An absolutely wonderful day, for no particular reason I could name. Could have been the weather; warm and sunny. The rumors of a cold dank week turned out to be mere calumny from the weatherpersons. I walked Gnat to the bus stop, chatted with the Mom from across the way, waved goodbye to the bus – having first made sure the driver was not wearing one of those Lecter masks and Freddy-Kruger fingers –

Speaking of which.

No, that’s not scary. This, however: off the scale.

Anyway. The bus left, and I littered. Cheerfully. I always celebrate the crack of noon by heaving an apple core into the lawn of Jasperwood on my way back to the house. Here, my woodland friends. Feast. I even took the sticker off. It’s a Fuji. Hope you like. We actually went to a different grocery store the other day, because I feared I would go stark staring mad if I went to the same grocery store AGAIN; we tried a Rainbow, a chain than went belly-up but was revived and repositioned as a down-market up-market store. Clean and well-lit, nice prices, but still dowdy. The apples were the size of parakeet gonads, which does not invite repeat attendance. The house brand was called “Roundy’s,” which sounds like some peculiar 19th century term for something rural and unsettling. He’s got Roundy leg, that boy. Or I remember the Irish riots of ’47, when the boys from Roundy’s Point went up against the Rabbit Stickers. Blood everywhere. I don’t know why, but it just seems peculiar. The fish selection seemed to indicate that the oceans have indeed been depleted, with the exception of one small school of Minced Cod that leapt with gratitude into the breading machine, happy to quit this earth. The clerk was incredibly cheerful, but inexplicably stopped totaling my goods halfway through. Which I didn’t realize until he bagged everything, gave me a receipt to sign, bade me farewell, then asked: is this yours, too?

You mean the other items that were in a contiguous mass with the rest of my purchases? Why, yes. So he rang up the rest of the stuff and I signed another receipt. I don’t know what he was thinking; there wasn’t one of those property-line bars between the Roundy’s Fishsticks and my Roundy’s Bathroom Tissue (Now less gritty) or Roundy peanut butter (“Where Extra Crunchy No Longer Means The Federal Allowable Maximum of Insect Carapaces!”) Won’t be going back, I fear. Insufficient fish.

(Fearing a flood of instructive emails, I googled Roundy’s. At least I got the 19th century part correct.)

Anyway, that was Monday. Today we went to the Mall to get Gnat a laptop.  The new Macbooks boot Windows, and many of the educational programs and websites she visits or covets require Windows, so, well, sigh. Got the laptop, headed up to the ever-deserted food court to have coffee with a fellow who had some nifty stuff for this site; more on that tomorrow. Sped home. Got her off to gymnastics. Tried to nap in the lobby; no go. Sped home to get her into soccer gear; off to the playing fields of Eaton, such as they are. Home to work – but that was interrupted by Gnat’s insistent desire to set up the new computer NOW, and how could I resist? I know the feeling.

Leaving aside the new aspects of the Macbook – the shiny shiny screen and the Pcjr keyboard – I was pleased again at the ease with which you get these things up and running. It’s almost spooky. It recognized the network right away, and thanks to some brilliant little behind-the-scenes mumbo-jumbo it accessed all my registration information from the main Mac and auto-filled the registration form. Wow. This thing had been turned on a total of two minutes, and it was right at home. As for the screen – yes, it’s overly reflective, and I couldn’t use it for what I do. But for her, it’s fine – and it’s amazingly crisp and bright. Makes my laptop look dingy and dull as an old newspaper left out in the sun for a day. The keyboard, which gave me pause at first, is perfectly fine, even though I prefer the Macbook Pro style. She loved the built-in camera, and instantly learned to take silly pictures and store them in iPhot, which now has 37 pictures of My Little Ponys in various fun-house filter styles. She’s thrilled. I’m happy. Everyone’s fine.

And busy. So you’ll forgive me if I duck out now; my wife has bunco tomorrow, which means I have no time to do the Diner tomorrow night – so I had to bang it out in a 90 minute window this evening. I have two pieces due tomorrow AM, but after that? The glide path. Sunday – get this! – a reporter from the BBC is coming to Jasperwood to interview me for a Beeb4 show on bloggers and podcasters, and I’m looking forward to that.

Again, sorry for the brevity and sucktitude; it’s just one of those weeks. I apologize by offering up a Twin Cities pop radio commercial from 1989, part of my new strategy to waste bandwidth whenever possible. It’s quite amusing – we all rolled our eyes at it when it came out, and we were the target audience.

People DO NOT DANCE outside of Bullwinkle’s bar. I know all these locales, and never saw anyone dance around, especially in these fashions. Incidentally, the LOL does not stand for Laugh Out Loud, but Land O Lakes. (I’m sure this station get calls from giggling slumber-party pre-teens who say “Oh My God” and hang up the phone.) But it’s still rather cheerful and fun, a reminder of an era when rapping cartoon wolves filled the airwaves, and guys were flattered when you told them they looked like Joe Piscopo. Rilly? Ya think?

New Quirk; see you tomorrow.