We have elves in our house. Really. Remember that story about the poor shoemaker and his wife who had elves- you know, the one where they would wake up every morning and there would be a pile of newly cobbled shoes on their table ? Well, we have elves as well. They come here at night when we are all asleep.

How do I know this ? Because they don’t come here to cobble shoes, they come here to steal things. I started noticing this a few years ago- this disappearance of common household objects. And now I am firmly convinced that the elves do this.

What do they steal ? Well, topping the list are scissors. They are very fond of scissors. Here are other common items that they seem to have a penchant for :

- glue
- super glue
- sticky tape
- photo hinges
- hair brushes
- paper clips
- staplers
- hole punchers
- pens
- pencil sharpeners
- single socks
- sewing needles ( in particular the tiny ones that I use to quilt with)
- rulers

Sound familiar ? Maybe you have elves in your house as well.

Believe me : go here.

Dear Sir-

Mummy Dearest

I joined a webring the other day. It’s for 40+ ers. Well, that is certainly me- I’ll be 45 in a few weeks. I find I can enjoy pages by all ages ( I like Bitsy’s very much), but sometimes it is nice to visit a page where you recognize all of the music that they are listening to – like David’s- or check in By Sand and Sea.

I’m in a perfectly foul frame of mind today. All I wanted was a bit more control over the comments here. No, not like in ‘censorship’, more like some of those clever things that Jennifer has done. Here I shall confess : Jennifer, I was at your place about 5000 times yesterday because as well as following your son’s big day I was trying to see how all of those clever little comments things are done. I was reading your code.

So ( now ,sit back and enjoy learning just how ignorant I am) , I have come to realize that one day I am going to have to look into php. I accept this. But my host ? ( you know, the place I pay money to to have this space) does not support php. But, the fine print says, it does support Perl. So I found a Perl script that looked like it would deal with the comments well enough, I banged my head on my desk for 2 days as I ‘chomd’ this and that ( well, I seem to recall that that is what I was doing). After a while I realized that while I was supposed to have access to,oh, something like a perl bin, I actually didn’t. Even you can tell I need help, so I wrote to them- you know, hey, bro, wheresa Perl ? No answer.

So I have been looking around at different places- in an oh-so-casual way- to pay my money to to have this space. I have discovered that I pay way too much for what I am getting, but you know what ? I am really lazy. Just the thought of moving all of my crap from here to there exhausts me. And it seems I may actually have sub-domains, whatever they are. But I am getting more and more annoyed by the fact that my hands- in a certain way- are tied when it comes to trying to do certain things on this page.

So this morning, I was was fussing around and became curious- how long have I had this space ? It used to be that you just could go to Internic , check Whois, bang in your name and out plopped all of your info. Well, no more. I typed it in and I get some company that I have never heard of in Australia. I nose around on their site and check their whois and wa-la ! My info pops up. With the wrong e-mail address. I am seriously thinking of trading spaces and my e-mail address is wrong. You can’t move without your correct address. I happen to use an e-mail address from my alma-mater for most things like this, as I’ve been planning to leave the place that I pay good money to get e-mail and to go on-line for the last three years. And ( yes I tried) I can’t just get a second e-mail address there, one that matches the flubbed up one in Australia. No.

So, I banged out my 2 letters this morning. Then I started looking for someone else to throw my money at. The Netherlands seems too expensive to me, by comparison, but where do you start ? Plus, I get the nagging feeling that in order to have the comments really do what I want, I will have to change to MT or GreyMatter or PMachine.
You know, all I wanted was a bit more control over the comments here.

Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?

Handy Latin Phrases

via uren.dagen.nachten , a very long time ago.

Oh yes – translation : How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

I finally heard from The Father again- he called last night. It was good to hear his voice. I have been sitting on my computer, waiting for e-mails that never came, all week- it seems that Andy’s computer is down.

But he is fine. Say, if you were in the Beijing Sheraton last week, The Father was the bearded guy who wowed the club with his renditions of ‘Let it Be’ and ‘New York, New York’.

Perhaps I should save this link for him : web-karaoke.co.uk.

via hydragenic

Cup enjoying her moment of fame.

Today The Baby watched Snow White for the first time. I was sitting here, behind the computer, but still, Snow White’s smarmy little voice filled the air.

Of all the Disney females, Snow White gets on my nerves the most.

I couldn’t help but imagine what Diana would say, what tongue lashing she would give me, for letting a daughter of mine watch this film.

I spend too much time behind the computer.

The Boy and luc

When I told my mother-in-law the other day what I was planning for today she looked at me like I had lost my mind. The fact is, if I can do something by myself then I don’t like to ask for help, and walking to The Boy’s football game today was entirely do-able. It’s actually a lovely walk and really, what else did we have planned for today ? Zip.

It is about a 35-40 minute walk, and as we had to be on the field by 9.30, I had planned to leave the house at 8.50. I hadn’t planned on The Boy’s socks being missing. I looked everywhere- his room, the laundry room, the laundry basket but they were nowhere to be found. Finally, making a wild guess, I looked in The Girl’s room. Lately, if something is missing, it tends to be there. Sure enough, there were The Boy’s football socks, still neatly rolled up in a rather large ball on Girl’s floor in front of her bed.

We took our time, pushing The Baby’s stroller past the windmill and then out through the dikes and waterways that make up the town’s fortifications. From there we walked past the farmlands, the fields filled with cows and dandelions. Then past the farm houses, where we peeked into the stalls for the cows and looked at the tractors. Past the round-about and GP’s farm-house, turning by the walnut trees and looking at the ripening nuts. On the last bit to the football field, we saw two kittens, some pear trees and a large slug. It’s a nice walk.

The Baby and I sat in the grass and watched The Boy’s team lose, took some pictures, watched the geese flying overhead. There are worse ways to spend a morning. It is my turn to do the team’s laundry. Marc had a bloody nose during the game, so his mother came up to me afterwards. She just wanted to let me know that there was a blood stain on his shirt. She had tried to get it out, but there is no warm water here ( Oh. I guess I need to use warm water for this) and she wanted to let me know, just in case I had been planning on doing the laundry on Monday ( Monday ?But I don’t have to have it done until next Saturday .Better buy some stain remover when I get home.)

We walked home on the other side of the street, and this time stopped and looked at the horses at Verhoeven’s as well as the big willow tree there and his,oh, 8 foot replica of the Statue of Liberty.

We found the first acorns of the year laying on the sidewalk and The Boy stuffed his pockets, with the intention of sending them off to Grandma and Grandpa in America for their squirrels.

It was a lovely morning, even though they lost. Again.