Oh, sweet! I would totally use a city bike rental scheme. I’m reluctant to invest in a bike without knowing how much use I’d get out of it, so this would be perfect.

My sister sent me some photos of Penn’s first professional haircut. The lady cut off his crazy wildman hair and turned him into a little yuppie! I said to the Snook: “You know who he looks like? Calvin! In that strip where they’re trying to take his Christmas picture and his hair’s all slicked down and he keeps pulling faces.” So I surfed over to the Calvin & Hobbes Index to look up the date of the strip, and then found it in our Complete Collection. I give you proof:

Look well, Sis, for that is your future!

Things That Are Different in Our New House, Mostly Because It’s Not a Dank Cave:

• I wake up between 6-6:30 every morning to the sight of sunlight streaming in the window.
• I come home and immediately open the front door and the patio door so I can feel the breeze.
• I made some serious smoke with the new stove last night, and it didn’t set off the fire alarms. In fact, it cleared out of the house within 10 minutes.
• I don’t have to make a special effort to see what the weather’s like before I leave the house. There’s always a window within sight.
• I saw a currawong from my desk yesterday morning. Snookums helped me identify it. Nature! Right where I can see it!

I feel like all this light and air flow are going to make such a difference to our moods and health. You should see the piles of dust (and MOLD!) we’re finding behind things at the old place. We talking Is Your House Killing You? territory, folks.

Need a little pick-me-up? Watch this adorable YouTube video. I don’t normally like such things, but I liked this one.

I got a phone call today just before lunch.

Guy: Hi, this is Rob calling from EB Games about your pre-order–
Me: EEK! IT’S HERE, ISN’T IT?
Guy: Yes. Your copy of High School Musical: Sing It is here.
Me: Sweeeeet. hysterical laughter Am I the only one who pre-ordered it?
Guy: Yes.

I’ve been reading the reviews, and they’re pretty much what I expected. Still, I think I’m gonna have fun with this. I was also excited to pass this tidbit along to the Snook: “If you have a friend who doesn’t want to sing, he or she can use the d-pad to rotate between percussion instruments — cowbell, drum, etc. — and then shake the Wiimote to use the instrument as you sing.” I CAN SING AND HE CAN PLAY THE COWBELL. (It’s like we’ll have our own band!) And it comes with a microphone in case anymore Singstar type games come out for Wii.

On AskMeFi: What’s it like to feel loved? I wrote about my Mom.

We gotta move these refrigerators…
I’ve had Dire Straits stuck in my head all day. This morning was to be the final big push of the move, the day that we moved the last of the heavy appliances. I had a brainwave last night and called up a nearby secondhand whitegoods store. “Hi, I’ve moved into a new house and I’ve now got an extra washing machine. Do you want it? And as long as you’re here, can you help us move a fridge?” (That’s what you call putting your feminine wiles to work.) The guy agreed to come by this morning “between 9 and 10” to pick up the washing machine and help us move stuff. By 9am the Snook and I had emptied the fridge into a cooler, unhooked all the washer connections, and shifted all three appliances into place near their respective front doors. Then we waited. And we waited. And he didn’t turn up. At 10am I rang the shop again to find out where he was. The guy who answered didn’t know: “He hasn’t gotten in to work yet.” He asked if we could stay til 11:30. “Uh, we’ve both already taken time off to be here NOW. That really sucks.” So as I stood there, fuming, something snapped. “F*** IT. WE’RE MOVING THEM OURSELVES.” Thus, fueled with the kind of adrenaline that only comes of being screwed by a service professional, the Snook and I got to work. And folks, we moved both washing machines and that fridge (up six stairs!) with only a two-wheeled trolley and the sweat of our own brows. It was glorious. I’ll probably be sore tomorrow, but today I feel like a superwoman.

Oh, and the washing machine guy finally turned up 45 minutes late. He took the old washer and gave us $100 credit at the shop. Better than nothing, I guess!

Anthony Bourdain bags out the current “stars” of the Food Network. HA! We watched a fair bit of FN when we were in Indiana last April, and Snookums still has nightmares about “that Italian chick with the huge teeth.” (Link courtesy of patrick.)

For those who are interested, in the five days my site has been at my new web host, mod_security has successfully repelled 384,360 spam comment attacks on the site. That’s over 76,000 per day. And while I’ve done all I can to thwart them, I feel really powerless and frustrated by this. Whoever is doing this: YOU REALLY SUCK.