What’s Family For?
“Ma Larkin” from “The Darling Buds of May” is also in the new Harry Potter movie, The Prisoner of Azkaban. She’s the awful Aunt Marge. Here’s what else she’s been in: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0274913/
HA! She was in the 1986 movie, Little Shop of Horrors! Don’t remember her? I didn’t either. She’s the mother of Steve Martin as the Dentist. Her picture hangs on his wall.
People get credit for things like that?
Sphere: Related ContentToday, in a surprise move, the US handed over limited power to the Iraqi interim government two days ahead of schedule. Honestly, I think that was a good idea. There’s a better than average chance that the rebels would have been planning something spectacularly awful, so I think moving it up by two days was a good idea.
Do you remember the Frank Herbert series, Dune? In the first book the ruling house stayed inside the capital city. The city had giant walls to keep out the huge sandworms and to lessen the impact of massive sand storms. It also gave them lots of control over who came and went. But the royal families holed up there completely separated from their subjects or charges.
And that’s what the “green zone” in Baghdad feels like based on news reports. It sounds like they’ve made this one sector very secure and the foreign nationals rarely leave it. I haven’t been there so I don’t know, but that’s what it sounds like. It really reminds me of Dune. It sounds very isolated. But I guess its that isolation that protects the residents.
Sphere: Related ContentOn Saturday the Melrose National Little League had their annual end-of-the-year field day. We brought the whole crowd, Grace included. They had set up lots of giant inflatable toys (like a “moon bounce” and a giant obstacle course and a huge inflatable slide. The slide was actually the stern-end of a ship. Clearly this was meant to be the Titanic sinking. While I readily admit its in poor taste to make a children’s toy out of such a tragedy I also have to admit some amusement with it.
We were able to let the “big” kids roam around with friends while we played with Grace. Everyone had a fine time for about 30 minutes until the rain started to come down in buckets. Our coach was EXCELLENT. Normally you have to wait around for the hot dogs and hamburgers to finish cooking and for everyone to finish eating and finally for a “few” words to be said before they hand out awards. Our coach gave us Chloe’s trophy early due to the terrible weather. He’s a good egg.
Some time back I had promised Ben that if he could read five chapter-books I would take him to the movie of his choice. On Saturday he chose Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. So I brought Chloe and Gabriel and we had lunch at the theater. What a mistake. The service was awful, the food was worse and the prices were truly horrifying. But the movie was good. And so were the kids. Ben and Gabriel were really absorbed by the movie while Chloe became distracted quickly. It was really about an hour too long for her. She’s only a year younger than Gabriel, but she kept trying to wander around and sit on my lap.
I picked up a diversion for the kids while they’re on the airplane. Its something called a “pixter”. It came well recommended. I haven’t tried it out yet, but will test it out before we get on the plane.
Liz tried giving Chloe and Grace some Benadryl last week to see if it would make them sleepy on the plane. The last time we gave some to Chloe it had the opposite effect and really wound her up. We were stuck with a hyperactive 1 year old on a plane for eight hours. This time it had no net affect on either girl.
Sphere: Related ContentThe iBook sure is a handsome little machine. Even though we got the larger of the two machines, its still teeny compared to the Dell Inspiron 1150. I think it weighs about half as much (4.9lb) and is much smaller. Its about the size of a textbook. and smaller than many!
When I was packing the Inspiron up for its trip to Memphis there are these foam insert designed to protect the laptop during transit. But the Inspiron wouldn’t fit. Then I noticed the instructions explained that if you had an “oversized” laptop you could remove some of the inserts. I didn’t have the heart to tell Liz that her machine was “oversized”.
Actually, she wouldn’t care. She never liked it anyway. She’s happy to see it going away.
DHL Express is coming by this evening to pick it up. I guess its really very fortunate that this will work out ok — that is, without losing a pile of money. Its not so common you can call “Do-Over” and get away with it.
I’ve been using the iBook over the weekend and I have to confess that I really do like it quite a bit. The OS is good. The machine itself is very thoughtfully and solidly built. The display on the screen is very clear and its much faster than the old G3 we used to have. In fact, I was even starting to think that I might get a desktop version someday instead of my PC. But then again, although I don’t play games on it much any more I really used to like playing games on a desktop. and Macs aren’t really very good for that, are they? I wonder how many games are still put out for the mac?
Hmm…
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