Since today is kindergarten registration day and Ms Thing has a half-day (yes, another one), a list follows. However, two for tomorrow, which I mention here so that I'll remember them: 1) after I pick up the Diva we are going to go do something that I've needed to do for a few years and 2) last Thursday I chopped off most of my hair, which makes me look a lot like my mom, which I find disturbing on a number of levels. There will be a picture.

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Many things:

* If I didn't have kids and cats, I'd totally get a few of these sheep to have around the house. However, given the kids and cats, I can only image what they'd look like after a week.

* I live in Maple Syrup Nation. Now I just need to find some Buckeye Chickens.

* McDonald's odd menu items from around the globe. The green tea milkshake sounds really good.

* John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman have a podcast. Mmmmm.

* Yet another book to add to my ever-growing list: Armageddon in Retrospect, as reviewed by the great Roy Blount, Jr., whose Long Time Leaving: Dispatches from Up South was my first audible.com purchase and great knitting listening.

* Lately, I've been thinking about making a dollhouse. Yes, really. Used to be fascinated by them as a kid. But this is the sort of dollhouse I'd want -- and I bet the Diva would agree.

* Having living in Knoxville, which if it isn't the buckle of the Bible Belt is one of its holes, I spent the whole time I was reading this review of Daniel Radosh's book shaking my head in agreement. Sample quote: "A Christian friend who'd grown up totally sheltered once wrote to me that the first time he heard a Top 40 station he was horrified, and not because of the racy lyrics: "Suddenly, my lifelong suspicions became crystal clear," he wrote. "Christian subculture was nothing but a commercialized rip-off of the mainstream, done with wretched quality and an apocryphal insistence on the sanitization of reality.""

* Two folks who are doing good work and who I sorta know and want to heap praise upon# -- Jessamyn Harris, who I would book to shoot the family if she lived closer, and Teresa Brittain, whose lampworked jewelry I dearly love and wear when life permits.

# because one of the perks of having a navel-gazing blog is that I can do that.