Okay, let me just start off with the disclaimor that it's been so long since I've read these books that they're surely out of order and I may have forgotten a few. But I'm 98% sure I finished this book in 2007. ;) So any which way, it counts.

Anyway, like any good bookslut worth her salt, I've read and loved Neil Gaiman's Sandman series. For a while I collected other books about it, but it soon became clear that unless I was someday planning to teach a course, or even an entire program on Sandman studies, continuing would be ridiculous. Besides, most of them had been sitting on my bookshelves, unread. Until this winter.

The Sandman Companion is pretty darn comprehensive. It starts out with some general overview material, and then just plows through the entire series, nearly issue by issue. It's stuffed full with interviews with Gaiman, series artists, inkers, and letterers, writers and artists who've worked with Gaiman elsewhere, and some of those who've written introductions to the graphic novels. It covers the story lines, the creative process, and where everyone's heads were at during the writing.

This book doesn't get too deep into the symbology and story nuances, but it is an amusing behind the scenes account nonetheless. It made me want to read the entire series again, but I found, much to my amazement, that I am missing the first paperback of the series! I would be more bitter about this, except I think it was one of the lamer reprint covers, so replacing it is just a matter of money, not losing one of the cool older versions. This book also made me want to get the opening sun image from "Ramadan" tattooed on my body. But that's another story for another time.

Buffalo vs. Lion vs. Crocodile
Seriously. You have to see this video. It's amazing.

Gay flamingos raise "born again" chick
Just like the penguins, only pink!
Seriously, how many stories like this will it take before the fundies get it through their head that being gay is not unnatural?

Soldier-robot love
Soldiers awarding their robots promotions and purple hearts. Naming their robots, demanding they be "brought back to life," and shutting down robot tests for being "inhumane." You've got to read this.

Your results:
You are James T. Kirk (Captain)

James T. Kirk (Captain) 65% Beverly Crusher 65% Will Riker 60% An Expendable Character (Redshirt) 60% Leonard McCoy (Bones) 50% Data 49% Spock 49% Uhura 45% Deanna Troi 40% Chekov 40% Jean-Luc Picard 30% Geordi LaForge 25% Mr. Scott 25% Mr. Sulu 25% Worf 20%

You are often exaggerated and over-the-top in your speech and expressions. You are a romantic at heart and a natural leader.

Click here to take the Star Trek Personality Test

Just a reminder to myself. My brain is currently exploding from multiple sources of stress. I owe people posts, comments, and meme stuff, and I'm sorry. I will catch up, I promise. Right now I shouldn't even be posting this, but I had to share.

On our way back from Kansas for Easter we stopped at the Moon Marble Toy Company. And I swear. Watching a marble making demo was enough to make me want to drop everything in my life and take up glass work right this second. It is just so amazingly cool.

So I am posting two of my favorite handmade marble pics here. Go check out the rest of the amazingness at MoonMarble.com. And while you're there, check out their amazing selection of toys. I swear, all of my gifts are going to be bought there from now on. I am in love.

in case you need a laugh today.

I was hoping they would have sea lions, but they didn't. I just bought the DVD Deep Blue for Jefferson and he loves the sea lions. He stands up and points and says "kitty!" Then when I correct him, "that's a sea lion." He goes "ROWR!", complete with MGM lion head-roll. Probably the highlight of my day yesterday.

Okay, let's be totally honest. When I got this book in a package from my friend, Burt Humburg, I wondered what he was thinking. It looked, ummm, like an airplane book. And I can't say I've ever harbored any particular interest in Jeopardy! (Other than the Weird Al song, which is magnificent.) But I knew he would ask me about it, so I decided that I should at least try to read it.

As it turns out, while it is certainly not the kind of book I would have ever picked out myself (obviously), I really enjoyed it, and once I got into it I couldn't really put it down. The book bounced around everywhere, based of course, on Harris' experiences on Jeopardy! But this involved theories on how the brain works, studying tricks, the history of Jeopardy!, game strategy, and anecdotes throughout his life. I don't know, it ends up sounding more focused in this listing than it felt in the book. Mostly the book is fun because Harris is a remarkably entertaining writer. Seriously, I found myself reading a rather long excerpt about football to my husband. And most of the time, I could give a crap about football. (Sorry, new_world_smurf and deathbytamarind!) But Harris is just funny.

While it was a much better written book than I was expecting, I think it would still make an excellent airplane book, if you're looking for that sort of thing. I would also recommend it to those who are interested in Jeopardy!, how the brain works, or clever people who aren't really sure what they want to do with their lives.

I have my first pregnancy stretch mark. It was not there when I got up yesterday morning, but by last night? It was there. For no good reason, I was strangely elated by this development, which inspired much giggling in the greeniezona household last night. I kept trying to get Andrew to feel it while we were watching our Gilmore Girls Netflix DVD, but much to my disappointment, he claimed he couldn't tell the difference. That smooth slick spot! Right over my belly button! How can you not feel that?!!

After the DVD was over I dragged him to the bathroom so that he could inspect it in the light. All the time he's looking at me like I think you may have gone slightly insane and I don't know how you want me to react to this so I'm just not going to say anything.

Then in bed I kept giggling. He'd ask me what, and I'd just say, "I have a stretchmark!"

And now for something completely different:
The LOTR trilogy done entirely in Princess Bride quotes

Outside Minas Tirith:
WITCH KING: Good heavens. Are you still trying to win? You’ve got an overdeveloped sense of vengeance. It’s going to get you into trouble someday.
EOWYN: Hello. My name is Eowyn. You killed my uncle. Prepare to die!

So last Tuesday, I was driving home from work, listening to my favorite radio station, KXCI, when they announced the big question of the day. Now I never know the answer to this question, and as I was in my car and not near a phone, plus the announcer said that he'd stumped the station manager today with this question, I wasn't really paying attention. Until, of course, he said the name "Paul Simon." Then I was all ears. Anyway, after a lot of wind-up and meaningless background information, the question ended up being "Who is the Paul Simon song, 'Graceland,' about?" Immediately I started shrieking (in my brain, anyway) about how impossibly easy the question was and how crap it was that it was the first question I'd ever known and there was no way that they wouldn't get a correct answer before I got home. But of course the fact that I'm telling this story indicates that after screeching up the driveway, sprinting into the house, throwing my belongings everywhere, and dialing frantically, they had not, in fact, received a correct answer. So, my friendship with Jason Greever, fellow Paul Simon fan, who shared this tidbit of musical trivia with me years ago, paid off in the form of the CD of my choice from the radio station. Happy, happy day.

So good that it qualifies as its own good thing is that upon perusing the selection at the radio station to claim my prize, I found the 2-CD remastered Legacy Edition of Jeff Buckley's album Grace. There had been two other CDs I was lingering over, but really, how could I not take this? (Oh, and it is divine.)

Then Wednesday, which was a complete freak-out day due to being forced to deal with the bureaucracy that is student insurance (I was uninsured for 24 hours during my 32nd week of pregnancy! Whee! It was fun!), I discovered the miracle that is double fudge cookie dough Blizzards at Dairy Queen. Oh. My. God. After divulging samples to my two friends who were with me, it was unanymously declared to be the ultimate food. You really must try it.

Then Thursday, which was actually my most stressful day last week (there was just too much to do), Andrew picked up and installed our new front-loading washer! I can't even tell you how happy I am to be freed from the laundromat. No more suffocating in the heat of all of those dryers. No more listening to the attendant whine about the other attendants not doing their jobs. No more feeling like we have to carve out a three hour chunk of our lives just because someone's out of socks.

And right now? Right now I am waiting on the delivery of my lunch from Picurro Pizzeria, which I might be unhappy about later that I've blown so much of my allowance already but now the thought of a spinach calzone and vanilla coke is making me very happy.

So last night a friend came over that I haven't seen in a while, and she and my husband and I sat around talking about baby names. She was strongly objecting to the name that I had chosen, Jefferson, and demanded to know where it came from. So I told her about the whole tradition of names in my family with the initials JDC, so most of my life whenever I thought about potential baby names for whatever reason, I'd tried to think of JD names, and several years ago had come up with Jefferson and liked it a lot. Anyway, although we'd pretty much settled on Jefferson and Abigail (Andrew's pick) as potential baby names, I wanted to allow for the possibility that the baby would come out and wouldn't look like either name and maybe something else would come to us. Surprisingly, Andrew pitched a fit about this. Evidently he's way more attached to the name Abigail than I realized.

Anyway, I don't even remember how this came about, but somehow we brought up that when watching Chocolat last week, I had declared that we should move to France and name the baby Josephine. Which my friend pointed out to me was a J name, which had honestly not occurred to me at the time. I just liked the way the name sounded with a French accent (and how Michael used to say it on La Femme Nikita!) So then we all started throwing out D names that we could use for a middle name, and someone (I wish I could remember who!) laughingly suggested Josephine the Destructor. At which point we all started giggling. Then we got the idea to look up in our book of baby names a possible D name that meant Destructor. I thought there was no way we'd find one, but evidently when you buy a book with 35,000+ baby names, you get what you pay for. There it was, Devi, Hindi goddess of destruction. So Josephine Devi, isn't that pretty? Then my friend got the idea to look up what Josephine meant, and found that it means "God will add, God will increase." So basically Josephine Devi would mean God will increase DESTRUCTION! At which point we all were basically falling over ourselves laughing. I said the name was too perfect to not use, but Andrew was adamant that we not change our agreed upon name scheme at this late date and if I wanted to use the name Josephine Devi I would have to keep having kids until we had a second girl.

I would try to launch a major internet campaign to convince my husband that he's got to give up on this Abigail thing, because Josephine Devi is clearly divine inspiration, but he'd probably just freak out on me that I'd given out his email address on the web and OMG SPAMBOTS MIGHT FIND HIS ADDRESS! cause he's paranoid like that.

But holy God, can't you just picture it? In fourth grade, when they give that assignment to go home and research what your name means and where it comes from, and our little girl would shoot her hand in the air and tell them she already knows what her name means, it means God will increase DESTRUCTION! And the teacher would blink and think what ridiculous hippies her parents must be and that she should have suspected something when her name wasn't something obvious like Sunbeam or Rainbow.

And if any of you take my fabulous name idea I will hunt you down and stab you with a plastic fork. The goddess of destruction commands that it be so.