I was really proud of Sandy today. I'd helped her cut her speech down but she forgot part of it. No one could ever have guessed, however, because she trimmed it down on the fly and it sounded far better than it had when she was practicing it. More importantly, she KNEW where she was going to break off, so there were no awkward pauses to give any ( Read more... )

Every four years, Chicago goes through a highly ritualized exercise in futility. Other cities call this process a "mayoral election," we call ours, "another four years of Richard M. Daley, Mayor."

This morning, the local NPR station interviewed one of the three candidates. The interviewer asked, "Aren't you worried that you and Dorothy Brown ( ( Read more... )

Given the neighborhood we live in, it's not a surprise that the kids' school make a VERY big deal about African-American history month. Every year, there's a themed festival night sometime in mid-January night, complete with a show, vendors, and fried chicken dinners. This year's theme is "African-American poets," and to celebrate, all the kids ( Read more... )

Okay, this is hopelessly shallow, but I'm still irritated.

( screwed )

I was a happy bunny on Friday afternoon. I'd finished a story that was kicking my ass, the weather was glorious, and we were going to the zoo that evening for the opening night of Zoo Lights. We go every year and every year we freeze. It was unseasonably perfect on Friday, so we decided to take advantage of that fact. As we were driving ( Read more... )

I'm pleased to report that everything turned out well. I was a bit nervous when I was making the gravy that I hadn't done a good job of washing the turkey after brining it and that it woud be a bit salty, but it was actually perfect. I swear, that is the way to go. So, SO moist ( Read more... )

My sixth grade daughter is doing her science fair project on handedness, specifically on whether a planned reliance on one one hand carries through to instinctual actions. She needs as large a data pool as possible, so I'm begging all you guys to take this and pimp far and wide. Thank you.

Poll

Sandy's class is doing an extended lesson on the Ancient Near East, so I've been tagged for several lectures on Mesopotamian history. (Hey! Eight and a half years of graduate work come in handy after all!) I talked for almost an hour last week on "how historians know what they know," a combination of archaeology, philology and anthropology aimed ( Read more... )

Help! Partridge's Concise Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English has let me down. What is a "pigwidgeon"? This word showed up in an important context in a book that Sandy's reading for school and we can't figure it out. (If context helps, it's a YA novel set in Elizabethan England.)

Sarah: Sandy, let's play house ( Read more... )