Poem for Friday

A poem by younger son, who tells me that the spelling errors are the fault of the boy who typed it into the computer while he was searching for graphics.

Had a hectic day, as both kids' magnet program applications have to be postmarked tomorrow and one son had not finished an essay and the other son's school guidance counselor never got the form she needs to fill out (son says he gave it to one of the school secretaries, though knowing son it is possible that it got buried in his desk and he gave the secretary something else entirely). Husband played interference figuring out where all the forms had gone and what still needed to be mailed. We think we have everything now, but considering that younger son in particular had to finish his essays and has both spelling and vocabulary tests tomorrow, plus violin to practice for recitals on two consecutive days, the afternoon was a bit high-maintenance.

Once we had the guidance counselor stuff figured out, though, I had a nice few hours with eating sushi and watching the David Tennant/Laura Fraser Casanova, which makes a fantastic contrast to the Heath Ledger/Sienna Miller Casanova. I liked the framing story, in which Tennant has grown old to be Peter O'Toole, and while it's fun if Casanova falls in love with a feminist and has a happy life, it probably makes more sense that a doomed romance would be the great love of his life. Not as lushly filmed but the BBC version covers many more courts of Europe which are portrayed with interesting stylistic effects and costumes, and the acting is really superb.

Older son came home and announced that the school had been evacuated for half an hour in the morning because of a gas leak -- someone had left one of the ovens on overnight and the building stank of gas! The principal later sent out an e-mail that the fire department had come and certified the air fit for breathing but it sounds like it really smelled and was not a pleasant day. And they don't even know who screwed up! I also discovered things I really did not want to know about the Wii and the existence of $1200 Steuben Glass penguins, which younger son will NOT be getting for Chanukah.


A Przewalski's Horse, also known as Mongolian Wild Horses, once common all over Asia, believed to be extinct in the wild since the 1960s and reintroduced after an aggressive breeding project.


The National Zoo has two in DC -- a male and a female, I presume. There are more at the Zoo's Conservation and Research Center in Front Royal, Virginia.


They live in what was formerly the camel enclosure, after the zoo's camel died unexpectedly last year. Hopefully there will be a baby horse soon.

Watched Smallville and Shark. Was thrilled that Lana was sent to Amsterdam for the bulk of the episode -- oh, Lex, do that more often! -- and that the show made some attempt to talk about a social issue, as I have some hope that with the Green Arrow around, they could have a Justice League type setup. I really appreciated Clark identifying himself as an illegal alien and calling his mother on it when she tried to pull the "but I'm in Congress now" card. Not so crazy about Clark marching into the mansion only to be reminded by Lex that he's no longer welcome there, not at all crazy about seeing Lex with all the people locked up in 33.1 -- he turned evil without logic this time, really -- not remotely crazy about Lana being too dumb to know she IS being manipulated even as she's berating Clark for assuming she's not making her own decisions, and still not warm to Chloe/Jimmy because he's still being written as so much dumber than she is. Didn't love Shark in part because I apparently missed an episode over Thanksgiving when I assumed they were showing a rerun and missed all the excitement with his daughter; can anyone catch me up on the stuff that's vague, like whether she was lying about her sex life? And I was glad to see Jeri Ryan getting a bit of character backstory and some emotional growth but I really disliked the ending. So a rich society girl gets away with murder in a case where he'd have come down like a ton of bricks on someone from another walk of life...ugh.

I don't know whether this will be visible because I don't know whether support requests are locked by default, but I have been having this rather frustrating conversation with LiveJournal staffers because the recent suspensions of two music communities I watch over the number of tags they have made me nervous. In both cases the communities were suspended without warning and then told to get rid of the vast majority of their tags. I initially asked how many tags were too many -- I have more than 500, though I spent much of this evening condensing certain categories -- and I am frustrated that they won't give any kind of idea whether they might need to institute tag caps nor even put a warning in the FAQ stating that this problem can happen!