Karaoke Rock!

So here we are with that special, special song I promised you last week. My daughter picked it out for me, although she refused to sing with me. Apparently, she's the management and I'm the talent, so there's no mixing of duties to take place. Anyway, there's no good way to prep you for what you're about hear, but let me just say for those about to rock, I salute you. This is, by the way, Goofy Gober Rock from Spongebob Squarepants, The Movie.

Daily Dancer Interview, Part V

Here we are back with your favorite booty-shaker, Daily Dancer, for the final installment of my in-depth interview. It's been great getting to know the man behind Daily Dancer and I hope you have also learned a little something about his gracious nature and generosity in the process. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Daily Dancer for answering all the questions I threw his way. He never flinched once. That's a real man for you. And before I get all choked up with emotion and everything, let's get on with the show.

KC: Five years?!? What are you waiting for? Seriously, what are you waiting for?

DD: Do I have to answer that question? You know that she will be reading this, right? All I can say is that I am waiting for the right time to come. Regardless of when I propose to her, I love her very much and love being with her.

KC: What type of games are you interested in developing? Shoot 'em ups? SIM type games? My Little Pony? Also, what are your thoughts on the heavily male-focused video game industry? I know there have been recent attempts to gear more games towards girls, but they seem kind of lame to me. What do you think?

DD: I am more into games from 10-15 years ago, back when side scrollers and top-down RPGs were at their peak. I have always wanted to make such a game, but with a great internal design, of course. No hacking for me! As for girls' games, they are probably lame because of stereotypes. The game makers assume that girls will enjoy playing games about makeup and clothing. Even more significant is the fact that these games do not have much of a market, so the top gaming companies devote their budgets to the more-popular shoot-em-ups and sports games.

KC: What is your opinion on the recent events surrounding Hurricane Katrina?

DD: These things happen in the world. It is sad to think about people losing their homes and families. But, with all these disasters, it is often easy to forget the people who go through these hardships on a regular basis. Think about the people in poor countries, or on the streets of your own city, who have lived homeless and hungry for years. Why do people often jump to help the people who had more in the first place, rather than the people who never ever had much at all?

KC: You spend a lot of time dancing to requests on your blog, but what type of music is your favorite type of dancing music?

DD: My favorite dance music is the same music I dance to most frequently on my blog: hits from the 80's and 90's.

KC: What do you regret most in life and why?

DD: I do not have any regrets that stand out. Everything that goes wrong turns into a learning experience.

KC: What is your proudest accomplishment?

DD: My proudest accomplishment is finishing my Masters degree in Computer Science. Working on my Masters thesis was extremely difficult, but it made me learn about how I work best and how to persevere.

KC: Are most people who know you surprised you would do something like this blog (if they know about it, that is)? How do you think most people in your life view you?

DD: I think that many people would be surprised by my blog. I think that I am generally perceived as quiet and shy. But, when I get a chance to perform, I always let my inner star show. You should see me do Karaoke! I see that you like doing Karaoke as well. :)

KC: Who designed the logo for your Daily Dancer t-shirts?

DD: A friend designed the logo for the shirts. He did a great job on the body hair.

KC: Were you ever nervous about dancing on the internet? I can detect a significant level of loosening up as your blog progresses, so I'm wondering if you are gaining more confidence as you continue to do it.

DD: I was never really nervous about dancing on the Internet. Maybe the barrier of the Internet makes it somewhat easier.

KC: If this ends up being the last round of questions, is there anything in particular you'd like to tell the Daily Dancer audience?

DD: I would like to tell the Daily Dancer audience "thank you" for giving me an audience to dance for. I enjoy dancing for my fans, and I love reading their comments and e-mails.

<< previous interview, Part IV

Snoozer is dead. Long live Snoozer.

Well, that thing we have been expecting for some time now has finally happened. Snoozer the hamster is no more. He died yesterday and my daughter is sad. Very, very sad. We realized he was dead right around bedtime and it looks like he just died in his sleep. He looked pretty peaceful. I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but this hamster was creeping up on three and a half years of life, which is a long time for a hamster. He had huge tumors on his underside and half his fur had fallen out. One of his back legs was paralyzed. But he kept going. You'd hear him on his wheel every night. He was a nice gentle hamster. Most hamsters are ornery, but Snoozer was always very gentle and he never tried to bite any of us. We told our daughter we're never getting another hamster because we will never find a nice hamster like Snoozer again. Also because I don't want anymore animals in the house. So he's in the freezer right now because my daughter wants to make a casket for him so they can properly bury him on Saturday. I'm not supposed to tell you this, but my daughter cried quite a bit when we told her the news. She specifically told me, "Mom, don't tell your blog I was crying." See how easily I betray her? Maybe tomorrow I'll put up a picture of Snoozer if I can dig one up.

I am also going to try podcasting. Here is my first, although modest, attempt.

Rant day

I'm going to complain today about why I don't really have much respect for most academics. If you are an academic, I suggest you stop reading right now because you're probably going to get pissed off. Anyway, the primary reason I don't respect academics is because an awful lot of them have no view of the world around them. They are so focused on their one little, itty bit of knowledge that they have completely lost touch with the fact that they are the only person in the world who probably gives a damn about that one little, itty bit of information. What I probably resent even more is that they take that incredibly limited knowledge base and then justify an entire life of arrogant behavior upon it. Wow, you know everything about one obscure medieval manuscript. Yeah, that gives you bragging rights. I mean, come on. That doesn't really mean a hill of beans in the whole scheme of things. Can you change a flat? Can you you get a kid up and out the door in ten minutes or less? Can you speak to strangers in a social situation and not have them walk away thinking you're a complete tool? Yeah, I didn't think so. Are you saving lives? Do you even know what a deadline is? Yeah, I didn't think so. Sometimes I think there must be some sort of indoctrination akin to the sort that takes place in medical school with these ivory tower dwellers. They are conditioned to believe that their "immense" brain power just puts them leaps and bounds above the rest of society, when in reality, they're pretty stupid when it comes to everyday life. In conclusion, let me just say that the world would probably be a much nicer place if all you self-absorbed "thinkers" would just shut the fuck up for two seconds and try to actually listen to the shit you spew. Try and actually relate your life to the world around you a little bit. You'll most likely find you're just as insignificant as the rest of us.

Another blasted coldsore.

If you haven't been able to guess from today's title, I've got another stinking coldsore. I don't know what sparked it this time. I don't remember being exposed to bright sunshine anytime recently. Maybe it's because I've been feeling a little under pressure at work. So it's back to popping acyclovir. We did our trivia night over the weekend and my team only came in fourth, which isn't too shabby. But we were never close to taking top honors, so it wasn't nearly as exciting a night as last time. I have to say, they got a little harder with the questions this time around. But like I said, we didn't embarass ourselves or anything, so that was alright. One of the categories was college fight songs and we had to listen to sound clips of different songs and write down which school they belonged to. I don't know about you, but all fight songs sound the same to me, so I was like, "Don't even expect me to have any input on this one." And they did all sound the same to me. Drums, trumpets, cymbals. Quite frankly, I don't know that I'd even recognize the Penn State fight song if it started playing.

My husband starts his new job today, so he was a little excited and nervous. I have to say I feel nervous and excited about it, too. I'm excited for him to have the opportunity to really do the sorts of things he's been wanting to do and I'm nervous because I want him to feel like he's in a good place to work. I have to take my daughter to the petstore today to buy a pinkie for her snake. This will be the fourth one and I have to say it gets less disturbing watching the snake eat the little mouse with each subsequent feeding. It's funny how long it sometimes takes the snake to finally get his jaws around the mouse, though. It doesn't seem to be something he has a lot of instinct about. Sometimes he trys to start eating it my grabbing it on the side rather than the head or bottom. I don't know, it's funny to me but maybe that's just normal.

Karaoke Dance Party #57

So here we are with another installment of my super popular karaoke Fridays. I'm going to try to have an extra special song for you next week that my daughter is helping me with. It will be hot, let me tell you. But today, we just have me singing Lone Justice's Shelter.

Oh hey, guess what? My husband had my car detailed yesterday and it's sooo nice to have a clean car again. I'm the primary child transporter, so my car was pretty filthy. What with all the discarded craft projects and Cheez-It crumbs ground into the upholstery. Anyway, before I left for work yesterday morning, he told me to take his car so he could clean my car. When I get home and see how clean the car is, I was really impressed. I was thinking, "Wow, he did a really good job." But then I looked a little closer and saw just how clean the car was: shiny tires, no dirt or sticky debris anywhere inside the cup holder, pristine upholstery, and I realized, "He didn't do this. He got this detailed."

He came out and asked, "How do you like the car, huh?"

Immediately, I responded by asking if he got it detailed. And he sheepishly admitted to it and said, "I did it as a surprise." Anyway, it's just as cool. I don't mind that he had it detailed. Although, for $90, you'd think they would've cleaned out the chocolate wrappers out of the map holders in the side of the doors. There were some left in there. If money changes hands, it better be cleaner than the day I bought it as far as I'm concerned.

What to talk about.

What, what, what? Do you know how it is that you can only win a mega-lottery amount if you live in a trailer park? Why is that? What is it about trailer park dwellers? Living in a trailer park also guarantees that your house will be crushed by any wayward tornadoes. So you either lose it all in a natural disaster or you win it all in the powerball. Just can't decide if it's worth it or not. So everyone is clearing out southern Texas in preparation for Rita. It'll be interesting to see how much people have learned from Katrina. I wonder if the entire place in blown to bits if people will be sending donations with the same fevor as they did for Katrina. I'm not bad-mouthing everything that's been done for Katrina victims, I just wonder if it will be hurricane overkill by the time Rita takes care of business. I don't know if there's anywhere in the world that's worth it for me to live with the constant threat of total annihilation from hurricanes or floods or whatever. We do get a lot of tornadoes here in Indiana, but I live here against my better judgement anyway, so it's not like I'm getting something out of it. If I could live the same life somewhere else, I would in an instant.

Oh, this is the depressing thing I realized the other day: My daughter is an Indiana native. It's like a burning knife to the heart to understand that fact. She called soda "pop" the other day. That's what everyone here calls soda. They call soda "pop" in Utah, too, and I hated it just as much when I lived there. Anyway, she called it pop and my ears started to bleed.

"No," I said, "it's soda."

"OK, soda," she said.

I don't know why it bothers me to hear pop, but it does. I don't know, maybe because it sounds kind of red-necky.

Hey y'all.

First off, I want to give a shout out to my brother for taking care of posting for me yesterday. I've been feeling kind of overwhelmed lately and haven't been able to devote much time to the whole blogging thing. I'm sure you appreciate the break from me as well. My brother is much funnier than I am. He should post more often. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, know what I mean? I don't really have anything interesting to talk about today. We have a parents meeting at my daughter's school tonight to start learning about her first confession. This is in preparation for her first communion in the Spring. I haven't been to confession myself in an awfully long time. I should go, but it seems hard to fit in. I'm sure I'll have to do some sort of confession during this entire thing with my daughter. The main thing that freaks me out about confession isn't even telling my sins. I'll tell that to anyone who listens. What makes me nervous is that I'm never sure when to start saying the act of contrition. Most of the time the priest just starts praying over you and you're supposed to do the act of contrition at the same time, but that just seems rude to me to talk at the same time as the priest. Also, I don't know the act of contrition by heart, so I'm afraid I'll mess it up. I should just take a little card in with me then it wouldn't be such a big deal. Why don't I have the act of contrition memorized? Because I don't go to confession that often, haven't you been paying attention? So that's my great shame. I'm all flumoxed by the act of contrition part and I'm very self-conscious about making a fool of myself in front of the priest. It's not rational, I know. OK, I just discovered it's possible to eat too many Hershey kisses in one sitting. And too many is 10. Excuse me while I go ralph.

Hail to the Redskins!!!!

Ok Ok Ok

I admit it I was putting out some negative energy by the second half of the game. I was just feeling a little pain in the notion that we were going to have another one of those seasons. But with 2 minutes left in the game they brought me out of the pits of dispair and threw me onto the field of victory!!!! The Skins came from behind to beat the Dallas Cowboys 14-13 The world is a good place and God loves me! Go skins go! go skins go!!!!!!


They almost made me drink last night but luckily I didn't I feel both happy and not hung over today which is the best thing in the world!!!!

The draught has ended!!!!! after ten years the skins have beat dallas in dallas!!!! wooo hooo!!!
Now lets see if we can actually get an offense!!!! PS the refs last night had to be paid off by Jerry Jones...

Now I return you to my sisters blog. Everyone needs to cheer for the Redskins

Hail to the Redskins!
Hail Victory!
Braves on the Warpath!
Fight for old D.C.!
Run or pass and score -- we want a lot more!
Beat 'em, Swamp 'em,
Touchdown! -- Let the points soar!
Fight on, fight on 'Til you have won
Sons of Wash-ing-ton. Rah!, Rah!, Rah!

Hail to the Redskins!
Hail Victory!
Braves on the Warpath!
Fight for old D.C.!

That really wasn't any fun.

I stayed home sick today and it really wasn't any fun. I became increasingly bored and restless as the day wore on and I wouldn't say I enjoyed it at all. Usually, I like a day of rest, but this one didn't seem to do it for me. I woke up with a headache that felt like it was going to blow my head to smithereens and my entire body just hurt. I'm feeling OK now, so it'll be back to the daily grind tomorrow. What did I discover during my day off? Daytime television really sucks. This morning I watched a movie/mini-series called Little Dorrit, which was based on a Charles Dickens' book. It was in two parts. The first part was done from the point-of-view of Mr. Clennan and and the second part was done from the point-of-view of Amy (aka Little) Dorrit. Each part was its own movie, with each part lasting about three hours. I came in on the last hour of part one and was sufficiently sucked in to continue watching when part two started. I enjoyed it, and as with most Charles Dickens' adaptations, waited until some great deus ex machina would be revealed to make the entire story fall into place. I'm in the last ten minutes of part two when, suddenly, the satellite signal goes out because there's a thunder storm passing over. When the signal reconnected, the credits were rolling. Does that suck major donkey balls or what? Yeah, it does. Anyway, although I suspect Amy and Mr. Clennan live happily ever after, I don't know that they live happily ever after. Stupid satellite signal. How do we spy on other countries if the weak-ass signal can't even make its way through a thunder cloud? Answer that one for me, will you. I will confess, however, to watching this entire Kathy Griffin tribute that was playing on Bravo. They showed her reality show and then a couple of her stand-up acts. She's actually pretty funny and all I want to know is if she can make a living bad-mouthing celebrities, I should be able to make a living bad-mouthing all the normal people I encounter in my life because, really, normal people are just as screwed up as celebrities. They just don't get the same press.

K, K, Karaoke. Karaoke. (I'm rapping. Can you tell?)

OK, here's me singing Englishman in New York by Sting, who I have loved since I was 15. My husband thinks I would leave him for Sting, but I wouldn't. But I still love Sting. The first time I saw Sting was during his Dream of the Blue Turtles tour. I was 16 and there was a lull between Roxanne and Message in a Bottle, so I screamed as loud as I could, "I LOVE YOU, STING!!!" And he smiled, which means he heard my voice. I was pretty jived after that because Sting heard my voice. HE HEARD MY VOICE! Before that concert, I'd also written a poem for him which I wanted to put in a glass (well, probably plastic) bottle and then throw up on stage to him. I was going to put my name and address on it because I was certain once he read it, he'd be so blown away by my talent that he'd want me to write songs with him. I never did find an acceptable bottle, so all my dreams were dashed that night. But at least he heard my voice.

P.S. I just realized I sound like a lounge singer here.

OK, this is totally funny.

Here's Britney's new baby in his first photo, courtesy of American Idle.

Ain't he just precious, y'all? With the little ciggy and bottle of Jack. He gonna be just like his daddy.

Praise the Lord. Halleluiah!

Yesterday my husband found out he got a job he interviewed for a couple of weeks ago and we are all ecstatic about it. I'm especially ecstatic about it because there's a lot of stuff about our life that will be much easier now. For starters, my husband's new job is actually in the town we live in now. For several years he's been commuting about an hour and a half away from town for work. Now, he'll only be about five minutes from home. Needless to say, with gas prices being the way they are, it really couldn't have happened at a better time. It also makes life easier for me because that means there are two of us in town now who can take care of the occassional school emergencies that come up every once in a blue moon with our daughter. I've been the point man for everything concerning our daughter because I've been the only one easily accessible during the day. Now we can spread the love a little bit. Also, it means we can eat family meals. Usually, my daughter and I eat dinner because my husband gets home too late, and then he just eats by himself when he gets home. He's going to be assistant vice president for administration and operations for a credit union in town. He was a regional investment officer for the bank he just left. I'm pretty happy about the situation.

Disappointment in Paradise

Why can't anything we want end up the way we want it to end up? What am I talking about? I'm talking about my new iPod Shuffle. Guess what I found out yesterday. You can only download songs from one computer. If you try to plug it into a different computer than the one you originally downloaded from, you've basically got to erase your entire song base before the new computer will recognize it (the iPod). I've got two computers with different music and I can't just download some songs from one computer and then download other songs from the other computer. AAARGH!!! The fantasy is ruined. Ruined, I tell you. Other than that little glich, the iPod works GREAT! I used it yesterday when I went running and I was very pleased. It's just the downloading issue I've got problems with.

So I'm currently in the process of getting my daughter hooked on Judy Blume books. Reading Judy Blume books is an indespensible rite of passage for young readers as far as I'm concerned. I can't even tell you how many times I've read Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. Not that I'm starting her off with the hardcore stuff, mind you. We've just finished Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing and are currently reading Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great. If you're a girl and you're not familiar with Judy Blume books, I can only guess that you're an alien from another galaxy. My daughter is really enjoying the books. I've told her a little bit about what Are You There God? is about, but I'll have to wait before I go too much into what Deenie is about. For those who don't know, Deenie is about a girl who has to wear a back-brace and deals with life's troubles by masturbating. My girl is only seven, I think she can wait a few more years before she discovers the world of masturbation within the pages of a Judy Blume book.

Who's dat? Who's dere?

Do you ever feel like you've been sucked into a vortex that fucks up the entire space-time continuum so that when you're spit back out again you're not sure where you are or who you are or whose life you're living? That's kind of how I feel right now for some strange reason. I feel really harrassed lately, like I can't take a little time for me. It's probably because school is back and everything's back in gear. But I really feel like I've gone from 0 to 150 in about ten seconds. I haven't had time to read the blogs I normally like to read and it feels like I've totally lost touch with reality because of it. Isn't that weird? I guess it's like missing episodes of a soap opera. One day Ellie Sue is pregrant with Billy Bob's illegitimate baby and then the next time you tune in Ellie Sue has been murdered by her son's psycho girlfriend who was jealous of his Oedipal yearnings.

Anyway, I've got to cut out. I have to start working on my daughter's Halloween costume. She wants to be a Pokemon trainer. Probably no one will be able to figure out what she is and that'll really piss her off because she doesn't have a lot of tolerance for people who can't immediately recognize who she's dressed up as. I think she considers it some kind of intellectual defect on the part of the guesser. Oh yeah, my husband's going to be a garden gnome.

My man treats me good.

Guess what? My husband bought me an iPod Shuffle over the weekend. Isn't that swell? This way I don't feel guilty about getting it because it was a gift. So I've been putting music on it and playing with it and generally enjoying my new toy. As I've mentioned before, I only need it for jogging, so it's perfect. I actually can't wait to go running tomorrow so I can use it.

My husband also brought home a chinchilla for our daughter last Friday. A lady was giving away her pet chinchilla because she's moving to North Carolina. My daughter's been wanting a chincilla for a long time, but I refused to let her get one because they cost too much money. So when my husband called from work Friday and said he'd seen the ad in the local paper, I told him he could go take a look at it. Needless to say, she was pretty excited about it. So having given away the guinea pigs only a couple of weeks ago, we're back up to a pet head count of four. I don't know how this happens.

Karaoke Friday (I gave up on trying to be creative.)

Hi, how are ya? Welcome to another installment of KC's Karaoke Friday. I went back to the karaoke machine on this one. It's Madonna's Beautiful Stranger. I've done Madonna twice now, but only because the karaoke machine only has a limited number of songs I've ever heard of in my life before, which is why I've been using the karaoke function on my stereo for most of my songs. Anyway, enjoy.

Now that we've gotten through that part of the post, can I tell you it's 3:30 in the freaking A.M. I woke up and I can't get back to sleep, so I'm posting. This has been happening to me a lot the last couple of weeks, I wake up and can't go back to sleep until an hour before I'm supposed to be up. It pretty much SUCKS because then I'm all groggy and thick-headed the rest of the day. Oh, I got the pictures back from my brother's wedding, so here are a couple like I promised.

This is my brother and his new wife.

I'll do more later. It's almost 4:00 and I want to see if I can get a smidgen of sleep before I have to be up in an hour and a half.

OK, I'm up now. Here are a couple more photos from my brother's wedding.
Here's a picture of my brother and his wife eating food. Really they're smiling and pretending to eat food.

Here's a picture of my parents.

And here's a picture of one of my uncles with a fairly decent size gaggle of women from my family.

Nothing New

It's Thursday and there's absolutely nothing else that makes today different than yesterday other than that. The school meet and greet thing was OK last night. I got to sit in a midget chair at a midget desk for half an hour, so that was good. And by good I mean not good. My daughter's teacher said my daughter is such a "darling girl." Which is true when she's not bugging the crap out of me. Funny thing happened the other day. Every Monday my daughter brings home her schoolwork from the previous week for us to look at and one of her writing exercises had a sentence she'd written that said something like: "I really like my new blue shirt." However, she'd left the letter "r" out of shirt. What drew my attention to it was that the teacher had underlined the misspelled word in green and then wrote the correct spelling above it. So I started laughing pretty hard because it's funny. And my daughter asked why I was laughing so I pointed to the misspelled word and I asked her what it said and she responds, "shit." And I'm like, yeah, remember that's one of the bad words I told you about, and then I laugh some more. Of course, then my daughter was frantic because she thought she was going to get in trouble and starts saying, "That was an accident. I didn't mean to do that." And I said that I knew it was an accident but it was still a funny accident. I'm sure it gave her teacher a little jolt when she first saw it, though. Kids are funny.

Why don't you talk to me?

Why don't any of you ever leave comments for me? I'd like to engage in conversation. I'd like to know your thoughts and opinions. I'd like to get to know the real you deep down inside. Let's dialogue and think outside the box. OK, I'm sitting here eating "New York Style" Bagel Crisps and I see they are made in Bulgaria. I don't think I've ever seen anything made in Bulgaria before. I thought all that came out of Bulgaria was summer labor for Wall Drug. Interesting. But getting back to what I was talking about. Speak to me, people. Speak to me. I'm listening and I care. I really, really do care. Really. I'm serious.

I'm really sleepy today. I don't know why. We have Back to School night at my daughter's school tonight. We go and meet her teacher and eat some cookies and drink some kool-aid. That kind of thing. The city tore up some of the equipment in the playground across the street from my house and we've been watching to see what they were going to put up to replace it. They tore down a slide, monkey bars, a ball hoop thing and a small climbing structure. Yesterday I think they finished installing the new equipment and all they put in was a small, baby slide, a fiberglass dinosaur on a giant spring and a merry-go-round. The merry-go-round is cool, but the rest doesn't make up for what they tore up. I hope they're still going to put in some kind of climbing structure or something. If they don't, then they've totally gipped the kids in the neighborhood.

Sad news

Heard some sad news over the weekend. One of the ladies on my social life committee lost her newborn baby. They had to deliver early because an ultrasound showed water on the lungs and they didn't expect the baby to live, but it's obviously still very heart-wrenching. It's the woman who I don't much like, the one who never really helps. But despite not being my favorite person, no one deserves to have something like that happen to them. She's really had a crappy month because her mother died a few weeks ago, too. It just makes you realize how precious life is and how you can't take for granted any of your loved ones because you don't know what tomorrow brings. I just put a condolence card in the mail. I don't know what I would do in a similar circmustance. Losing my child is the only thing that really scares me.

Karaoke Vendredi

OK, I know today's title isn't too terribly creative, but you try thinking of five bajillion ways to say Karaoke Friday. Anyway, one of my many not so secret dreams is to be a rock star. If someone were to come up to me and say, "Hey, would you like me to make you a rock star?" I'd say yes. So, I spend a lot of my karaoke singing pretending to be a rock star and this week's song is one of my favorite pretend-to-be-a-rock-star song. I imagine I'm performing in a HUGE stadium and people are waving lighters at me and I'm breaking some sort of public deceny law. So here I am singing Stone Temple Pilots' Plush.

By the way, I witnessed the fury of the praying mantis this morning. While I was sitting there eating my yogurt and Grape Nuts, I look over to the tank and the praying mantis is hanging from a branch directly above one of the hapless crickets when, BAM!, he snatched that cricket up faster than a greased pig on a slip-n-slide. I called my daughter in and she watched it for a few seconds before she said, "This is really disgusting."

Unfortunately, my husband was in the shower, so he missed most of the action. He did comment on the irony that the only person in the house who wasn't too terribly excited about watching the praying mantis in action was the one who ended up seeing it. What can I say? C'est la vie.

On a grimer note, last night was the first time I got a chance to sit down and watch the news a little about Katrina and I have to say I was shocked by the video. People walking around in thigh-deep water carrying around garbage bags full of stuff. You know, I really can't imagine what it must be like to lose everything like that. Of course, this is something that's been happening for as long as people have wanted to live in areas vulnerable to natural disaster. But there is something about what's happening in New Orleans that seems so different than other post-hurricane stories we've seen in the past and it's all about the human element. I can't believe people are shooting at rescue teams. I can't believe--in this country of abundance--we are not getting the necessary aid to the people in need. And explain the looting to me. Where are they going to take all the stuff they've stolen? If they're in the city, I'm assuming they don't have anywhere to take it. It's complete pandemonium, it's like watching something on another planet. All I can say, is lets just pray for all people in need down there.

Daily Dancer Interview, Part IV

Have I got what you want? Oh you better bet your sweet bottoms I do. More, more, more Daily Dancer exposed. Will we find out when DD and G tie the knot? Will we find out who is DD's animated doppelganger? How far is DD willing to go for money? Keep reading to find the answers to these and more intriguing questions.

KC: So when are you and G getting married?

DD: Getting married? I have not even proposed yet, even though I have been with that wonderful person for almost five years. But, that time will likely come in the not-too-distant future.

KC: What type of software products are you interested in developing?

DD: Growing up, I have always wanted to develop games. Over the years, I have made many tiny demos, and I have come up with lots of ideas, but I never completed anything substantial. Other than that, I am interested in developing anything that challenges my design skills, as opposed to forcing me to hack together tedious code.

KC: I find it interesting that you have so many artistic (read "abstract") interests yet make your living in a field that relies more on logical, mathematical thinking. Do you feel that the two sides of your brain are in constant struggle with each other?

DD: Not really. Software development is not really mathematical unless the application calls for it. It is, however, full of structure and hierarchy. Artistic talents like dancing and playing music are similar in the sense that they involve large routines/pieces that can be broken down into smaller, more detailed, parts.

KC: Do you think you'll ever play the guitar for us? I think people would like to get a glimpse into all your talents. What do you say?

DD: That is a strong possibility. Maybe as a bonus video?

KC: Which cartoon character did you identify with most as a child (or even now) and why?

DD: Well, my serious, over-analytical, side identifies with characters like Brainy Smurf. My naive and immature side identifies with characters like Sponge Bob Square Pants. Growing up, I was a big fan of The Chipmunks. I have a bit of each one of them in me.

KC: If somebody offered you a million dollars to go full monty on your blog, would you do it?

DD: I would consider it. But, for now, I am keeping my blog clean as a whistle. Well, except for the occasional partial strip-tease and explicit lyrics...

KC: How does G manage not to laugh when she's filming your dances? Also, now that we know you haven't learned how to do the windmill move, I really, really think we need to see you give it a try.

DD: Maybe she is so used to my craziness that the novelty has warn off? And the windmill move is still not out of the question. I must look it up.

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