The Random Yak

Seen on Saturday’s trip to meet friends for Dim Sum in San Francisco’s Chinatown:

A falcon sitting in the front passenger seat of a minivan, waiting for its owner to get back to the car.

No, not a parakeet.  Not a cockatiel, not even a parrot.

A falcon.  And a rather large one at that.  Complete with belled jesses.  In fact, though it wasn’t actually a Saker Falcon, it looked remarkably like this:

But in a car.  Parked on the street.  At a meter.

The bird seemed remarkably interested in people passing by on the street, and not at all scared.  In fact, it tried to snatch my friend’s iPhone out of her hand when she paused to snap some photos – and probably would have succeeded but for the pesky window glass that got in the way.  (Yes, the window was up.  Yes, another window was cracked enough to give it air.)

Once it realized the iPhone wasn’t going to become a new chew toy, the falcon seemed about as interested in watching us as we were in watching him.  He seemed to think some of us looked better upside down (like owls and other predatory birds, falcons have remarkable flexibility in their necks) and didn’t seem aggressive, though I have no doubt anything smaller than a German Shepherd would have a different opinion.  (As I said, it was a very large bird.)

As we walked away, my friends and I tried to decide whether this was par for the course in Chinatown or whether to file it under “strange, no matter where you see it.”

The unanimous vote was for “strange pretty much anywhere.”

***

Note: Saker Falcon Image retrieved from Wikipedia Commons, uploaded/shared by owner/user Qatari and used here under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license.

Did you ever have one of those days where it seemed like The Crazy was hiding behind every corner,  just waiting to jump out and play?

Yeah, today’s been like that.

Doesn’t seem to matter where I go or what I do, someone’s seriously bringin’ the crazy.  Worse, they’re all trying to outdo one another.  It’s as though my life just became one big granola contest, and I’m the unwitting Judge of the Fruits and Nuts.

A few examples:

1.  Random_Person_001 calls to ask if I can give a referral.  Yes, I respond. I give referrals all the time, how can I help you?  (Note:  Random_Person_001 already knows what I represent, and that I don’t represent the kinds of issues this person has.  Hence the request for referral rather than representation.) 20 minutes later (I’m not kidding) I still have no idea what Random_Person actually needs.  I am, however, considering reclassifying Random_Person to Random_Weirdo…but decide not to because that would require renumbering.  (I already have Random_Weirdos_001-375)

2.  Not to be outdone by the private sector, the U.S. government decides to sue Arizona…for enforcing Federal law. (While NOT suing state entities that flagrantly flaunt it.)

3.  A major online video game company considers forcing users to use their real, live names when interacting in the game’s online forums…while prohibiting the use of real life names on their in-game characters.

4.  Another blog I read (but do not link to for reasons of preserving the anonymity of this space) recently linked here:  SlushPile Hell. That’s a whole lot of crazy.

I could keep at it, but I think for the moment I’ll batten down the hatches and try to get some of the weeds cleared out.  If things keep going this way, I’m going to need room for a hunting blind.  The herd of Crazy definitely needs some thinning.

* Note: the original title for this post was “Bringin’ the Crazy Back” but before I even finished typing that in I realized my error.  The crazy never went anywhere.  It was just waiting behind the next tree, as always, so it could pop out and yell “SUPPLIES!”  (though statistically, 4% of you get that reference.  The rest of you have a film to see.)

Today is National “Embrace your Inner Geek” day (as opposed to embracing the outer geek, which gets awkward at the office).

In honor of the occasion, permit me to share ten geeky things about myself that most of you will not know:

1.  As a child, I wore bermuda shorts.  In plaid.  With argyle socks.  And … I liked them.

2.  I also wore glasses.  Big, coke-bottle glasses that made me look like Stapler Guy.  (Note: if you recognized that reference…you are also a geek.  I still don’t want you to touch my stapler.)

3.  I got nothin’ against James Cameron, and Imma let him finish…but Star Wars was the best Sci-Fi movie of all time…OF ALL TIME.  (Note: the outer geek owned originals of Star Wars comix issues #1, 2 and 3.  Read them until I had them memorized.  The inner geek cries horrified tears that The Random Mother tossed them in a box that went to charity instead of letting me keep them…)

4.  The Yak was household champion at Astrosmash and Snafu.  (and can still hear the Random Father’s howls of glee when he beat us at Tank Battle.  Curse you, OP panzer!)

5.  When the kids down the block got a newfoundland and a lab, my parents bought me … a lhasa apso.  (For those not in the know, this is basically what you get when you animate the business end of a rag mop.) I thought it was the best dog in the universe.  Even Chewbacca had nothing on Chipsie.

6.  My piano teacher fired me.  Not because I couldn’t play, and not because I wouldn’t work (though I admit more laziness than I should..mostly because piano wasn’t cool then) – but because I never showed up for lessons.  Note: She was the kind of piano teacher that comes to your home.

7.  When The Random Sibling did something bad, I told on him.  When I did something bad … I told on myself.  (Note: I’m not sure whether that really qualifies as “geeky” or just annoying, but I’m filing it under both just to be safe.)

8.  I separated my M&Ms by color before I ate them.  (…sometimes I still do, but I don’t think it’s a geek thing any more.  Now it’s OCD.  If you don’t believe me, I have a list of 327 reasons why I’m right – I’m just not publishing it until it’s fully alphabetized.)

9.  I was the only kid in my neighborhood who couldn’t ride a skateboard without incurring some horrific craniofacial injury.  (Still true.)

10.  I was also the only kid in my neighborhood who could spell “craniofacial” and use it properly in a sentence.  At eight.

Looking back, I’m not as much surprised by how much has changed as slightly disturbed by how much remains the same.  The inner geek is still there, still strong, and still amused by Star Wars and video games.  I’m still terrible at the piano, and just last week I told on The Random Sibling.

In other words…you can add more numbers to the geek’s age, but geeks never really grow up.  It’s part of what makes us awesome.  At the age when the “cool kids” are working on their second and third divorces, getting grey hairs that send them screaming to the stylist, and worrying if they’re drinking the “right” coffee or beer, the geeks of the world are the ones in the corner, snickering behind our Dr. pepper and Oreos.  As a partner at my first law firm told me: “In the end, it’s the geeks who make good.”

He wasn’t right about an awful lot, but he was right about that one.  It’s good to be the geek.

July 2 was national “I Forgot Day.”

I meant to post about it well in advance, so you would know you had a legitimate excuse for anything you might not have remembered.  It’s not often we get a “get out of responsibility free” card, so I thought you’d want to hear about it.

But…I forgot.

Oops.

Yak the Younger leaves town for a week and I toss responsibility to the winds.  He’s still gone, but what comes up always comes down, and sometimes I’m standing under it when it does.  Like now.  When I realize I’ve neglected the blog.

Although I’ve deprived you of more than a week of gleeful celebration, let it be known that July 2010 is official:

Air-Conditioning Appreciation Month (101 in the shade last weekend. I’ll say I’m appreciative!)

Wheelchair Beautification Month (Hey! You kids!  Get outta here with those spray cans and stop tagging Gramma!)

Tour de France and Women’s Motorcycle Month  (I think a woman’s going to win the tour this year….because Harley beats Schwinn no matter how hard you pedal.)

and

National Child-Centered Divorce Month (Yes kids – it’s YOUR fault! BWAHAHAHAHA!)*

*(I am told I need to apologize for that last comment.  Please do not blame your divorce on the children.  Blame it on the dog instead.)

Please join me in blowing a collective virtual raspberry at Gavin Newsom and the city of San Francisco, in editorial response to the new city policy banning Coca-Cola and other sweetened beverages from vending machines on city property.

This latest in a long line of nanny-state prohibitions replaces high-test colas, sweetened waters and juices which contain less than 100% (read: unsweetened) juice with such nutritionally responsible alternatives as soy milk, rice milk, and “other similar dairy and non-dairy milk.”

BLEAHRGH.

Mayor Newsom’s spokesperson, Obviousman Tony Winnicker stated that “there’s a direct link between what people eat and drink and obesity.”  (Thanks for that…from all those still needing help with difficult concepts like ‘water is wet’ and ‘make sure the mace can is pointing at someone else before you depress the trigger’.) The ban on sugary drinks is intended to help encourage healthier habits among the residents of San Francisco.  In reality, I’m guessing all it does is lower the (probably limited) revenues the city receives from its vending machines.

Other proposed legislation would impose a tax (or “fee”) on retailers who choose to sell sugary sodas, in an effort to discourage soda sales.  Although the Newsom administration claims people are still free “to choose to drink unhealthy sugary sodas,” one might reasonably wonder how long that freedom will continue, at least without serious penalties.

I can understand regulating firearms.  Or fireworks.  Or hand grenades.  Or a variety of other items and objects people use to cause mayhem and destruction.  I can even understand a certain number of regulations intended to prevent people from hurting themselves or others.  But taking away soda? Seriously?  One would think, in a morally bankrupt state like California, our elected officials might find something more productive to waste their substantially overpaid work hours on.

Like teaching our children to spell soda.  And “tax.” And “unreasonably restrictive government regulations.”  (OK, it is the public school system.  I guess that last one might be a stretch.  But “@*&%$#*&^ deal” is banned by my site regulations.)

Seriously, guys.  Next time I go to San Francisco, I’m taking a 12-pack of Cokes in the trunk, and I’m handing them out to every homeless person I see.  Along with a fiver, so they can buy some Twinkies to go with it.

Hear me, Newsom, and all the others like him:  You can have this Coke when you pry it from my cold, dead hand, and not a moment before. Feel free to come and find me if you’d like to make something of it.  I’ll keep some soy milk in the fridge for you.*

* Note:  My new refrigerator has informed me (in excellent, grammatical Japanese) that soy milk is disgusting and beyond what I’m entitled to ask of any reasonable appliance.  I’ll put some ice water on tap for you instead.

It’s been weedy on my side of the mountain lately, but I thought I’d toss up an update or two:

In Random Family News: we gave a gift to Heifer International in honor of Yak the Younger’s birthday, and when asked which animal he’d like to give, he chose a water buffalo.  Why?  Because they didn’t have a yak, and it was the next best thing. Awesome.  As a side note, this also enabled us to deliver a rousing duet of “The water buffalo song” at the dinner table … at which point The Random Spouse announced we’d gone completely ’round the bend and vacated the room … smiling and moving slowly, as one should generally do in the presence of something that might or might not suggest the need for institutionalization.  Or cookies.

We have enough high explosives safe and sane fireworks to make quite a dent in Sunday evening, and I’m looking forward to the annual Random Family Barbecue-and-Boomfest.    Also, The Random Parents are coming in for the weekend, so we’ll be busy with a variety of “let’s not go outside because it’s really 100 degrees out there so doesn’t a movie sound nice” type activities.

The Random Refrigerator finally gave up the ghost about a week ago, so we replaced it with a Samsung French-Door Space Station (with “flex drawer” for sodas!) that not only makes ice but also filtered water (yeah, the old one had a broken ice maker when we bought the house, we never bothered to fix it) and it has super-cool-awesome-LED lighting.  And did I mention it makes ice??  The only negative is that last night, when I went in for a late drink, I distinctly heard it talking with the microwave about its plans to take over the world.

I’ve decided to name it “Hal.”

But please join me in welcoming our new refrigerated overlords.

Hey, at least we’ll have ice.

An old joke, but appropriate to the spirit of the day.

June 28, 2010: Please Take My Children to Work Day

I’m not sure whether this one originally started as a plaintive cry from stay-home parents who’d finally had enough of their laundry-throwing, frosting-licking, habanero-stealing offspring, or just a joke.  But either way it sounds like a reasonably good idea.  Particularly if the people we’re talking to are teenagers working at summer jobs.

I can hardly think of a better way to encourage them not to have children too soon.  Six hours keeping little Billy out of the deep-fryer while simultaneously trying to keep a courteous tone in your head and make sure you know if the customer wants fries with that burger and shake … knowing Mom’s at home eating bon-bons and enjoying a few rare moments of silence … would convince even the most kid-friendly teenager to think twice.

As for the teens themselves, and anyone else forced persuaded to take their – or someone else’s – children to work today, I offer this advice:

Silence is golden, but duct tape is silver.

…but I saved her using my L33T World of Warcraft skillz.

There might be a bigger Gamer-Geek Tale of Awesome in the world today, but I don’t think so.

The link in a nutshell:  12 year-old Norwegian boy, out for walk in woods with sister, encounters angry moose.  (Note: moose are dangerous. They will actually try to kill you.) When the moose attacks, the boy remembers from Warcraft that a tank “taunts” to get the monster off weaker party members.  He does so (though I’m not exactly sure how he pulled it off) and when his sister runs away, Norwegian Tank Boy does what any good hunter does when danger rears its massive, shaggy head…

…he feigns death.

At which point the moose loses interest and leaves.  Making Hans Jørgen Olsen one of the few hunters I know who can also tank properly.  Nicely done, Hans.

*We apologize for the continuing movie references in the titles.  Those responsible have been sacked…(queue the llamas).

Tip of the horns to BoingBoing for today’s Linkbait Generator post.

Having difficulty coming up with something to fill the white space between the toolbar and the “publish” button?  Problem solved.  In fact, it makes a creepy-but-entertaining game for those days when I’m struggling to make sense of the Voices In My Head.  Check linkbait, and force myself to do something with whatever it gives me.

It’s like “leftover night at the blog diner.”

All kinds of awesome.  (Don’t eat the meatloaf.)

For today, however, let’s just play with the generator and see what it offers up.

Option 1:  “8 Horrible Lessons about Hippies Hollywood Teaches Kids.”  (I have four off the top of my head:  1: They all make as much money as Drew Barrymore and Val Kilmer; 2: they all LOOK like Drew Barrymore and Val Kilmer; 3: (Thanks to the failure of smell-o-vision) they all SMELL like Drew Barrymore and/or Val Kilmer (though admittedly, I’ve never smelled either one and have no care to start now); and 4: We don’t need no steenking badges.)

Option 2: (using the singular subject “Yak”) “10 Under-appreciated Things About the Yak”  (Rejected for actual posting because there’s no way I can get that list down to ten…)

Option 3:  (subject: BP oil spills) “10 Ways People Have Gotten Rich Exploiting BP Oil Spills.”  (Suddenly this doesn’t seem quite as random any more…)

Any rate, I’ve found a new game and I’ll probably check in with it from time to time.  Unless I get distracted or find something more engaging to waste the limited minutes of free airspace on.

* Extra points to those who caught the title reference.  (Statistically, 78% of you didn’t, and the others have children under 12.  The rest…keep on guessing, guessing, guessing…)

Today is Yak the Younger’s birthday.  As of 5:14 pm, he will have seen 15 full years.  In honor of the occasion, permit me to share a few Lessons Learned in the course of his lifetime:

1.  Parents should never say anything they don’t want repeated louder and more publicly.

2.  Turning your back on a 2 year old is a bad idea.  Turning your back on a teenager who can reprogram your computer is worse.

3.  Oreos, beef jerky and ice cream come only in single-serving containers.  (No matter how big the containers may appear.)

4.  A three year old with a sharpie can have a mustache if he wants one, regardless of his ability to grow hair.

5.  The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but habaneros can also teach you a thing or two.

6.  If you’re going to steal dad’s candy, you’ll have better chance of getting away with it if you don’t leave all the empty wrappers on his desk.

Corollary to #6:  When confronted with the wrappers, a general denial isn’t always the best choice.  Especially if there were only three people in the house at the time and two of them were asleep.

7.  There is no blessing greater than a happy, intelligent, healthy child.

Fifteen years ago this evening, I welcomed a premature baby into the world.  (For the record, I still think he did it to make sure his birthday came earlier than mine.) The doctors weren’t completely sure he would have any birthdays at all.  That he has seen fifteen, with the promise of many more, gives me a joy almost as great as that I experience when I see the man he is beginning to become.  My father would have been proud, had he lived to see his oldest grandson today.  The Random Spouse and I are proud of his achievements, impressed by his character, and occasionally mortified by his continuing insistence on proving his snark is at least as fast and well-heeled as my own.  But that, I probably should have expected.  After all, the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Happy Birthday to Yak the Younger.  May he have many, many more.

Spotted yesterday morning on the sidewalk near the Citrus Heights Town Hall:  one mother turkey and six baby turkeys.  The feathered family was walking next to an empty lot, making its way toward either the fountain in front of the town hall or the town hall itself.  As usual, one of the babies was straggling behind.  Mom didn’t notice or didn’t care.

For the record, this section of Citrus Heights is not a rural area.  The town hall is bounded on one side by residential structures, and on the others by a Dairy Queen, a Sam’s Club, the Citrus Heights Post Office and a fish and chips place.  In other words, I found it a little surprising to see a family of turkeys wandering down the street.  (Note: I didn’t even know we had wild turkeys in California, though I guess if you’re going to look for them, Sacramento is the natural place.)

All of which leads me to conclude the turkeys were on a homeschool field trip to study government, with a possible fish-and-chips and/or Blizzard treat at the conclusion of the day.

Some of you may think me odd for suggesting wild turkeys would have any interest in visiting the Citrus Heights town hall.  I say, “not so!”  Mom clearly just wanted the kids to see their own kind in their natural habitat.

I had four entries lined up this morning, ready to run for today’s posting slot, but (as occasionally happens) a late entry beats them all hands down.

Why?

Because any time you get to poke BigLaw in the eye, you take the shot, and when someone else does it for you (complete with rainbows and sparkles) you better get in line to take the laugh.  In this case, it’s a long, long line.

On April Fool’s Day, ThinkGeek (one of the best websites in the known universe) posted an ad for the following “new product” offer:

The ad bore the slogan, “Unicorn: the New White Meat.”

In itself, awesome and worthy of note.

Then, on May 5, ThinkGeek received a cease and desist letter from none other than….the U.S. National Pork Board, claiming that “Unicorn: the new white meat” infringed its trademarked slogan, “The Other White Meat.” (ThinkGeek posted the first page of the letter here.)

Now, even ignoring the fact that the Pork Board recently stated its intention to stop using the Other White Meat slogan in favor of an updated and more interesting alternative (as reported by Slashfood, and also on the ThinkGeek blog) and assuming that the Pork Board’s legal counsel had honorable intentions to protect its client’s intellectual property, the noble, high-minded village idiots attorneys at [firm-name-deleted-to-protect-the-bottom-dwelling-though-you-can-find-it-at-the-link-above] might have wanted to take a couple of things into account before popping off with an angry growler of a cease and desist letter.  Things like:

1.  This might be an April Fool’s Day prank.

2.  This might be an April Fool’s Day prank.

and

3.  Unicorn isn’t really a sustainable meat, so the slogan won’t be around all that long anyway.

In the attorneys’ defense, I can certainly understand their concern.  Lots of people have a hard time distinguishing unicorns from pigs, particularly in a legal environment, where those who oink the loudest often seem to believe they poop rainbows.

Light blogging last week.  This week promises to be worse – but for all the right reasons.

See, we have company coming today from out of town.  Some of those “virtual friends” I blogged about a while back are getting off the computer and into my guest room from which they will use their laptops for online gaming and ventrilo – enabling us to talk over the Internet from within the same house.  (There’s something exceptionally geeky, and probably creepy, about that, so we’ll just leave it there and move on.) Specifically, one of The Random Family’s much-loved and long time family friends is coming to visit this week, and bringing his two young sons with him.  (We’ll call them Thing Son 1 and Thing Son 2.) Today happens to be Son 2’s third birthday, as well as their arrival day, so Yak the Younger and I went out and found the perfect birthday present(s) for a boy-turning-three and his older-brother-soon-turning-six….

Nerf/Super Soaker Rattler. All kinds of awesome.

Because nothing says “welcome to our home” like enormous water guns.

We also picked up one for Yak the Younger, and an extra one “just in case.”  (After all, two on one isn’t fair so we really did *need* at least four.) The boys have no idea there are birthday presents waiting for them on Our Side of the Mountain, or that we’re planning a pizza party after I get back from picking them up from the airport.

Although I’m working most of the week, I’ll be playing hooky at least once and probably far too busy trying to get the work done ahead of schedule to blog reliably until the company leaves.  That’s not to say I won’t pop in from time to time.  A three year-old and a six year-old in the house pretty much guarantees Lessons Learned and Random Moments of the best possible sort – some of which I may be inclined to share.

That said, don’t count on it.  It’s 85 degrees, the pool is warm, the lawn is mowed and I have NEW WATER GUNS in the house.

Yeah.  You have a nice week too.

Last night, after an hour and a half battling on the portion of my lawn that’s rapidly becoming known as the Bermuda (grass) Triangle (time really does begin to lose its meaning there) I was visited by Yak the Younger and The Random Spouse, both of whom remembered my earlier promise to make an ice cream run “when I’ve finished in the yard.”

The resulting conversation went something like this:

YtY: Are you finished in the yard yet?

Me: Not quite.  Look at all this Bermuda grass!  It’s invading the front lawn.

RS: It will still be there tomorrow.  We want ice cream tonight.

Me: (pulling stubbornly at a clump that won’t come free, and inadvertently breaking one of the bricks on the front stairs) The ice cream will be there tomorrow too.

RS: True, but you said you’d get some tonight.

YtY (from across the lawn): Hey…what’s this? Wow.  Nasty.

RS:  What…wait, what is that?  It looks like something puked on the lawn.

YtY: Gross.  No, wait, I remember that from my science textbook.  It’s a fungus.

By now I am off the crabgrass and heading across the lawn.  My new, beautiful lawn, that squishes softly beneath my feet and makes me misty-eyed in the mornings when the dew sparkles on it.

Then I reach the place where The Random Spouse and Yak the Younger are crouched over a roughly twelve-inch wide patch of something that does look remarkably like bright yellow puke.  On my new lawn.

Me:  Well, maybe something did get sick here.

RS: (scornfully) Yeah, right.  What in the neighborhood is big enough to do that and gets this far up on the lawn?  It didn’t just fall from the sky.

Actually, at this point, I am hoping it fell from the sky.  It’s a more reassuring thought than the more likely alternatives.

YtY: I’m telling you, I saw it in the science book.  It’s a fungus.

At which point I get The Feeling.  I’ve had it before.  That sinking feeling you get when you realize the person talking to you is probably right, mainly because in similar situations he’s never been wrong.  When it comes to recognizing the odd, the unusual and the scientifically challenging, Yak the Younger has become a walking encyclopedia.  If the kid says he saw it…he saw it.

Which means there’s a fungus among us.

A quick family conference was held on the lawn while I ran to the garage, pulled out a handful of Scott’s weed killer and ran back to fling it on the offending fungus.  The crystals stuck all over it, but my efforts were met with looks I can only describe as disparaging.

YtY:  You know that’s not going to work, don’t you?

RS:  He’s right.  That’s not a weed.

Me: We don’t know exactly what it is.

YtY:  I do.  It’s a fungus, I’m telling you.

RS:  Well, it’s definitely not a weed.

Me:  I don’t have any fungicide!  But I have this, and I have to do something!

YtY:  How about that ice cream?

Realizing the local nursery was closed and I would have to wait until morning to exact my revenge on the vomitous mass clinging tenaciously to my darling lawn, I gave in and went for ice cream.  By the time I returned, the Nasty Thing On the Lawn had begun to darken and shrink slightly.  After another minor debate with YtY about whether this was merely my imagination (his opinion) or actually a positive result of the weed killer (my desperate hope reasoned opinion) we went inside and drowned our my sorrows in ice cream.

First thing this morning on the way to work, I stopped off at the nursery to ask about The Nasty Thing On the Lawn and, hopefully, to pick up some Nasty Thingicide.  Preferably the variety that works on vomitous masses.  (Note: I also got some Bermuda grass killer. Take THAT, Bermuda Triangle!)

Inside the nursery, I had a conversation with a very helpful staff member that went something like this:

Me: Thanks for the Bermuda grass killer.  Have you got anything that kills fungus?  Because I have this really nasty thing on my lawn – it’s not like anything I’ve ever seen before, but I’m pretty sure it’s a fungus.  (See what I did there?  I accepted Yak the Younger’s reality and adopted it as my own!)

Helpful Staff Member: Does it look like dog vomit?

Me: (wondering if I should rename her “helpful stalker”) Yes, actually it does.

Helpful Staff Member:  It’s a fungus.  It’s Dog Vomit Fungus.

Me:  Dog…

Helpful Staff Member:  Yep.  That’s actually it’s name. Pretty gross, huh?

Me: I’d go with ‘pretty accurate’ actually.  Do you have anything that kills it?

Helpful Staff Member:  Not specifically no, but it’s easy to get rid of.  Toss some nitrogen on it and that will speed up the decay cycle.  Then you just have to remove it once it dries up.

Me:  So…something like Scott’s weed and feed?  Just toss it on there?

Helpful Staff Member:  Yeah, that would work great.

Me:  Thanks.  You made my day.

And it wasn’t a lie.  It’s a rare day when everyone in the Random Family gets to be right at the same time.  Yak the Younger gets credit for knowing a fungus when he sees it (even though technically Dog Vomit is a slime mold), The Random Spouse gets credit for pointing out that the ice cream would, in fact, make me feel better, and I’m taking credit for knowing exactly what to do with the Nasty Thing On the Lawn…even if I got there by accident.