Total randomness

because my mind is too fragmented at the moment for a single, coherent blog post. Sorry.

• The other day I found a brown recluse in the bathtub, about halfway between the drain and the spigot, as I was about to step in and take a shower. I know it was a brown recluse because of the black violin-shaped mark on the thorax.
• If any athletic person with a natural mocha or caramel complexion is interested in becoming a professional wrestler, then I have a schtick for you based on my above experiences: you can be The Brown Recluse. You’ll need to get a violin-shaped tattoo on your back, with the tailpiece at the base of your neck and the pegbox at the base of your spine. You’ll also need to develop a signature move, the “Spider Bite”, which will “debilitate” your opponents. Beyond those two minor details, though, you should have a long and prosperous career ahead of you.
• I’ve had “Bist du bei mir” in my head all week. Not sure why.
• Performing at the Sheldon again! It’s a Wednesday evening this time (May 17) and will be a BRIEF program instead of the ponderously-long marathon o’music to which we contributed in February. I have to get cracking and learn something like ten songs in the next month, though.
• And while I’m thinking about it, STL-area folks should head for the Tivoli on April 23 for a special matinee screening of The Power of Harmony, a documentary about the Turtle Creek Chorale (a gay men’s chorus in Dallas). $5 a pop.
• No more plugs. I promise.
• My contract with a certain mobile phone service provider (who shall remain nameless, but whose logo is bright orange hinthint) expires next Monday, w00t. Already checking out my options, I am.
• Eating lots of Rachel Ray recipes lately, thanks in part to time constraints for both Fred and I but mostly to the fact that we picked up her newest cookbook a few weeks back. Most of these recipes leave Fred cursing Rachel, though: “DAMMIT! IT’S TOO EASY!”
• Work? Yeah. Sucks. People don’t seem to realize that they could save themselves time by reading the freakin’ documentation instead of playing Twenty Questions (or the less-fun alternative, Forty Questions) with me. (“My $PROGRAM doesn’t work.” “How does it not work?” “When I try to get it to work, it doesn’t.”)
• Do have a new toy at work, though; we installed a new spam firewall just about three weeks ago but haven’t really told anybody about it yet. So far, of the hundreds of thousands of e-mails we’ve received, 75% have been blocked as spam. Over time, though, that ratio is bound to increase as some of the intelligent filters learn. Day um.
• Going to the ballgame tomorrow at the new ballpark. It’s a day game in April in St. Louis; is there anything better? Oh, right, not having to go to work the next day.
• No, I don’t have to go to work on Friday. I get to sleep in for once.
• I so need to find an excuse to go outside today. It’s currently 79 degrees F (26C) and sunny, and the dogwoods, magnolias, and cherries are blooming. Maybe I can fake severe allergies or something and hope nobody sees me frolicking outside.
• About to start a major overhaul on my home laptop, and I’m enough of a masochist to run Gentoo on that thing, so posts over the weekend may be a bit limited. (Like any of you are surprised.)
• Thinking about changing the image at the top of the screen here, so I’m browsing the interesting Creative Commons-licensed medical images on Flickr.
• Got Fred hooked on the Electric Sheep screensaver… come to think of it, got a few people at work hooked on it too. It’s preeeeeetty.

OK, that’s all that comes to mind right now. More later.