Wickets, Worm Holes and Wonders

Velociraptor in Casper, WY.
He's giving the squinty eye to the price of fuel.

Do you have a reliable internet connection?
Are you distracted easily?


I don't and I am and that is a very bad combination indeed.

For several days we have been in the land of spotty internet signal and you would think I would use that time wisely to add and subtract numbers, but I don't. 


I’m actively avoiding it and bugging Himself with all manner of pointless conversation.

Example:

Me: Hey, what was the name of your 5th grade teacher?

Himself: I don’t remember.

Me: Mine was Mrs. Griffin and she made fun of me one time because I said purty instead of pretty, so on the last day of school I put a ketchup packet on her seat.

Himself: Uh-huh.

Me: You know that way when she sat down it would explode all over her ugly dress.

Himself: Wow. You were a rebel even way back then.

Me: I know, right?

Me: So. Who was your first crush?

Himself: I don’t remember.

Me: You have a terrible memory, what are you repressing?

Himself: What’s our profit margin this month?

Me: Don’t try and change the subject. I think you were abused by a traumatic experience as a kid and you have somehow suppressed it all these years. What are you afraid of?

Himself: Nothing. You don’t have internet do you?

*crickets*

The elusive tiger-striped T-Rex of Kentucky.
 

When I do have a good internet connection, instead of writing Nobel Prize winning blog posts, I look up things on the List. The List is a place where I write down all the things I come across in life that I need to know more about; words I don't know, plants I can't identify, the lyrics to Good Times. This is why I love the internet. I can find out anything with just a few clicks. The problem is that there is no end to the internet or to the things I don't know.


**Aside**


Spell-check wants me to capitalize internet but I refuse to even though I can't stand to see that squiggle under it every time I don't. I think it's a little presumptuous of the internet to want a capital I and I'm not giving in to the pressure, I'm slave enough to the internet as it is. Besides, I'm pretty sure that's how HAL got all uppity. (Did you know that in the French version of 2001: A Space Odyssey it's not HAL it's CARL? No wonder they always surrender, who's scared of Carl??)


Anyway.


Let's say I want to know what the difference is between crickets and grasshoppers (their antennae). That will lead me to wonder about the British sport of cricket (it's boring) but I will learn that the phrase a sticky wicket originated from cricket not croquet as I had thought and only Americans call the hoops in croquet wickets and that a form of croquet is played at the Burning Man Festival that involves glowing Magic 8 Balls. 


This is how time sucking worm holes are created and before I know it the whole day is gone. On the plus side, I won't remember any of it, so when I look it up again, it's all new to me.

I'm fairly certain that King Kong
wasn't a dinosaur, but I'll have to look
it up tomorrow. Again.