12.16.02 - 5:43 p.m.

So we're walking around the FDR memorial in D.C. yesterday (a memorial that I had no idea even existed until this weekend, to give you an idea of how up on current events I am). I'm kind of out of it, due to my Hefeweizen-guzzling habit the night before. The gum I'm chewing has lost its flavor, and rather than spitting it as if I'm a contender in a watermelon seed contest or swallowing it, I decide to do the right thing and throw it in one of the many garbage cans lining the path.

Only it's NOT the right thing to do because as soon as I chuck the sticky green orb into the garbage, a humongoid squirrel leaps out of the can at me. What else is a bleary-minded rodentphobe to do but shriek? (Luckily, it was not a Bobby Hill-type girly scream but more of a "uhhh-whhhoooah!") Damn fluffy rats.

That's not the first time flying rodentry has attacked me from a refuse container. I can think of two separate instances wherein squirrels have menaced me outside Hunt Hall. I must have a target on me that only beady animal eyes can see.

Later, as Dan waited for me to come out of the FDR Memorial Lavatory, he was stalked by a squirrel inching closer and closer through the brush toward him. Only when he stomped his foot and threatened it in squirrel-speak did it edge away.

. . . . Conversation during Cookie Bake-Off 2K3, after someone complained that buckeyes were too similar ingredient-wise to the Hershey's Kiss peanut butter cookies:

Jess: "But they're chocolate and peanut butter! The best combination ever invented!"
Me: "Except for chocolate and mint - that's a close second, at least."
Dan: "What about chocolate and kitties?"