Vacation time

The Princess and Hero soon embark on their summer vacation at the beach, where, according to the weather forecast, they can look forward to seven days of thunderstorms. The Princess and Hero are handling this news like any good vacationer: ignoring it.

But just in case the forecast is correct, the Princess is armed and ready with various reading materials, the total pages of which number somewhere in the thousands, and the complete reading of which would take approximately 6.3 years. The Princess likes to be prepared.

Estimated packing time, Princess: 37 hours, 18 minutes.

Estimated packing time, Hero: Actually his packing is complete, having been accomplished during the time it took to write this post.

Stay tuned for when the blog returns.

The envying of sea cucumbers

The sea cucumber was invented specifically to impress boys of a certain age. When threatened, the sea cucumber throws out its insides in an effort to confuse its enemies. While the enemies are puking out their own innards in response to this, the sea cucumber can retreat to a safe, secluded area, such as a sea cucumber spa, in order to regenerate the parts it has lost.

Were boys to possess this trait, it could be very helpful in the average young boy's life, such as when he is threatened with dire consequences if he doesn't finish his dinner:

Parent (in threatening tone): You'd better eat that all up, young man, or else.

Other parent (anxiously): Uh, maybe we'd better not --

Boy: Oh yeah? If you're so concerned about my stomach, ya wanna SEE it? (thrusts out his torso and out pops his stomach)

Family (scattering quickly in desperate effort to reach the bathroom): EWWWWWWWW!

Boy: Well, guess I'll go grow a new stomach now.

Boys would also be impressed by the sea cucumber's ability to turn itself into a liquid and then back into a solid again. By doing so it can fit into small holes in a rock, and once it is inside and has turned back into its usual solid body, there is no pulling it out. This would be a helpful trait when, say, a boy is unable to utilize the family bathroom, due to an older sister hogging it. He could just pour himself into a hole in the door handle, or underneath the door, and turn himself back into his normal form on the other side of the door. This would no doubt result in the desired exodus of the sister and provide hours of entertainment for friends.

Another thing to appreciate about the sea cucumber, if you are a young boy, is that it is not very romantic. There is no kissing or other form of public display of affection. In fact, its reproductive process is described as "not very intimate." The sea cucumbers release sperm and eggs into the water, and the sperm and eggs sort of hang out and float around until they meet up, which, since the sperm and eggs are not equipped with GPS, could take a long time. There may be thousands of potential reproductive parts from sea cucumbers floating around in the ocean.

This method of reproduction requires large numbers of sea cucumbers in a particular area in order to be successful. Might we just say that, if you are swimming around in the ocean and happen to see a large herd of sea cucumbers, you might want to make yourself scarce.

Unless you are a boy of a certain age, in which case you will definitely want to stick around and watch for exploding stomachs.

A public service announcement

Today we offer a brief but important public service announcement for airline travelers.

You will be pleased to know that, as you and your loved ones vacation this summer season and into the fall, should you happen to come into possession of some antlers on your trip and wish to take them home with you, the airlines will happily accommodate your request to transport them on the plane. According to airline policy, antlers can be up to 9.5 feet, and the skull must be wrapped, presumably so as not to alarm or dismay female employees or passengers, who tend to view anything remotely connected to deer as "Bambi."

Antlers must of course be checked to go in the cargo area, unless they happen to fit under the seat in front of you or in the overhead bin, in which case you may be subject to severe ridicule by other passengers ("Really? A one-point? Hahahahahahaha."). Please note that placing antlers on the toilet in the restroom as a joke is severely frowned upon by most airlines. Antlers left unattended in the baggage claim area will be subject to search and seizure, and possibly to display in some airline personnel's home.

You are also permitted to check your javelin on the plane, should you possess one and for some reason are taking it on vacation with you. Javelins are not permitted in the cabin itself due to the chance that someone might use it to spear another passenger's dry roasted peanut bag. For security reasons, the javelin -- a roughly 7-foot long pole with a very sharp end -- is permitted on airplanes, whereas a pole vault pole -- a much longer but blunt object -- is not. Attempting to disguise one's pole among a head of antlers is strictly forbidden and may result in your being forced off the plane at javelin point.

We hope these brief travel trips help make your journey go a little smoother. And please -- remember to wrap up that antler skull.

Note: The blog may appear sporadically over the next two weeks due to foreseen travel plans, which at this time do not include acquiring any antlers. The Princess experiences some difficulty using the notebook laptop while traveing, on which the keyboard is about the size of a Cheez-It but not as easy to type on.

Vacation destination: Panic

We have recently struggled with that all-important marital discussion: where to go on vacation. Rather than leave this momentous decision to just a few weeks before the vacation is scheduled to start, as we usually do, this year we decided to wait until just days before we are supposed to leave.

Waiting until the last minute to plan a vacation actually has some advantages, the chief one being that your choice of where to stay is drastically reduced. This eliminates the mental anguish of comparing 3,782 available condos and hotels and vacation homes online ("Hmmm, I don't know, this one has blue carpeting...I think I'd prefer the one with beige."). Whereas when you plan last minute, the choice is much simpler: "This place has four standing walls and a roof that looks like it only nominally leaks. Let's go with that."

In this reduced pool of accommodations, the Princess was desperate to avoid any personal contact with places that might have paneling, which liberally adorned the last vacation home the Princess and Hero stayed in and which reminded the Princess of a relative's cottage she frequently visited when she was little, an experience that left her with a lifelong dread of paneled walls.

The Hero declared that, in the current state of Vacation Planning Emergency, he was willing to take even paneling. The Princess equated this statement with "I'm willing to take a place with roaches," and was beginning to seriously consider a vacation at the Marriott near their home, where she is reasonably sure there exists no paneling.

With this restriction the Hero also began to be desperate, suggesting such alternative vacation spots as the Bahamas; Florida; Ireland; Toledo, Ohio, etc. In the Princess's family, Toledo was always mentioned as an alternative when considering vacation destinations, as in, "Anything would be better than Toledo*." (*Absolutely no disrespect is meant toward Toledoans, most of whom would also rather be someplace else.)

They had almost decided on a condo in the Outer Banks, and were ready to hit the Make a Reservation and Give Us All Your Money button on the website, when the Hero instead hit the View Aerial Photo of Condo button. They eagerly viewed, right in front of the condo complex, the sparkling if somewhat grainy-looking ocean, to the west some beautiful trees, and to the east -- the largest RV park ever conceived.

The Hero slowly backed away from the Make a Reservation and Give Us All Your Money button. "Well," he said. "There's always Toledo."

"If there's a place without paneling," the Princess said.

Waving the white flag -- or is that a flyswatter?

Insect invasion at work has reached alarming proportions. Fighting my way through rush-hour traffic is nothing compared to fighting my way from the office door to my cubicle, which is fraught with thick clouds of stinkbugs, large unidentified flying things, man-eating jungle spiders, etc.

Amazingly, I am sometimes the only one to see these things. Others are blissfully unaware of the invasion, noticing bugs only when they reach critical mass, and not always even then.

Joe exhibits this same ability. "That spider's been sitting in the corner over there for two weeks now," I'll say pointedly.

"Welcome to the family," he'll say to the corner.

This state of affairs often leaves me to deal with creatures on my own. By the time I work up enough courage to do so, the bug or spider or whatever has vigorously expanded its family, built several retirement homes, and registered to vote. If I look hard enough, I would probably see them all waving little patriotic flags that say "I voted." It is hard to kill something that is waving a little patriotic flag.

And yet I cannot step on something to kill it. I have to use something that is not an actual part of my person, such as a flyswatter, a log, an I-beam, etc. OSHA rules unfortunately prevent me from keeping an I-beam in my office space, even if I fervently promise never to use it on a fellow worker, so I must make due with a flyswatter, which is like cutting timber with a Playskool saw, only less effective.

Over the weekend the insects at work solved my dilemma for me, having apparently engaged in an Insect Armageddon that left both sides, as far as I could tell, extremely dead. My trusty flyswatter and I gathered up and buried the war dead in various wastebaskets -- although not the one in my cubicle -- and found one wounded among the fallen, which, as there was no infirmary set up to provide care, we promptly put out of its misery and deposited in a watery grave.

Later I encountered what may have been a survivor of the carnage, a stinkbug, which like all stinkbugs has the appearance of a tank and seems well-suited to war. I didn't have the heart to kill it, and besides there was no I-beam handy, so I saluted as he went by and set off to, I assume, start building retirement condos.

Time flies, fun or no fun

We editors are by nature observant individuals. So we at work could not fail to notice when a wall clock near my cube began exhibiting strange behavior, such as telling the time correctly. No, just kidding! This clock keeps excellent time, being an atomic clock, which is the most accurate type of clock and keeps time better than the earth's rotation or the movement of the stars. This leads us to wonder why some clock company hasn't yet come up with a marketing campaign aimed at the earth and stars:

Salesman: Heyyyyy, I hear you're running a little slow.

Stars: Whaddya mean? We're very accurate.

Salesman, Welllll, by my calculation you're losing 1.00000001 second every 20 million years! You just can't afford that inaccuracy. I have just the clock for you! It'll make you accurate to within just 1 second every 20 million years!

But back to our wall clock.

After behaving in an exemplary manner for a year or so -- except for not making 5:00 come sooner each day -- one day without warning the clock hands suddenly started speeding around the dial. They raced around, as if in pursuit of an elusive, perfect time, until finally coming to rest exactly 8 hours ahead. A co-worker and I watched as, first, quitting time came and went, then evening -- "I missed dinner!" she exclaimed -- and finally a very, very late bedtime.

As this was by far the most exciting thing to happen at work that day, the two of us wasted no time in telling our co-workers about it, and everyone came to stare at the clock, as if by doing so we could divine its mysteries.

The following day at the same time the clock hands once again sped around the dial, stopping short of the correct time. Sometime later it happened again, and this time the clock finally showed the right time.

We thought that was the end of it, and we would have to look elsewhere for entertainment and diversion, but on the third day at the same time the clock again sped up to 8 hours head. This time there were several witnesses, and we all stared at the clock as if seeing a spaceship land right there in our hallway.

We immediately began formulating conspiracy theories about the cause and meaning of the clock's behavior. The most popular theory involved some sort of cataclysmic atomic event, which for some reason had no effect on anything but our one humble clock. Perhaps, we thought, it portended some yet future, more catastrophic event, one that might possibly allow us to leave work early.

So of course we did what anyone would do in the face of such a momentous occasion: We are planning a party around this event, as one might share an eclipse with others, or the aurora borealis. Of course we will have food, and possibly little festive flags to wave, and maybe we'll invite the press. And soon the salespeople will be knocking on our door: "I heard you need a new clock...."

Fly vs. human

Today we discuss a phenomenon that has baffled the scientific community for years: the curious occurrence whereby one can be outside for hours, days even, without observing a single common fly, and yet the minute the door to the house is opened even the tiniest of cracks, a fly comes from nowhere, finds the crack in the door and speeds in, then commences to zoom around the house in kamikaze fashion, having no obvious purpose other than to drive you insane.

According to a theory put forth recently (6:23 a.m. today) to explain this mysterious occurrence, flies do not actually exist without certain conditions. In a similar manner to the way tornadoes need warm, moist air, a cold front, and a state in the Midwest containing several trailer parks in order to form, flies need the following in order to become actual entities:

a) the mixture of different air masses caused by indoor air meeting outdoor air just outside an open door, OR

b) the presence of one molecule of picnic food.

When one of these conditions is met, you suddenly have Insta-Fly, which is equipped with a jet engine and the most advanced enemy-detection radar, and is able to sustain speeds of up to 16,792 mph without landing on any actual surface for weeks. Individuals pursuing the Insta-fly in their home are often found days later, weakened and near death from an ill-advised oath to kill the fly no matter what, whose hands must be pried off the flyswatter in a complicated medical procedure.

Once in the home, the Insta-Fly is attracted not only to leftover picnic food -- or anything resembling food, such as tinned ham -- but also to light. For this reason it is advised to keep all lights off in the house but one, which theoretically (as put forth at 6:37 a.m. today) will attract the fly and offer the homeowner a slim chance of isolating and swatting it. For this to be effective, however, ALL lights in the rest of the house must be kept off while the fly is at large, which may be upwards of 16 days, and family members must be continually reminded of this fact:

Family member in charge of pursuing fly (reaching into bathroom and shutting light off): I said no lights! It'll attract the fly!

Family member in bathroom: But I'm putting on my masca -- ow! It went in my eye! Turn that light back on!

Fly: Bzzzzzzzzz.

Young family member (gleefully): Too late!

Note that the fly can never be coaxed back outside, due to reasons for which there is not yet a theoretical explanation (6:52 a.m). Fortunately, Insta-Fly is made of materials that gradually break down once the initial conditions of formation fade, causing the fly to exhibit slower and slower response times until finally, no longer able to hold itself aloft, it falls directly into the tinned ham.

Finally, to cheers from family members, the exhausted fly chaser declares that, once again, lights may safely be turned on in the house. But no one, under penalty of severe torture, may ever again open an outside door.

Up, up, and awaaaaaaaay [crash]

After a winter in which all the snow that usually falls everywhere else in the world was collected and dumped directly on us, our area went directly into a season resembling the climate of Venus, which is the hottest planet in the solar system because it is inhabited solely by women of a certain age, who go there when they "need some air" (although some, like certain members of my family, go into the freezer, which is much closer and does not require a visa and flight training).

This early swelter has caused confusion in the natural world, where flowers have been blooming several weeks before their time, mosquitoes are hatching at rates enabling them to mount large-scale attacks on humans, certain individuals believe that they appear attractive in Speedos, etc.

Cicadas, who generally tune up their bands (such as "Buddy and the Wings") in August, began making appearances in June this year. Although no 17-year cicadas are scheduled to make an appearance here this year, with all the general confusion caused by the early hot weather we would not be surprised to see them.

The 17-year cicada is known primarily for three things:

1. Erratic flying (motto: "Why fly direct?")

2. Large, red, horror-movie eyes that frighten even other cicadas ("Mo-o-o-om! He's looking at me!" "Reginald, stop looking at your brother. Now.")

3. An extremely long life cycle, consisting of 99.999996% dozing and .000004% actively seeking directions to Outback Steakhouse

These cicadas appear to be made in China with whatever materials are close at hand, such as cheap plastic, because they have a tendency to just fall apart in midflight. This may also be due to the fact that, with their poor navigational skills, it takes them too long to get to wherever they are going, and they fall apart just as their warranty is running out. If they do manage to make contact with a solid object -- such as a person's head -- they break into millions of insect parts, revealing a little-known fact: Cicadas are actually insect crash dummies.

These things are 17 years in the making. Clearly, during that time they are doing nothing that will help them adapt to the new life they will have when they emerge. I would encourage the cicada world to consider using that time to build up their members' flying skills -- perhaps start a flight school, complete with an instructional manual like The Complete Cicada Guide to Improving Flight Navigation: A 17-Year Course (Illustrated with Photos and Diagrams).

With practice and proper training, cicadas might be able to learn how to fly directly from Point A to Point B without falling apart. Someday, they could even make it all the way to Venus.

Plants and worms and singing birds, oh my!

For people like me, who cannot tell when plants need to be watered until they are crawling to the faucet, help comes in the form of the moisture meter, which is a little stick you place in the ground or flower pot that tells you when you need to water and when you have drowned your plants.

Thanks to intense lobbying from the Supporters of Attractive Moisture Meters, moisture meters are not the boring appliances you might think. For instance, you can get a worm meter. Known affectionately as Wormie, it is a little terracotta worm that changes color to let you know whether or not you need to water the plants. If it is a light color, the plants need some attention, which may involve singing the words "Oh, do you know the plant parts, the plant parts, the plant parts," to the tune of "Do You Know the Muffin Man?"

No, not really! If Wormie turns light, it means you should water the plants. When the plants are sufficiently watered, the worm will turn dark. If the worm explodes, immediately remove Wormie and all affected plants to a safe location, such as your neighbor's yard.

If worms are not really your thing, you may be a good candidate for the singing bird moisture meter, which indicates that plants need water by singing. Through some design flaw, the bird also sings when the plants have been overwatered, so if you are a Class 1 Plant Dummy as I am, you might be confused by whether the bird is singing because the plants are too dry or too wet. To be on the safe side, you might keep both the worm and the bird around, although you may notice that the more the bird whistles merrily, the paler the worm will get, regardless of how wet the soil is.

Moisture meters also come in many other picturesque forms, such as frogs, flowers, windmills, trains, planes, American flags, space shuttles, the president, macaroni and cheese boxes, etc. Because I have a tendency to water my plants too much, I personally need a moisture meter that senses me approaching from, oh, 75 feet, and immediately sends an alarm to summon the Garden Police, who, within minutes, would swarm the garden and confiscate all my watering equipment.

Hopefully they would leave Wormie.

A persuasive effort

Kids have been bugging their parents to let them have a pet ever since pets were invented, and probably before that ("Can I have a pet, Daddy?" "What's a pet?" "I don't know, but Timmy has one.")

But their techniques for accomplishing this have become much more sophisticated now, thanks in part to the schools, whose job it is to teach children to become smarter than their parents, preferably without the parents realizing this. As a consequence, kids are learning things much sooner than they used to.

Take writing, for instance. Here is a comparison of the writing curriculum when I was in school, and a typical writing curriculum today:

Writing assignment, first grade, circa a long time ago: Write something. Try to stay on the paper.

Writing assignment, first grade, present day: Write a persuasive essay on a topic of your choice. Your essay must involve complex philosophical ideas or political arguments and be accompanied by a 10-slide PowerPoint presentation.

So now when kids want a pet, they can write up an impressive persuasive essay and make a formal presentation to their audience, Mom and Dad. Unfortunately, though techniques have changed, kids themselves have not changed all that much, and a kid who writes a persuasive essay on having a pet is statistically no more likely to actually take care of the pet than a kid who has to rely on more traditional methods, such as begging. A smart parent will see right through the child's persuasive points on why the child should be allowed to get a pet:

1. Having a pet will teach me responsibility. (Or how to foist responsibility on others.)

2. Having a pet will help me get exercise. (Or help Mommy get exercise.)

3. It will be fun. (Until the pet relieves itself in an unapproved location.)

4. We can be friends. (Until Ashley moves in across the street.)

5. I will feed it and take care of it and take it for walks and wash it and... (For about two nanoseconds after the pet first arrives.)

My friend's first grader was given one of these persuasive essay assignments in school. He chose to write about how he might, hypothetically, benefit from having a pet, in the hopes that, hypothetically, his parents might get one.

"Are you persuaded?" the father asked the mother after reading the persuasive essay.

"Not exactly," she said. "Maybe he should have done the PowerPoint..."

Recalculating our vacation

Presently we are in the process of choosing a location for our vacation, which like all other social activities must fit in around Joe's class schedule. This schedule leaves a window of approximately 16 minutes the entire summer for trips and other fun.

Now, the ideal vacation spot requires careful consideration. In our case, an ideal vacation is basically defined as anyplace that will not require us to drive over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.

The Bay Bridge, which consists of two bridges side by side, was designed by engineers with a sincere and twisted desire to reduce drivers to blubbering cowards. Supposedly it is only five miles long, but through some little-known miracle of engineering it stretches as you are driving on it, so that the actual distance is closer to infinity. Instead of having enclosed barriers on the sides, there are simply open railings, which allow you to see the full distance from you to the bay (approximately 900 miles, straight down).

And if the distance and wide-open view are not enough to frighten you, once a day one lane of one bridge is opened to traffic going in the opposite direction, so that you are trapped between vehicles rushing toward you on one side, and the cold, cruel waters of the bay on the other side.

After exiting the toll booth on a recent trip over the bridge, I very astutely observed that my car was approaching the westbound bridge rather than the eastbound bridge, and reluctantly entered the Lane of Doom.

Approached from that side the bridge goes straight up, and you begin to stare so hard at the car in front of you in order to pretend that large vehicles are not driving at light speed inches from you, that you not only memorize that car's license plate but also its every curve and dent. Someday, if you ever make it to the other side of the bridge -- and this is not assured -- you may see this car again, and you will immediately recognize it and go over to the driver and fall at his or her feet, declaring your everlasting thanks and loyalty for having saved your sanity.

Just when you begin to relax a little, and think that maybe, with your eyes glued to that car and humming loudly every comforting hymn you ever learned, you will make it to the other side, you hear a voice. But this voice does not comfort you. This voice is the voice of your GPS, which is having seizures as it attempts to understand why, in the face of the wonderful relationship the two of you have built, you are driving on the wrong bridge. And it attempts to get you off.

It does this by saying repeatedly, "Recalculating. Recalculating. Recalculating. Please drive to the highlighted -- Recalculating. Please drive to the highlighted -- Recalculating."

And you cannot turn the voice off, because your hands have become one with the wheel, and you cannot spare any body part to yank the GPS out. So you settle for making a solemn vow to recalculate the GPS woman into the bay, which has no effect whatsoever on the voice, but which at least gives you something to look forward to should you in fact survive this trip.

And so, you can be sure that our vacation will not take us over this bridge, even if we have to drive 1,643 miles out of our way to avoid it. And even if the GPS woman begins to drone, "Recalculating. Recalculating. Recalculating."

No-grow

In the ongoing effort to make our yard look attractive while minimizing the need for actual skill in keeping things alive, I recently purchased a number of old sap buckets and a beat-up wash tub. They are all painted in attractive pastel colors, probably to hide the fact that they are so rusted through the paint is basically the only thing holding them together. These I plan to place strategically around the yard in an effort to provide some color should my flowers fail me, which, statistically speaking, is more likely than the chance that you will, at some point in your lifetime, put something edible into your mouth.

"Are you going to plant flowers in them?" my mother said when I told her about the buckets.

"Noooo, I'm trying to think of something nonliving to put in them, like maybe rocks or shells. Just so I don't have to try to keep something alive," I said.

There was silence while she digested the fact that, despite her best efforts at instilling in me an appreciation for life's finer things, I was deliberately building a junkyard.

My mother has always been dismayed at my affinity for primitive antiques, and laments the fact that I will readily pay for someone else's old stuff when I could have her old stuff for free.

Do you...have any flowers anywhere?" she asked tentatively.

"You mean live ones?"

She sighed. "Vegetables?" she asked, without much hope.

"I do my best to support the local grocer," I said.

Finally she seemed to resign herself to my low-brow tastes and lack of talent. "You know," she said, "if you need another old wash tub..."