unrelated bits

Santiago, Chile, originally uploaded by Sandra Maynard.

Jon is away on business(in of all places, Santiago, Chile) this week. Guess where he gets to go in December: Milan, Italy! The most exotic place I've been to on business is Edmonton, Canada, eh. Anyway we talked to John yesterday after he arrived via Skype. Brenden was really thrilled that Jon was talking through the computer. B is making more sense when he talks, but he still doesn't get that no one can see him when he's talking on the phone so I have to interpret.

Before he left, we watched Kung Fu Panda which was cute. That's it, that's the total review. Nothing to see here, move along.

I finally, finally finished Neal Stephenson's The Baroque Cycle, his trilogy that takes place in the late 1600's - early 1700's. All I'll say the last third of the last book I was really getting impatient and was speed-reading (which consists of scanning the first sentence of a paragraph - is it a description? SHEESH! Move onto next paragraph & repeat). I don't care how much you like your characters, 300 pages is too long to try to have anyone executed.

I should tell the worm & rubber mallet story for Helly: While working in the yard I usually give Brenden an earthworm or two to investigate to keep him out of trouble - I know you can sense problems with this story already - but one day a few weeks ago I let him take a rubber mallet out of his dad's toolbox so he could pound acorns littering our driveway. While he was pounding away, I was digging up a shrub and I said "Oh, look, a worm!" Brenden came over, picked it up and I stupidly didn't put 2 + 2 together until I heard the "WHACK".