Just ran out of pain meds.  That means my foot’s supposed to be better now, right?

The first e-mail spam was sent out thirty years ago today.

“It was rather an insult to one’s sensibilities to have an obvious commercial message sent out over a research network,” said computer scientist Peter Neumann of SRI in Menlo Park, who was one of the 393 recipients of that primordial spam.

Yet, like the cockroaches, it persists and grows. 

Where’s a good Sandman when you need one.

She’s not trendy, and she doesn’t have a nice production deal with the Food Network.  I don’t think she’s done a TV show in years.  Actually, I think she’s dead.  That doesn’t stop me from giving a shout where one’s due though.  We had a guinea pig friend up to casa for dinner last night, and it gave me the chance to use and tinker with Camille Glenn’s recipe for Chicken Newburg.  It totally rocked with that perfect creamy goodness that lets you know your arteries are going to be tough enough to survive a nuclear blast.  She describes it as “sinfully rich, deliciously good, and very easy” and I usually like anything where you can use the descriptors sinfully, rich and easy together.  I’ve had her Heritage of Southern Cooking book since I was in law school, and she’s never done me wrong.  I did tinker with the recipe a bit though, and thought I’d share.

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Paid $3.99 per gallon for gasoline this morning.  I don’t think I’ll  be able to avoid $4.00 much longer.

I haven’t really had a puppy since I was living in Togo in 1995-96, and I’m very out of practice.  Where Pongo earned his puppy bones by brazenly trying to chew through the leg of a coffee table, Diego’s been much more subtle.  You’d wake up to find the in-soles removed from the shoes, or a blizzard made from the used Kleenexes, but by the time you find him he’s rooms away from the scene of the crime batting his big brown eyes and and doing his what?-who?-me? routine. 

Then three books were destroyed in the last week (two caught red-handed) and several attacks were noted on innocent shoes.  Miscellaneous damage includes one pair of headphones, a couple of throw-pillow tags, and the premature demise of a squeaky toy that he only received last Wednesday.  One bright lesson: the child-proof caps on Spinner’s cold meds work.  The downside: Diego made a pretty good effort at going in through the bottom of the bottle, and probably would have succeeded given another ten minutes.

At fifteen-months-old I thought we’d be past this, but I guess not.  Time to get serious on the training.

Just spent a big chunk of my Monday morning parked on the I-15.  This is what happens when someone mixes a semi truck, two SUVs and an assortment of smaller cars and scatter them around five lines of concrete.  People get told to park.  Or at least would have been told if there was news on the radio instead of a pledge drive. 

But while parked there where the highway passes through Rancho Bernardo, one of the Wisteria Lanes of San Diego, there was a bright spot.  A shimmering beacon of day glo orange shorts on a hilltop, surrounded by a sea of conforming suburban strip-malls.  Hooters!  And more importantly, The Girls Of Hooters!

Sure the restaurant was maligned by the locals when it opened a few years back.  Suburban wags opined that Hooters’ presence would give RB a bad reputation.  From my perspective it gave them a dining after dark option, but I never exercised that option.  But today they showed their community spirit.  While everyone sat and waited in the 90 degree heat, the girls stood on the hillside overlooking the freeway and did their best little cheer leader routines to pump up drivers’ spirits.  Their day-glo orange shorts gave us something to look at besides the backend of the car in front of you.  They waved.  They jiggled.  They got the truckers to blow their horns.  They jiggled some more.  They showed their community spirit(s). 

Of course, for all I know their little antics are what caused the semi, the SUVs and the others to become the pile of mangled metal they are now, but still it was nice to see people out there trying to brighten the days of others less fortunate.  If only they could have served drinks… 

Sunday night ended with Spinner pointing out that our voracious little reader had devoured the spine and back cover of Orson Scott Card’s Xenocide, and Monday morning started with Joe pointing out that someone had hacked Spinner’s site. 

The week is not boding well at this point.

Temps here are supposed to be in the 90s for the third day in a row, and I’m really contemplating doubling up the Naproxen and plowing through a nice, long swim.  I can deal with the consequences to the various tendons later, but I really think I’m going to need the mental aspects of a good swim today. 

[via Mike and Zane]

Which Doctor would you choose as her running mate?