Flotsam

Because it has occurred to me that not all of you share my deep and abiding love for test results, today I offer you two separate posts. We here at Flotsam aim to please, and so allow me to present Door #1—a post about sundry non-reproductive topics, and Door #2—a post devoted entirely to yesterday’s rather dramatic visit to Dr. Doctor.

Overheard last night
The Nearly, on the couch watching television, to Willie, one of our cats:

“Do you want to watch Jaws? He doesn’t eat cats, because cats don’t go near the water.”

More answers to your questions
Wessel, from Israel, writes*:

Q: “Is there anyone in your life that you would like to kill right now? Why? Any plans?”

A: Funny you should ask. I have been working like Slavey McToil for the past few weeks—arriving at the office early and leaving late, skipping lunch, taking stacks of pages home with me that I am then too exhausted to work on. It has made it impossible for me to keep up with commenting on the blogs of others, much less update my own. All this because of the Short, Powerfully Frumpy Attorney Editor on my tiny jurisdictional team. You see, attorney editors suggest changes but do not actually make them themselves. So if the SPFAE decides that all of the amendment notes in a 1230 page volume should be rewritten in a different style—for reasons unknown—she merely makes a few notations in green pen, flags the page, and trips merrily off to buy more hideous pleated “slacks,” while I spend the next 14 hours rewriting said amendment notes and cursing my fate.
My plan is sort of a modified tar-and-feathering: I will cover her all over with page flags and gather a mob of editors to chase her from the town brandishing torches made from rolled-up manuscripts set alight.

Babies: An Idea Whose Time Has Come
Perhaps it is merely my infernal infertile bitterness, but I find those “Having a Baby Changes Everything” commercials, by Johnson & Johnson, annoying in the extreme. And odd. They do not mention any products, but merely extol the virtues of babies, a la ad campaigns like “Beef: It’s what’s for Dinner” and “The Power Of Cheese.” Is the American Baby Council (ABC) troubled by declining interest in their product? Have babies fallen out of fashion? What’s next—“Babies: The Anti-Drug?” “Vote Baby in 2006?”

At long last…
My whip has arrived! I have decided to call her Dinah:

The picture doesn’t do her justice—she is the sleekest smallest dark shiny charcoal-colored machine you ever did see.