It is snowing. It waited until I had gotten safely to work and then began snowing and it has not stopped.
I sent Blessing home at noon when the schools closed, and she called me 15 minutes later to say that she had only made it two intersections north by that time. Since then I have been here alone except for a couple of apparently insane people who came in to buy things, even though it was obviously snowing, and a depressed-looking UPS man with one meager box of books, none of them for me.
I was quite calm about it until the snow actually covered the roads and I realized that I had foolishly worn clogs rather than hiking boots and therefore would be a bit cold if I chose to walk home. What with it being 12 degrees out and all. And snowing.
It was at that point that I decided not to call people and tell them that their books had arrived, for fear of encouraging them to risk their lives on the snow-covered roads.
Blessing loaned me a book and there is some tea in the back room (though not any Yorkshire Tea). I have the internet. I can just stay here.

I once heard that the people who stick to their fitness goals are not the most disciplined, but the best at problem solving. I thought of that today, since I have to take #2 son someplace instead of exercising today. I will simply have to fit my 30 minutes in somewhere else, I suppose -- but I also have rehearsal tonight, and there is that job and all.

There has been a smaller bit of grit in the gears of my fitness goals since the new semester began. This is #1 son's last semester of high school, and he has been able to get a better parking space. I had first begun going to the gym after dropping #2 son off at the junior high, a set appointment that made it easy to get to the gym five days a week. When he started at the high school and rode with his brother, it took me a few weeks to work out a new routine that would get me to the gym regularly. I ended up marking their leavetaking with a quiet cup of tea, after which I left for the gym -- arriving reliably at 8:00.  This term, they leave later, and if I stop for a cuppa before leaving, I am too late to get a good workout before I have to come home and get ready for work. So once again I had to readjust.

No matter how well we work it out, there is going to be a need for periodic readjustment.

My fitness goals for this year begin with two simple things: 30 minutes a day, no excuses; and greater variety (and, therefore, intensity). The "no excuses" part still needs work, as we see from the excuse I have today. As for the "greater variety" part, I thought I'd share my experiences on that, in case you have a similar goal yourself.

First option is going to the gym. The great thing about the gym, for me, is that I am not expected to clean it. When I work out at home, I am always feeling as though I ought to dust or load the dishwasher or something, but at the gym, I never feel as though I should be doing anything else but exercising. True, once there, I tend to hop on the treadmill and get engrossed in a magazine, but I can be sure of doing a steady 30 minutes, and I keep the incline high enough to get my heart rate in the target range. There are also all the weights I could ever want. The disadvantages include the time it takes to drive there and the blaring TVs.

The second choice is walking. I have several nice neighborhood routes, I can walk to work once the days get long enough, and our town also has a lovely system of walking trails if I want to drive to another area for variety. I live in a hilly area, and can walk as fast as I want, so here too I can keep my heart rate up.Walking has no flaws, as long as the weather is clement and I mix it up with strength work.

The third choice is exercise DVDs. I get them from Netflix, trade with friends, and occasionally buy one, so I can have good variety here. We have a stability ball and free weights at the house, which gives me more options. Here are a few of my favorites:

On the Ball Pilates Workout with Lizbeth Garcia
3 Day Rotation with Donna Richardson
New York City Ballet Workout I & II
The Lotte Berk Method  -- any of the series

The fourth choice that occurred to me was books. This seemed like a good idea, because books always seem like a good idea. In fact, it didn't turn out that way for me. If you read and memorize the routine, that might do it. I found myself referring back to the book. There I am, balanced on the stability ball, Sam Cooke playing on the computer, and I'm trying to grab the book and see what the next move is without falling -- well, let us say it is not the ideal.

The alternative is to stop after every exercise and read the next one, and you can't keep your heart rate up that way, can you? An assistant who calls out, "Okay, now it's time for the one-legged plank!" would do the trick. Still, books on the subject can be helpful for getting the correct form for moves clear in your mind so you can do them correctly in the gym,  in class, or with the DVD, so here are some favorite books on the subject:

Strength Training for Women, DK books
The Pilates Body, by Brooke Siler

These are not all the possibilities available to me. I hope to do some hiking once the weather settles. My boys have a hand-me-down Nordic Track machine and a curbside-scrounged mini trampoline which I may put into service. I would like to find a convenient place to swim, though at the moment that would involve more driving than I am willing to do. Overall, I think the idea of increasing variety is a very good one. It is harder to slip into a trancelike state in which you do the same workout every day and stop getting any benefit, it is easier to persuade yourself to put in those thirty minutes every day, and it keeps the whole thing  more fun and surprising.

We all want the occasional surprise, don't we?

I finished the Fuzzy Feet last night. I made them according to the pattern, and lengthened them according to the pattern's instructions, to fit #1 son.

This pattern doesn't seem to be intended for men, actually.

Perhaps I shouldn't say that. I didn't felt them carefully by hand, after all. I threw them into the washer with hot water and a little soap, as I usually do, and pulled them out when they reached the right length.

#1 son put them on and I helped him mold them to the preferred shape.

I was hampered in this by the maniacal laughter.

For one thing, though they were just fine in length, they were so tight that, rather than making a nice little elfin bootie like the pair on the right, these gray ones fitted precisely to the contours of #1 son's foot. Since the yarn also unaccountably ended up looking furry -- never had that happen before, and I have felted several things with Wool of the Andes before -- the effect was very much as though #1 son were turning into a werewolf, beginning at the feet.

We are waiting for the final drying before deciding what to do with these werewolf paws. I may wet them again and felt them down further for #2 son, or I may do some cutting and make them into clogs, hoping that that will take away some of the werewolf look. I'll let you know.

While I'm at it, here is a report on the bawks. In Christmas of 2005, I made wool covers for hot water bottles. How have they stood up? I think this is a good test of the puissance of the yarn, since we fill them with boiling water every night, often spilling some onto them, and then shove them under covers and put our feet on them.

The ones pictured here are in Wool Ease and Wool of the Andes, reading from left to right.

I append a picture of the gray one when it was new, so you can see the lovely cable pattern.

Said lovely cable pattern has been smushed out of recognition on both used bawks. Wool of the Andes has held up a little better. The Wool Ease one has pilled quite hideously. Both still keep the hot water bottle hot all night long, so I have no complaints.

However, if you are wondering which cheap yarn will stand up better to wear, I would say it is Wool of the Andes over WoolEase.

I also made some in Peruvian Highlands Wool, but none of those ended up in my household, so I don't know how they have fared.

A theological question arose in conversation yesterday.

Can you adjust God to suit your preferences?

Now, I'm not talking about atheists. In fact, now that atheists are getting evangelical, I no longer want to allow them any opinions on theological matters at all. You don't hear me saying that the Easter Bunny, who does not exist, is German and pale brown.

No, this question is only for those who worship some particular God, or who refuse to worship some particular God.

Supposing that God exists, then how much leeway do we humans have with redefining God? Can you, if you are Jewish, say that God was pretty scary sometimes but you bet he has matured since then? There is actually an interesting book that takes this position. Can you, if you are Christian, base your entire concept of God on John 3:16 and praise songs of the "Jesus, My Boyfriend" school, thus deciding that God is an unconditionally loving mom and humans are the entire center of the universe? Actually, a lot of modern American Christians do this.

We don't feel free to redefine polar bears, though, do we? How much flexibility do we have in our concepts of God, without sacrificing intellectual honesty?

So there you have it: God and yarn. Take your pick. I must go make breakfast.

  SWAP report

"Sewing With a Plan" is a sensible idea in which you plan a wardrobe and sew all the pieces, rather than sewing according to random inspiration and ending up with nothing to wear.

Around the sewing blogs, people do these as contests and sewalongs, and they have some rules. You are supposed to begin with a storyboard, for one thing, and then make all the things you plan on your storyboard. Mine is to the right. The fabrics have been updated, but I didn't take a new picture, because neither you nor I will care that much, right? You are to choose two colors, a neutral and one that you wear as comfortably as a neutral, plus a couple of accent colors.

The SWAP consists of eleven pieces (though I see that my storyboard has twelve). In theory, if you do this right, these eleven pieces will allow you to get dressed for work every day for a month without wearing the same thing twice. The key is a jacket in your neutral color, with matching skirt and pants.

If you wanted to do this, the book pictured at the top there, Looking Good from Palmer and Pletsch, explains the whole thing thoroughly, without the sewing blog rules.

The other central thing is a print two-piece dress combining your two basic colors. These two sets of things are the center of the SWAP. I made a second skirt instead of a second pair of pants, because you know how much trouble I had with the pants. The rules of the official rule-governed SWAPs allow you to do this, though I suppose there are consequences for deviating from your storyboard. Possibly you have to make a new storyboard. As it happens, I am not in any contest or sewalong, so I guess I could just switch. However, I have the fabric for a second pair of pants, so I will just end up with a thirteen-piece SWAP instead.

You then add five more tops (you've done one in a print already, so you end up with six). The rules of the SWAP are that you make these with TNT patterns in simple shapes. Since I had no TNT patterns, I just picked  some out. Three were sewn tops with no buttonholes, and I have completed them. One was a knitted Bijoux blouse, for which I have the yarn and pattern. However, I made the Jasmine sweater, and it works well with the SWAP, so it is in a sense a further substitution. Or a fourteen-piece SWAP.

So in order to complete my original planned SWAP I must finish my second pair of pants, a second jacket, two sewn blouses, and the knitted Bijoux blouse. If I got the sewing done on my highly optimistic one piece per week plan, and knitted the Bijoux blouse at the same time at my usual rate of speed, I would have the whole SWAP finished in early March, with three additional pieces.

I bought the pattern for the princess-seamed shell back during the first SWAP shopping, but I punked out on it because it just looked too hard, and frankly it still does. There is also the blouse to the right, for which I never even bought the pattern. I do not have any blouse fabric on hand. I don't see myself getting either of those things done this week.

I also have three -- no, wait, four -- knitting projects on the needles, and two quilts waiting to be quilted. I don't feel that this is the time to begin the Bijoux blouse, either.

So it is the jacket or the pants. Neither is going to be something I can finish in one week without more free time than I am expecting to have this week.

And this is why I am thinking that this is the perfect week to make a potholder. And merely start one of my remaining SWAP pieces. So this is the plan. I will cut either the jacket -- and I may switch to an easier pattern, actually -- or the pants this week, and hope to get it sewn up by next week. I also hope to complete one of the knitting projects.

It's good to have a plan.

  The service yesterday was very nice. Ozarque had quite a long discussion over at her place recently about death and dying. I didn't read all the comments, so I may have missed it, but I don't recall that anyone talked about planning your funeral. My friend planned hers, and wrote to people asking them if they would do her the favor of reading a particular poem or scripture at her service. She grew up in the Belgian Congo, and had some elements of that culture in her service, and it was very comforting and beautiful. I now think that, along with having a will, we should probably all plan our funerals.

We had the chance to see some old friends, as well. Always nice.

#2 son headed off to film a project for school, #2 daughter and I began planning our writing contest entry for this year (note to self: must read more romances in preparation), #2 daughter gave #1 son a haircut, and then she headed back to the Midwest and I sat down for a quiet evening with my husband while he watched completely incomprehensible Thai soap operas and I read and knitted.

There was a little break when a trio of girls came by to take #1 son out for coffee. The previous evening a pair of boys came to take #2 daughter out for a drink, and I had turned off the Thai soap operas and forced hospitality upon my husband. Last night I left it up to him, and he muted the sound but left it on. Thus it was that when the girls admired the character with white make up and a black organza headdress, we learned that people sporting that look are ghosts. I had never realized.

I completed the jacket which has been sitting around sans buttonholes for all these months, so I have a sewing FO for the week. Photos and details tomorrow, along with a SWAP report, so I'll say no more about my garment-sewing plans for the moment.

The Sew?I Knit! group has kitchen gear for the sewalong theme this month, and indeed it extends to mid-March. My kitchen linens are all pretty shabby, so this is good timing. I  am envisioning this group of fabrics doing something patchwork ... being potholders, maybe, or something like that. Or the other group of fabrics on the left being an apron.

Not that I have either group of fabrics. It is merely that I received the Keepsake Quilting catalog at the same time as the announcement of the sewalong, and snow showers and leaden skies make sunny floral prints so appealing.

I have a couple of Japanese craft books with many patchwork kitchen things. I think we all know that Japanese craft books attain a level of specificity unheard of in American books, so you will understand that there are not merely potholder patterns there, but also assorted pan handle covers, pen cases and matching phone book covers (and phone covers, too, which are not cell phone cozies but mats to cover the phone sitting on the counter, with matching covered phone book and encased pen handy so that you can take a message after a few minutes of fumbling around in all those covers and cases), special wall holders for various sizes of wooden spoons, and silverware cases.

I will be looking through  all my household sewing books this afternoon, and will wait for inspiration to strike.

I'm attending a funeral today, for a dear friend who has been suffering the last two years from ALS. She died in complete confidence that she would be going home to God, so this is not sad for her, but of course it is for the rest of us.

#2 daughter has come down for the event, so that is a good thing.

Let me offer you a meme that is going around the book blogs. They don't tag one another over there, but just put the meme out and ask everyone to do it, and I found the answers interesting as I read around, so I am sticking my oar in.

Science Fiction, Fantasy or Horror? Fantasy
Hardback or Trade Paperback or Mass Market Paperback? Usually mass if I'm buying, but I don't mind the occasional trade paper. Hardcover is only for reference books -- like knitting books or cookbooks, things like that. Well, and stuff I can't wait for. This is a financial rather than an aesthetic preference.
Heinlein or Asimov? Asimov.
Amazon or Brick and Mortar? Both. Brick and mortar first, but if I can't get it elsewhere, I'll buy it at Amazon when I'm ordering my Yorkshire Tea.
Barnes & Noble or Borders? I've never seen a Borders. I rarely go to B&N, but at least I have been there.
Hitchhiker or Discworld? I like both very much, but there are more Discworld books available, so that is automatically better.
Bookmark or Dogear? I used to dogear, but Booksfree has broken me of that habit.
Magazine: Asimov's Science Fiction or Fantasy & Science Fiction? Neither, though I've read both in the past.
Alphabetize by author Alphabetize by title or random? Pretty random, I fear. In fact, though a lot of people argued forcefully for alphabetizing in the book blogs, I have to confess that I suspect them of having too much time on their hands. "Go do some volunteer work!" I want to say to them. Of course, it can take me a long time to find a particular book
Keep, Throw Away or Sell? Keep, return, or give away. I would never throw away a book, nor would I bother to sell them. I know how little used books go for.
Year's Best Science Fiction series (edited by Gardner Dozois) or Years Best SF series (edited by David G. Hartwell)? Well, this is another SF question I'm not qualified to answer.
Keep dustjacket or toss it? Throw it away immediately. Except for kids books. I give those to a school librarian for the bulletin board.
Read with dustjacket or remove it? Remove it. Aren't these two questions in the wrong order?
Short story or novel? Novel.
Harry Potter or Lemony Snicket? Harry, though I confess I bought one of the Lemony Snicket books for the sake of the cover..
Stop reading when tired or at chapter breaks? Chapter breaks, unless it's a really long chapter and I'm really tired.
"It was a dark and stormy night" or "Once upon a time"? "Once upon a time." Hard choice, though.
Buy or Borrow? Either. I have a good system with Booksfree and Frugal Reader, but any source is okay with me. With favorite authors and reference books, I will of course buy them so I can reread and refer to them.
Buying choice: Book Reviews, Recommendation or Browse? All of the above. Recommendations are the most fun, of course. In real life, and especially at work, I probably use reviews more than anything else.
Lewis or Tolkien? Lewis
Collection (short stories by the same author) or Anthology (short stories by different authors)? I don't like short stories enough to read them unless they are by a favorite author, so collection for sure.
Hugo or Nebula? Golden Age SF or New Wave SF? Hard SF or Space Opera? My reading of science fiction is too random and rare for me to have opinions on these things.
Tidy ending or Cliffhanger? Tidy ending. With cliffhangers, I suspect them of using it as a marketing device for the next book and it makes me cross.
Morning reading, Afternoon reading or Nighttime reading? Anytime is good. I always read at night. Other times if I have the opportunity.
Standalone or Series? Either. I'm not fussy.
Urban fantasy or high fantasy? I don't even understand this question.
New or used? Don't care. I won't read a smoky book, and I find highlighting irritating, but otherwise I'm openminded on this subject.
Favorite book of which nobody else has heard? There are so many contenders for this... In fact, this meme ends with a whole string of "favorite books" questions, and I really can't answer those. You know, I read about 100 books a year, plus the ones I read for work, and I am 48 years old, and have been reading since I was three. How can I be expected to have only one or two or five favorite books? Don't other people have this problem?

"I was glad no harpers or chroniclers happened to be passing by." -- Jonathan Stroud

Surely we all feel like that sometimes.

Yesterday, for example.

First, I was at lunch with a friend and she asked about my husband. I guess I had mentioned that he was Buddhist. She was wondering how we reconciled our differing views. Doubtless she imagined theological disputation chez fibermom, interesting discussions on how Christianity and Buddhism meld and flow. But I had to explain that my husband is not a trendy Western Zen Buddhist. He is an old-fashioned Southeast Asian Buddhist, which is to say that he was raised as an animist. He thinks of bad spirits the way I think of bacteria, and believes in magic -- not in the airy-fairy neo-pagan mystical sense, but with the calm assurance of a guy whose father had skin impervious to bullets.

I forget how odd this sounds to people.Like, "Oh, no, we've never discussed the Doctrine of Election. He is a follower of Odin." I didn't lead up to it gently or anything. I think we are still friends, but I know that I have a tendency to back away from people who sound as daft as I did, telling her matter-of-factly about my paleolithic husband.

I returned to work, where I assisted people with their various needs. I was just coping with a nice Englishwoman who said things like "I saw something I liked. It cost $4.99. What might it have been?" when a regular customer came in. He had called and asked me to get some things ready for him, but there had been some babies hiding in the fixtures and screaming hysterically, and a laminating contretemps, so I hadn't done it and I was apologizing.

"I was engaged---"
"You're engaged? Does your husband know?"
"I mean I was involved--"
"Does your husband know?"

Yes, well.

I had no rehearsal last night, and was planning to watch a family movie with my boys, and to finish up those Fuzzy Feet, and go to bed early with a John Grisham novel. Instead, I found myself driving in the dark to unfamiliar places. #2 son's study group called a sudden meeting. It was at the home of one of the members, in one of the new upscale developments that keep popping up in former farmland when our backs are turned. Naturally, we got lost. Fortunately, #2 son has a cell phone. As soon as we got back close enough to town for him to have service, he called his friend.

Ah, yes, the friend explained, the street sign on his road had fallen down. Armed with this new information, we made it to the right house within another, oh, twenty minutes. Then I sat up waiting and waiting and waiting for the call to go pick him up.

There are three drivers in the house. Two of them have no issues about driving in the dark, to unfamiliar places, and getting lost. I strove for a balance between appearing completely calm, like a person who has Overcome Agoraphobia, and appearing somewhat pissed off, like a person who has been dragooned into doing the task no one else wanted. Not an entirely unacceptable position, but not the stuff of ballads, either. 

And then, to top it off, while I was waiting I read Earthchicknits, and learned that I am a slow knitter.

Well, I knew I wasn't a fast knitter, of course. I think I've mentioned that before. But this blogger claims that there are lots of people knitting 50, 70, 80 stitches a minute. She was bemoaning the fact that she only knits 28 stitches a minute. Curious, I got a kid to time me.

22 stitches a minute.

So, well, okay, nothing too terrible. But I'm glad no bards happened by yesterday, looking for material.

Ah -- regarding yesterday's post,  I had an email from an old friend who assures me that being the Older Woman in a romantic relationship isn't all that great. We had suspected as much. I think that leaves older women with very few dating options, though. Older men tend to date younger women, and they don't live as long as women, either, so the pool of men gets sparse. So if you know an older lady who is single, you might want to introduce her to all the presentable men you know. On the other hand, freedom from the stress of dating may be one reason those older ladies who roam in packs are having so much fun.

At book club yesterday, one of the discussion questions was, "Do writers ignore the concerns of older women?"

We stepped away from the book we were reading, The Jane Austen Book Club, which had turned out to be rather slight. Each of us had books in mind in which there had been memorable older women. We were reminded of movies, as well.

"What I don't like," said the retired schoolteacher, newly returned from Italy, "Is how fluffy and harmless old women always are in books and movies."

"They're always secondary characters," said La Bella. "Never the heroine."

Again, we were able to come up with counterexamples, but the fact that they stood out in our minds made it seem likely that what the book club ladies were saying was true.

"It's because the stories need to end up with a marriage," said one, referencing Shakespeare as well as Austen. "It's all about sex."

I offered them the cradle-robbing algorithm which the Jewels of Knowledge recently explained: you can date someone who is half your age plus seven years, but no younger.

"So," I explained, "if you are sixty, you could date a man who is 37."

The older ladies frowned a bit.

"Younger women might end up with older men because of power and wealth," said the schoolteacher, "but there are so many younger women available... I guess you could cook for him."

She shook her head. The conversation continued in this vein. Some of the ladies are married and some are single, but none felt it likely that a May-December match would make good theater. Nor did any of them feel that they would want a younger man in their own lives.

I suggested that the pairings of old men and young women were not really any more plausible. La Bella mentioned Clint Eastwood.

"In  his last couple of movies," she said, "those women were only ogling him because he was the director."

The Piano Teacher brought up Something's Gotta Give, with Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton. We had a bit of noisy agreement that no one in her right mind would choose Jack Nicholson over Keanu Reeves.

We had, at this point, strayed a bit from the topic.

I didn't really want to bring up Agatha Christie, but I think she is a good example. Her early books had plucky young girl heroines, since she was herself a plucky young girl, but the elderly lady Miss Marple became one of her most popular creations. People tend to write about younger people when they are younger and then to write about the concerns of older people when they are older. It makes sense.

I've often mentioned the HGP, the Holiday Grand Plan which allows me to enjoy the holidays every year without excessive stress. The HGP is part of the GP, the annual Grand Plan which begins with New Year's Resolutions, moves through spring cleaning, and then has a food focus part before getting to the HGP.

I don't do the GP every year, but this year I plan to. The month of January, on the GP, is "a month of self" not, we are cautioned, for selfishness, but to clarify our year's goals for ourselves, to recommit to habits and routines that have to do with taking care of ourselves, and just generally to pay a little attention to what we need in between the hard work of the holidays and the hard work of spring cleaning.

Now, as January moves toward February, we are instructed to spend some time thinking about our relationships.

The GP actually recommends listing all your relationships, determining what priority they have in your life, and putting them on your calendar. This may sound odd, but if you are a busy person, you have probably allowed a friendship to slip away without intending it, just because you kept meaning to get in touch and didn't.

I have.

Even family members can sort of fall off our radar screen. We assume that our spouses know we care about them and the kids will wait till we get around to them, and understand that we are busy. But that doesn't reflect how much we really love them.

So, by making sure to pay a bit of attention to your A list people daily and your B list people weekly and so on, you can be sure that you translate those thoughts into action so that the people in your life know that you think about them.

Since I am a working mother with four kids, there was a spell in my life when I just didn't have much of a social life. I had lots of contact with people at work, had friendly interaction with the ladies at the gym, knew people from church, but I simply didn't have time to develop friendships. I enjoyed time with my family, and did lots of fun things with my kids. My husband was the center of my grownup relationships, and my daughters were my girlfriends.

But when my daughters grew up and moved away, I realized that I had to make some grownup friends. I put it on my list of goals for the year.

And since then I have put the goal of developing those friendships on my list each year.

Some people make friends more easily and naturally than I do, probably, but organizing it a bit works well for me.

So today I have book club and tomorrow I have lunch with a friend. Class last night and choir practice tonight, and I make a point of connecting with the people in those groups that I really like.

Maybe some day I will be one of those old ladies who has long-time friends and hangs out with them like a teenage girl. They always seem to be having a lot of fun.

#2 daughter will be singing the alto aria for Bach Cantata 12 with the KC Symphony on February 11, so if you find yourself in the audience, you will know whose amazing voice that is. Well, I guess you would know anyway because of the program and all, but still...

Now, we may have high taste in music around our place, but my husband has very low taste in television. He watches Fear Factor, Nashville Star, Fox News, CNN. So I knew, when he asked me last night, "What do they mean, 'wild girls'?", it was some news story.

I went over to help him puzzle it out.

We were a little hampered by the fact that the expert (and how do you become an expert on wild girls, anyway?) kept insisting that there was no need to give more detail, because "everyone has seen it!" She kept repeating this with asperity whenever the desiccated old man interviewing her tried to slip in a little information. She was, I think, sick of the whole thing.

Now, I had been at the internet anyway. I am trying to help #2 son with an assignment. I am having a little bit of difficulty with this because he has either misunderstood his teacher or she has lost her mind.

His subject is agriculture in the 1920s. This is a great subject. There were huge technological and economic changes going on. Lucky devil, I thought. But no. Apparently he is supposed to explain whether agriculture in the '20s was liberal or conservative. That, he assures me, has to be his thesis. And he is not allowed to use any internet sources. Nor can he use any of the books we have on hand, because they are too popular. The Omnivore's Dilemma, Food and Faith, An Age of Extremes? Practically novels.

So I was trying to help him come up with a reference or two. It was the work of a googly moment to find out what these wild girls were.

Apparently, Britney Spears was photographed getting out of a car in an unladylike manner, with no panties on. Maybe Paris Hilton, too. Whether both of them forgot their undies on the same evening, and some nearby photographer took advantage of the opportunity, or whether they have been making such a habit of this that it counts as exhibitionism, I don't know.

You may be one of the "everyone" who already knows this story. If so, I am sure that you immediately thought, as I did, of Carmen Miranda.

She had the misfortune to be photographed while being swung about by Cesare Romero, with no panties. Her skirt billowed up and a slimy photographer got a shot right up her dress.

She had to leave the country.

Now, I don't know much about either of these stories. I don't know why, in either case, these girls had decided to leave off their knickers.  From the way the expert on the news show was talking, it didn't seem likely that Spears was entirely blameless, but don't you have to wonder about the photographers?

Fortunately, they then moved on to the presidential hopefuls, and we began trying to disentangle them. My husband is toying with the idea of becoming a U.S. citizen, in which case he could vote in the 2008 election, so he is trying to keep the players straight.

Another case where it might be good to have a program.