i make small children cry

Chalk the lack of posting up to the holiday season and a heightened social schedule. Sorry. Promise to make up for it. Right about..... now:

Instead of fighting the Thanksgiving holiday crowds, I visited the fam over Veterans Day weekend (I got to combine the federal holiday with my compressed work schedule so made an extra long weekend of it - its pretty much the only reason to work for the federal government anymore). The fam had an early Thanksgiving dinner just for me, which was rilly nice. The visit did not go perfectly, however. I managed to scare my poor (not-yet-seven-year-old) nephew.

My 19 month old niece loves cuteoverload.com. We sit her up on the desk so she can kiss the monitor as we scroll through the photos. She screws up her precious little face and makes these little "oh!" sounds and then kisses about 80% of the photos of kittens/bunnies/puppies (not so much with photos of turtles and lizards - she's such a girl). While going through this daily ritual, the neph joined us and we found this particular set of photos: http://mfrost.typepad.com/cute_overload/2006/09/love_pain.html

Since my sense of humor has gone mostly dark and twisted, I found the second photo pretty hilarious. The neph followed my lead and giggled as well, and then ran off to get his mother/my sister to show her. By the time he had returned with his mom he was crying. In the short time it took to locate her, the full horror of the photo dawned upon him and his sensitive little soul couldn't bear it. We tried to comfort him. "Oh, honey, the chick is fine. If the chick had been hurt they never would have posted that photo. I promise you!" He was nearly inconsolable and I felt awful. Like the Worst. Aunt. Ever.

That photo still makes me laugh out loud. I'm not entirely sure what it means to find this thing that is rather horrifying to the innocent so funny, but it can't be good.

On a completely different subject, what happens if I switch to the new blogger version? Bad stuff? I think C-Lo (the Circumlocutor) had a negative experience...