Last year was the first time I ever saw a Doctor Who cliffhanger in "real" time... and there were three of them then. The best cliffhanger, by far in my opinion, was the end of The Empty Child, which I loved. The Dalek cliffhanger at the end of the season wasn't bad, either, but the Empty Child had me hiding behind the sofa.

This one was almost as good.

For the first time ever I'm speculating with hubby-Eric on how the cliffhanger might be resolved and coming up with a bunch of theories, each one more silly. I feel like a kid watching a great show that I'm gonna want to talk about with all my friends on the playground tomorrow. I LOVE THIS NEW SHOW!!!!!!!!

The neighbor across the street has a new riding lawn mower. When I went out to get the mail, I casually joked that he ought to do my lawn too. I'll point out that my lawn has a nice steep hill on it, so a riding mower is utterly inappropriate for mowing it. He mentioned that he's still trying to get the hang of driving the thing and making it mow when he wants it to.

I looked out the window a moment ago. He's mowing my lawn. Hill and all. And it looks like he's having a fine old time of it, too.

Yesterday morning as I ate breakfast and checked the 'net, I thought I heard something odd. An animal scratching at the door, maybe? I stood up and got closer to the door, but the sound stopped. In fact, every time I heard it, I would get up and walk toward it, only to have it completely stop. I figured it was a bird or something getting into the attic. Just another thing to worry about.

Later that evening, hubby-Eric and I sat down to watch Corpse Bride for the first time, and shortly after the movie started I heard the sound again. I got up to investigate, and Eric said, "You hear it too? I was hearing it this morning." We checked, but couldn't find the source of the sound.

A bit later, I heard it again, and so I got up stealthily while the movie was still playing and looked around. Suddenly I heard the noise, very clearly. It was coming from one of the buckets we use as a recycling bin, right by the back door. My mouth went dry, and I turned on the light... snuck up on the bucket, and looked.

I wasn't sure what I saw, and I babbled something to Eric about turning off the movie and checking this. He came over and looked too... It was hard to be sure, but it appeared to be a mouse. He moved the bucket, and the creature attempted again, as it had apparently been doing all day, to jump out of the bucket. Definitely a mouse.

A moment of debate later, we decided that we didn't care if it lived or died, we just wanted it out of the house. Eric opened the door and kicked the ... um... bucket out into the yard. He said that he thought he saw the mouse go flying. He was about to bring the bucket back in, but I convinced him to leave it out, and we finished watching the movie.

Presuming the neighborhood catwatch wasn't on patrol in our back yard, I'm going to presume the little guy made it out alive. Much better than us finding him dead in the bucket from sheer exhaustion and starvation.

But of course, that leads us back to the problem of how he got into the house in the first place. Very probably via that hole in the side of the house that I still haven't had a chance to get repaired. While it's covered with plywood, it looks like a critter could easily come up from the crawlspace into the house through the interior hole. Unfortunately, we just got an estimate on how much it will cost to fix the gutter and the wall... and it looks like we're going to sink into debt yet again. But if we've got little critters wandering around, I don't think we have much choice.

At least the movie was pretty good.

Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis TPB by Kurt Busiek, Jackson Guice, 144 pages, release date November 1, 2006.

Generation Landslide.

Licensed versions of Monopoly.

Vintage cartoons on-line.

Trained dogs sniff out DVDs.

Some FCBD sketches and pictures from Owly Andy.

Querldox has found an Amazon.com listing that is worth checking out just for the customer reviews... Would you like a lovely ladies watch? Again, read the customer comments after checking out the description and such. Warning: some of the comments are a bit crude.

Um, I'm sure most comic book folks have already seen this one, but what if men were objectified in the same way women are on comic book covers?

The Rock Slab that's growing out of Mt St Helens. Hrm. Fascinating.

Paul Cornell has a bit about the new Doctor Who, and links to a Dalek font as well. Gonna have to install that one on my machine.

Bummer, the Bosnian Pyramids appear to be a hoax.

Flood Map. See what your city would look like if the waters rose to 14m above sea level. I wasn't surprised to see not a lot of changes around most of the Seattle area. Lots of hills around here... via Boing Boing.

Went to bed feeling not-at-all right last night, and woke up this morning with a roaring headache, all-over body ache, and an utter inability to even look at food, much less eat it. I spent the day attempting to not hurt. Just before 6 pm, hubby-Eric made me eat something and gave me some painkillers. Now, about an hour later, I'm finally getting hungry.

I don't know if it's a flu, it could just be an extra-bad fibro day. Whichever, it's completely taken today from me. The headaches involved mean I haven't been reading the web. I'm lucky somebody posted an Aquaman sighting over on the Aquaman page, or I wouldn't have updated it today. And this is all the update on Bloggity you're likely to get today.

Reinette: "What do monsters have nightmares about?"
The Doctor: "ME!"

I've seen the latest episode of Doctor Who, "The Girl in the Fireplace" 3 times in the last three days, with six different people. It's the best episode so far in this season (the second "new" season, with David Tennant as the Doctor). Next Saturday: Cybermen. Or as I have called them for many years, Cybertwits!

Silver Age Comics tells us about The Bizarro Bump and other fun Bizarro stuff.

Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed #49. Percival Popp, Superman's faulty vision, and Wildcat's inspiration.

Dark, But Shining points us to a movie being made from one of the more interesting Manga books available. I've read the first volume and very much want to read the rest.

Bad Astronomy points us to a Martian Mystery. I saw the anamoly right away, but I didn't have a clue what it was until reading the explanation at the bottom of the page.

More on the Maine Blogger who was sued for exposing an ad agency's corruption. This link via Neil.
Update: The lawsuit has been withdrawn. Lots more and fun links on the main Maine Web Report.