weapons of massdistraction

The first week of school has been a little bumpy but we’ll get it sorted out. And we’re working out the details for the birthday party too. The kid actually asked me for a phone book - I don’t even know if we have one - so he could look up his old classmates’ addresses but 1) most live on the opposite side of the metro area 2) we haven’t kept in touch with many and 3) we don’t really know a lot of their last names let alone their parents’ names. So yeah, I think we’ll be skipping that. Thankfully I’ve got enough friends with nice kids that we’ll manage.

Five good things for this Friday:

• When searching by flickr tags for “polka dots”, as you do, I stumbled upon The Hidden Seed’s set of gorgeous self-portraits of fantastic outfits. I now have a little crush on her blog too.
• “Cycling’s answer to the Goodwood Festival of Speed was held in a quiet town south of Manchester on Sunday. Entrants on penny farthings, hobby horses and bone shakers raced around a 1km track laid out around the town’s heath” - Penny farthings and bone shakers compete in Knutsford’s Great Race. Neat.
• Brilliant IKEA commercial with cats, and the making of said commercial.
• Kitten riding a tortoise, a cat-powered hybrid humidifier, Dragon Puncher fears nothing and is a cat, and have you seen this awesome cat?
• Speaking of animals…this trailer for the animated No Pets Allowed has me all kinds of excited!

Last night we popped by a friend’s art opening, which was good fun, but before that we ran a bunch of errands. Fairly pleasant ones. Like retrieving a coat from the dry cleaner that I’d gotten up North ($4 for the coat, $14 to clean it). And getting new prescription sunglasses at the Spectacle Shoppe, using a recent Groupon. But the last errand would have been more satisfying if I weren’t over thinking it. We stopped by a thrift store to procure Halloween costume components for the kid - a trenchcoat and hat - so he can be Inspector Clouseau (I will be the pink panther, of course). But now the stupid bedbug scare has me all kinds of anxious. Guess I’ll just throw the stuff in the dryer on high heat for an hour or so and hope for the best.