We got new windows in our home a couple of weeks ago. The new ones are double-paned, well-sealed, and generally much more weathertight than our previous wooden single-paned ones which came with the house forty years ago. Well, apparently the old ones had been providing an avenue for ladybugs to get in and lay their eggs. While looking out at the snow, I’ve found about 16 ladybugs on the south-facing windows of our house this weekend. They were on the inside, crawling up, trying to get out. Given the snow and ice, it’s probably just as well they couldn’t.
After looking on the internet (thank you, Ladybug lady!), I found out that they’d be just fine inside for a while with the right conditions. So now they’re in a plastic container with holes punched in the top, a moist paper towel (apparently they die inside of dehydration instead of starvation) and a few raisins, which they seem to enjoy greatly. Oh, and there’s some tufts of grass in there for good feng shui. At right is a pic for the curious.
We think we’ll take it to my daughter’s kindergarten class tomorrow, assuming school’s in. Quite the little science project!
Remember how my booksforsoldiers guy very kindly sent my daughter a box of candy and a stuffed camel? Well, he wrote to ask what the camel sounds like. He said, “I would assume it might sound like a camel but I rarely hear anything out of the camels when they pass us in the desert. Pretty quiet actually.” So I finally put batteries in.
Ho. Lee. Crap.
Unless real camels burst into song when you push on their shoulders, this does not sound like a real camel. And the eyes… the eyes were very unexpected.
Shall I share a link? Yes, I think I shall.
Small camel movie
Big camel movie
Does anyone out there have any clue what this song is? I’ve plumbed resources all the way to an online buddy of my husband’s in Israel, and no luck.
I’m pretty sure that this is some kind of demon camel meant to hypnotize my daughter into joining the Taliban or something. Excuse me… I feel the need to go put on a burqa.
As usual, Bartlebee gets the best lines. 🙂
[Meriel] everytime I’m in this damn temple, I want to rip it down.
[GM in training] ROFL Alrighty then.
[Liadran] But it’s pritty!
[Meriel] it’s epcot
[GM in training] That was funny.
[Meriel] it IS… look at it sometime. Huge silvery-sphere. Epcot. All it needs are mickey mouse ears.
[Tvini] Heh. Let’s do it for April Fool’s.
[Liadran] AHAHAHA
[Liadran] Can we add piped in music?
[Meriel] fine with me.
[Meriel] 😉
[Meriel] and have “It’s a small world” playing in the background
[Liadran] Little mechanical dolls dancing across the walkways. Ooh and a moat!
[Tvini] We can put in an audio animatronic display illustrating the construction of the temple.
[GM in training] (GM) is going to have her “Disney sense’ start tingling and log in
[Tvini] An all-Gnome review singing “It’s a small world after all”
[Tvini] I wonder if I’d get in big trouble for LJing this.
[GM in training] Hah!
[Meriel] and a big space-mountain roller-coaster spiraling down the halls of the thirteen
[Tvini] Wooee! With free illustrations taken from Shadewatch mirrors that you can purchase at the end.
[Meriel] we could also have costumed monks dressed as your favorite avatar
[Tvini] “Noot’s Teahouse” with big whirling teacups.
[Meriel] a Hoiderna avatar… a Truffeni avatar… we had an Idon avatar, but he was arrested for groping the female postulants.
[Tvini] Hahahaaaa!
[GM in training] Okay, yall have a sickness and need help. 😛
[Bartlebee] o/] It’s a world of graves and a world of fears, a world of favors, a world of tears…
[Tvini] (Bartlebee’s) right, we need a Starry Road ride.
[Bartlebee] When you wake up you’re bare, but at least you’re all there, it’s a Temple after all!
[Meriel] make that the space mountain ride
[Liadran] Ooh and we can put a glass coffin with Snow White in the Resurrection creche
[Meriel] ::applauds (Bartlebee)::
[Tvini] Wooo, (Bartlebee)!
[Meriel] are we disturbing you, (GM in Training)? 🙂
[GM in training] Haha, not at all. I’m actually greatly amused. This is better than TV. 😉
[Liadran] I think you should LJ it (Tvini). Between this and the lingerie thing, how else would people know that GM Bartlebee is so talented since he hides back there in the shadows?
[GM in training] Back Channel should be deemed addictive by the FDA
[Tvini] You’re right. Bartlebee cannot hide his light under a bushel. We’ll pry him out from under there.
[Tvini] Besides. What would the Magic Kingdom be without (REDACTED)?
[Liadran] AHAHAH (Tvini)!
[Tvini] The one joke I can’t LJ. Well, at least you all appreciate it!
Tessima is, as they say, the shiznit.
The site, she be born and standin’ on her own!
http://www.wearwithstyle.com/
One hat on commission from a guy in California who saw the Firefly Jayne hat and wanted one himself. Halfway done – but I’m out of one color yarn and must wait until Monday for it to arrive. This guy’s already paid me, so it’s first on the list.
One pair of mittens plus “lover’s mitten” for mother and new husband. The wedding was today.
One cabled hat for friend of Dad’s who needs a chemo cap. I’ve already made her a nice hat in Berroco Chinchilla which she really liked, but I had to open my big yap and offer to knit her another like my own (but in softer yarn) when Dad admired my cabled hat.
One cabled hat and one kid’s hat for another friend
One baby item for a friend who is having a baby shower in February
One pair of angora baby booties and (hopefully) matching angora socks for the mom – this is not the above baby shower gift, it’s another kid.
One skinny scarf in Berroco Optik for my mom, who specifically asked me to do something for her. (The weird part – I bought two skeins of the exact color she wants A YEAR AGO on the way to Simucon, thinking, “You know, Mom would really like this. And now she decided, without knowing that, that she wants THAT.)
And THEN maybe – maybe – I can do something for myself. Yeesh. I think I’m going to stop knitting for other people unless they pay!
Naw, I can’t do that. Curse my soft heart!
Let me just say that I’m sorry, chaospearl, but we will NOT be doing it 47 times in one night. I don’t want the ole ticker to give out.
http://www.tomatonation.com/over25.shtml
Thank you, Sars, for laying it out there. Leave the drama back in junior high, where it belongs. Grow up, everyone! Sheesh!
Some of y’all know that I occasionally send care packages to guys and gals overseas through http://www.boooksforsoldiers.com (Politically, if I leaned any further left, I’d fall down, but I absolutely want to support these individual men and women who are far from home, working on behalf of our country.) Well, one guy in particular has been super about writing back. Which, happily, works to his benefit because then I want to send him and his buddies more stuff. “This Is Spinal Tap” is next up to go out. Sidetracking, if you haven’t seen the DVD of this, you really, really should. The commentary is done by the cast members as if they were in the band. So it’s Nigel and the rest doing the commentary, and it is freakin’ hilarious! I highly recommend it.
Aaaanyway, getting back on track. I had mentioned in a recent mail that my daughter had been sick on Halloween and hadn’t been able to go out. Well, apparently the guys in my soldier’s tent had gotten about 75 lbs of candy for Christmas from various organizations back home who wanted to be extra nice to the troops at the holidays.
Seventy five pounds. Five guys in the tent. That’s a lotta candy. So they sent a care package to my daughter consisting of four pounds of candy and a stuffed camel. The box is deeper than it looks in that pic, by the way. It was very unexpected, and so nice!
I’m going to have to hide the box, though. My daughter has already burned through at least five lollipops since yesterday afternoon.
I’m just really impressed with the thoughtfulness of these guys, to take the time and money to pack and ship a big box of candy to a five-year-old girl they’ve never met. It really reaffirms my faith in the basic goodness of people.
