five random things

1. It’s harder to get to sleep without Ted here – though it’s easier to stay asleep when I have the bed to myself.

2. I checked just to make sure, and the clerk in Montgomery County, PA says there is no other way to get a marriage record there than to request it by mail, complete with SASE and check or to turn up in person. She seemed to think the fact that they’d had requests from England meant that it wasn’t a problem for anyone overseas; totally ignoring the possibility that it had in fact been a major pain the ass for said person, who had just been resourceful enough to manage it. Also, I think they still use checks (well, cheques) in England, which is emphatically NOT true in either Taiwan or the Netherlands. I suppose I could manage it if I had to, since we do still have US bank accounts, and a checkbook for at least one of them, and by dint of using a Fedex form instead of a simple stamped envelope, but my mommy is being kind enough to do it for me (since she lives in the same state and it should be both faster and safer that way).

3. It’s finally cooling off here, yay. Unfortunately one effect seems to have been to drive the mosquitoes indoors and I have a couple new bites, which are also not helping me get to sleep. (Nor is typing this, obv.)

4. Speaking of my mommy, she called tonight. What I hadn’t known was that she took over my uncle’s cell phone (hers was just a prepaid, his had an international calling plan, and possibly a commitment though I bet they’d have canceled it if she’d asked). She called me on my cell instead of the home number, probably because he had the number programmed in. It gave me a bit of a turn to see his name pop up.

I’ve heard of leaving a dead person’s number on your phone or not deleting their voice messages. But how often do they actually call?

5. Speaking of remembering people, I never actually knew willfullcait or read her blog regularly (and am not sure I spelled her handle correctly, for that matter) But it’s a funny kind of immortality, to be remembered even by strangers for “five random things make a post”. I don’t think that sort of thing originated with the Internet – how many people pick up a habit from a teacher, and pass it on to their kids decades later? And there’s the classic Suzette Haden Elgin story, with an sfnal setting though at base it’s about just folks, about the family who cut the ends off their ham for five generations. However, I suspect the Internet makes tat sort of ripple effect easier and wider-spread, if possibly shallower.