7 Quick Takes Friday Part XVIII

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1. When the Duggars start a show with "Hey, come on, we're picking a baby name!" you know I'll be in TV Heaven. They're voting, and Jim Bob says, "Now there's twenty of us here, and just so you know, Mama's and my votes count for twenty each." I really like this show.

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2. The hiccups I mentioned here: they lasted for 24 freakin' hours (on and off, but violently every time they were "on"). They were miserable and painful. Why do hiccups happen, anyway?

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3. My most exciting project for this summer is finding and visiting the graves of ancestors at Holy Cross Cemetery in Brooklyn. I was going to go yesterday, but had to spend the day moving into my room. I was going to go today [I'm writing Tuesday], but felt awful all day, so I stayed home. I'm very much looking forward to this, but I don't know when I'll find the time. But who knows what I could learn? I'm so looking forward to this little trip!

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4. Did anyone see Law&Order:SVU this Wednesday? It was about a family who didn't believe that HIV cause AIDS, so the mother and sister both died of AIDS. The thirteen-year-old boy, after his mother's death, refuses to be tested or treated for AIDS. The court upholds his right to make that decision. It's wasn't the SVU new episode time slot, I don't think. Hmmm. . . I wonder if the decision to show that episode this week was at all influenced by current events?

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5. Okay, this CNN article about so-called "Important Kisses in History" is kind of banal. But I loved this part of it:

3. The kiss that proved no means no

Gentlemen, a word: When a lady rejects your advances, you'd do best to listen. Take, for example, the story of Thomas Saverland, an English gentleman who was at a party in 1837 and, as a joke, kissed Miss Caroline Newton by force. In response, she bit off a chunk of his nose.

Saverland took her to court, where the judge found his case more hilarious than harrowing. The judge ruled, "When a man kisses a woman against her will, she is fully entitled to bite off his nose, if she so pleases." A smart-mouthed barrister then added, "and eat it up, if she has a fancy that way."

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6. I've been worrying a lot about money lately. My sister is way cheaper (we'll say "frugal") than I am, but she likes to save for things like fancy vacations, and nice apartments, whereas I feel like I have to be saving to repay student loans (okay, she doesn't have any loans), have a nice wedding, put a down payment on a house, buy a car, put kids through college, and retire comfortably. How do people ever do these things? Do you know how much a house costs?
Updated for accuracy: I've actually never seen my sister's apartment, and I don't know what she pays. I was extrapolating from the conversation we had about taking a nice vacation, where she said, "Well, we can save up for it," and I said, "But shouldn't we be saving up to be able to pay off our mortgages faster, instead?" and everyone looked at me like *I* was the crazy one. (Neither of us owns a home, and probably neither of us will for several years.)

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7. How you know you're not a very good Catholic: with a tendency to search for a saint to ask the intercession of whenever you feel stressed, you find yourself rushing through the streets of Washington, DC wracking your brains to figure out who might, in a pinch, serve as a good patron of illegal parking. Wait, something's wrong here. . .

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