Random Things That Made Me Smile Today

First, I got an email from Statistician with this link in it today: http://skeletorislove.tumblr.com  I wish I could come up with a witty something or other about Skeletor but I just can't-- my mind is wiped...other than to say, good mental health could lead to an Eternia of happiness for all of the Masters of the Universe, yuk, yuk, yuk.

Second, one of my little sisters has a pretty serious and long standing obsession with penguins.  She actually answers to both, "Penguin Pete" and "Penelope Penguin" in the course of a conversation.  This is what you do with literally 6 feet of snow in my family:

Apparently, his name is "Parry."  Parry happens to be wearing my tie.  I don't know exactly why Parry was chosen as the name, a name fail if there ever was one.  I would have gone with Philbert, Polonious, or Pascal.  Regardless, Parry the Penguin is pretty amazing.

Third, in order to make it through my PhD program without completely decompensating, my use of Star Wars references has spiked, as has my now irrational desire to watch the un-besmirched versions of the Original Trilogy to cope/avoid life (a decades old coping skill for me).  Most of the time, I manage to contain them to my own head; however, sometimes I can't help but share them.  I think this was particularly evident when I had to abbreviate Empire Strikes Back (ESB) in a post, and I ended up with the very acronym of the building my program is located in.  Of course, this was absurdly amusing to me because I can identify a fairly accurate proxy for most of the characters using people in my department.  It was less funny when I had to explain to my cohort-mates why it's so amusing that SharkFox is Jabba the Hut, my primary advisor is C3PO, the Dean is Sarlacc, and the main office is almost as bad as the pit of carkoon.

Smile.  Random things are happening.