Happy Birthday to Anna Banana II from the Zoom Cow

 

Sorry that I didn't blog yesterday. I didn't have much to say, and I'm sort of grumpy about all the extra stuff I have to do at work. Years ago, when I was a student, I used to get the Chicago Tribune, and there was a comic strip in there called "Mr. Boffo." There was one strip where the couple were trying to get a mortgage, and their loan officer said, "Now tomorrow I'm going to need you to bring me a six-foot thimble," which is about how I felt today. I had to go across campus twice today, once to get a new bus pass because I lost mine yesterday, when it only had a month left on it, and once to bring two forms of ID to prove I'm me to get access to payroll information. Not that I want access to payroll information, mind you, but nobody else can do it right now so it has to be me. I did mention to the chair that it would be nice to be compensated for all this extra work, but she just ignored that I said that, so that must mean a raise or bonus is off the table. She did promise to bring me chocolate.

Meanwhile I have been getting so into French on DuoLingo that I have been really neglecting Irish. Not entirely my fault, because French is so much easier for me than Irish, and also it has these cheesy stories that I love reading. Irish just has exercises, no stories. I did write one sentence in French that DuoLingo didn't like, and I couldn't figure out for a moment what the problem was until realizing that the first half of the sentence was in Irish and the second half was in French. I was supposed to translate "My sister is funny," and I wrote, "Ta mo soeur amusante,"which means nothing. In Irish it would have been "Ta mo dheirfiur greannmhar," and in French it should have been "Ma soeur est amusante." The other thing about French DuoLingo is that it makes me speak French to it, but it has trouble understanding my French R, so I have to keep repeating words like "boire" (to drink). Pretty soon I'm yelling "BWAAARRRR!" at my phone. Travalon must be so annoyed! He said he finds it sexy when people speak French, but come on, how sexy is "BWAAARRR!!"? Oddly, right after that it made me say thanks, and I was laughing so hard about "BWAARRR" while trying to say "merci," but it had no trouble understanding "merci" through my laughter. Maybe I should laugh while saying "boire" - it can't hurt.

Today is Anna Banana II's birthday, so after Night Prayer we were goofing around on Zoom. She and I had different virtual glasses on, and then she had a screen that made it look like she was in a movie, but apparently not a very popular one because all the seats in the theater were empty. I made myself into a cow wearing a hoodie, and it could blink when I blinked and even stick out its tongue when I did, but it couldn't wink when I did. When I wiggled my ears, it did too, but it didn't acknowledge my hands at all. Another guy made himself into a panda bear. The problem is that when I'm on Zoom, I'm either at a work meeting or praying, so making myself into a cow or panda bear isn't that appropriate. I used to be able to put a halo over my head, but then when Travalon poked his head into the picture, the halo jumped from my head to his. That actually makes sense - he's a lot more angelic than I am! Anyway, Happy Birthday to Anna Banana II, and I'm glad we got to celebrate with you by goofing around on Zoom. None of us celebrated as hard as Jilly Moose, who sang "Happy Birthday" to her in a hamster voice thanks to her "Happy-oke" microphone. She has a "Jolly-oke" one too, for the holidays. That lady is prepared to party!

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