| Priorities |
[Nov. 28th, 2009|04:40 pm] |
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Why can Michelle pronounce "pteranodon" but not "mouth" (="moup")? |
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| The uncertainty principle in a macro scale: |
[Nov. 27th, 2009|11:22 pm] |
Opening the door of her bedroom to check if the baby is asleep
or not. (You can't know exactly when she falls asleep without
affecting the outcome...) |
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| Rules for Radicals |
[Nov. 26th, 2009|05:46 pm] |
(not by Saul Alinsky)
1) All
2) Lone
3) Enclosure
4) Top
5) Bottom
6) Left
7) Right
8) Corners
9) Through
Of course, some radicals, being rebellious types, don't follow the rules... |
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| Take one down, pass it around |
[Nov. 25th, 2009|06:05 pm] |
Our one day vomit-free streak in this household appears likely
to be at an end, unfortunately. Michelle seems tired, listless, and
(worryingly) not hungry. So our hope that only Christine would
come down with this flu-like bug is probably in vain. Poor Michelle.
Little ones are so pathetic when they are sick--they have no idea
what's going on or why. They all had both kinds of flu vaccines
this season, too. Oh, well... Wish us luck! |
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| Two D&D references |
[Nov. 22nd, 2009|07:01 pm] |
1) Christine saw this poster on the hall of the high school where she takes
Chinese classes: "I would live to study, and not study to live." Christine
pondered the meaning of this to her mother afterwards.
V: "Do you know what that means?"
C: "No, but maybe-- 'Studying doesn't give you hit points.'"
2) Earlier today, Annie was pretending to cast a "spell" on one of her toys.
She says Michelle started pulling on her shirt. "My spell didn't work
because it was disturbed." How do they learn such useful (?) concepts
as spell interference at such a tender age? |
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| Haircut |
[Nov. 21st, 2009|12:40 pm] |
Christine cut off 10 inches (!) of hair today to donate to Locks of Love to make wigs for kids with cancer. I'm not used to her short haircut yet, but she looks cute in it. I suspect that yet another outbreak of head lice in her kindergarten classroom may have pushed my wife to support such a drastic new look... (No lice here so far, by the way, but just thinking about it makes my head itch...)
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| Time Warp |
[Nov. 17th, 2009|01:52 pm] |
Michelle inexplicably slept from 6 pm to 2 am last night. (Usually when
she falls asleep early she's tired enough to sleep 10-12 hours.) So
her night ended shortly after mine began. Sigh. She's very chatty
and eager for attention in the middle of the night, which I was not
eager to provide... |
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| Stifling debate |
[Nov. 13th, 2009|09:00 am] |
Very early every morning it seems, Michelle and I have a detailed
and spirited discussion as to the whereabouts of various stuffed
animals which she was holding when she fell asleep, and the
relative necessity of finding each of them before she might go
back to sleep. These conversations never end on favorable
terms. |
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| Farewell to a Stranger |
[Nov. 12th, 2009|12:02 am] |
I wage not any feud with Death
For changes wrought on form and face;
No lower life that earth's embrace
May breed with him, can fright my faith.
Eternal process moving on,
From state to state the spirit walks;
And these are but the shatter'd stalks,
Or ruin'd chrysalis of one.
Nor blame I Death, because he bare
The use of virtue out of earth:
I know transplanted human worth
Will bloom to profit, otherwhere.
For this alone on Death I wreak
The wrath that garners in my heart;
He put our lives so far apart
We cannot hear each other speak.
--Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Christine's Chinese school teacher's assistant passed away one week ago today.
She was 17. I barely knew her, but I remember seeing her at the Halloween
party at Chinese school two weeks ago, dressed up as a cowgirl. She seemed
like a beautiful, bright, vivacious young woman, and very kind to all the
children. It's hard to imagine that she's gone. I can't even begin to imagine
what her parents are going through right now. God bless... |
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| Monkeys jumping on the bed |
[Nov. 11th, 2009|06:02 am] |
No school today! I get to sleep in until... um... 6:45. Michelle does not really believe in daylight savings time. Anyway, happy birthday, big girl. Time flies... I've never had a youngest child be three years old before.
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| Strange Ads Seen on Public Transit Vehicles |
[Nov. 9th, 2009|10:45 pm] |
For a D&D nerd, these names have different associations than the
advertisers perhaps intended...
1) Vecna Technologies (Seen inside Red Line T cars)
What it is: A Cambridge company that deals in robotics and medical kiosks.
To a D&D nerd: The undead lich Vecna, whose hand and eye are powerful
artifacts which can be used to command some portion of his powers at
great risk to the user.
Connection between the names?
Maybe. Vecna is from Czech word věčný, meaning "eternal." That would make a
reasonable origin for the name of a legendary lich, but more likely is that
Vecna is an anagram of the surname of Jack Vance...
2) The Arioch Center (Seen on outside of Boston buses)
What it is: An center at the Wentworth Institute of Technology
To a D&D nerd: The meddlesome god of Elric, from Michael Moorcock's novels
Connection between the names?
Hard to say. Arioch is a Hebrew name, meaning "fierce lion" dating back at least
to the book of Genesis. [Genesis 14:1-3 In the days of Am'raphel king of Shinar,
Ar'ioch king of Ella'sar, Ched-or-lao'mer king of Elam, and Tidal king of Goi'im,
these kings made war with Bera king of Sodom, Birsha king of Gomor'rah, Shinab
king of Admah, Sheme'ber king of Zeboi'im, and the king of Bela (that is, Zo'ar).
And all these joined forces in the Valley of Siddim (that is, the Salt Sea).]
Perhaps Moorcock got the name from the Bible, perhaps he made it up
independently. I would imagine that the Arioch Center is named after a real
person, probably a major donor given how colleges are organized. |
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| Non-stackable status effect |
[Nov. 9th, 2009|08:29 am] |
Christine had a little bit of sniffles this weekend, so she insisted
that she wouldn't want to go to school the next day (today). They
only have to stay home if they have a fever normally, so I wasn't
eager to go along with this plan. If they stayed home every day
they had a runny nose, I imagine they would miss about half the
school days in the winter.
Anyway, this morning, I was trying to cajole Christine into getting
ready for school. She suggested that I take her temperature.
[beep]
Me: "It's 98.6˚."
C: "That's almost one hundred degrees!"
Me: "Yeah, but 98.6˚ is normal. I'll check the other ear."
[beep]
Me: "That's about 98˚ too. You don't have a fever"
C: (Suspiciously) "What if you add them together?"
Me: "You don't need to add temperatures together. That would
be almost 200 degrees, but that wouldn't mean anything."
C: "Yes you could. It's just math."
Anyway, after much deliberation, I suggested that those girls
who felt healthy enough to go to school might have a piece of
Hello Kitty™ gum to chew on the way. Christine was obviously
pained by the prospect of missing out on that, so she reluctantly
agreed to go along. By the time she got to her classroom and saw
her friends, all signs of "illness" seem to have been forgotten.
(Until tomorrow morning, or course.) |
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| Creepy |
[Nov. 8th, 2009|11:22 am] |
Facebook just presented on the "friend suggestion" list someone from my
high school who I know died last year in an apparent dual murder/suicide.
Creepy. |
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| Timeline |
[Nov. 7th, 2009|09:40 am] |
C: "Daddy, were you alive during the Civil War times?"
Me: "Christine, that was almost 150 years ago!"
C: "So? So were you alive?"
Me: "So nobody is alive from back then."
(Thinks for a while)
C: "But there were people alive. The slave owners were alive."
Me: "Yes, people were alive on earth then. But nobody from
back then is still alive now. They would be over 150 years old."
Annie later tried to set her straight with reference to the various
American Girls stories. ("It's before Samantha. Addy was alive
during the Civil War and she's much earlier than Samantha.) |
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| The many faces of Christine |
[Nov. 6th, 2009|07:36 am] |
A couple of old photos of Christine from 2006. She reminds me of those comedy/tragedy Greek drama masks. Christine can be very expressive...
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| Connotation |
[Nov. 6th, 2009|06:50 am] |
Saw a store near Davis Square called "Redemption Tattoo"
while driving Annie to kung-fu. Somehow I kept looking
to see if I had missed the word "Removal" on the sign, but
nope, that seems to be the full name. |
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| Hands-free lollipop holder |
[Nov. 5th, 2009|04:24 pm] |
Michelle found a lollipop from her leftover Halloween candy and was messily devouring it. She must have gotten her hands sticky with it, because she demanded, "I need a bowl!" (to set it down, perhaps) and made me rinse off her hands. The bowl I picked happens to have a plastic straw attached to it (some sort of kid's bowl for eating cereal or soup with a straw to sip out of it), which she appropriated to create a hands-free lollipop holder as shown.
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| A good start? |
[Nov. 5th, 2009|08:35 am] |
C: "I only know two words in Japanese.
'Unagi,'(鰻) which means eel and 'Nan de?'(何で？),
which means 'What the heck!?'"
That would be useful in a pretty limited set of conversations... |
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| That's one hypothesis |
[Nov. 4th, 2009|08:31 am] |
At school this morning, I had to wait for the elevator to take
Michelle and the stroller upstairs. Annie and Christine decided
to run to the stairwell instead. Seeing them disappear through
the doorway, Michelle hypothesized:
"They want to go 小便."
Maybe she thought the stairwell was a bathroom? |
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| Competing Lore |
[Nov. 3rd, 2009|06:41 pm] |
A: "Christine, if a rooster lay an egg on the top of a sloped roof,
which way would it roll?"
C: "I don't know."
A: "Neither! Roosters don't lay eggs!"
C: "Actually, if a rooster lays an egg, it makes a monster."
me: "You mean a cockatrice?"
C: "Yes."
Edit: I didn't realize the King James Bible used the word "cockatrice"
in several places. Mt RSV has "adder" for the same Hebrew word.
Isaiah 14:29 "Rejoice not, O Philistia, all of you,
that the rod which smote you is broken,
for from the serpent's root will come forth an adder,
and its fruit will be a flying serpent."
Isaiah 59:5 "They hatch adders' eggs,
they weave the spider's web;
he who eats their eggs dies,
and from one which is crushed a viper is hatched."
Jeremiah 8:17 "[17] For behold, I am sending among you serpents,
adders which cannot be charmed,
and they shall bite you," says the LORD. |
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