1. "Kids" by Lady Danville (cover of MGMT) - I think that the original "Kids" is one of the greatest rock songs of the new millenium.  This is a softer-edged cover by this super cute alt-pop trio that I heard open for Ben Folds one time.  This one is a bit of a shout-out to my friend Donna, who was with me at the Ben Folds concert.
2. "Imitosis" by Andrew Bird - This one's for my friend Dayna.  We discovered Andrew Bird together when he opened for Wilco at a show we saw.
3. "Brothers in Arms" by Dire Straits - this might possibly be my favorite song of all time.  At any rate, when it comes on the iPod I never, ever skip it.  Also a bit for Rachel, she knows why.
4. "The Shankhill Butchers" by The Decemberists
5. "John Wayne Gacy, Jr." by Sufjan Stevens
6. "Everybody Knows You Cried Last Night" by The Fratellis
7. "Sorrow" by The National
8. "On the Radio" by Regina Spektor
9. "Hard to be Good" by My Little Pony
10. "Marry Song" by Band of Horses
11.  "How to Fight Loneliness" by Wilco
12. "White Winter Hymnal" by Fleet Foxes
13.  "Between Two Lungs" by Florence + the Machine
14. "Diablo Rojo" by Rodrigo y Gabriela
15. "Horchata" by Vampire Weekend

Wow.

So in pondering things I'd like to do in London, naturally I decided that I absolutely have to visit the zoo! As a docent at the good old Columbus Zoo & Aquarium it is my SWORN DUTY to check out other zoos and buy pins from their gift shops to put on my badge lanyard. Then I thought, I could make my life a little easier if I just buy my ticket online right now. So that's what I did.

I read a little about the London Zoo and it's...tiny. I am not disparaging, so my British friends, take no offence! But just as a comparison, the London Zoo is 32 acres. The Columbus Zoo is about 250 acres. At the moment. It's about to become about half again as large.

That wasn't what gave me the WOW, though. You can get a lot of awesome stuff into a small area. It wasn't that it's small, it's that it's expensive. I bought a ticket for a Monday, off-peak hours. It cost me $32 USD. Admission at our zoo is $12. I don't mind paying it. It was just a bit O_O.

But it's only 2 miles from where I'm staying (two streets away from Paddington Station), looks like I can pretty much walk there.

So my friend Brian and I share website hosting on GoDaddy; we each pay for our own domain name under one account (he originally designed and uploaded my website, so this was easiest).  It's about $60 a year for my site.

I had paid the yearly subscription in March.  Yesterday Brian and I each got this email, a receipt saying that my credit card had been charged about $60 for "New Account."  I wondered if maybe he'd opened a new site and had just chosen the wrong card for payment, but he knew nothing about it.  I started to get nervous.  What if someone had hacked our account?  That'd mean they could see both of our credit card numbers.  The last thing I need one month before my London trip is for my debit card to get hacked AGAIN.  Brian said he'd call them this morning and figure it out.

He did, and HOLY CRAP.  Apparently, it is GoDaddy's policy to once a year sign you up for a new account AND charge you for it, even though you didn't ask for it.  You have to contact them to have them delete it.  They did this to us last year too and we just didn't notice.  They refunded both this charge and last year's, so yay, an extra $60 I wasn't expecting.  So I guess that's good service that they refunded the money, but that has got to be one of the worst business practices I've ever heard.

How is that a good idea?  Just randomly charge your customers for products they didn't order?  That's like Eddie Bauer just sending me a down parka and charging me $300 for it just in case I might want it.

Shysty.  I mean, GoDaddy being shysty is nothing new.  And their website is the most horrible incomprehensible, impossible-to-navigate hellhole I've ever seen.

My tattoo is one week old today. Honestly, at the moment it looks pretty horrible. It's totally scabbed over and the scabs have picked up fuzz and such from my clothes although I tried to keep it uncovered as much as I could. The edges have de-scabbed and it's flaking off a bit at a time. Plus the scabbed area is tighter than the surrounding skin so it sort of...pulls. But the redness and swelling are gone, so it's healing up nicely. Man, how do people who get full sleeves or giant back pieces deal with all this scabbing? Admittedly mine is a solid-ink tattoo and some are lines only, but most of the real elaborate ones are extensively colored. I can't imagine having this scab all over my back. It'd be uncomfortable in the extreme.

Good thing I don't want to get a full back piece then, isn't it?

Watching my tattoo heal is sort of odd. It's like watching the ink sink into the skin. That's not what's happening, of course, it's that the surface skin that is inked is sloughing off and being replaced by un-inked healed skin over the top. It's noticeable right now just at the edges. The middle part is getting sort of scabby and rough (I know, I won't pick at it, don't worry). It's still a little bit sore and reddish, but it's only been three days.

Last night I met a couple of friends at the Franklin Park Conservatory, where every Thursday they have a cocktail thing where you get booze and snacks and can walk around the conservatory at night (it's a big glassed-in horticultural gardens, basically). They've done some renovations there to expand the main portion with an eye towards being better able to host weddings and events, and I hadn't been there since they did that. It's lovely. Being in there at night was kind of eerie. The garden rooms are lit, but not extensively. But the many Chihuly sculptures in there are lit, and they look especially cool at night. I'll post some pics when I load them off my camera.

Tonight I have HOMEWORK for my docent training. I'm to start assembling my little notebook that I'll take with me when I'm docent-ing, with facts about the animals and such. We'll be out in the zoo for a lot of the day tomorrow and thankfully it's to be pleasant weather. I will probably go right from there for a hike in one of the parks. Had a sunset hike last Wednesday. It was overcast, so no sunset, and we didn't see the bald eagles, so double bummer, but it was good company and a nice brisk walk so no arguments.

They have a skinny mocha at Starbucks now. This involves sugar-free chocolate. I understood that the reason they didn't have it before is because it is impossible to make sugar-free chocolate that does not taste HIDEOUS. But it's back, so I thought hey, maybe they found some amazing new SF chocolate.

Nope. Nasty. The baristas were like "Yeah, it's not our favorite" and happily made me a vanilla skinny latte instead.

My tattoo is starting to scab a little (that is supposed to happen, incidentally). Still looks great! I'm already contemplating others. I'd like at least one that reflects my secular humanist/skeptic/atheist philosophies. I'm thinking of getting Occam's Razor in Latin (numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate). There's also a super cool atheism symbol that I like. And of course something chemistry-related would be neat...a serotonin molecule is my top contender. It's easy to draw and simple, and it's the brain chemical thought to be responsible for feelings of happiness and contentment! Other contenders could be adrenaline, or something less concrete, like the Bohr model of the atom or an equation of some kind. SCIENCE.

Went for a walk last night with a couple of Babes, it felt great. Had dinner with Brian, spent like half an hour talking about "RuPaul's Drag Race," aka the awesomest reality show in the history of ever.

YOU GUYS GUESS WHAT I DID?

Yep. I got my first tattoo. I'd thought about it for...well, for years. I never doubted what I wanted, which was a little Bryn Mawr lantern. Let me explain a bit of what the lantern means.

When you get to Bryn Mawr, you learn that everyone has a lantern. They bring them to Step Sings (college-wide singalongs including everything from our high-falutin' Greek hymns to tearjerking rounds to wacky filked songs about smoking weed) of which there are four. At the first one, everyone has their lantern EXCEPT YOU because freshman don't get them until Lantern Night, in October. It's a nighttime ceremony with no lights except the lanterns and no words spoken, the only sound being the college hymns being sung. The freshman wear robes and are given their lanterns by the sophomore class. It's a symbol of our sisters passing the light of knowledge to us. It might sound arcane but it's pretty powerful. Most of us treasure our lanterns and keep them our whole lives.

So a lantern tattoo isn't exactly a novel idea. I know of at least one other Mawrter who has one (hers is on her ankle). I drew mine myself, sort of. I took the standard lantern cartouche that the college uses on letterheads and such and retraced it. The lines of the original were too thick and it'd get blocky looking when it got shrunk, so I made the lines slimmer.

The design wasn't the issue, but the location was the sticking point. I wanted it someplace that I could see it myself, so not on the ankle or the back or anything. I finally settled on the inner forearm. I actually taped a cutout of the design to that spot and wore it around for a few hours to see how I liked the location.

I went to the biggest most popular body-mod studio in town. They were very professional. The tattooing took about half an hour. It barely hurt. It got a bit pinchy when he was coloring in the lid of the lantern but it was very tolerable. It's a bit sore now, but it'll take a couple of weeks to heal completely.

They say once you get one tattoo you will always want more. Yeah...I'm kind of already plotting. I might have my graduation year added to the lantern. And I have other ideas. But I don't want to get ahead of myself. I want to live with it for awhile. I'm still getting used to it being there. I keep catching sight of it out of the corner of my eye and being startled!

But I love how it turned out, I think it looks great. Yay!

My life just got a lot busier. Didn't think that was possible, but there you go.

Saturday I had my first day of docent training at the Columbus Zoo. It was great! Pretty big class of new docents, almost twenty. We learned about zoos in general and our zoo in particular, did some paperwork, you know. The zoo's COO came in to talk to us and he brought a really big kitty! He often goes on talk shows with Jack Hanna, and two of their keeper helpers brought in a one-year-old cheetah! He was so beautiful! And his purr was super loud. I'll have three more eight-hour training sessions...next week we start learning about regions of the zoo.

And then, after some deliberation, I have just agreed to take over running my hiking club. I've been leading events for it since the start, but it wasn't my club. Our founder and organizer is stepping down because she had a baby in October, and surprisingly is finding that she doesn't have time to keep running the club like she thought she would. At first I resisted, but then decided to go ahead. I want the club to keep running, I plan to be more laid-back about it, and get a lot of other people to also run events so I don't lose my damn mind.

Saturday evening I had a friend come over to hang and watch some TV. I went into the kitchen to cut up some cheese for us and somehow I ended up purging and reorganizing my pantry. Not sure how that happened. She arrived and found me knee-deep in stale cereal and baking supplies.

Tomorrow it will be three months until I leave for London! Wow!

I just made my lodging reservation for London! Everything's going according to plan! Yippee!

I start my docent training tomorrow. They've advised us to dress appropriately because part of the training will take place out in the zoo. So naturally after weeks of it being like fifty degrees, tomorrow it's going to be snowing and twenty degrees. *le sigh* At least I'll get to haul out my down coat, which hasn't seen action yet so far this winter.

Lately my at-work sorta-viewing on Netflix Streaming has been "Frasier." God, it is a delight to watch that show again (well, listen to it). It is just as funny as it was when it aired. One thing I've noticed that went by me the first time around is that Frasier has many, many dates with women, but they are always of an appropriate age for him (unless their age-inappropriateness is part of the joke). They didn't throw a ton of bimbos at him. The women Frasier dated were in their thirties and forties, and were professional women who had it together (for the most part). I appreciate that.

And unexpected guest stars keep popping up! Alan Tudyk! Rene Auberjonois! OMG I forgot Felicity Huffman was in this!

I actually got a little misty when I watched that episode where Niles had the heart surgery. Jane Leeves sorta broke my heart a little.

I have been invited to attend Ascendio as a guest panelist for the Quill Track aspect of the convention, i.e. writing and ficcing and transitioning from fanfic-to-pro etc.

I'm thinking about it.  It'll be pretty soon after my big London trip so the budget will be tight.  I have never attended an HP convention, ever!  Or any other kind in a long time.  I used to go to a lot of conventions, but I haven't been in and ages.

I'd need a roommate!  Anybody up for it?

Lately I've noticed that more and more supermarkets are really pushing the gift-card thing, and I don't men GCs as gifts. I mean buying gift cards for stores you normally shop at to use yourself. The incentive to do this is fuel points. My supermarket, for example, gives you double points on gift cards you buy, and they have tons available. I buy gift cards for Target, Amazon, eBay, lots of places. This is pretty much a win-win all around. I'm going to shop at Target anyway, so why not get another ten cents off a gallon of gas while I'm at it? Plus it's great for the supermarkets because it brings in money on a product that has virtually no overhead and never expires.

Where I wonder about it is the store that accepts the gift card. If I give my money to Kroger for a Target gift card, and then use that card at Target, the money has to get from Kroger to Target somehow. It can't be an even-money exchange or Kroger wouldn't expend the manpower to sell the cards at cost. The only way that it's financially viable for Kroger is if Target gives them the gift cards at a discount. Which would seem to be bad for Target. Or are they counting on me spending more money over and above the amount of the gift card to make up the difference?

And how much of a margin does Kroger get on a third-party gift card? Even if it's just five percent it's well worth their while. Margins on supermarkets are razor thin and can be as little as 1-2%, so if they make a 5% margin on gift cards that's huge. Even one percent would probably be worth it. But does that work for Target, or Amazon, or eBay? They're losing one percent profit on every gift card that I redeem if that's the case.

The economics of this sort of fascinate me. Because I'm boring that way.

I've been thinking about small-world stories. We've all got them. Lately I seem to be hearing a lot of them.

My best small-world story: At Bryn Mawr, I had a good friend named Catherine (well, she's still a friend, of course, because she is lovely). Our junior year we lived in the same dorm a few doors away from each other. We were just chatting one night and I happened to mention that I'd just spoken on the phone to my best childhood friend. She asked where my friend was at school, and I said UW-Eau Claire. She said, oh goodness, I have a friend who goes to school there, too. Catherine was not from Wisconsin but she had been a camp counselor there a few summers and met her friend there. I said that my friend had just gotten engaged. She said what a coincidence, my friend did, too.

We just looked at each other. Yeah, it turned out that her friend and my friend were engaged TO EACH OTHER.

My parents have awesome small-world stories from all their days of RV traveling. The best one was when they were in some RV park far away (don't remember where). But my dad was walking the dog and he ran into another RVer who was also from Wisconsin. Actually it turned out he was also from Janesville, our hometown, and he and my dad had been acquainted previously as they'd both worked for the city. This was enough of a small-world coincidence, but it got better. Other Guy said that he hardly ever ran into other Wisconsinites, but that once he had met a young guy from Wisconsin at a parade in Texas. The young guy was wearing a Badgers ball cap. Other Guy said he struck up a conversation with Young Guy, and it turns out that Young Guy was from Janesville, too. He was in Texas for Navy training. And his name was Tommy.

My dad was like, "Um...that was our son."

Yeah. This guy from Janesville had randomly run into my brother AND my parents in two different far-flung locales, years apart.

Share your best small-world story!

Gah dammat. I left my debit card at the wine shop last night. And I have errands to run after work which will require said debit card. So now I'll have to go first to the wine shop and then do my errands, which is out of my way.

I know, heavy is the burden of being me.

On the plus side, the reason I was AT the wine shop was quite delightful. We have a sorta-weekly gathering of the hiking club at the wine tastings that the shop does every Thursday. Some of our regular Babes plus my friend Amanda came, and a new club member came too which is always good. I wore my super special designer shoes for the first time yesterday and everyone commented on them. These were a splurge. They're Morenatom pumps, which are bloody expensive, but I got them new on eBay for about a quarter of the retail price. They are gorgeous and pretty comfortable, actually.

I think I have found a place to stay in London! Through airbnb I found a host with a room for rent in Hyde Park, right in the thick of everything. When I pulled up the map of her location the first thing I saw was Baker Street! It's fate! She's got a dozen glowing reviews from previous guests AND it'll only cost me about $60 a night. Can't beat that with a stick. I really considered renting a whole flat, but...well, I don't need much space and it would cost twice as much and I just couldn't justify it.

I have two hikes planned tomorrow. It's been beautiful weather all week while I've been here in the office so naturally tomorrow it's supposed to rain all day. GAH DAMMAT.

I use Facebook pretty regularly. I'm not a spammer but I usually post anywhere from one to three status updates a day. It's useful to keep up with friends and family.

But there is a downside. Nobody can see every status update you post, depending on where you end up in their feed. If someone on my friends list posts something in the morning I'll likely not see it, since I hardly ever look at it at work, and when I get home in the evening I'll go back maybe two screens and that's it. So naturally people are missing my updates as well.

This has the unfortunate effect that whenever I post something referring to a particular event, there are always some people who have no idea what I'm talking about. A few of my statuses lately have referred to my London trip. Every time I say something about it, a few friends pop on and say "Oh, are you going? When, why, for how long, etc." Which is nice that they want to know, but I'm getting really sick of explaining it. I should just start appending a quick one-sentence thing to all my London-related status updates. "[Yes I am going to London for two weeks in May on vacation thanks for asking.]" I feel like a heel getting annoyed at something like this because obviously my friends mean well and it is totally not their fault that they have missed hearing about my plans so far, and there is really no good way around this.

Tomorrow night I think I will be doing something entirely new: buying a case of wine. My tax return is mostly being saved for London (and used to rent the flat I'm staying in - way cheaper than a hotel and more awesome) but I am going to splash out for a case of my favorite wine. I love wine and often have a glass in the evening and I found a pinot noir I really, really love at my local wine shop. I've probably bought six or seven bottles of it over the last four months. I do love trying new things but it'd be good to have this wine around all the time for when I'm not sure what else to drink. Plus you get a) 10% off the case price and b) a thirteenth bottle free if you buy a case. Sooooooo Imma do it.