Heptadecagon

I have just a short political message (ok, two), that I'd like to see go viral: Of course, my dream ticket would be this:

SCAN0189 Originally uploaded by three beans I've updated the Flickr page with more artwork created by the kids. This picture shows Talia and Zoe (conveniently labelled "T" and "Z") outside with me and the telescope on a dark, starry night. Several of these stars seem to have gone supernova at the same time, so it looks like the three of us are on the verge of a major scientific discovery. I'm so excited that my eyes turned red. The moon is also out, and despite the darkness, the grass is quite clearly green. Amazing.

After every baseball game, the players are responsible for cleaning up the field. Especially rookies. I'm a rookie. We sweep out the dugouts. We rake the dirt along the base-paths. We remove the bases and cover the base posts. We cover the pitcher's mound and home plate area with tarps. We are a grounds-keeping machine . During the post-game clean-up (wow, back-to-back hyphenations) our manager, Terrey, had me get a broom and told me to sweep a circle around home plate. This took all of thirty seconds. "Ok, I'm done," I called out to him. "Keep going, around and around," were his directions. So I did. I kept going in a small circle around and around home plate, in the same direction until I felt so dizzy I couldn't walk straight. Finally, Terrey came over to me, shook his head, and said to make the circles bigger each time. "You mean you want a spiral?" I asked. "Terrey, you have to speak geek to me." "Make a spir...

Chris had been feeling a little uncomfortable all day Wednesday, but at 38 and a half weeks pregnant, I'd guess that's the normal way to feel. We'll pick up the story around 11 pm, when contractions were about five minutes apart, but according to Chris, didn't feel like they were contractions of the entire uterus. I have no uterus, so I can only write what she described, and that's how she explained them to me. Oh, and another thing: this post will use the word "uterus," and other words that cause queasiness among beer-swilling men. If this sort of talk upsets you, skip all the words and scroll to the bottom of the post for the baby pictures. But back to the uterus (UTERUS!). I had noticed that the contractions kind of followed the scheme of one big one, and then two smaller ones, all spaced about five minutes apart. I don't really know for certain if this was what was happening; I was just trying to estimate the strength of the contraction by ob...

Thursday was the last day of school for the girls. They read, skipped, and sang their way through kindergarten and are ready to tackle first grade. Well, after a three-month vacation, that is. Just for kicks, we'll show the progression of education. Here they are on their first day of preschool: Before leaving for their first day of kindergarten: And finally, here, exiting the bus on their last day of kindergarten: Notice the increase in sophistication apparent in the pictures. Talia somehow managed to be wearing a pair of headphones to give the too-cool-for-school look. The headphones are, to the best of my knowledge, not even hers and we don't know how she wound up with them. I wouldn't put it past her to have won them shooting dice in the back of the classroom. Update: Ok, the headphones are actually hers. I had forgotten that the kids wore these when they worked on the computer at school. Zoe's headphones are tucked away in her backpack.

Aaron's hair was out of control. It wasn't that it was long, it was just, well, a lot . I'm no good at describing it; this is what he looked like. It didn't bother me, but according to Chris, something had to be done (shout-out to Miss Nel son ). Chris had a hair appointment on Saturday. As it happens, the woman who does her hair has two little boys of her own, so she has some experience taking shears to the heads of children while they're bobbing and weaving . When Aaron got on the chair, the hairdresser floated and jabbed with the clippers. By the end she was standing over him as if he were Sonny Liston. Then the hairdresser raised her arms and said, " I am the greatest ." Ok, she didn't, but wouldn't it have been unbelievably awesome if she had?

I really, really shouldn't admit to dreaming up this joke. Watch carefully -- I'm about to do something stupid: Joe: I think my urologist is a pessimist. Bill: What makes you think that? Joe: He told me my bladder is half-empty. Thank you. I'll be here all week. Please be sure to tip the wait-staff generously.