Not Swine Flu

Well, I was busy, and a bit out of it, but the rumors that I’m the first blogger to come down Swine Flu are completely false, and let me be the first to spread, uh, deny them.

In fact, now that Richmond has opened a call center where you can find out the facts behind The! World’s! Ending! Pandemic!, I expect to be reporting regularly on The Disease With The So-Not-Kosher Name.

(There are some religious nutjobs in Israel who are demanding that the name of the disease be changed, as it’s unkosher. This was even before Egypt started slaughtering its pigs, and Iraq decided to kill three wild boars in its zoo. You may roll your eyes at both of these actions. I sure did.)

Poor little piggies.

Actually, I don’t care much for pigs. I think it’s that whole non-kosher thing going on. At least they don’t look like bugs. Lobsters look like giant bugs. Ew, you people actually eat them? And shrimp? Little bugs. Ew, ew, and ew.

Oh, there’s an awesomely funny Onion video about the UN. If you haven’t seen it, go watch it over at Charles’ place. I’m too lazy to get the embed code. Don’t miss reading the crawls and alerts popping up, they’re utterly hilarious as well.

I think what I needed to get out of the funk I was in was a long lunch and shopping expedition with Sarah. So today, I went on a long lunch and shopping expedition, after making sure that the crisis at work from last night that kept me up until 2 a.m. was solved. Five hours sleep is not conducive to solving problems. Not even little ones. But happily, it got solved without my having to say, “Uhhh… what?”

So Sarah and I went to the Sears Scratch’n’Dent shop to look at gas stoves. I’m planning on spending my income tax refund on getting rid of my electric stove (Goodwill, probably) and replacing it with a proper gas stove. They’re more expensive than I had realized, though as Sarah pointed out, I don’t exactly have a history of buying stoves. In fact, I’ve bought exactly zero of them to date. Which reminds me, now I have to go check out the model numbers I wrote down and see how they stack up at Consumer Reports.

We had lunch at a great bar/restaurant that I haven’t been to in ages. We thought that tattoos were a requirement for waitstaff, and I expressed my concern to our waitress that she was going to be fired for not having one. We decided that the management must have decided to broaden the range of employees to people who don’t actually practice body art and piercings. It’s a good restaurant, though. We had a lovely time, and went to the used bookstore across the street, and followed that up with a visit to the candy store. (I have honeycomb sponge calling my name now.) And there was also a trip to a great store in Richmond that reminds me very much of the stores I used to frequent in Upper Montclair (and Montclair), New Jersey. Seeing an acquaintance from my old synagogue there was an added bonus.

Ahhhh. Yes, I feel human again. So what if I had to work late to make up for the long lunch? Totally worth it.