Home Alone

I was going to have a rant about the story of a British teacher who has been found guilty by a Sudanese court of insulting religion by naming a teddy bear Muhammad. Well I should say she let her class of 7 yr olds pick the name and 20 out of 23 of THEM chose Muhammad. She's been sentenced to 15 days in prison and will then be deported. Like she'd want to stay in that country anyway ??

But plenty of others have voiced opinions and I'm not going to add to the circus. I think the whole philosophy of hard line Muslims can be shown up for the nonsense it is by the following excerpt from a followup BBC article :

Ibrahim Mogra, chairman of the Muslim Council of Britain's interfaith relations committee and an imam in Leicester, says the name should be reserved for boys. "Some of us believe we are assured of heaven if we name our children Muhammad."

Ah but what about the '70 virgins' ? Sorry but that explosive bonus is a bit harder to get.

Holy crap, when I think of the 80 years of good honest Catholic living and the thousands and thousands of hours of praying that she did, my sainted mother will be kicking herself that all she had to do was call me Muhammad !!

But I'm not going to rant. Well not more than I just have. It's just all too silly.

Tomorrow morning (Fri) Deb and Den will be leaving to fly back to Michigan as Deb has organised a twin baby shower for her two daughters-in-law who are 'heavy with child' right now. They'll be back on Monday evening.

I don't envy them. The outside temp here right now is 82F. The temp in Houghton Lake, Michigan is 18F (and it says with the wind chill, it FEELS like 3F). Somehow I don't think they'll be wearing their usual attire of shorts and t-shirts while up there. Oh lordy no.

So for 3 days I'll be here on my own......well of course the ferocious finger eating Pixie will be with me. Thanks to her, my left index finger end is now the size of a grapefruit, excruciatingly painful and the colour of Michael Jackson pre-Thriller.

But I'm a man, so you can discount one of those descriptions. Well ok two of them.

No, no, no. I still say that little dark blood scab to the left of my nail is pretty black looking. Yes it is.

The thing is, one tends to hold any sore appendage away from ones body to protect it from accidentally coming into contact with......basically anything. So for the last two days I've been giving totally innocent passersby the finger, so to speak. We were in a Wendy's today and I went to scratch an itch on the left side of my head and two huge 'dudes from the hood' glared at me as if I'd just spat in their (go large) soda drinks. It was a tense moment.

I'm hoping to use this time alone to catch up on the 100 or so tv shows I've downloaded and not watched yet. I don't feel right putting on my headphones and watching them when Deb/Den are here so now I can forgo the phones and let rip. I'll also feel less inhibited using Skype to talk with friends as it's a bit bizarre talking into a microphone when others are around. I call it "Amy Whitehouse Syndrome" and it should be avoided whenever possible.

I'll also be fitting my tv show viewing around walking, cycling and, of course, swimming. I mean I didn't come to Florida to spend all day inside. Oh no. I can do that in Leeds.

Here the sky is blue, the sun is warm and the pool is heated to a lovely 84F. What's not to like about that ?? Well I'm not supposed to get my finger wet so that IS a problem. I could pop a condom over it but I can see that backfiring big time. I'd be dozing on a sun lounger by the pool when several deafening shrieks wake me from my slumbers. Mrs. Horowitz has fainted in the shallow end with my discarded condom stuck to her forehead. I'd have to leave the pool area muttering that the old biddy probably hadn't seen a condom for 30 years so what was she doing fainting in the first place ?

20 minutes later Mr. Horowitz would be at my door with a twinkle in his cataracts, asking if I'd any free samples !!

Maybe I'll give swimming a miss for a while.