A good exhibit I'll probably miss

Venice and the Islamic World, 828-1797. It's at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through July 8. Since Laura and I won't be moving to Washington until early June, chances that we'll be able to make a trip to New York in time are fairly slim.
Of course, some of us still are traumatized by our last visit to the Met with Laura in tow. She showed little interest in anything that didn't involve the American sculpture garden in the atrium -- or suits of armor. She was willing to study every single suit of armor in minute detail.

Those French police dogs sure are talented!

Youths in Paris are rioting and wreaking havoc. Election preparations, I suppose.
I came across a wire story yesterday with this description from the Gare du Nord:
Officers and police dogs fired tear gas and charged at groups of marauding youths, some of them wearing hoods and swinging metal bars.
And since I'm such a copy editor, I began wondering exactly how a dog would go about firing tear gas. That led to wondering how one would say, "Hey, look! That police dog is firing tear gas at us! Run!" in French.
I shared that question with my friend Bill, who apparently speaks French only slightly better than I do. His translation:
“En garde! Quel chien something something something. Allez!”

Life support for laptops

My new laptop -- purchased during the last week of February -- has died. The Hewlett-Packard tech people think it's a hardware problem. Regardless of whatever its problem is, it will have to be shipped somewhere for repair. It's quite irksome because not only is it not a cheap laptop, it's brand new. On the bright side, at least I hadn't moved over all my family history files and other things from Laura's computer.

When in Rome ...

you go souvenir shopping. And when you're my friend Bill, you take photos of souvenirs such as this. (This isn't an incredibly recent photo, but I just came across it in an old e-mail and think it's cool.)

Perhaps strep would be better

I remember when we were fairly small children that Heath got strep. (How the rest of us avoided having it is a miracle only bacteria can understand, I suppose.) But Heath had to get a penicillin shot in his bottom, which Nicole and I thought was funny.
Maybe it was my 100-degrees-plus fever, but I thought about that incident yesterday as I sat in the doctors office being tested for strep myself. Apparently I don't have it, but I have to wonder whether getting a shot of penicillin in my back side would have been preferable to how I felt. (Not that such a shot would have been the prescribed method of treatment.)

Where do babies come from? In this case, O'Hare

My friends Heather and Ivan have adopted a baby girl from South Korea. (They also have a South Korean son they adopted two years ago.)
Details, details, details:
http://support.tennessean.com/blogs/?p=1541

Translating the writing of a 6-year-old

Laura wanted a snack this morning, and I said no. She then brought this note upstairs to me:

Deer Mom I wot a sack now or you will bee doomd.

Of course, what she meant was:
Dear Mom, I want a snack now or you will be doomed.

Did I give her a snack? Heck no. Still awaiting the doom.

Most famous Frenchman?

A sentence in our business editor's column for tomorrow sparked a debate at work last night: Who's the most famous Frenchman? He declared it to be Napoleon, but we came up with some other possibilities:
DeGaulle (as someone pointed out, there's an airport named after him)
all of the Louises (there's furniture named after a few of them, after all)
Marie Antoinette (not a man, so not sure whether she qualifies)
Jacques Cousteau (Napoleon never went under water)
Marie Curie (same problem as the previous Marie; plus, not actually French)
Inspector Clouseau (OK, so he's not a real person, but he does have an interesting accent)
Not that it really matters, since the column in question was expressing an opinion. But I guess Napoleon probably is the most famous Frenchman who also invaded Russia.

Want to learn more about orchestras?

I'm not sure how I came across this Web site recently, but it's great. It's the BBC's guide to orchestras, and it has information on all the instruments in an orchestra, as well as excerpts from various pieces.

All hail the birthday girl

Laura keeps asking when she's getting the rest of her presents and won't take "You already have them all" as an answer. But she really does. Among the haul:
1. A Little Einsteins DVD
2. A Disney film shorts DVD
3. A baby My Little Pony
4. A horse-and-rider action figure set
5. Scriptures and a tote for them.
She also got a large package from PawPaw and MiMi that contained some other lovely gifts, including a Disney princesses nightgown.

Breaking news: Not only am I old, I'm also wicked

Or so Laura has told me multiple times today.
There seems to be a fine line between wanting your child to develop an extensive vocabulary and wishing they didn't know so many words.