LBJs

*It's happened, just as they said it would: Radiohead's Kid A has finally grown on me. It took a good while, mind you--so long that I still haven't picked up Amnesiac or Hail to the Thief yet--but I finally warmed up to its spacy and improbable charms. It may also have helped that I quit expecting it to be The Bends or OK Computer all over again. "How to Disappear Completely" has been coursing through my head on and off for a couple of days now.

*In the "Oh. My. GOD!" category of unlikely discoveries, Kelly and I discovered that an actor in one of our favorite TV shows actually made his debut on one of our OTHER favorite shows: James Marsters, "Spike" on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, debuted on Northern Exposure. We watched NE pretty religiously in its heyday, but neither of us made the connection until Kelly was checking out the extra features on her new Xmas present, the complete 2nd season of Buffy. There it was revealed that Marsters' first appearance was as "an uncomfortable priest" on NE. I don't know Buffy as well as Kelly does--she's called "The Buffinator" for a reason--but I'm still reasonably strong on NE, and I could think of only one uncomfortable priest. "You don't mean," I asked her, "that Spike is the priest who talks with Maggie's sister-in-law in Grosse Pointe?"

"What?" said Kelly.

"The episode where Joel goes home with Maggie to Grosse Pointe, and her sister-in-law's telling the priest, 'I have a body you could break bricks on... my breasts float..."

"Oh my god!" she said, and we started digging through our old NE videotapes. Sure enough, once we found it on the tape (our new VCR simply flies through its rewind and fast-forward functions) we could see for ourselves: he's got brown hair and an American accent, but that's definitely Spike in the dog collar.

Is that cool or what?

*Jesus! There's a MOUSE in my classroom! I thought it was a reflection off my glasses, but it's a real rodent. As cold as it is outside, I understand why it's in here. I just hope it doesn't take up permanent residence...

*My life list now sits at 295 species. Last weekend's count in Augusta County yielded three new birds: the American Tree Sparrow, Lincoln's Sparrow, and Common Redpoll. I'm planning a trip to the Everglades with my dad for March, so when I go through the 300 barrier, I'm planning to go through good and hard.

*Are you as cynical as I am? Do you think Pete Rose already has money down on the year when he gets into the Hall of Fame?
7:08 AM

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