Wombats! In my town!

And not just any old, run-of-the-mill wombat. Nosirree, these are hairy-nosed wombats, which, as any wombatologist will tell you, are the best kind.I assure you that picture is completely Photoshop-free. They really look like that. Also, I think that any job that allows you to cuddle wombats pretty much stomps a mudhole in any other job. Unless another job lets you cuddle binturongs. Binturongs are deadly cute, and they smell like popcorn. Why hasn't there been more research into domesticating these animals? Can't Pres. Obama take some of that free time he's using to go on Leno and fill out an NCAA bracket and call for more wombat and binturong domesticating?

Jacob hasn't been to the Birmingham Zoo, because, you know, he can't quite drive and we haven't taken him. But it's close enough to Spring that I'm calling it that (I got the morning paper this morning in shorts!), so we may rectify that shortcoming this weekend. I doubt he'll understand all that much about the zoo, but I want to indoctrinate him into a love for animals at an early age. He's well on his way when it comes to dogs, although our three hairy Pekingeses would appreciate it if he'd hurry up and learn the difference between "pet" and "grab." They're learned to skirt around him when he's sitting on the floor, lest they lose a tiny handful of fur when he latches on like a human cocklebur.

If we do make the zoo trip, you can bet there will be a blizzard of pictures. Digital cameras for the win, as they say. And digital memory, too. If I can shoot roughly 1,000 pictures on a 2-gig memory card, and you can snag a one-TERABYTE hard drive for roughly $125, then you might as well glue the shutter button down and shoot from daylight to dark. It's not like I have to take film down to the processor and pay for each picture.

Getting the morning paper and taking film to the processor. Two things that my son will look on the same way I looked on keying Morse into a telegraph. "People really used to do that?" The digital storm takes no prisoners.

Non sequitur thought of the morning: I use wireless headphones when I have to write and need a little help blocking out background noise. When I do that, I'm always amazed at the little auditory frills, fills, furbelows, and such that I pick up with headphones (real headphones, not earbuds), even on songs that I've heard twelveteen-zillion times. And I'm a music nerd, so I listen to songs really closely. (The Lovely Missus gets justifiably frustrated when I rewind a section of a song and ask, "Do you hear that Hammond organ?") So I pay much closer attention than the average bear. And if I'm just now hearing those things for the first time, it's fair to think that the average listener never notices them. Yet the musicians and producers work hard putting them onto a record--I mean, into a digital file; there's another technology Jacob will never become familiar with. So here's to you, Mr. Work Hard to Get that Pedal Steel Flourish Just Right, Even Though It's Only a Second Long and Most People Will Never Notice It Guy!