The Wonderful Adventures of Nils and Other Assorted Things

I found Nils wearing one of Carolena's hats. I thought he looked so cute that I snapped a picture. I have tried like 800 times to upload the photos here, and it just isn't happening. The computer goes haywire (haywire? who says that?!) every damn time. Perhaps it is a message from Future Nils who has some kind of 2030 computer device that is blocking my ability to upload them. Considering the story behind the photos is that I found him wearing a big pink straw hat and took a picture and he insisted that I take about twenty-seven more, yeah, I would say Future Nils is happy they aren't getting posted. He heard the "click" of the camera, turned, posed and said, "Again! Cheeeese!" so I took another one and then smiled and got up to walk away.
And he screamed, "Again! Again! Cheeeeeese!!!"
So I laughed, he struck a pose, I took another photo, and got up to walk away.
And he screamed, "Again! Cheeeese!!!"
This went on for quite sometime eventually ending in a tantrum and fifty million photos of Nils in various pageant poses. And I do mean pageant poses.
What are they teaching this kid at school?

Aw, speaking of Nils at school... poor Nils pet an asp yesterday at school. Does that just break your heart or what? That sweet little guy. He saw one of those fuzzy little devils walking by and reached out his pointer finger to pet it. That just breaks my heart in both that my poor Nils was hurt and in its sad innocent cuteness. Evidently in addition to the pain of an asp, his feelings were pretty hurt as well. He told Carolena and me all about it when we picked him up that afternoon. Oh, sweet Nils.
If you've never been stung by an asp before, then chances are you are reading this from somewhere north of the land of anoles, asps, and humid Halloweens. Asps are venomous caterpillars. Yes, really. And you only purposely touch one of those dudes once. They're like crazy mini-porcupines (Casey science, not real science) who have quills instead of fuzz (Casey science) so when you touch them the venomous fuzz gets stuck in your skin and someone has to get it out (real science). Yikes!

Yeah, Future Nils is definitely using some sort of fancy technology to ensure Present Day Casey can't post embarrassing photos. Look, that cute pumpkin one uploaded in a cinch.

Blog updates: 
Reading: I finished Into the Wild (which turned out to be almost too fast of a read) and started The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin which is going to be fabulous. The prologue was so good that I read the whole thing aloud to Chris. I then settled in to start reading chapter one and promptly fell asleep (it was 920... waaay past my bedtime).

Caffeine: I remembered the big container of 1/2 caff and this morning drank plenty of coffee but far less caffeine... so that's good... except that I had four scoops and now I'm about to get up and go make some REAL coffee. Hmph. That didn't work. 
Also, I've been thinking about how I have memories of my grandfather Clyde's (aka "Pop") coffee mug burned into my brain. The fact that all of my memories of Pop involve him with a brown coffee mug (which I wish I now owned) with the dredges of a cup of coffee in it, combined with my father's, sister's, and brother's, and my coffee... ummm shall we say "habits" (aka horrible life controlling addiction) is making me think there is something coffee related in the gene pool. Perhaps that's where the Rush name came from in the first place? I'm beginning to think someone overly caffeinated just got dubbed "Rush" somewhere back in our family history when humans were doling out last names. 
*Also, for those of you who think I'm just obsessing... you've just forgotten that I looovvvee coffee and my neurologist doesn't think unlimited pots is a good thing. So there is a legitimate medical reason for the obsession. Otherwise I would cease to drink water unless it had dripped through beans. And also I like to obsess about things. That's also in the gene pool *cough*jimmers*cough* AND also it's my blog so I do what I want. Start your own blog and talk about boring non-coffee related things. 

Hey, speaking of obsession and non-coffee related things, anyone want to talk about polar exploration?!

Tarantula holes in the front yard count: numerous. 
Number of tarantulas I'm excited to have living around our yard: all of them. That's one fuzzy bug! Those suckers eat roaches, y'all. Bring on the arachnids!

After asps and tarantulas who else is going to spend the rest of the day saying over and over, "that is one fuzzy bug!"? Well, if you clicked on that then you are now...