Monday, Monday... Tuesday.

Well, yesterday was something of a grind. Today doesn't look much better. I worked my way through several implementation issues, hooking up a nifty front-end to NIS and getting the first page of the health monitoring system together (it's a basic HTML form with no confirmations-- whoop de do), so I'm unimpressed with my progress on that front.

After meeting Omaha and Kouryou-chan at the Costco warehouse market, we did our monthly shopping. A long time ago we acquired a rugged, plastic shopping cart just perfect for a child Kouryou-chan's size and she had a lot of fun driving it around and putting into it the things that would fit in its minescule basket: a shaving kit, a plastic bottle of maple syrup, a package of batteries, stuff like that. While we were walking around she announced "I have to go potty."

So I took her to the bathroom, leaving her little cart with its stuff outside the door since the sign on the door said "No merchandise in the bathroom."

When we finally came back out, her cart was gone, but the stuff that had been in it was left on the floor! Someone had stolen our toy shopping cart!

We alerted store security, but I managed to find it. Another family had walked off with it, thinking that it was something the store had provided. Nevermind that it was parked in a spot next to the restrooms intended for shopping carts in use, or that it had been full when they'd found it.

Some people.

Kouryou-chan fell asleep on the drive home, and was very hard to wake up. I managed to get her awake with a combination offer of something to drink and to read her one of the Frog & Toad stories. We ended up reading four and then I helped her work her way through several puzzles in a book of mazes we had bought for her. I'm helping her work her way through subtraction on her fingers. Omaha made a very yummy shrimp curry with raisins and apples. Kouryou-chan ate her rice and some of the fruit, but wasn't thrilled with the shrimp.

Nobody slept well last night; Kouryou-chan is still haunted by the seziure and, after her impromptu nap, didn't want to sleep alone and didn't want to go to sleep at all. I lost an hour of sleep last night trying to convince her that she needed to go to sleep herself.

And if this morning is any indicator, I shall have to be wary. Omaha had run my thermos through the dishwasher and put it away, and I mistakenly assumed it was assembled correctly. So after making myself a tall coffee and putting it into the thermos, I cheerfully walked down to the bus stop-- to find the thermos leaking everywhere. The gasket was missing from the cap. Fortunately, I had a handkerchief with me and the gas station coughed up a few paper towels so no real harm was done. The grapefruit I bought for a dollar at Pike Place Market was dried out and nasty. I'm just having no luck today.

Shock and aww.

I am shocked, shocked! to discover that a Republican Congresscritter, North Carolina 11th District Rep. Charles Taylor, has been implicated in fraudulent loan deals. Apparently, a big question is whether or not the Republican administration tried to kibosh a federal investigation of the matter.

MSNBC, in turn, was shocked, shocked! to discover that they'd hired a homophobic bigot who told a gay caller "I hope you get AIDS and die." Apparently they had no idea that Michael Savage routinely used racist language and anti-gay epithets to generate an audience.

Racist and ridiculous: The Media Action Network for Asian Americans has decried the casting of John Cleese as Lucy Liu's father in the latest Charlie's Angels flick, describing Miss Liu as "so obviously... a full-blood Asian" that portraying her as half-white was, in their words, "hurtful... to Asians."

A Russian officer has been stripped of command and rank for beating his soldiers with a dildo. Apparently the charge of abuse came to light when a soldier deserted after one of the beatings. The, um, unit was described as a "black latex baton." Hey, I own one of those!

Sean Thomas writes in The American Spectator about his addiction to internet porn. While it contains the usual mealy-mouthed "we're liberals so of course we would never call for censorship, but by Gods lock up your sons and daughters!" attitude, I have to confess to amusement. I don't know what's more amusing: his £150 a quarter bill ballooning to £600 (according to this, I spend £60 or so per quarter for all of my Internet access), or that he misspelled Bunko Kanazawa's name, or that I know who Bunko Kanazawa is (warning: link is probably not work safe and may contain zillions of popups) [edit: the link contains swimsuit-type photos, none of which show the slight overbite and bee-sting lips that made her popular, and one annoying popup].

I screwed up my courage, and...

So, I tried to write on the bus. I'd written 1400 words on the way up to Seattle in the morning and I was hoping to reproduce that on the way home. But, no, I get seated next to yet another nosy person. I mean, the bus isn't even full and she has to sit next to right next to me. She was the sort of woman who thinks she looks good in faux leopard prints and who thinks she smells nice wearing half a bottle of eau d' urinal cake. She was reading a book called We Who Are Called: Forgotten Heroes of America's Christian Heritage, and the chapter she's reading is about John Birch.

And she keeps trying to read over my shoulder. It's a nice, quiet scene between two characters from whom you've never heard, but she keeps leaning over. And I don't mean "peeking." No, she's leaning in to look closely.

I finally had enough. I said, "Miss, if you don't stop looking over my shoulder, I shall start writing violent homosexual pornography. If that doesn't put you off, I shall add bestiality to the plot. If that doesn't put you off, I shall have to ask for your phone number."

There were some shocked looks, and one woman who knows me reasonably well laughed. She's seen how frustrated I get when people read over my shoulder. Anyway, leopards-print woman harrumphed and went back to her book, but she still peeked over my shoulder from time to time. So I switched to hacking an HTML parser.