Nobody Knows Anything

Through careful deliberation, Tamar and I came up with the identities of the Final Five Cylons.

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I’ve spent most of what seems like the past several months but probably was just the past few days celebrating Sophia’s 7th birthday. (SEVEN? Is this fair? Is this true? Good lord!) We had the family party. We had the kids’ party. Today was the school’s party. All hail, Sophia! Seven!

(My God, the time goes fast.)

My birthday’s in August. I never had a party. Darin’s birthday is right before Christmas. He really never had a party.

Simon is tired of preschool. As in, we have a fight every day about going. Of course, when it comes time to get him at the end of the day, he doesn’t want to go home, he wants to stay and play. I’ve tried to explain that preschool is all about the playing and kindergarten (which he wants to go to NOW) is all about the school. He doesn’t believe this. Sophia has snack-recess AND lunch-recess, so clearly going to school is the best choice.

He has also taught himself to read.

We’d noticed he was picking up a few words here and there. For over a year his favorite word has been EXIT, because he could read it on signs everywhere. But lately the pace of acquisition has picked up, until finally he started reading his favorite Blue’s Clues book to me. And he isn’t reading from memorization either (he’s had several books completely memorized for a while now). Now I point to a word and he can either read it or begin to sound it out. When he hasn’t a clue he shakes his head until I help him out.

He isn’t quite so thrilled with reading that he’s doing it on his own, but he is clearly pleased with himself to have figured it out.

No wonder he wants to be in kindergarten NOW.

I still think he’s going to be surprised when it’s not all recess.

Wait a second: Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore play a composer and lyricist who write a pop song together, and we’re supposed to believe Drew Barrymore is the witty one good with words?

I used to speak German — I probably wouldn’t call myself fluent, but I did well enough to argue with another German when I was drunk, to always end up speaking German after the Germans had exhausted their English, and once, when hanging out with a bunch of other Germans, they guessed everything from Norwegian (I’d dyed my hair blonde) to Dutch to Canadian before finally guessing American. (Sadly, this says more about the state of Americans leaning the language than it does about my abilities. Still.) But I haven’t done anything in German for the past 10 years or more.

So last night I have a dream in which I’m trying to get to Berlin and I find a book entitled something like Berlin auf Fluchthaft. I looked up “fluchthaft” in Babelfish and it gave me “escapeful”; the various dictionaries on-line gave me “No such word, bucko.” However, there are several pages (via Google, natch) that use the word “fluchthaft.”

Is “escapeful” the best translation for “fluchthaft”? Or does it mean something else in slang?

ETA: My father-in-law says it means “something that keeps you from fleeing,” from Flucht=flight and Haft=arrest (or constraint). So now I am really wondering what that dream meant!

(Warning: there are spoilers for the most recent episode of Heroes, “Distractions.”)

So, one of my favorite blogs is Alan Sepinwall’s What’s Alan Watching? He’s a TV critic and I’ve found that his take and my take on shows is almost exactly parallel, so Alan joins the rarefied critic pantheon that includes…well, so far there’s just been one: Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly. Owen likes a movie, I’m likely to like the movie; if Alan likes a show, I’m going to check it out. (Although he likes How I Met Your Mother, which I found unwatchable during its premiere episode, and I recently tuned in for another ep and said, “Wow, still unwatchable.”)

Anyhow, in his current entry about this week’s episode of Heroes, Alan says:

Nathan is Claire’s daddy…I know there had been some ’shipping for Peter and Claire, and this revelation nips that neatly in the bud….

Hahahahaha. You don’t know much about fandoms, do you, Mr. Sepinwall? Nathan being Claire’s daddy and therefore Peter being Claire’s uncle just launched a thousand fanfics. I love how enthusiastic fans can get, but let’s face facts: some of them are pretty deeply wacked out.

(ETA: You know, I didn’t even need to check this to be sure, but I went on Fanfiction.net and sho’ nuff, Diane shoots, she scores…)

(Crossposted at my LJ journal.)

Or: why a writer reality show will never work.

Someone snuck into my house and filmed something not unlike one of my days, except a)at 7 I’m making lunches and b)at midnight I’m asleep. Possibly I don’t drink this much coffee either. Possibly.

(Via Elizabeth Bear.)