I think my very finicky about books 9 year old might be interested in some short science fiction. Does anyone know of an anthology that's aimed at late elementary/middle school readers? Not necessarily stories written specifically for kids, but something put together with kids in mind, no inappropriate themes, etc? He reads very well, so I'm not so much concerned about reading level as content. I found one (The Starry Rift) on Amazon, but it says 8th grade and up, so I'm not sure if it would be okay for him or not.

We liked the Time for Kids biography of Edison.

My aunt and uncle have one and she bites people with some regularity, despite the thousands of dollars they've dumped into expensive trainers. But they still love her. Purely anecdotal, but it's all I've got.

I didn't respond to the other thread....I like going out with DH, but I don't feel an overwhelming need for it, and, yeah, it probably is because we have tons of time together (and a good bit of time alone together) at home. He's a teacher, so he's home for the next 6 weeks right now. During the school year, he's gone before I get up, and he gets home anywhere between 4:15 and 5:30, depending on his tutoring schedule. Then he often goes back out to tutor for an hour after the kids are in bed, but we still always have an hour or two at least alone together in the evenings. And then all weekend. Like I try to remember when we only have $11 in our checking account, a lot of reason DH does what he does is so that we have a good amount of time to spend together.

We always go in September because DH has a week off then. Advantages: free dining! For our family, there's not really any other discount that competes with free dining, so it's the cheapest time to go. Crowds are good; I don't have much to compare it to, and I've heard things have gotten more crowded in September since they started offering free dining, but it's still one of the least crowded times of year, and it's definitely manageable. The only real disadvantage is the heat, but it's a pretty big one. The average high in September is 89, I think, and it's that or right around that pretty much every day. We don't really have any choice; DH is a teacher, and his September break is the only time we can go when most people are in school. Otherwise we'd have to weigh my love of free dining against my love of cooler weather to decide whether to go in Jan or Feb instead (oh, BTW, the only thing to watch out for in Feb is President's Week; a lot of schools have that week off, so it's one of the more crowded weeks of the year.)

My observation has been (and my quick skim of this thread seems to hold it up) that people either have a really tough time going from 1 to 2 OR from 2 to 3. For me, 1 to 2 was much, much harder. 2 to 3 was easy by comparison. I'm actually one of the few people who thinks 1 to 2 was harder than 0 to 1, in fact. With one baby I felt like "ahh--this is what I'm supposed to be doing!" I loved it, and he was a super easy baby. Then the chaos hit with the second one. I think it has something to do with spacing and probably a lot to do with personalities; my second was my toughest baby but my most easygoing toddler...so when the third came along I had an easy toddler/easy baby combo instead of the relatively tough toddler and relatively tough baby combo I had with number 2.

I don't think there's any argument about Puerto Rico at all; Puerto Ricans are US citizens. As to the other countries they allow; I imagine the name "National Spelling Bee" predates the inclusion of other countries and they didn't want to change it and lose the name recognition. Kind of like how the Montreal Expos used to be part of the National League in baseball.

I found this on the website: Seems a little random...

3-5 times a year, but some of those times are at the dollar movie (well, I think it's actually 1.75 now). I love going to the movies and wish we could do it more. I worked at a movie theater in college (that's where I met DH!) so for a couple of years I saw nearly every movie that came out. I still haven't gotten used to actually paying for movies.

I'd do hardwood in a second upstairs if I could afford it. I'd prefer pretty much anything to carpet, in fact. I hate carpet with a fiery passion. Our last house had hardwoods everywhere, and it was great.

My oldest was reading Magic Tree House books before he was five, so finding a phonics program that wasn't way too easy and slow paced for him was pretty much impossible...we got 1/3 of the way through Sing, Spell, Read, and Write and then gave up. It's worked out fine--he's about to turn 9 and he can read pretty much anything he wants--but looking back I think what I'd do if I had it to do over is have him work through all the Explode the Code books. A full phonics program with all the bells and whistles was way too much, but he could easily have spent 10-15 minutes a day doing ETC just to make sure we had all the bases covered.

We used surgical tubing with my son, and it worked pretty well. Fortunately, he seems to have grown out of it now.

another non-coffee drinker here! I sort of think of my 20 (umm, or 40) minutes on the internet in the morning as my coffee.

I'm the opposite; DH does the bulk of the cooking around here, but I like baking. Doesn't get much easier than muffins. We like applesauce oatmeal muffins: http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,194,146181-237203,00.html cinnamon muffins (for when we want cinnamon rolls, but don't want to go to the effort): http://www.recipezaar.com/recipe/Cinnamon-Muffins-25969 chocolate chocolate chip muffins, peanut butter chocolate chip muffins....muffins can do anything!

We have three boys. With my last pregnancy, we made a half-hearted attempt at Shettles, but when I wasn't pregnant after 3 months I got impatient and gave up...so boy #3. So I guess that's about as far as I'll go. My rule has always been that I wouldn't have another baby unless I would be having one even if I already had some of each, if that makes sense. If I ever have a fourth, I'll go into it just assuming it will be another boy.

ooh, very interesting!

Frogurt's there! he's on the plane with them! Michael, we're told pretty explicitly, doesn't get to go to the sideways world...along with all the other whisperers...at least not yet. Which seems sort of unfair, really. And fascinating. Why Michael? If you look at so many of the characters on the show who DO wind up in the sideways world, their sins have to do with being really terrible parents. Widmore, Mrs. Hawking, and Ben all essentially sacrifice a child to the island. Christian Shepard is a pretty classic bad father along with Ben's dad. Locke's Dad stole his kidney and threw him out of a building, not to mention ruining Sawyer's life, and HE still makes it to the Sideways world (although I'm not sure we can really say he's there....maybe he's worse than stuck on the island). Obviously, Michael did a couple of Very Bad Things when he killed Ana Lucia and Libby, but it's interesting to me that these particular murders can't be forgiven as easily as the collective mass murdering spree of Ben, Widmore, et. al., particularly since Michael's murders were committed in the name of being TOO devoted to his son.

We have a tiny creek on our property, and I love it. The kids can play out there, and I just have to look out the window to check on them. big creek would worry me a lot. Our little creek leads to a big creek a 10 minute hike through the woods--best of both worlds, as they can go there when we go with them, but can't get to it easily on their own. We don't worry about flooding, as the creek is down a steep hill. We had major floods in our area last fall and no problems at all at our house.

I don't know that it was so much that she wouldn't get to stay with him (although they do seem to be pushing the idea of one soulmate, which presumably would mean Charlotte and Daniel) as that she wasn't ready to deal with who she was/what she did to Daniel during her life. She needed to hang out and play perfect mother for awhile longer. Or she was just worried that Daniel would be moving on with the losties instead of staying with her and whatever group she's in with.

Interesting (ABC is sorta dumb): http://popwatch.ew.com/2010/05/26/lost-final-scenes-wreckage/ ABC added the final shots of the 815 crash. yes. Decompression. how, err...helpful.

I was thinking today about how much I like what they did with the sideways Mrs. Hawking story. We're expecting her whole "you can't do this" thing with Desmond to be more of the same old protect the space-time continuum at any cost Eloise--but then it turns out to be all because she doesn't want to lose Daniel again. So in her life she was this woman so devoted to the island and a particular view of truth that she was willing to sacrifice her son for it, and then in the afterlife she doesn't have any purpose other than being a good mother to Daniel and indulging his every piano playing whim. Questions I want to hear Damon and Carlton talk about on the DVD: 1. Did the bomb really go off? Doc Jenson says no, which surprised me--it hadn't occurred to me that it didn't really go off. I initially thought the bomb created the sideways world, but then abandoned that when the lightbulb went off and I realized "it worked" was what Juliet said to Sawyer at the vending machine. But I still thought the bomb was "the incident" and necessary to keep Dharma from finding out to much about the island. Now I dunno. 2. Minor point, but I'm curious: did the characters live full sideways lives before finding each other, or did the sideways world start up when the plane passed over the island and they all have fake memories of sideways lives? I would guess the latter, my primary evidence being when Jack asks his sideways mom about his "appendix scar" and then seems very confused as to whether he remembers it happening or not.

whoops, yes! ha--pretty major plot point for me to mess up on there.

I'm with the PPs in my overall love your post but quibble with the island as being a place between life and death, CW...so you're arguing that when Hurley, Kate, Sawyer, et.al. fly away they immediately go hook up with Jack in Sideways world? How does this reconcile with Christian saying that some people died before Jack and some people died long after? And what about all the on-island/off-island fraternizing elsewhere in the story? Ben leaves regularly and comes back, Widmore leaves the island and has Penny, etc. Doc Jenson's EW columns are up now. Overall he is, not surprisingly, a big fan of the finale, but he makes an argument that the sideways plot didn't fully work...I can see where he's coming from...it's a lot of time devoted to a device that could have served the same purpose emotionally and rhetorically by not showing up until the final episode. It felt in some ways like a gimmick--like a way to satisfy the audience's expectation for a big twist at the end. On the other hand....well, it satisfied my expectation for a big twist at the end. And it was kind of fun. I'm looking forward to watching it again knowing how it turns out. Yeah, that's how I end all my LOST posts: "I can't wait to watch it again." When will my kids get old enough to watch LOST with me already?!

Given how many dozens of people over the past two days I've heard saying stuff like, "so I guess they all died in the crash?" or "so the island was purgatory all along?" despite Christian's rather explicit explanation to the contrary, I can't imagine how much confusion there would be without that explanation.

I think it's interesting that the sideways resolution is the only thing that's getting any attention today. I would certainly agree that the ending was a cop-out if the sideways resolution was supposed to be the answer to all the big mysteries, but it wasn't. The island story and the mythology of the show had its own on-island resolution. The sideways story turned out, in the end, to be self-contained. I see it as a comment on some of the major themes of the show--the idea is that they were brought to the island to do this specific job, and they did it, but what was bigger than that was the way they found redemption through these relationships with each other. That's what sticks around when people are finished fumbling around in the dark, pushing buttons, trying to save the world. People are deeply flawed and terribly incompetent and universally, well, lost, but our need to love and be loved is what saves us. It is hokey, but LOST has always been a hopeless romantic kind of show. The more I sit with it, the happier I am with it, really. I want to go watch it again now.