Friday Miscellany

• Incongruous? You be the judge. The title of my last two posts:
  Steven Vincent Murdered in Iraq
  Powder Puff Girls Fraud Alert
  Do I need two blogs?

• I am working on this at school. That is the good news. My school's blocking software doesn't block blogger.com or blogspot addresses. The bad news is that they will probably block it as soon as they see someone using it. Nearly everything else entertaining on the www has been blocked.

• I have become convinced that Amazon has changed their shipping procedures. They have a thing called "FREE Super Saver Shipping". They have had it for years. It means that there is no charge for shipping (which is where many online stores make their money). When I first started utilizing "FREE Super Saver Shipping", I would usually receive my order within a week, often within a few days. Recently, their "Super Saver" orders come a full two weeks after ordering. They have also been pushing "Amazon Prime", a subscription service that offers "Free Two-day shipping" for $79.00 a year. Coincidence?

• I just checked my order. Uh-oh. I have a message in red: "Important Message We thought you should know that we're experiencing a delay with your order. We apologize for any inconvenience. Please take note of the revised shipping and delivery estimates marked in red below." and "Your order contains 2 shipments. Delivery estimate: August 15, 2005 - September 1, 2005". I ordered the two items on July 23.

• My son woke up the other morning and began talking to his sister. He won't leave his room until one of us tells us he can, so he leans out the door and talks into his sister's room. His morning conversations with her are always entertaining. On Monday, he talked about dreams. He made up dreams for everybody and told about his dream of flying. Then he made up one for the cat. Apparently, the cat dreamed that "A dog was barking at her so she bit him."

• My son is going through the "This is funny?" stage. He uses the sentence is three ways:

1. As a question. "This is funny?" Emphasis on "This".
2. As an unsure statement. "This is funny?" No emphasis
3. As an exclamation. "This is funny!" Emphasis on "funny".

He is discovering classic cartoons. Watching him respond with his various uses of "This is funny" is quite entertaining. He instinctively knows funny when he sees it, but his attempts at recreating that humor are hit or miss.

• I was at the thrift store tonight, looking at books. I found a number of books belonging to the same man. The books dated from the 50's through the 70's. Clearly, the man was a history teacher. There were dictionaries, history textbooks, a set of World War II reference books, political science books, and other academically themed volumes. Either he is dead or has no more use for books. I bought a couple of them (even though I will not be teaching history this year). I was powerfully struck by a thought that made me feel very small: One day, there will be shelf of books in a thrift store with my name written carefully inside the front cover in faded black sharpie. Some of them will be bought; some will not; most will end up in the trash. I will be gone, and no one will no what it means that those books are sitting on that shelf in a thrift store.

• Next week is teacher pre-planning. Look forward to my dispatches from the front lines of teacher training.

Peace