I'm no good at memorizing. I have to work very hard at it, and if I ever have to recite something for an audience, my mind goes completely blank. So why does it seem I can recall the exact words to entire Python sketches? And why do they pop up at odd moments, unbidden by my conscious mind? My daughter told me on Thursday night that she needed a medieval costume for school the following Tuesday, and that she did NOT want to go as a noble, because, as she said, "Nobles sucked!" I'm absolutely a… Continue

Spring has sprung on the Connecticut shoreline. The birds who are early nesters are already busy feeding babies, and our Red-Shouldered hawks are incubating. I can't see into the nest, so I don't know how many eggs there are, but Roger Tory Peterson tells me they usually lay 1-3 eggs that take 28 days to hatch. Cardinals work fast: the eggs take 13 days to hatch, and the nestlings take only 11 days to fledge. We had a nest last year, too, and got to see the whole process. The baby cardinals were… Continue

...maybe. A little. I've been feeling kind of weepy today. I chalked it up to menopause and did my best to carry on. I was out running errands, and when I got home, my husband had the Brahms requiem (Ein Deutsches Requiem) playing full blast, the movement with the text "...I will give you comfort, as one whom his own mother comforteth" and "You know that for a little while, labor and sorrow were mine. But at the last, at the last, I found comfort." Then I remembered that this was the fifth ann… Continue

This is the introduction of Mr Jack Cheese to the Ning network, hoping to meet kindred spirits who appreciate and enjoy comedy, rejoice in the surreal, like lemurs, and are willing to engage in silly conversations beyond the normal.