I found, as I was helping SoS with the aforementioned Blue Poison Arrow Frog habitat, that brown is not a color that is standard in paint sets these days.  Is this part of the millennial "we can't do anything that doesn't blow sunshine up your skirts" mentality of child rearing?  Seriously, I needed brown paint and couldn't seem to find any.  But, I'm educated, resourceful...desperate....I can figure out how to make brown paint, can't I?  I had several craft paints left over and started my artistic alchemy.  Red, yellow, green, hmmmm...I've got some kind of grayish-green ooze happening here.  Perhaps some purple and some more yellow?  Nope.  I decided to call the Senior Chief 's wife; she homeschools, this should be like breathing to her!  She was useless.  Together we decided that maybe adding brown colored food stuffs would change this to what we wanted.  Cinnamon!  It's brown!  It will work!  What it does is make the grayish-green ooze fill with particulate matter.  It doesn't blend, and it certainly doesn't color.  Next on the list was Worcestershire.  Hmmm.  No change in color.  How about some vanilla?  Why I thought that would work when the Worcestershire wouldn't is beyond me; it's basically the same thing except sweet.  And now the ooze smells like pancakes and I'm starving.  I decide that this color would be fine for the rocks the frog uses as shelter, especially since we were going to glue moss on to them anyway.  Did I mention that black paint didn't come in this paint set either? Yeah, out of luck on both counts.  So, what are we going to do for the black spots on the frog?  Hey!  Charcoal Puffy Paint!  That will work!  And it didn't look too bad.  Especially when you put the frog in his shelter so that the majority of his little self was hidden.  Our last obstacle was the predator...the only snake not affected by the poison in the frog's skin.  This is a specific snake and it is specifically colored.  Specifically, brown and orange.  Well, shit.  Orange I can handle; but I still have brown issues and I refuse to drive to Target to get brown paint for this one project.  But, since I doubted SoS's teacher would know exactly what color this snake was, I thought we could fudge it by painting it black.  I can make black, right?  If you mix everything together it should make black, I'm almost sure of it.  Wrong.  It makes even more grayish green ooze.  By this time I was over this project (and SoS was really jonesing to get on the Xbox) and I remembered that black fingernail polish is a staple in my fashion zeitgeist. (Can one have a fashion zeitgeist?  I have no idea, but it sounds good.)  So, SoS painted the shiniest, blackest snake Snootsville Elementary has ever seen.

I now have a Twitter account.  Fear not, I am sufficiently satisfied with this little experiment in narcissism and self indulgence;  I have no intentions of tweeting. I can't imagine how obnoxious I would have to be to think I would need to publish every impulse that jumps the synaptic gap.  I joined so I could follow Steve Martin, John Cleese, The Onion, Drudge Report, etc.because, apparently my Google Reader doesn't leave me feeling nearly as overwhelmed as I would like, and I need even more to keep the spice in my insanity.  What gets me though is I keep getting emails about "So-and-so is now following you on Twitter!"  Why? I could see if I were writing something wittily brilliant on a daily basis, but the way things are, I can hardly manage something mundanely mediocre here in any kind of timely fashion.  It remains a mystery to me.

I saw a guy at the Costco gas station the other day who was wearing Napoleon Dynamite's moon boots. I came close to yelling out "LaFawnduh!" just to see if I could get a reaction.  

I am in the midst of helping SoS create a "Blue Poison Arrow Frog Habitat"as his last big project before school is out.  So I have made a snake (that is immune to the poison and therefore, the only predator the frog has), several rocks (they hide out under them in the rainfores0t, termites and ants for food (really just rolled up bits of clay and the leavings from mistakes I have made) and, of course, the frog itself.  I had a really cool one made up, with little fingers and toes, and it was bitchin; if I do say so myself.  Unfortunately, it was a trifle fragile and every time I moved it, it would lose an appendage or two.  Not to mention all the fingers and toes that have now joined the ranks of "ants and termites."  I tried to repair it several times and, just when I thought the glue had done the trick, another piece of the little bastard would break off.  I finally chucked him into the garbage and started over.  Blue Poison Arrow Frog v. 2.0 seems to be made of sterner stuff,  but it won't matter if it isn't.  We're running out of time, Connor needs to pain these things and we have to figure out how to make a tropical rainforest out of a shoebox. By Friday.  Hmmmmm. 

We will be heading to Utah for a family reunion in a week and a half, and then, two weeks later, heading for Idaho for another family reunion.  No matter what, the chaos and mayhem of those two trips should result in some awesome story fodder.

Marshal Dillon! Marshal Dillon!

I loved Gunsmoke.  It was a weekly snuggle-fest with my dad and I had a deep, deep crush on James Arness.  (Which may have led to my recent Mike Rowe lust; they share a look)  RIP Marshal.

Update:  I just found out he was wounded at Anzio .  Amazing how many actors of that time period were combat vets.