Presenting: Our Lady of Guadalupe, Live!

Austinites! Come celebrate the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe a day early by stopping by the Cathedral tomorrow to catch some of the area homeschoolers, directed by yours truly, present a short play about Our Lady's appearance to Juan Diego! The performance is at 1:00, following the 12:05 Mass, and there will be refreshments afterwards. The Cathedral website has more details, and a photo of last year's cast. This year we've added some Spanish dialogue and a chorus, who will sing verses of the traditional hymn La Guadalupana as well as the chant Ave Maria.

The young Darwin misses will be participating: one as the narrator, and two as flowers on Tepeyac Hill.

And Then There Were Five

We attempt to make up for the lack of substantive posts lately by letting the world in on a discovery that we made some weeks ago: we have one more child than we had hitherto suspected. How exactly this new addition crept into the family without our knowledge I cannot say, but he/she is certainly welcome and encouraged to get bigger soon so that he can be tasked with picking up toys and such along with the other offspring.

Asked how she felt about these developments, MrsDarwin (who proved to have been concealing the new addition from the rest of the family, unbeknownst even to herself) responded, "Tired."

Rejoice with me, o my friends!

Out with the old...




In with the new!


It's kind of suede-y, hence the vacuum marks, but oh so cool! Now you're all invited to come over, now that I have somewhere suitable to seat people.

In Which Things Are Not Nearly As Amusing As We Thought

Last night, as I was loading the dishwasher (and drinking a beer) I picked up a plastic pitcher and its lid, then paused. Even after several hours in the dish pile, the pitcher smelled very distinctly of margarita. In a flash, I recalled that when some good friends visited on Saturday, there had been left-over margaritas, which they had kindly poured into a pitcher and left for us. Not margarita mix, mind you, that poor wan creature waiting for its infusion of tequila and cointreau to achieve its full purpose in life. No, these were fully mixed margaritas.

"Mrs. Darwin?" I called. "Did you drink the left-over margaritas today?"

"No."

"Because someone did."

"Oh..."

"Did any of the kids seem odd today?"

"Oh my gosh, the neighbor kids!"

At this point, it is necessary that the reader understand that we have acquired neighbor kids. The family had actually lived in the neighborhood for some time, for for whatever reason the three youngest children (not counting the baby) have suddenly begun to spend an hour or two of every day in our back yard. On days when the house is clean, they play with the young Darwins inside as well. On most days when the two-year-old has stood astride the table throwing food to the four corners of the earth, they're advised to remain outside. However, even on these latter and more frequent sort of days, there is, it seems, an unavoidable magnetism to The Stranger's House, and so they let themselves in every few minutes to get drinks of water or go to the bathroom. This particular afternoon, MrsDarwin had several times had to expel these young foragers from the fridge. And here we were with a mysteriously empty margarita pitcher. Readers of children's literature will know what we thought first:

"Mrs. Lynde was up to see Mrs. Barry today and Mrs. Barry was in an awful state," she wailed. "She says that I set Diana DRUNK Saturday and sent her home in a disgraceful condition. And she says I must be a thoroughly bad, wicked little girl and she's never, never going to let Diana play with me again. Oh, Marilla, I'm just overcome with woe."

Marilla stared in blank amazement.

"Set Diana drunk!" she said when she found her voice. "Anne are you or Mrs. Barry crazy? What on earth did you give her?"

"Not a thing but raspberry cordial," sobbed Anne. "I never thought raspberry cordial would set people drunk, Marilla--not even if they drank three big tumblerfuls as Diana did. Oh, it sounds so--so--like Mrs. Thomas's husband! But I didn't mean to set her drunk."

"Drunk fiddlesticks!" said Marilla, marching to the sitting room pantry. There on the shelf was a bottle which she at once recognized as one containing some of her three-year-old homemade currant wine for which she was celebrated in Avonlea, although certain of the stricter sort, Mrs. Barry among them, disapproved strongly of it. And at the same time Marilla recollected that she had put the bottle of raspberry cordial down in the cellar instead of in the pantry as she had told Anne.

She went back to the kitchen with the wine bottle in her hand. Her face was twitching in spite of herself.

"Anne, you certainly have a genius for getting into trouble. You went and gave Diana currant wine instead of raspberry cordial. Didn't you know the difference yourself?"

"I never tasted it," said Anne. "I thought it was the cordial. I meant to be so--so--hospitable. Diana got awfully sick and had to go home. Mrs. Barry told Mrs. Lynde she was simply dead drunk. She just laughed silly-like when her mother asked her what was the matter and went to sleep and slept for hours. Her mother smelled her breath and knew she was drunk. She had a fearful headache all day yesterday. Mrs. Barry is so indignant. She will never believe but what I did it on purpose."
Anne of Green Gables, CH16

Sad to say, interviews this morning revealed a rather less exciting story. Our own three-year-old had poured herself a cup of "lemonaid" from the fridge, but on tasting it concluded that "it tasted like wine" and so for the general welfare she had poured the cup and indeed all the rest of the pitcher down the sink.

I must admit that, while I'm glad no one was made sick, I am a little disappointed at the true story.

Dude!

Jack -- he's just this guy, you know? Fourteen months never looked so good.

Couch me no couch

Since Betty's cornered the market on elegance, we'll have to go another direction altogether.


The couch was actually quite nice when we bought if, off craigslist. The red spot was always there, but in those days we could actually use the other side of the cushion. In three years we have utterly destroyed it. "We" being the girls and the cats.

And because everyone who knows me knows I love repeating a good joke, here is one of my favorite pieces from sometime in late 2006 (can't dig up the original right now), written after being laid up sick on the couch.

Sickbed Revisited
(With apologies to Evelyn Waugh and, of course, all of you.)

She talked to herself, because hers was the only voice she could trust, when it assured her that she was still alive; what she said was not for the children, nor for any ears but her own.

"Better to-day. Better to-day. I can see now, across the expanse of the living-room, the fibers of the carpet, faded and grey, where yesterday I was confused and took the floor for a repository of broken toys and stuffed animals. Soon I shall see the tabletops and couch and know where it is that the ants get in.

"Better tomorrow. We live long in our family and talk early. Three is no age. Julia is only two and can remember where her candy is hidden and how much of it I ate, her 'tandy'; that was the name they had for it in the nursery and in the back-yard where unlettered girls have long memories. You can see where the big weedy shrub used to stand: the corner of the yard where the fence is uneven and half the grounds are waste, nettle and brier in hollows too deep for filling. We dug to the roots to hack it out and lay the foundations for the rose-bed planter. Those were our roots in front of the new house when the men in the orange truck came to cart them away to the dump .

"Julia knows about dumps, toys dumped on the floor, books dumped from the shelf, media scratched and worn from the loving touch of little fingers smeared with grime and orange juice. We were cultured then, purchasing old volumes and new music and bathing in the flickering light of the cinema. They came for the books first; later they scaled the sturdy cases and found the vases, the decanters, the Italian glassware. The family decends in the female line; Julia's son will page through the books his mother tore and mutilated in the days of the small house and the hair-shearing and the wall-patching; my daughter drew on the walls, her sister added the dents. Julia watched me set up the bookshelves and paint the kitchen; the paint was old before it was two months settled. Soon the linoleum will be tattered and pitted till the concrete foundation shows through and the baseboards rot away. Better to-day.

"Better to-day. I have lived carefully, sheltered myself from the cold winds, eaten moderately of what was left on the girls' plates, drunk lukewarm tea, slept with children tangled in my own sheets; I shall go grey soon. I was twenty-two when I was sent to the line for the battle; most women took the epidural, so they said, but my midwife said, "You're a textbook model of delivery." So I was; so I am now, if only I could breathe.

"No air, no wind stirring under the cotton sheers; no one has opened the door since we put the chain on it. When the autumn comes," said Mother, oblivious of the falling leaves and the dying rose-bush and the late heat, "when the autumn comes I shall leave my bed and sit in the open air and breathe more easily. God take it, why have they dug a hole for me? Must a woman stifle to death in her own living-room? Eleanor, Eleanor, turn on the fan."

"The fan is already on, Mommy."

"I know it. I re-built this house. Some days I want to blow it up with gunpowder; bore the foundation, cram it with powder, trace the fuse, crouch under cover round the corner while we touch it off; we'll blast our way to daylight."

Thus, til mid-November, Mother lay dying, prone on the recliner with a box of tissues and a glass of ice water. Since there was no immediate change, Father went to work and the small girls watched videos till their brains ran out of their ears

What Jack Hath Wrought

In case anyone was wondering, "Gosh, why doesn't MrsDarwin post that much anymore?", it's because I live in a house where five minutes of an unattended 14-month-old nets you this:



That would be Jack taking his revenge for the tea party and lunch we had while he was napping, and on the bookcase just for being there. I was in the kitchen the whole time, chopping onions and adding them to soup. The lad is fast.

No wonder he's so worn out.

I'm Sorry, Mom

It's come full circle. Tonight one of my own children looked at a delicious plate of homemade macaroni and cheese and said, "Ewww. I like the kind in a box from the store better."

It was only the slightest consolation that in response to being told, "But you always liked macaroni and cheese," the young miscreant revised somewhat more politely, "But I do not prefer it, Father. I do not prefer it at all."

What exactly is the magic of that bright orange powder for the young?


If making macaroni and cheese from scratch sounds daunting, be assured that it is not. It's easy to make the sauce in the time it takes the water to boil and the noodles to cook. Here's the sauce recipe:

In a glass bowl, melt three tablespoons of butter in the microwave.

When it's fully melted, stir in three tablespoons of flour. Grind in pepper. Add half a teaspoon of salt or so (I never measure, so can't swear) and a few dashes of paprika (or cayenne pepper if you want some extra kick) and stir it all up. Microwave for another 30 seconds.

Add three cups milk. Mix and microwave for 1:30 increments, stirring at the end of each round, until it begins to thicken. This will take 6-9 minutes total. While it's doing that, grate one pound of cheddar (preferably sharp or extra sharp.)

When the sauce has got a bit thick and sauce-like, add in the grated cheese in 3-2 rounds, stirring in between. No need to microwave further. Taste and add salt, pepper or Tabasco if desired.

Pour over the drained noodles, or else pour the drained noodles into the sauce, and stir.

There you have it. Great, home-made macaroni. Only according to six and seven-year-olds everywhere, it's not as good as the housebrand stuff from the box. For adults on the other hand, it's delicious.

The attack of the swine flu

While you suckers were out doing the usual shiftless weekend blah, we here at DarwinCatholic were doing groundbreaking medical research: we survived the swine flu.

"Really?" you gasp. Well. The doctor said that they weren't testing flu strains right now. But it might have been swine flu! It was definitely the flu at any rate. Fever cough chills nose eyes headache bodyache weepy fussy: that flu.

One by one, the children were overcome. This was not the style of flu in which everyone just slept for twelve hours at a stretch. Oh no. After industrial-strength doses of ibuprofen, the youngsters were raring to go, until the medicine wore off and there was total collapse. Judicious applications of Benadryl to treat the sniffles and the runny eyes ensured that each child got sufficient rest.

I already see different approaches to suffering in the children. The oldest moans and lows as if she were dying. The second gets weepy but tries to be stoic. The third curls up in a ball (a weepy ball) and looks bleary. The baby wants to nurse all the time. This we allow, because he is only just one, after all.

Darwin has been spared the ravages of sickness (so far) but I've come down with -- well, not the flu. There's no fever, but there the sore throat and the racking, rasping cough that makes the throat raw, and now, the lack of voice. That makes it tricky to yell across the house at the mostly-recovered children trying escape outside. It also wreaks havoc with our school schedule, because I can't really read aloud, and the kids are still just fractious enough that their attention spans are seriously low -- except for old cartoons on youtube, which they could watch until their brains run out of their ears.

On Riding a Bike

When I learned to ride a bike, we didn't go in for any of this sissy stuff. I cut my teeth (and other parts of my body) practicing with no training wheels on a long long gravel driveway in rural Virginia -- spanning three acres worth of sharp rocks and wild flowers and blue blue sky and barbed wire, which was far enough away that was no real danger of wiping out into the fence. It was the neighbor boy's bike, and none of us wore helmets, or (often enough) shoes. Somehow we survived, though. We were all of us tough and skinny. The gravel driveway, or the freshly-mown field (baled for hay by a neighboring farmer) were as nothing to our hobbity feet.

(In fact, the only serious injury I recall anyone getting took place on the path. My brother and the boy next door, the one his age, were walking on the path mown between our house and his, coming from the baseball field. My brother was swinging the bat over his shoulder, as kids will do, and the other boy was following too closely behind him and was bashed in the eye. He needed stitches and probably still has the scar, but he was okay.)

So, the bike. I think the neighbor had a typical boys' mountain bike, and it served us all fine. But as I got older I had a hankering for something different. I didn't ever intend to go biking in the mountains (and truly, I've never done such a thing since) and I wanted a bike that looked more like the ideal bike in the mind of me. And lo, I saw such a thing at the local K-Mart: a blue (or was it red?) woman's bike, not a girls' bike, with an elegant line and not fussy like some ladies' bikes are wont to be, and with the handlebars that curved under and looked so grown-up. It cost $100, which was a virtually unheard-of fortune to my financially virgin ears. I started saving up -- a few quarters here, a dollar there, bits and drabs and limp bills, folded and unfolded and counted again and shoved back into a dingy envelope. I didn't have a steady source of income, and then my family was making plans to move out of state, and as time passed the idea of a bike lost its initial luster (probably aided by the glacial pace of my savings) and I started considering a desk. A desk, like I'd seen at K-Mart, with the pencil drawer and the file drawer and maybe a secret compartment (the models at K-Mart didn't have that feature, but I thought maybe I could build one). I didn't buy that either, and I don't know what I spent my money on. That's the way of it as you get older.

Now my daughter, a few days shy of six years old, has suddenly found her bike legs. In the course of a week she's gone from wobbling a few feet to zipping down the street (paved, and she in shoes), weaving and turning and standing on the pedals. She has a helmet, bought the day after she took a spill and landed a huge bruise smack in the middle of her forehead, highly visible even through the bangs we're growing out that she won't keep pinned back. It's thrilling and exhilarating and not a little heart-wrenching to watch my daughter fly down the street, moving so quickly away from me. And overhead, the sky is blue.

Just call me Auntie

My sister is going to have a baby in March! My biggest life ambition -- to be an aunt -- has been fulfilled. Thanks, sis.

Baby, you're much too fast

This morning, while I wasn't paying attention, the baby:

a) Got into the cat food and threw it around the floor;
b) Splashed in the cat's water and soaked himself;
c) Climbed up to the THIRD STAIR -- slow down, Mr. Man, you're only nine months old and I don't need you to move so fast and anyway you couldn't get your leg up that high only last week so I thought we were still safe;
d) All of the freakin' above.

My internal speed limit has been violated.

Wasting Gas to Save the Planet

This afternoon found me spending my lunch break (or being non-hourly, a period of time in the middle of the day) driving in circles for no reason other than to save the planet.

You see, I have been so unsporting as to own a 1996 Toyota Camry, which despite looking a bit dirty gets great mileage and has 118k miles on it. Most people would think this was a keeper -- except, it seems, my state's environmental regulations. You see, 1996 was the first year during which the current type of ODB II emissions monitoring system was required, and the one on my car, being a first year out attempt, is rather flaky. It doesn't help that my car was originally manufactured for the California market, which has it's own totally unique set of emissions monitoring requirements, which don't match the rest of the country and which Texas mechanics don't seem to be very good with.

So while my car invariably passes the actual tailpipe test, it frequently has a check engine light on, which constitutes an automatic fail on our emissions test here in Texas. Over the years I've spent plenty of money (indeed, almost all the money that I've ever had to spend on care repairs) on getting the car to pass emissions, though last time around I learned that since I always pass the tailpipe emissions anyway, I can just reset the computer sixty miles before going in for my state inspection, and I'll usually be fine.

Thus, I found myself this afternoon driving in circles to get up to sixty miles so I could get my inspection sticker (which was long overdue). A cop pulled me over and observed that my sticker was out of date. I told him that I was aware of this (MrsDarwin having been pulled over in my car last week for the same reason, thus spurring me to action to get things fixed) and was trying to get the requisite miles on the computer after working on it to be able to pass inspection. The officer helpfully advised me to go find a parking lot to rack up sixty miles driving in circles in so that I wouldn't be violating the law on public road, but let me off with a warning.

So the car is now down getting inspected. Here's hoping that 48 miles on the computer allowed enough tests to run for it to pass. But one can't help being deeply cynical about the whole process. The bottom line I've got from various mechanics is: Your car is a 96. It'll probably always be trouble on the check engine light. You can either drive it and deal with it each year, or sell it and get a newer one.

At the end of the day, I can't help suspecting one of the real reasons for all our regulations in regards to cars is to make sure that the car inventory turns over often enough. Having driven my car 4,600 miles in the last 16 months (so the JiffyLube guy told me in wonder) I'm not exactly destroying the planet -- but the government won't rest until I shell out the money to buy a new car, which would probably involve more emissions to produce than driving my '96 around for another decade.

Reality Check

I'm tired of seeing pix of people's pristine houses, so here's a reality check: my kitchen after my three-year-old threw a tantrum this morning (what instigated it is still a mystery).

Note the cheerios all over the floor.

Some days you're the dinosaur; others, you're the pirate.

On Meeting Bloggers

As MrsD mentioned, we had the pleasure of dropping in to hobnob with several of our fellow wizards in the blogging world during the recent Darwin family travels. At various points in the Great Ohio Trip we spent time with:

Entropy
Fr. Fox
Jay Anderson
TS
Betty Duffy
Rich Leonardi
Scott Carson

And on previous occasions we've had the pleasure of meeting:

Tito
Blackadder
Jenn
JulieD
The Opinionated Homeschooler
LitChic
The Bettinellis
Cranky Conservative (and the missus)

(My apologies to whoever I have forgotten. It wasn't intentional!)

Even in our increasingly wired culture, there's still a slightly spooky air to the statement, "I'm getting together with someone I met online." Not only does it make it sound like one of you has a greater than average chance of being a serial killer, it has a certain antisocial ring to it, suggesting that one spends most of one's time in a basement, smelling of old socks and lit only by the glow of the monitor. I must admit, I'm rather cautious to admit to non-blogsphere people that I originally met some of my friends and coworkers through blogging. "We knew each other in Catholic circles" tends to be my way of explaining it away.

Yet for all that I am hesitant to admit to seeking out chances to meet those we interact with online, I've found it to be a universally positive experience. Admittedly, the etiquette of meeting for the first time someone one has talked to for years can be a little awkward at first. But modern social relations are nothing if not challenging from a social custom point of view. (How as poor MrsD to navigate the traditional "nice girls don't kiss on the first date" stricture when we were both car-less freshman on the same college campus? Our first "date" was a number of months after we started "going out". But I digress.)

For me, the reason why meeting bloggers is so enjoyable is because one has already been able to find out a great deal about the other person through a less socially threatening medium. I am, by habit, a very cautious conversationalist. For all my online opinionating, I'm very hesitant to bring up politics or religion or indeed my more unusually interests in history, literature and languages with people I don't already have some indication would be interested and congenial. Indeed, I usually stick to discussing with people mostly those things in which they have already stated an interest. This leads to safe and low conflict conversations, but with other people who are equally careful in their discussion habits, it can result in never getting too far into any topic.

However, reading what someone else has written over the course of months or years (and reading their comments on my own writing) provides enough of a layer of familiarity that it seems possible to discuss a wide range of topics without too much fear of either alienating (or boring) the other person, or needlessly exposing myself to disapprobation. In effect, the blogsphere acts as a social sifting mechanism. It allows us to form sub-communities of people with at least a certain level of common interest and acceptance. And this commonality makes much more interesting conversation possible. And it also gives one enough information about the specific person to know of possible shared interests, or areas where one ought not to throw one's elbows around. (So for instance, I know not to issue any smack talk against rap when visiting with Jenn and certainly not to bring along a pet scorpion, lest she feel the necessity of instigating a throw down.)

For all that blogging is often knocked as one of the lower forms of communication, in my more self congratulatory moments, I like to imagine the blogsphere as a sort of modern equivalent to the 18th century coffee house culture. Not only did different coffee houses in the great cities like London and Paris and Vienna have different characters (in some people congregated to discuss business, in others philosophy and politics, in other literature, in others science) but there was a thriving genre of one to two sheet daily papers put out by individual writers or writing teams which were distributed to the coffee houses and served as both reading material and conversation topics. Addison & Steele's The Spectator was one of the early successes in this genre, and Samuel Johnson's The Rambler was a late one, but there were many others -- less successful and less remembered. At one point Boswell writes about his wonder at seeing Johnson dash off an issue of The Rambler in one sitting, longhand, and send it off to the printer without revisions. If only my own unrevised (or even revised) writing could be of such value.

Curiouser and curiouser

But how is it that every time I look at my children recently, they seem... bigger?

(Long time readers will note the continued absence of the bed. It currently reposes in the graveyard of broken furniture known around here as "the garage".)

Office Life

Sometimes even the subtle revenge of quiet misbehavior is not enough to overcome one's feeling of ill use.

Time Usage

Unfortunately, I've had to spend a lot more time on work lately:
[source]

Than on Dante:


The sad commentary is, that when I received that cartoon via email today I started laughing out loud. Excessive analytics does this to one.

Though to mix up the drudgery I took time out this weekend to break an additional 3'x15' strip of sod in the back yard, yearly doubling the width of the vegetable garden for this year. This becomes necessary when you get carried away and order around twenty varieties of seeds.

Stress Positions

You would think, given our Darwinian moniker, we would understand the value of fitness, and indeed there has been a gradually escalating attempt in the Darwin household over the last several months to get into shape. Those with long memories may recognize that much of this has to do with MrsDarwin's sibling inadequacy issues.

Reader and family friend Big Tex had recommended this book to MrsDarwin, and since it's easier to keep obligations that we share, MrsDarwin bought me the original men's The New Rules of Lifting as well.

A little over two months in, I've found that there's a deep satisfaction in the mechanical feeling of moving correctly through a lift. Though I've always made intermittent efforts to go to the gym at work, I'd always "worked the machines" and frankly had never seen any results. Doing free lifting is much more satisfying, though I find it difficult to do sets as close together as instructed. (Instead I stand holding a silent conversation with the barbell. "One more set. But this is going to be heavy. Oh man... One more set and then a full rest." Etc.)

However, though the traditional lifts are intimidating to the extent that one does them with more weight, what actually leaves one sore for the next day are the "combo moves". My current bane in this departments is the t-push up. You grab a pair of hex weights (I'm using a pair of 10lb ones, which may sound cream-puffish, but don't knock it till you've tried it) and get down to do a push up. After each push up, you rotate one arm out in an arc until you're vertically up on one arm with the other straight up in the arm, turning your body into a diagonal T. Then back down and do another push up. You alternate sides. Three sets of ten of these is plenty to kick my proverbial ass -- a burro which is getting increasingly cranky with all the abuse he's been taking lately.

(And no, despite my efforts I do not look remotely like the above specimen.)

These sorts of exercise regimens often suggest that you consume a protein shake after working out. Eating we're down with, and besides after doing this sort of thing slurping down something cold and semi-liquid is just what you want. However, most people (including all the smoothie chains) seem to make a protein shake with ice, and this is, to our minds, a big mistake. So the following is the Darwin workout shake recipe.

First off, you must buy bananas in bulk. At least 5lbs at a time. This is because the aptly nicknamed monkeys will steal half of them while they're sitting on the counter working on ripening. If your grocery store discounts bananas which are turning brown already, these are perfect: snap them up.

Peel and freeze gallon ziplocks full of slightly over-ripe bananas.

Now you're ready to make your shake.

Drop two frozen bananas into your blender.
Add milk to bring the level up to the 2.5 cup mark.
Add two scoops of protein powder (don't use chocolate or anything too sweetened -- ours is a basic vanilla)
Add 2-4 heaping spoonfuls of cocoa powder.
quick splash of vanilla extract

Blend. (Makes two adult size shakes.)

Part of the key here is to use lots of cocoa powder. The bananas are already plenty sweet, and the protein powder may be a bit sweet too. So the cocoa powder provides that bitter chocolate balance. It also makes it a lot richer.

And hey, you've just worked out, so you deserve a nice rich shake, right? Knock these back for a few months, and ice cream shakes actually start tasting rather paltry by comparison. Which is another healthy side effect.

Seven Quick Takes, Feb. 13

I'm the last one on the boat, I know, but here it is: MrsDarwin does Seven Quick Takes. At least I'm still holding out on a Facebook account.

1. I've been pondering a subject that's close (if not dear) to every parent's heart: poop. Specifically, why does my daughter who is two weeks shy of her third birthday not show any signs of wanting to deposit in the toilet rather than her diaper? And what does it mean that the five-month-old has curds in his? Does this mean he's ready to digest solid food? And why isn't my college degree insurance against spending my days contemplating excrement?

2. Going to see Slumdog Millionaire with friends tonight, after two months of schedule negotiations as to when both couples had a free weekend and we could all get babysitting.

3. Why was it, that when I knew Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain
had a two-week limit and I couldn't renew it because it had a hold on it, I started reading it on the thirteenth day? I'd love to tell you all about it, but I only got a third of the way through it.

4. I'm not really a big fan of Valentine's Day not because it's a Hallmark holiday (though it is) but because it's the anniversary of an unhappy event in my life unconnected to any romantic relationship. Anyone else in the situation of having a holiday also be an unrelated sad occasion?

5. A few weeks ago I looked in the mirror and realized that I had suddenly acquired a chipped tooth, with no memory of the event itself. I don't know how or when it happened, but I find it a bit alarming that pieces of me can fall off without my knowledge.

6. I'm reading Socrates' Apology and realizing that it would make a great dramatic presentation. Some theatre company should work up a stage version -- cast a fine elder-stateman actor as Socrates, have the jury and Meletus onstage, and use the Apology as the script. I'd pay to see that.

7. Philip of Macedon would have been about the most important figure of antiquity -- if his son hadn't done everything he did on a larger scale, and at a younger age.