly.
6.
I woke up this morning and found this magnificent use of GIFs on my Facebook wall, courtesy Lisa. But then, when I tried to stick it on here, I couldn't do it, which resulted in me trying to google the original GIF, which led me into a 20 minute rabbit hole, watching Ninth Doctor GIFS.
All that time, and rhymes-with-Meejah is probably finishing her takes, and telling the internets about GeoGussr before I could! Was I going to let that happen?
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| Ummm...NO |
7.
So off to Jen's, where she has great news about a publisher for her book! And a horrifying story about bugs.














