Thank you, Eliana and Pam. Pam, the title of the Nabokov is Despair. Yes, I know. Ladydusk, that is unearthly! Good work. Some day I have to see that part of the country. Re: Germinal. I started it this summer, and abandoned it, unimpressed. If it improves and I quit too soon, someone let me know.

Don't worry. :) Dostoevsky is another excellent choice of Christian writer. Those Russians!

Tolstoy. No, seriously.

Agreeing with Jane. ****caution spoiler**** Also adding that, much as I enjoyed the book, the sacrifice of the innocent man by being hung from a tree was too much symbolism for me, and gave me flashbacks to high school and Billy Budd.

Sure. I'm only asking that you find a less infelicitous way of phrasing your observations than to remark that a Catholic family in the individual has only a small number of children, and leaving the inference to the reader or listener. It's done, believe me, by those with intentions less benign than yours, and it stings.

I know you didn't mean it this way, but I cringe (and yes, take it personally) when the "Catholics with 2-3 kids, nudge, wink" trope is trotted out. I have three children, and am unlikely to have any more. You now know exactly nothing about my belief or practice. ETA: I find "cafeteria Catholic" an insulting phrase, too; right up there with the sneering "neo-Cath." Can we stop coming up with pejoratives for each other?

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_the_Violet_Crown Hint: not Athens. It was previously Name in City, until a stalker targeted my dd and began harassing dh and me. I wonder how many of us here changed our names and/or accounts for stalker reasons?

Just mentioning that this is a fairly old thread. But still a good one!

I need encouragement. I've read almost nothing this week. Well actually I have read, partially or in entirety, D'Aulaire's Norse Myths, Robinson Crusoe (abridged), The Sea Around Us, Man's Great Adventure, The First Book of Ancient Greece, Johnny Texas on the San Antonio Road (a classic!), Who Lives Here?, The Adventures of Don Quixote, Prehistoric Animals, All About the Ice Age, A Treasury of Stories for Eight-Year-Olds, and I Wonder Why Snakes Shed Their Skins*. Yesterday my voice actually cracked dramatically into a feeble croak in the middle of a sentence about Thor dressing up as Freya to fool the jotuns, and I had to quit. Post-bedtime has been spent with Great Girl as she gets ready to go off to her study abroad program. It will be the longest time she's ever spent away from home and she feels an understandable need for Mom time. So no reading in the evenings. And there's still 600 pages to go in Boswell. I think this must be like the colic days. Tell me there will be a day when I will read to myself again. (Dh brought me, from his office, an "accessible" Nabokov, and wonders why I haven't started it yet. Maybe it will be the next comfy couch read-aloud.) *I did not need to know that geckos lick their eyeballs to keep them moist.

In an amazing coincidence, that's exactly how I do my clothes and hair. There's a time in Edinburgh when you can't buy alcohol??

Hm, out of the way... I don't know if the National Museum is out of the way, but the lowest floor is the part to see if time is short, as it has all the Scottish archeological wonders - Viking hoards and the like. Half-ruined Craigmillar Castle, near the Royal Infirmary, is much more interesting than touristy Edinburgh Castle, being chock full of hidden stairways and passages and generally much more castle-y. It's like the Remington House of castles. I admit it's most fun with young children who can disappear into the many nooks and hideaways. And, not least, Armchair Books. Google armchair books edinburgh and click on Images. And then you will know where you must be. ETA: Edinburgh Books, a block away from Armchair, is also a fantastic place for used book shopping, but is pricier. At both, look for Canongate Classics, an Edinburgh publisher selling Scottish writers often not found in the US.

2 Corinthians 4:8 "We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed." Careful.... ;)

Not exactly food trucks, but the egg roll/fajita stands on the University of Texas campus, run by a lovely Vietnamese family, and which fed just about every UT student in the '80s and '90s, turned out to be a ring for fencing stolen goods. http://www.esri.com/news/arcnews/spring03articles/austin-texas-police.html But the egg rolls were so good! And so cheap!

An Indian truck just moved in down the street. I'm just waiting for a chance to go scope out their menu. It replaces the "genuine New Orleans beignets" truck run by a lovely young couple with suspiciously Slavic accents. Mmmm beignets. Wikipedia claims food trucks were invented in Texas. So that's true.

Wait, one other thing, and I can't believe this didn't occur to me. In Houston, in one room of the exhibit there was a "living statue"; a guy made up like one of the statues and standing perfectly still, who would suddenly move or gesture, startling everyone. I really wished there had been some warning because Wee Girl with her anxiety problems was very upset. I don't know if this was part of the exhibit in other cities, though.

Another agreement with SoCalLynn. We saw it in Houston. We went with another family so that when the littles got bored and fidgety, we could take them to more pleasing areas of the museum.

We're city folks, and Middle Girl just got her first house key and bus pass on a lanyard so she can take the bus from our house to dh's office, the art museum, and the library (all at the same stop). She's very excited about beginning middle school, and being old enough to take the city bus by herself. ETA: Like most of the homes here, no garage, just a carport. Lots of people in the neighborhood have only a short driveway, or just park on the street.

Beautiful! What is that blue stuff in the background?

The Johnson Twitterfeed: DrJohnCampbell @Johnson Opinion on taxing Americans w/out consent? Johnson @DrJohnCampbell @Boswell Sir, they are a race of convicts & ought to be thankful for any thing we allow them short of hanging. #DetestAmericans #ToriesRule

I don't think an academic is necessarily acting out of greed or narcissism even if she writes a "real" textbook, though. If she thinks there's nothing suitable in the field, or she believes there ought to be a completely different approach to teaching an area, why shouldn't she try to get her own textbook out there to many students, instead of just customized sets of photocopies for her own classes? They're not in it for the money.

That's one way of looking at it I suppose, and dh doesn't deny that egomaniacal twits abound in his field. But as the article's author mentions at the end, professors who write their own materials generally do it because they've looked at the options and feel they can do a lot better. If that's twittery, it's nevertheless the same reason dh wanted to homeschool our children.

Dh and a colleague are just finishing up a textbook in their field, on contemporary issues in that field (for upper level undergraduate classes). They're writing it as multiple shorter books of about 100 pp each. The idea is that (1) many instuctors would want to use it as an add-on to an overview type of text, and this avoids requiring buying the entire textbook or some sort of non-resellable customized option; (2) since it's contemporary work in the field, if there are major changes in one area, they can write a new edition for just that section; and (3) if a professor likes a couple of the chapters but not others (as is frequent - a big reason instructors in his field assign their own work is they believe their own approach to be the right one), he can just purchase the chapters he wants. Admittedly, this is a field where prices are already fairly low, as it doesn't start with the letters S, T, E, or M. So there's some expectation of keeping materials affordable. I wonder if part of the problem in fields with $300+ books is that everyone already expects that to be the normal cost.

I had a long post and then deleted it because it was getting too personal. In summary: Listen to what the parent says about the child's needs, not making assumptions based on other SN kids you've met or what you've read. Believe the parent when they say X is not a problem, but Y is a problem. Don't take it personally when a parent of a child having a meltdown or panic attack or other crisis is short with you (especially if you've inadvertently triggered the crisis), as we're mostly focused on dealing with the situation. Asking if you can help, or how you can accommodate, or if there's anything specific it would be useful to know, are all good things. As long as you listen to the answer. ETA: Just because this comes up so frustratingly often: not all neurological/ psychiatric issues are autism spectrum disorder. So all the things you've learned about ASD kids are going to do you no good in dealing with my child. And, thanks for starting this thread. :)

Ha! Great Girl enjoyed it especially, being the one in her summer math program who kept getting called over to make computers work. She thought it would be even better if the tech support guy turned the page and the book reader gasped, "Now you've lost all my data!!" Samuel Johnson tweet of the day: Elphinston @Johnson Have you read *********'s new book Johnson @Elphinston I have looked into it Elphinston @Johnson What?! Have you not read it through? Johnson @Elphinston @Boswell No, Sir; do you read books through?

Happy birthday to your mom! Is that Samuel Johnson in the first picture? It looks like it could be. ;) Now I'm reading all of Johnson's pithy sayings as tweets. They hold up pretty well! I can find me if I click on "View all birthdays." I'm next on the list. So I think I just have to figure out how to get one of the people listed visibly banned from the forums, and I should make the page.