Category: Random

Are spammers getting stupider? No, really. Today alone in my work e-mail I’ve gotten five messages with subject lines like:

• ***SPAM***13.5 Your future, Paleo-american
• ***SPAM***32.7 Your health, paper cloth

Actually, some of them are kind of interesting: “palm-veined,” “your future, narrow-mouthed,” “pillar drunk.” I don’t have to read the subject lines if I don’t want to: thank heaven for spam filters!

Which suddenly reminds me—I like how in GMail’s contextual ads the ads running above my Spam folder are always stuff like “Savory SPAM crescents recipe!” You just have to laugh. It’s mandatory.

Off to swim lessons! Hayden got his face under the water for the first time on Monday (or at least the first time that was on purpose on my part). Maybe he’ll like it a little better today.

When I first became a mother, I was completely overwhelmed. Not by that “What now?” moment that everyone else seems to have once they get home from the hospital, but by the fact that I now had another person who needed me all the time.

It’s reassuring to note that other mammals feel the same way: Here’s a sad story about an overstressed panda mom.

Panda Inconsolable

Update: FOUND ONE!

The best commercial ever is on TNT. The first time we saw it, Ryan and I both jumped. It beings with the distinctive “dunk DUNK” sound from my favorite show, Law & Order. It’s a little unnerving when you know you’re not watching Law & Order.

Anyway, “dunk DUNK.” We’re in a parking lot. There’s a guy standing by his car, waiting. I think the car has something about “L&O” on its license plate. The voice-over tells his name. As he places his insulated “I <3 L&O” mug on the roof of his car, the voice-over, done by the guy from the title credits of L&O, tells us that this guy loves Law & Order. Duh. Favorite character: Jack McCoy. Jack’s face is on the guy’s watch face. The guy carpools with guy 2, Johnson. He (guy 1) often finds Johnson GUILTY of being late, making him miss Law & Order reruns on TNT.

I love Law & Order reruns on TNT. My favorite seasons are Lennie’s, of course. I actually prefer Rey Curtis as the junior partner to Mike Logan, but he’s second. Ed Greene’s okay, too, but Rey’s my fave.

But my question is: where can I get that mug?

Edited to add: The mug quest update

Update: FOUND ONE!

I’m sick. Blech.*

*Translation: I never realized how much energy being a mom really takes. Current energy stores=0. Should you exercise when you’re sick? I’m going to bet on no. Especially since if I did exercise, I might die. Or at least not have enough energy to carry Hayden around a grocery store for an hour. Oh wait, I just did that. Yo quiero . . . ¡dormirme! Fin.

I was asleep. Then I got up and took a shower. It was the second week of classes at BYU, my freshman year.

I came back to my room and my roommate informed me that “the Pakistanis are bombing us.” I didn’t believe her. I suggested that maybe it was Palestinians.

We didn’t have a TV in our room yet, or at least we hadn’t hooked it up yet. My computer was still in the mail. We logged on to MSNBC on my roommate’s computer and kept hitting the reload button. The second plane hit.

There were long delays. We switched on NPR just as the first tower fell.

We went to devotional at 11. We didn’t know what to think. Or feel.

The world is a different place now. I look at my beautiful, innocent son and realize that he’ll never understand how that day changed our world. He won’t understand what that meant to me, just as we will never understand what V-E day or V-J day meant. Or how November 22, 1963 defined a generation.

In a large way, I still don’t know what to think or feel. I didn’t know anyone there, or even close. The pain that New Yorkers still feel is almost as distant to me as those days forty and sixty years ago.

Poignant (and apolitical) accounts from a few people far more affected than I:

• John Moylan (by Steve Friedman)
• Laura Wattenburg

No politics here either. Never forget—but always move forward.