Well, the first cases of swine flu in Illinois have been confirmed, including 2 cases where Sara works. Which, obviously, reminds me of this song, by the Flying Fish Sailors:
Nothing can cheer you up about deadly flu faster than a pirate band.
I’m not sure what the deal with the swine flu is. I feel like people are trying to make me flip out about it, but I just can’t bring myself to be that worried about it. As far as I can tell, with less than 100 cases confirmed in the U.S. (that’s about .00003% of the population if I did my math right) and only one death, it is far far less common or deadly than the regular flu. Now, certainly it could continue to grow and then maybe we should start to worry, but it seems to me like the incidence is much lower right now than the reaction.
Well, the good news is, there is a website you can go to, doihaveswineflu.org
One of, if not THE main reason I moved to wordpress from livejournal was that livejournal didn’t offer the ability to see statistics. And the best part about those statistics are seeing what searches on google are leading to hits on my blog.
These statistics are not at all what you would expect, but they are fascinating. For example, the most frequent search item that people use to find this blog is ‘clock’. Searches that involve that word have landed on this blog more than 1,070 times. I just can’t fathom that! I’m sure there are entire blogs devoted just to clocks. As far as I know, I have only really mentioned clocks twotimes, and in passing at that. How far down the list must my blog be that people are finding me?
After clocks, my next two most searched for items are running neck and neck at just over 200 hits each. Kate Micucci is narrowly beating out searches related to the Mario ? box. The first I feel okay about since I actually took time and energy to write up an informative post. The second I feel a little bad about, since my post is really just a summary and link-through to another post. Still, at least in those cases I’m fairly sure that the searchers got what they were looking for, as opposed to all those clock people.
Sometimes when I look at the search results, I know exactly which post of mine the person found. For example, when someone for some reason searches for ‘smell my gas’, well, I know I happen to have a post with that name. Same goes for ‘phantom pig‘, though I’m not sure why anybody is searching for either of those things. Or when I see one for ‘job hunting secretly’, I chuckle to myself thinking, “Oh ho buddy, have I got a post for you.” I’m always glad when I feel like I have satisfied a request. Another example, I know the person who searched for ‘awesomest man ever’ definitely found what they were looking for.
Sometimes I know which post they found, but I’m not really sure if I have satisfied their request. For example, requests like ‘larp babes’ or ‘hot larpers’ obviously led them to this post, but it doesn’t look like they found what they were looking for. Or ‘what do hipsters eat’ obviously led them here, but were they wanting to learn how to be a hipster or were they just generally curious? Like, “What the heck DO they eat?”
Some posts I really, really hope they DIDN’T find what they were looking for, or else I would get a little self conscious, like the person who found me by searching for ‘fat man at baseball game’. I don’t *think* I’ve been to any baseball games lately, but hey they found my blog didn’t they? The same goes for 15 or so hits I’ve received on ‘odd looking people’. I mean, I’m not so attractive, but I hope nobody would describe me as “odd”. But here they are on my blog! (j/k by the way, I know those hits go here)
Some search terms are very specific to where I have no idea what they were searching for at all, much less how in the world they ended up on my blog. Take, for example, the search for ‘picture of 6 rings march 14,2009’.
Then there are the very odd searches, like ‘zombie solution stuck in a building‘ or ‘how to explain a picture to a dead rabbi’. Aside from having no clue which post on my blog could have possibly fulfilled the search criteria, do you think someone communes with the spirit of a rabbi who died before the invention of the camera? And this person thought maybe he’d find someone in a similar situation on the Internet whose advice he might ask?
I think one of my favorite search items was ‘pickle pops and cancer’. I am SO vindicated on that one! Unfortunately, I haven’t had any hits on ‘nun skin‘ yet.
On one hand we didn’t really do all that much this weekend, and on the other hand we had a lot of exciting things going on.
The library has passes for all of the museum etc. around us, but they are mostly always gone, or at least the good ones are. Some of them are so completely always gone that one of the librarians confided that they were probably lost. But Sara managed to snag a pass to Adler Planetarium. I was already on board with going there for free, but that was before I knew that one of the exhibits right now was Sesame Street based. We did have to pay for that part, but it was well worth the money. Evie was in 7th heaven, by which I mean she was happy as opposed to how you feel when someone forces you to watch that god-awful show. Although she was a little young, she was just so thrilled to be watching an “Elmo movie” on this huge screen, she couldn’t tear her eyes away from it. It was fun in the audience too seeing all the kids get so excited and like shouting out the answers to Big Bird’s questions, etc. and all the parents singing “twinkle twinkle little star” and just enjoying watching their kids. Needless to say, it was a big hit. I would recommend the show to anyone with little kids. There was more to see at the planetarium than I expected, but it was a little boring, especially for someone Evie’s age.
As if that wasn’t enough excitement for one little girl’s day, we also rode the train there and back. Since the train runs right by our house, Evie has always been into trains a little bit. This was the first time she ever rode on one and she was pretty excited. The train trip worked out perfectly and we definitely plan on using it a lot more in the future.
Probably the highlight of my day, was the (for lack of a better word) hipster-ish breakfast place that Sara found, Yolk. It was sooo super easy to get to from the train, and it was delicious. The best part? Instead of toast, you can substitute pancakes! “Yes, instead of my toast I would like to substitute a second breakfast.” I paid a little extra and upgraded mine to blackberry / banana pancakes. Evie approved. It was a tad pricey for breakfast, but I ate so much that I hardly ate anything else the rest of the day. Given it’s proximity to the Museum Campus, I’d imagine it could get busy in the summer, but it is huge and kid friendly.
So to top it all off, we decided to give Evie her first haircut! We only cut her bangs. They are always in her eyes and she would rather die than wear something in her hair to keep it back, like a barrette. She was really good for it. She didn’t exactly sit still, but she did okay. I think Sara’s not really happy with the job she did, but I think it looks fantastic, and not too short no matter what you might hear.
Evie has been saying a lot of funny words lately. Some of her favorites are perfect, excellent, and exactly. Like, “Hey Evie, how about when we’re done eating we go downstairs to play?” “Perfect!” Or “How are the grapes?” “Excellent.” Or “It looks like you’re putting your froggy to bed.” “Yes, exactly!”
But my favorite quote of the weekend? “And what else starts with the letter ‘R’?” “Arm!”
In other news, I started the dead and the gone and I have to say, with going on my second end of the world book in a row, all of this swine flu talk is coming at a bad time for me.
There was a conference I was supposed to go to this week that I ended up not going to for various reasons. I wasn’t exactly broken up about it until I found out that they keynote speaker was the Governator himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger! Best keynote speaker ever.
So, I was thinking about him and I hopped on over to IMDB to see how many Schwarzenegger movies I have seen in my lifetime. Oh man, so many great movies under that guy’s belt, how could you pick a favorite. But then I saw something that caught my eye – he has a movie listed as “filming”! Isn’t he busy off being a governer or something? So obviously I had to click on the link for The Expendables.
Right off the bat I notice that this movie is directed by none other than Sylvester Stallone! Crap on a stick, you’re telling me Sly Stallone is directing a movie staring himself and Arnold? And I hadn’t heard about it? Then I start looking through the cast…Stallone and Schwarzenegger of course, but hey, Jason Statham, nice! Jet Li? Wait a minute, Stone Cold Steve Austin is in this? Mickey Rourke (and I’m thinking Marv here, I haven’t even seen The Wrestler). This is starting to sound like the Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny or something! NO WAY, they’re bringing in Dolph Lundgren?
When talking about the great action stars of all time, Dolph Lundgren gets short shrift. He belongs in the list for Ivan Drago alone (Drago being the big rediculous Russian from Rocky IV, the one that killed Apollo Creed), but lets not discount the original Punisher and Universal Soldier. He was He-Man for christ’s sake! If there is to be a battle royal for the all time action star title, he needs to be involved.
So obviously, it makes not one bit of difference what this movie is about, it is clearly one of the greatest of all time and it’s not even finished yet! Although, I am struck by the fact that there were a few people left off the list. Where is JCVD? You can’t leave out the Muscles from Brussles. What about Chuck Norris? Is Charles Bronson still around? Maybe you could wheel him out in an iron lung or something. The problem is, where do you draw the line? Kurt Russel? Does Harrison Ford make the list for Han Solo / Indiana Jones? What about Clint Eastwood? And does that open it up for cowboys like The Duke (except he’s dead, which opens up even more options)? Bruce Campbell? That chick that dated Flavor Flav?
So titled because it covers not one but two YA books! And InteractiveReader is certainly the best (*ahem* only) such blog that I read.
I am just over half way through Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer, and I already have to blog about it. If I remember correctly, this book was actually recommended to me by two people independently: Jackie and Barb (Do you want a link somewhere?) So when the two most qualified book suggesters I know both come up with the same idea for me, I thought I better take them up on it. And they were sooooo right!
I am a sucker for end of the world stories, I don’t really know why exactly. But this was a little bit different. An asteroid hits the moon moving its orbit slightly closer to Earth, affecting the tides, etc. It was interesting how this was sort of a slow decent into chaos over the course of months instead of the instant disaster usually associated with the zombie apocalypse. For example, in this book food is a big issue and it slowly runs out over time (well, slowly for some, faster for others). In the case of a zombie apocalypse, most people die pretty fast leaving a decent amount of food lying around. Since I don’t usually read YA, having a teenage girl as the main character was sometimes annoying. I could do with out the boy talk, day-dreaming about figure skaters, etc., but that being said the choice of narrators did make it interesting. For example, going alone into a lawless town was a big concern, whereas growing up as a boy it’s not something I even really think about.
I would definitely recommend this book. I would listen to the audio book in the car on the way home from work and I would get so absorbed that it would take me a little while to snap out of it when I got home, like I would have to remember that we don’t need to conserve food, or that we could just go to the store and get things if we wanted them. I already have the pseudo-sequel the dead and the gone lined up for when this is done, which is sort of a retelling of the same disaster from a totally different viewpoint (for example, New York city instead of small town PA).
Before Life as We Knew It, I read Twilight by Stephenie Meyer.
I like vampire books. I have spent a lot more time reading about, thinking about, and watching movies about vampires than I ever have about zombies, and yet nobody ever accuses me of being obsessed with them. Maybe that is because everybody knows that vampires aren’t real as opposed to the zombie menace. I don’t know. But either way, I am inclined to look favorably on the subject matter.
So my review of this book is: Eh. ::shrug:: I know this is a really well known, well selling book with a lot of hype, but I’m not sure why. The characters are likeable, and they better be since the vast majority of the book is setting them up. I have to admit that the book gets interesting once some action kicks in, you know, right at the very end. It ended well enough that I will get the next one in the series.
I don’t know, to be fair I’m not exactly the target audience. I can only take so much high school melodrama and staring into someone’s eyes and thinking about how beautiful they are. If I have to have one more description of someone’s eyes…sheesh. It was worth a read, but I don’t know that I would recommend it to anybody unless maybe they were a teenage girl. But then there aren’t a lot of them asking me for book recommendations.
The strange thing is that reading the book made me more likely to see the movie. They always have to cut a lot of things from books to make them into movies and in this case it would probably help the story. I can certainly think of a few “longing glance” scenes that could go.
What I’m Watching:
Synecdoche, New York. Anybody who tells you this is a good movie is lying to you. Either they want you to waste a lot of time on this horrible movie, or they are lying to themselves. In the second case, they might not realize they are fooling themselves, but even still they are only telling you to watch it so that you know how sophisticated and smart they are, which isn’t very nice. I don’t know why they don’t like you; you’ll have to figure that out on your own.
I like all of his other movies, but world? Charlie Kaufman played a joke on us with this one.
What I’m Listening to:
“Jenny Says” by Cowboy Mouth. Do people know this song? I can’t remember if this was on the radio or if we just listened to it. I also like “How Do You Tell Someone” if you’re looking for another good one.
Shane Halbach 