Happy Leap Day!! I love this day, it makes me smile just by existing and how many things can do that? The idea that we’re ‘losing’ enough minutes over the course of four years that we can shoe horn in an extra day is awesome. Plus, my lovely sister, Blanketgirl got married on Leap Day in 1996. So happy third anniversary to her and husband!!

Try Neil Gaiman before you buy! American Gods is available in its entirely online for free for a limited time only please go read!!! If you do not have the patience to read the entire thing, I recommend page 27-31 – love it; best sex scene ever written ever. Also, pages 212 [starting with 'Later he was never...']-215 are wonderful – so much love for Neil. Both of these happen to be sex scenes, but I assure you the rest of the book rocks.

Since our plans for visiting Stoat and Mal last weekend were thwarted by their absence, we have moved plans to this weekend; in theory tomorrow. I’ve been dreading it all week and I couldn’t figure out why. It came to me this morning, even though I feel lonely and socially isolated with this illness interacting with people is hard. I cannot hear them and the listening device is only so good. I had a long chat with Weasel and we’ve decided to not go. I feel so stupid cancelling, especially because of such a lame reason – I feel uncomfortable. I don’t know, perhaps it is valid; I spent so much time being in pain and miserable and now that I’m on an even keel I want to stay here and not be uncomfortable.

I’ve bought an amplifier for the telephone from RNID [they who help the deaf]. I’m hoping this will make it easier to talk to people. I miss talking to Horatio, we used to talk every day. Now we’ve scheduled once a week so I can pump myself for dealing with the frustration. I want my hearing back so badly. I’m tired of silence, tired of missing things.

Weasel and I watched The Queen last night and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Firstly because Princess Diana’s death was a tiny blip on the radar in my Small Town, USA. Secondly because I got to finally understand how the nation, the government and the royals reacted. Thirdly, we got to see the Royal family behaving like a family; watching telly, eating, hunting and being horrid to each other. On the same page we got to see the Blair’s at home. This is what entertained me the most: Cherie cooking dinner, in an apron and burning the fish sticks. This small scene seemed soo wrong to me on so many levels, I loved it.

Jenn.nu asked about pet names recently and I thought I’d take a moment to tell you that as well as Weasel, my wife is also known as Karrot, Peanut and Magical Princess Weasel. Horatio is also known as Bunny, The Boy, Giuseppe and Peanut. I use Peanut for both so when I am a bear of little brain I’ll have one I know works across the board.

Weasel calls me ‘mon petit chou-fleur’ sometimes, I reply ‘mea culpa’ it makes us both laugh.

My Mom and I were talking about prayer in school and she said she thought it was a good idea. Her thinking was just to give people a minute or two of quiet reflection time where they could centre themselves spiritually according to their own particular faith. I disagreed and set-up an analogy for her. Picture 7-year-old who had no formal spiritual education at home, let’s say his parents came from two different religions, couldn’t agree on one and just decided to abstain. Then let’s say that prayer time at school comes up and our hero has no idea what the hell is happening because he has no education in that area. Does the teacher then tell him to sit quietly while his classmates pray? Does the teacher teach him to pray in their own religion? The other children seeing our hero not praying might use this as an excuse to exclude him or ridicule him. Plus, he is 7 – does he have any religious views? Does he know what the hell this is about? No. I think she understood my point and just might change her mind, but I doubt it. The problem is that her community is religious, the world she knows makes sense in those terms. Unfortunately, a great number of American people are the same in their communities so prayer in school makes sense. You cannot apply rules on a national level when they only logically apply to a handful of communities or states.