This past Saturday night I was in sole and complete control of the National Zoo's (and by extensions Animal Planet's) Panda Cam. I know, it's oh so thrilling, right? I don't know what was more comical, the fact that this was an exciting way to spend my weekend evening, or that the guy who heads up the behavior watch programs at the zoo hadn't heard about most of the Butterstick insanity. He was of course aware of some of the love and excesses the little guy's inspired. He was also not shy about sharing how much money the Stick's made for the zoo. He had not, however, heard of Obey Butterstick, Better Dead Than Red , or the DCist/Wonkette obsession. I was likewise able to inform him that the Atlanta Zoo's panda cub had been referred to on CNN as "Butterstick 2.0". This pleased me greatly. He mentioned that they really need to wean Tai Shan so that they can try for another cub ASAP. When he goes back to China, the zoo will lose its main attraction. However, should Butterstick end up with an estranged brother or sister, what kind of nickname will the new bundle of panda joy receive? And will there be nearly this much fanfare surrounding it, or will we be panda-ed out?

In related Zoo news, they've seen a slew births recently, and the breeding program appears to be rapidly expanding. The monkeys I watched over the summer have just had another litter of triplets. It's unlikely that all of them will survive, but just think of the tiny monkeys! They may be viewed on the GLT cam.

Some one in the office here had a business trip to Arizona last week. Since she's a nice person, she picked up See's in the airport to bring back with her. After taking a candy (and one of my favorites at that), I was struck by the fact that there's a notable difference between the boxed variety and the fresher selection available in the See's stores. These candies were just kind of stale, which meant largely flavorless. It did whet my appetite for a trip to See's and a sampling of its Bordeaux-ey goodness. Just a little over a month left.

I'll occasionally avoid emails whose potential contents I'm in fear of. At the moment, there is one such exchange going on in relation to the need for a chore wheel between my two roommate who have never really interacted. This should be fun.

New idea, since Google owns Blogger and has set up online word processing, there should be an option to publish Google documents directly to your blog. Get on it Google!