Ganked from MustangSally78, waaaaay more fun than getting ready for work:

The Internet proudly presents: The Find Sherlock Holmes game!!

1) Go to Wikipedia.
2) Click Random Article (on the left navigation bar)
3) From there, only using links in articles, navigate yourself to Holmes's page
4) Post your path here.


OK. Here's mine:

1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeannine_Taylor -- What?! Are you kidding me? Friday the 13th movies or Keene, New Hampshire? Those are my options? Wait, New Hampshire must link back to England somehow...

2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keene,_New_Hampshire - easy peasy

3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/England - Ha, this'll be easy. Wait, nothing about literature? Try culture...

4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_England - still nothing about literature? Are you kidding me?

5) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_literature - okay, here we go. Wait, still nothing? What's wrong with you people?

6) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian_literature - finally, a glimmer of hope.

7) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Conan_Doyle - ha!

8) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_Holmes - way too many steps, but I'll take it.

Pack up drive to airport fly there check into the hotel unpack walk to Rockefeller Center walk to Times Square have dinner sleep get up walk to Empire State Building three times (don't ask) enjoy the view eat lunch walk to Flatiron Building take subway to Chrysler Building walk to UN Building walk to St Patrick's walk home rest walk to Virgil's BBQ eat amazing food walk home sleep get up walk to Grand Central take subway to Forbidden Planet walk to The Strand buy art in Union Square walk to Movie Star News take subway to upper west side eat pizza walk to Museum of Natural History take cab home rest walk to dinner buy snacks from Hershey store walk home sleep get up take subway to The Met take bus home rest have room service sleep get up walk 42nd street and imagine how it used to be walk to Champion Stamps take subway to financial district walk the perimeter of the WTC site walk to Trinity Church walk to Statue of Liberty eat lunch take subway home have dinner delivered sleep get up walk to MoMA have amazing mindblowing lunch at Alfredo walk to Central Park walk through Central Park crap out at 79th street take rickshaw to other side of park (poor man) walk to Guggenheim take bus home rest walk to 42nd & 8th see The Informer (awesome) walk home sleep get up walk to Rockefeller Center take elevator to Top of the Rock enjoy the view sit at Starbuck's walk home pack up take cab to airport fly home drive home sigh contendedly.

So how was your week?

Our long national nightmare has ended. We are married, at last.

Now I'm reading up on WWII on wikipedia, so that if I *do* end up back in 1940 somehow, I can go see the FDR and use my extensive knowledge of the future to convince him to enter the war and remove Hitler sooner, thereby saving millions of lives.

Sometimes, I forget that time is linear and reality exists.

Facebook has taken over my life. I've been updating there like a mad updating thing, to the complete neglect of my LJ. A few things of note:

1) We're getting married on Wednesday. It'll be a courthouse ceremony with only ourselves in attendance. Rings arrived this week; attire and grooming and post-ceremony activities still need attention. Having a wedding means nothing to me, but I have to say I'm very excited to be married.

2) We're going on a honeymoon to NYC for a week. The store will be closed for this time, as we have no employees and no one to take over. This makes me nervous, but there's nothing for it. I just can't let myself think about any new customers that might come by to check us out, find us closed, and never return.

3) A near-stranger will be living in my house while we're away. She's a vet tech from the clinic that sees all our pets, and I'm glad someone competent will be on hand to tend their various health needs, but still. Someone else staying there without us kinda creeps me out. I hope the pets don't like her better than me.

4) I'm in a big band phase. I'm sitting here listening to Glenn Miller and knitting a baby sweater while tending a newsstand... help me, I'm in a time warp! I'd love to set the wayback machine for the 1940s and stay there a while, it if wasn't for WWII and the absence of Facebook.

As our nuptials loom ever-closer, the debate rages in our house over what to have engraved on our rings. We need a decision in the next couple of days. Our default position will be our initials and the date, but other leading contenders are:

1) "Oh shit, I lost my ring."
2) "Honey, have you seen my ring?"
3) "if you can read this you're too close"
4) "Drop in any mailbox, return postage guaranteed."
5) "Harmful or fatal if swallowed"

I swear, we're taking this seriously. Really!

I have been at the office for four hours now without doing a lick of work. Procrastination FTW!

For some reason, Milwaukee has it's big fireworks display on July 3. Yeah, I don't know either.

Last night, fortified by a gigantic pitcher of margaritas and a scrumptious Mexican dinner, we wandered down to one of the lakefront parks with a blanket and a few hundred other residents to watch the show.

It was awesome, except for the fact that the fireworks were completely hidden from view by a curve of the lake and forest of gigantic trees. D'oh! Honestly, this was one of the funniest things I've ever witnessed. All of us gathered on a grassy hillside, a half dozen grills serving up tasty BBQ treats, music pumping from portable stereos, children laughing and dancing, eyes turned expectantly towards the sky for... nothing.

The first couple of booms reached us with no attending visuals, and after about a 5 second lag to process this info, everyone realized at once that we were in the completely wrong place. Most people jumped up and started trotting down the street in search of a better vantage point. But the show was actually a looong ways away and required hiking down (and more importantly, back up) a steep incline. So we bagged it and went home, where we could still hear the booms for almost an hour.

Epic! Fireworks! FAIL!

We'll give it another shot tonight with our local village show.

I'm in one of those "so over-exerted it hurts to breathe" places right now. Everything hurts. I can barely walk. But I'm almost too tired / too sore to sleep, as my muscles and nerves are singing out loud.

I drove my ass all the way down to Kenosha for a craft fair this morning. Parking was miserable and far away and downhill from the exhibitor space. I bought a canopy this week after being rained on and then sunburnt at a fair two weeks ago, and wrestling that thing up and down the hill and setting it up solo nearly did me in. It's unbelievably easy setup as far as canopies go - it's amazing that one person can do it at all - but it takes some doing.

Then I sat there all day and hardly made a sale. In fact, I made back less than half of my entry fee in gross sales, not to mention the cost of goods sold. I'm not taking this personally or anything, but it's still maddening. This seemed to be the same for everyone, which I found not the least bit comforting. It's very frustrating to give up a rare weekend day off and go through all that bloody effort in order to lose money.

And I'm about to bleed, so everything feels especially dire and irksome. Blech.

Living with 18 year-old cats, I sometimes forget there are kittehs out there with energy. The one at about the 2-minute mark is just gorgeous.