I enjoy searching out new widgets for Dashboard in OS X 10.4: Tiger. I have a tournament poker one, from the maker of iPoker. Currently, as a Libra, my day brims with romantic potential, this year my birthday falls on a wednesday, the closest free wi-fi is 1.0 miles away at the Thai Kitchen on Queen Anne, it’s supposed to be 74 and sunny tomorrow, and La Banane is french for The Banana. But my favorite new widget is one that let’s me look on different web cams. Currently it is set for the San Deigo Zoo Panda Cam. I periodically go into Dashboard and check up on the pandas. They sleep a lot. For some reason, I feel this need to constantly update Evildeb on the status of the pandas. And, to do it in the voice of a toddler. I don’t know how this started. Maybe I was just overwhelmed, at first, by panda cuteness. We’ll be sitting in a meeting, waiting for it to start and I’ll get Deb’s attention, she’ll think I am going to say something intelligent. Or at least funny. And instead I say “Deb… the panda… hims slweeping on hims back and you can see hims tummy! It’s so flwuffy! widdle panda!” This seems to annoy her, so now I can’t stop. Cute widdle panda! I imagine she wishes I would switch to the Vancouver Aquarium Beluga Cam. I do check on the whales periodically.

Today, Louise and I went to Fred Meyer, because my headphones are seriously broken. One of my phones just snapped off. It’s dangling by the wires. They were dying anyway. Now I officially need new ones. So we were wondering around the electronics section, and we weren’t being quiet at all. It’s not like we were being sneaky. Louise said something funny, and I laughed out loud. I scared the clerk over in the next aisle. He jumped. My laugh made him flinch. It’s not a bad laugh, it’s just an enthusiastic laugh. As in common in the maternal line of my family. I’m easily amused and I like to laugh, it’s fun. And, apparently, it’s good for you as well. But the fact that he jumped just made me laugh harder. I couldn’t wait to come back to work and tell everyone that the power of my amusement startled the Fred Meyer clerk. Serves him right, the selection of headphones was sad indeed.

Tomorrow I should have stories involving Louise’s horror at finding herself surrounded by children at the Zoo concert tonight. She sees children and the first word that pops into her mind is “sticky.”