I got home about 9:00 last night, having missed dinner and had an unexpectedly exciting ending to the evening. I warmed up leftovers, ate, and decided to fool around a bit online while waiting for #2 daughter to show up so I could tell her my interesting experience.

So I decided to go play with the Celebrity Lookalike thing that #1 daughter has on her blog.

This thing is not infallible. They said I looked like Paget Brewster. I do not. That's me up in the lefthand corner, and while the picture is designed to be unrecognizable by my sons' friends so they will not die of embarrassment by having xangan friends recognize them as #1 and #2 son, you can tell that I don't look like Paget Brewster.

I tried another brand. This one said I looked like Ava Gardner. I would totally be okay with  looking like Ava Gardner, but it just isn't true. Sigh.

They also said that I looked like Venus Williams.  Another attractive woman, but  I don't think there is much similarity between us. I mean, the chances that Venus, when she is out with friends, has people saying, "Hey, aren't you the lady from the teacher store?" seem slim.

And Famke Janssen. I'd enjoy looking like Famke, too, but her name is just flat too hard to spell.

Now the thing that you might have noticed -- I did -- is that these people bear very little resemblance to one another. Do these applications just pick out a few people at random and hope we'll imagine a resemblance, like astrology?

Or does this merely tell us something about how computers see us? For example, I notice that all these women have similar chins. Their chins are even somewhat similar to mine. Maybe to a computer, the chin is the thing that really tells you all about people.

Possibly computers think that we all look alike. After all, you have to tell these games your gender. They can't tell. Maybe the computer is saying, "Well, these all seem to have two eyebrows. They look quite a lot alike."

Yet another reason to think that Gary Marcus is wrong on the old human vs. computer brain question.

You were wondering about the excitement?

Well, I had the music meeting, and suffered soldiered through bells, and was well into choir.

And you remember how I have been working on getting volunteers for special music for the early service every week and have the calendar filled up to Easter? And working with the choirlet, as well? Well, our choir director asked if the choirlet would sing this Sunday in the second service. I asked them, they agreed, I emailed the pastor to let him know, they worked hard on the song, all was going swimmingly.

We were about to sing a lovely new piece by L.L. Fleming, when someone in the choir asked about the anthem on Sunday. I confidently expected the announcement that the early service ensemble would be singing it. Nope. We're doing -- it doesn't matter what piece, because I was sitting there in consternation. I believe I said something.

The choir director said there had been a change of plans and it wasn't his decision.

I assume that I sang the Fleming piece more or less as it was written. I was thinking about the eight people who had been asked to do special music for the 11:00 service. About the fact that some had been excited and flattered to be asked and some possibly nervous about it, but all had rearranged their schedules to do it and worked hard to prepare. And about how the change had not even been conveyed to them -- I mean, two of us were in choir practice that night, and two more in bells, and no one had told the four of us, so I was pretty sure that the plan was just to blow us off at the time. And about how I didn't even have contact information for all these women. And about the effect this will have on my ability to find volunteers in future, after all these eight people have talked to everyone they meet about being uninvited to our little party.

I stayed after to find out who had made this decision, and I sent a carefully-phrased email. Carefully phrased meaning that it didn't say "You blankety blank! What do you mean blanking up my work like this?! Don't blank with me!" Not that I use that sort of language. But I think it would have expressed how I felt.

Sometime in my work day today, I will have to get in contact with all the people involved.

We have snow and ice and stuff, as a fitting background to such a task.

The recipient of my email got right back to me and we have fixed it all up. I am now thinking of ways to avoid having this sort of thing happen again in future.

Yesterday I had to take my kid to the dentist again, and so once again I didn't get to the gym before heading in to the store for work. Since I wouldn't make it home till 9:00 that evening, I decided to take a walk at lunch time.

When I drove up to the store, it was 60 degrees out, with a mild breeze. I stepped out the back door. The temperature had dropped. To 27, actually, as I discovered later. At the time, it just registered that it had gotten a bit cold, and what a shame that I hadn't brought a jacket.

Also it was windy.

Once my family went camping in a windy state. Our tent blew away a couple of times and we had to re-stake it. Then we had little conversations all night: was this normal, or were they having a hurricane?

We didn't want to be wusses if this was just normal wind in their area, but on the other hand, we didn't want to stay out there in a tornado thinking, "Hmmm, they have a lot of wind here."

It turned out to be normal, I guess. We didn't hear people talking the next day about the Great Blow of 1998 or anything.

That was how the wind was.

I continued my walk, but by the time I returned to the store, I felt that I had been out in an Arctic gale. My face was entirely red, and my hair had that Arctic explorer look to it, though admittedly without ice on it, so it could have been worse. The Princess couldn't believe I had gone for a walk in that.

I went back in to continue my forays into The Dark Art. I was doing one of those where you look and see what people have searched for on the way to the site. "Penguin Education," one visitor had wanted, and another was looking for "bulletin boards for penguins." I wouldn't have thought there were that many penguin trainers around, but I did learn in the process that there is a Penguin High School in Tasmania. My personal favorite was the searcher for "gripping adverbs," but their Google page was in the Cyrillic alphabet, so who knows what they might have had in mind.

Anyway, in the midst of this, I took a phone call.

"Do you have a bulletin board set with glasses?"

I mentioned the old sunglasses set from Scholastic, and that it was no longer being made. Sorry.

"Is there one with a schoolhouse with glasses?"

No, I'd never seen one like that, but we did have some schoolhouses. If she'd come in, I'd be glad to help her.

"Do you have one with a schoolhouse with glasses and a big bird with glasses and a drum with glasses and a ruler with glasses and a ---"

I may have shown the whites of my eyes to The Princess. You can't laugh, after all, and you can't even say, "Dear, go get your keeper and I'll talk to them." You have to continue as though it were normal. I did, however, stop suggesting that she come in.

Was going for a walk in high winds and below freezing temperatures more nuts than calling people are reciting loony poems about glasses? I haven't decided yet.

#1 daughter got to go to court yesterday. At a strategic moment, they sent her out for a file. Or of course they might have just forgotten it, but if it had been me, with a minion sitting there looking like a cross between Audrey Hepburn and Ueto Aya (actually, I stole that from her Celebrity Lookalike widget. I have no idea who Ueto Aya is), I would have an apparent sudden realization and whisper to her with an air of quiet triumph. She would waft out, looking dangerously efficient, and come back with a completely irrelevant file. I would glance into it, smile slightly, make eye contact with my opponent, and sit back in my chair.

The file could be take out menus. It wouldn't matter.

I bet real lawyers don't do that.

Anyway, #1 daughter took the opportunity, as she went for the file, to call and tell me how much fun she was having. She might get to sit in on a murder today! The exclamation point is to show the girlish enthusiasm with which she said it. She didn't squeal or anything, because she's not that kind of girl, but in the movie version she definitely would have.

What Lenten sacrifice are you planning? Ash Wednesday is just over a week away, which is quite early, so we're having to think of this earlier than usual.

The point of a Lenten sacrifice is that you should give up something that you want, or are tempted by, frequently. #2 daughter's whole church is giving up complaining, and it can be good to give up something that you want to give up permanently. That is how I got over being critical of people (or reduced it, at least). That year, my friend Fine Soprano and I both gave it up. It is easy to quit saying critical things, but it is very hard to quit thinking them. However, after 40 days of calling yourself on it every time, it happens far less frequently, and you don't go back to it easily.

If you give up tea, even though tea is good for you, it still gives you the opportunity to think. Lent, like Advent, is for thinking. People who celebrate Easter and Christmas but do not observe Lent and Advent are, it seems to me, missing out on a good opportunity for spiritual growth.

Not that everyone is in the market for spiritual growth.

I knew a woman once who disapproved of Lent because she thought it was bad for people's self-esteem to think about their sins. I am not too concerned about self-esteem, myself. When I see waves of excessive selflessness and dangerously low levels of self-regard sweeping the nation, I'll worry about it. Until then, I don't care much. But it seems to me that having 40 days set aside to think about sin and grace is not the same as obsessing about all the things you think are wrong with you.

Many people do that all the time. I doubt that they are usually thinking about their sins, though. I think they are generally thinking about why they don't look like a model or have as much money as the people on TV or how people don't like them as much as they want to be liked. Not the same thing at all. Psychologists call that "rumination," and it is not the same as meditation or contemplation.

Most of us probably go through our days without contemplating much. Just planning to contemplate the sacrifice of Jesus, or our responsibility toward the oppressed, or your sins, or whatever, often doesn't work. You get up and rush off to work, and are busy all day, and then have fun in the evenings, and go to bed having scarcely so much as taken time to pray, let alone meditate. If you give up sodas, then every time you reach for a soda and have to stop, you are reminded to think about grace, or whatever you have chosen to contemplate.

Christians who do not observe the liturgical year in their churches (and since we aren't instructed to do so in the Bible, there are plenty who don't) sometimes choose times of fasting for themselves, or times of "fasting from" something, much like the Lenten sacrifice. Doing this during Lent, however, provides solidarity and fellowship in the sacrifice. We support one another in our sacrifices, and share the learning from our contemplation.

The past couple of years, I have done Lenten studies that had specific sacrifices for particular days or weeks. These were supposed to be educational. I gave up all pre-made foods, to get a clear image of how easy it was for us in Hamburger-a-go-go-land to get food, while children die of malnutrition in other countries. Stuff like that. It was convicting, as they say.

But I am thinking that this year, I may make a traditional sacrifice.

My friend Partygirl, who is Catholic, is provided with a list of stuff to give up. She has to give up way more than I do. I was thinking about how she gives up novels and worldly books. I could perhaps do that for 40 days. That's a month and a half of Booksfree gone to waste, though.

My birthday always falls during Lent, and I always hope for a birthday cake, so I don't give up sugar. I rarely actually get a cake, but still. I don't want to give up the hope. What if this is one of the years my husband makes me a cake, and I have to say, "No, thanks. I gave up sugar for Lent"? Sad, I am sure you'll agree.

Giving up meat would just mean having to cook twice for every meal, since my menfolks wouldn't contemplate it. I fear that in that case I would find irritation with them interfering with contemplation.

The church bulletin was showing that Lent was coming up, in an unintentionally humorous way. In the youth calendar, there were listed not only the Ash Wednesday service, the WOW dinner, and "Differing Perspectives," but also "Sin" and "Temptation." On successive Wednesdays. How often are you offered that in church?

So yesterday morning I went to the early service as well as the one I normally attend, in order to get more data for my project of helping them get their music woes fixed, and I was able to make some simple calculations. The first service has less than half the music the second service does. In the second service, the congregation has nine opportunities to sing, and four more to listen to other music. The first service has four chances to sing (the songs are generally shorter) and one chance to listen -- the chance to listen being a piano interlude during the offertory. Nothing wrong with a good piano interlude, but there are so few people in that service that there isn't much time for an interlude while the plates are passed.

So even before we consider the style of music or the quality of the song leader or any of the other factors which have been discussed, it is pretty clear that the poor early worshippers are suffering from a dearth of music. I signed up another soloist, pestered a few more people into considering doing stuff, and went home satisfied.

I ensconced myself on the couch. All afternoon, I would begin to feel okay, and would get up to make bread or do a few rows on Erin or put in a load of laundry, and then would begin to feel light-headed and would go back and lie down.

My kids would tell you that, when they wake up feeling poorly, I always tell them to get up and move around and they might feel better. I also believe that the day might warm up as it goes along. And that you might come to like things -- food, a job, people -- better if you give them a chance.

I didn't get to feeling better, and I should have quit thinking I would, but I did at least get the laundry done and the bread baked.

My companion in illness was Bill Bryson's A Lost Continent, his travel book about a tour of small-town America. He started in Iowa. I've never been to Iowa, so I was prepared to believe that his description of goofy people and menacing-sounding flatness was accurate. However, he then went to Missouri. I've been to Missouri, and he was just wrong about that state, that's all.

I once emailed an author of travel books, telling him his error in missing the pig de-snooter in the Clay County Historical Museum when he was checking out weird little museums in Missouri. He went to Precious Moments and the Barbed Wire Museum, and it just seemed to me that those were not the best possible choices. He emailed me back, saying that he would be sure to check it out next time he was in that state. I thought that was kind of him.

However, if I had toyed with the idea of making travel suggestions to Mr. Bryson, I quickly gave it up, because the whole book was an airing of his prejudices. Not just about Missouri, either. He hits out at old people, fat people, Mexican music, tourists, Southerners, buses...

It is still an enjoyable book. Bryson is such a good writer that his tale of a rather boring trip which he doesn't enjoy much, and all his little pet peeves, is very entertaining. And there are people all over who can make intrinsically fascinating things dull. I don't know what to think about that.

I am back at the old stand today, with a long long to-do list.

It's New Stuff Time in the retail world. At the store, that means taking pictures, posting them on the websites, and thinking up clever ways to use the new things in the February workshops. At home, I received a package from Central Office with the coming season's recipes, so we will be practicing them.

Last season, I started a bit late, so I did this mad marathon when all the kids were home for Labor Day weekend. This season, I have six weeks before the shows begin, so we are incorporating them into our regular meals. The favorite so far involves tubes of crescent rolls. These things have no food value whatsoever, and lots of objectionable chemicals, but Central Office can make them really appealing. Both times I've made this recipe, I've thought about how I could simply make my own pastry -- with whole grains. -- and keep the almond and berry topping, and have a reasonably healthy item, but I haven't gone to the trouble of doing so. And I might not. There are a lot of recipes to try out.

The new catalogs arrived as well. They have outdoor entertaining items. Some of those things I actually want for myself. We've talked before about buying objects for your fantasy life. When I see the jewel-toned outdoor dishes and the clever stakes which hold wine bottles and glasses on the lawn without their getting kicked over, I remember occasions when we took picnics to Shakespeare in the Park, or long summer afternoons in a chaise longue under the plum trees. I can see myself in some sort of Gatsby-like gathering, with laughter and ice cubes tinkling in the soft evening air. Filmy tea gowns and ascots might be involved.

The kids point out how rare these occasions are. Cooking outdoors is pretty common around here, but it's either in the woods, camping, or a matter of dashing out into the oppressive heat to grab the grilled food and bring it in where there aren't so many mosquitos. Not to mention the fact that we have three dogs and a basketball hoop in the backyard and no lawn furniture at all. Who, they ask, am I kidding?

I don't know. Maybe if I had those objects, and was practicing Triple Citrus Mojitos (white rum optional) and Watermelon and Peach Salsa with Cayenne Chips, there would be a startling transformation in my leisure habits.

This kind of thinking, I believe, explains why so many people buy cookie cutters from Martha Stewart. Evening bags, too. It's a magic spell. It probably doesn't work.

Having done a little bit of work, I went for a walk in the park while #2 son was at gymnastics, and then set out for the rehearsal of the choirlet.

This is a fun group to work with. We have two people with backgrounds in directing, and me with a long background in being directed, so we are able to have proper rehearsals, instead of just singing the piece from front to back and hoping that it sounds okay. Everyone jumps in with suggestions about harmonies, and dynamics, and ways to vary the verses, and no one whines. It's refreshing.

I was able to add some propaganda. Someone said it would be okay if we got the beginning and the ending of the Rutter piece right, and I made an impassioned speech on how we had plenty of time to get the whole thing right, and it would be beautiful. The amount of passion I put into that speech would have been appropriate if I had been hoping to do well in the South Carolina primaries, but I fear that I will have limited opportunities for propaganda, and I want to get it in while I can. I am not going to be free to rehearse with these ladies all the time.

It is possible that they will feel relieved when I am not there. However, I trust that there will be, at the back of their minds, a sense of discomfort when they want to make illegal copies, and a nagging feeling that they ought to try to be on key. If so, I will have done my part.

After the rehearsal, I hung out with my family and worked on Erin (this is Erin from Alice Starmore's Celtic Collection, with shaping from the Handy Book of Sweaters, and who knows whether that will work). I got to the point at which I was supposed to begin Band A again, but the new shaping means that there is no longer room for Band A. I asked the boys what they thought I should do. Repeat one of the other, smaller bands? Find a new, smaller chart from another sweater in the same book and hope it meshes well?

"I don't know," said #1 son. "That sweater is so loud, I can't hear myself think." He then offered me an elfin grin and said, "Get it? Get it?"

I felt feverish last night, and was hoarse, but I feel a bit better today. I plan to take it easy this afternoon, and I expect I will be fine tomorrow.

#1 daughter didn't come in last night, since they had bad weather there, so I have no good update on her. Here's what I do know:

When she first got there, they put her into a little room filled with boxes of paper. Sort of like the miller's daughter in "Rumpelstitskin." She had to input, copy, and file all the papers, and as soon as she emptied one box, another would appear.

The papers were upsetting, too, since they dealt with rapes and murders and things. We hadn't foreseen that, though it makes sense in retrospect.

They expected it to take several months for her to finish it, but she got it done this week. So they are now going to train her to do more interesting things, such as dockets and stuff. I don't know what those are, but apparently they are pretty exciting.

Her colleagues are very supportive of her plans to go into law, though they fear that she may be too sweet. Those of us who know her well nod sagely when we hear this. "They just don't know her very well yet," we say.

So last night I made dinner at 8:00 when #2 son got home from work, and then just watched TV. Not knitting or anything, just watching TV with the kids. I never do this. And then I slept in till 8:00 this morning. I also never do that. I woke this morning with a headache and a sore throat. I don;t know whether it was from oversleeping, or if I was just really tired. And, since this week has been madly busy and I haven't exercised or eaten properly, I may just be getting the effects of that.

Still, my husband made me a cup of tea. I was on my way out the door to do the grocery shopping, but it was so nice of him to do that, I sat back down to write this post. Then I will get groceries, and make breakfast (or I suppose it will be brunch by then), and clean house. I have practice with the choirlet this afternoon. I hope all these things will make me feel better.

More presents arrived in the mail. I have definitely gotten used to this. If I ever fall from the present lists, I will begin to feel hard done by, I can tell. Central Office sent me some sea-green kitchen utensils and a new Greek spice blend. I could just keep it on my desk and smell it occasionally, to let it remind me of summer while it is so cold outside.

Amazon Vine sent me an enormous new biography of Napoleon and the book Kluge, by Gary Marcus. Yesterday, I merely went to the gym, worked, and then in the evening (since my show was canceled) began reading the Marcus book. He seems like a nice guy. His premise is that the human brain, which we all think is so great, really isn't. It isn't good enough to have been designed by anyone.

It may be that I am too familiar with the topic to find his book fascinating, or it may be that his real point is a defense of evolution, which doesn't need any defending around my house, but so far it seems to me that the book is a string of old anecdotes and cheap shots (are you really prepared to believe that the absence of ham in hamburgers tells us something significant about the human brain?). He also seems to believe that computers are better than human brains, and that the fact that we don't operate like computers is evidence that there is no God.

However, there were a few new stories, and I was reading them out to the family, and we were discussing them while the boys played Wii. I got to the part about how people from nonliterate societies don't get syllogisms. I remember learning that in school 30 years ago and finding it fascinating, because syllogisms do seem at first glance to be the kind of thing that everyone would agree upon.

Back then, I didn't know anyone from a nonliterate society, but when I was reminded of it last night my husband was right there. He can read, but most people in his country cannot. And, as I may have mentioned before, my husband has made no effort whatsoever to assimilate into our modern culture. He remains serenely uninvolved.

So I presented to him the example question in the book.

I'd been doing that all along. Now, this is unreasonable of me, but I think I am not the only one who does it. When I read some announcement about human beings, my immediate response is to compare it with my own experience, and if I can't confirm it that way, then I like to ask around among people I know. I am aware that, even if all three people in the room are counterexamples, that fact will not affect the results of a well-ordered study with a large sample. I still do it.

So I asked my husband. "All the bears in Siberia are white. A neighbor of ours went to Siberia and saw a bear. What color was the bear?"

People in literate societies will immediately answer this question, "White." They will then look at you oddly. As #2 son says, it seems like common sense.

People from nonliterate countries ignore the syllogism and answer these questions as though they were real questions. They go with their own experience, suggesting that the asker should find the neighbor and ask, or otherwise focussing on the question of the bear rather than the syllogism. My husband said that the bear would have been black. All the bears he has seen have been black.

Later, I read out from the section on why people continue to smoke, even though there is no question at all that smoking is a bad idea. My husband said that old people didn't smoke as much. And also dead people didn't smoke much.

Dead people don't smoke much? I asked. #1 son kept his face carefully blank, though his eyes were darting from me to his dad. They smoke only at parties, my husband assured us.

We were all staring at him by this time. I may have been laughing.

Dead people have parties, my husband insisted. Hadn't I ever seen the parties in the little cemetery out by our country place? He couldn't imagine how the people living near there weren't bothered by the noise. They would sit there, "just like people," smoking and having parties.

Every now and then my husband will tell us something like this. We never know quite how to respond.

"Do they have parties in the cemetery here?" I asked, because we have a cemetery at the end of the road. He has never seen a party there, my husband admitted. But the dead don't have parties just all the time. They have them when the moon is full, or on special days.

"You're lucky you can't see them," he told me, shivering dramatically.

He headed out for his tournament. I returned to the book, which was I believe repeating the story about The Prisoner's Dilemma. It seemed less exciting by comparison. I will have to sniff Greek spice mix occasionally as I read it...

I will be up at the store today, and #1 daughter is supposed to come home, if the weather doesn't prevent her. Her brother intends to make her remove all the handbags and scented candles and other girly stuff from the bedroom which is now his again. I intend to get all the details on her new job. I have the weekend off, except for rehearsal and church, and am looking forward to it.

Yesterday was just one long gallop. Two days in a row I have not found time to work out, nor to knit.

However, I have been involved in some interesting conversations.

Ozarque has been talking about her perception that the current generation gap is bigger than ever before.

So much of this depends on what generations you're talking about, and of course on how much experience you have to draw on. There's the whole World Is Flat thing, of course. In Book Club, we were talking about history on a grand scale, and the possibility that Friedman was right and the current flattening of the world is a historical event on a par with the Great Age of Exploration.

I have of course been working on a project to cover the sweep of 10,000 years of state history in 15 pages, but I was not the one who brought it up. One of the others remarked that geography had an enormous influence on history. Look, she said, at how some areas of the world had high culture and others did not, or didn't get there until later.

I weighed in with the news that art appears everywhere all at once in conjunction with religion. Archaeologically speaking. But it seems to me that you need a stable food supply before you can have specialization. And before specialization, no one has time to write The Iliad.

One can see in that remark some influence from my current project, I think. The tendency to sum up enormous swaths of history in a single conversation-stopping sentence.

But it's true, isn't it? If you need to spend eight hours a day gathering dung for fuel, you just don't have the leisure to create high culture.

Or even to get to the gym.

Not that I spent the day gathering dung. I just had the dentist for me and #2 son, and had to stop by and visit with a couple of my hostesses, and take the kid for his written driver's test, and take him to school, and make phone calls, and do book club, and copy music for the fledgling choir (we've ordered it, so we can make rehearsal copies and destroy them when the sheet music arrives) and then do study group and bells and choir. And -- here's the tough part -- fit eight hours of actual paid work in there amongst all that.

So I was quite busy. And when I got home, a little past 8:00 p.m., all three of the menfolks were hanging around waiting for me to cook dinner.

Can you believe that?

#2 son had done his first actual shift at work, slinging ice cream and singing. He likes it. He was okay with my not making dinner, since he had eaten several burgers and some ice cream. He had also hooked his brother up with some ice cream in gratitude for the ride to and from work. I'm not sure what my husband's excuse was. I made omelettes and they had to be satisfied with that.

Oh, the generation gap.

Well, as we were discussing history, we were saying that there were big enormous changes going on. Not only the flat world and big technological change, but global warming and a level of distrust of the government that the older ladies felt was unprecedented, though I think it's been that way all my life.

But the dental technician told me that her 92 year old grandmother scoffed at young people who thought they were more hooked up than previous generations. All this IM and texting, she thought, was just the modern version of the party line. This was a type of telephone line, I believe, where all the people could talk at once. Like they would pick up the phone to see who was on the line, just as you or I might turn on the computer to see who is online.

And Miss B was one of the many people who was stranded (for 7 hours, in her case) on the road Monday night when there was a bit of an ice storm. The place where she was stranded used to be the worst stretch of the Butterfield stagecoach route. The 11 miles between our town and the flat part leading to Hell on the Border. It was documented as the worst 11 miles of the entire route, a fact of which we are perversely proud. Now we have a fancy new freeway there, but it got icy and a bunch of trucks jackknifed and no one could get to them to clean it up. Nor could anyone who had already left Hell on the Border get off the freeway to turn around and get to a motel for the night. Everyone just sat there in their cars for the equivalent of a full workday. They had to run their engines at least some to keep from freezing, and many ran out of gas and abandoned their cars, adding to the mess.

The fact that the 21st century was taking place all around them didn't help much.

Today should be a normal day. Gym, work. My show for tonight has been canceled, but I had already sent regrets for the thing I was invited to before it was canceled, so I think I can stay home this evening and knit, even.

My list of things to do, places to go, and people to see today is really way too long. I have been feeling oppressed by it for a couple of days.

However, it does also give me the opportunity for rumination. You see,  for the third grade, state history requirements specify a weird little collection of history facts and topics. I'm going with the geography theme of movement -- that is, the movement of goods, people, and ideas in and out of the state. This allows me to include transportation, communication, explorers, Native Americans, immigrants, pioneers, and various cultures, without making it too higgledy-piggledy.

So I swotted up on all these things, got the names and dates and places clear, wrote the reading passages and the comprehension questions, and did a novel graphic organizer project to help the kids get it all straight.

Now it's time for a grand class project.

I'm having some trouble. I can easily conceive of this as a symphony, or a ballet. A mural, in the style of the early Grant Wood, also comes pretty easily to mind.

A class project? Not so much.

There was a moment there when I thought I had an idea for a class quilt (most classes do them in paper). For a few minutes, I thought I could see squares for Sequoyah, George Takei, and Dunbar and Hunter, each emblazoned with symbolic representations of -- well, never mind, it quickly became as complex as the symphony.

I have to leave this in my mind to percolate.

#2 son and I have dentist appointments first thing this morning, and then I must take him to do his driver's test and then, following a couple of dull errands, I have book club, following which there will be a couple of hours' computer time before my Wednesday afternoon marathon (study group, bell practice, choir practice). This ought to lead to some brilliant idea. I hope.

Look what Partygirl made for me. You can see that she is a more exciting and fun-loving person than I am.

I must resist the temptation to fill this little notebook up with notes on Thomas Edison's visit to the radium fields.

I must also get going. I have done some work already this morning, having leapt out of bed with the full list of the day thudding in my mind, but I now have half an hour to get from here out the door, and I am not dressed or anything. Eeek!

From Scriveling, a list of 100 books all kids should read, with those I've read in bold type.

1. The Twits, by Roald Dahl
2. Burglar Bill, by Janet and Allan Ahlberg
3. The Tiger who came to tea, by Judith Kerr
4. Where the wild things are, by Maurice Sendak
5. The Tale of Samuel Whiskers, by Beatrix Potter
6. Yertle the turtle, by Dr. Seuss
7. Fungus the bogeyman, by Raymond Briggs
8. The Story of the little mole who knew it was none of his business, by Werner Holzwarth and Wolf Erlbruch
9. Room on the broom, by Julia Donaldson
10. The Very hungry caterpillar, by Eric Carle
11. The Cat in the hat, by Dr. Seuss
12. Charlotte's web, by E.B. White
13. The Story of Babar, by Jean de Brunhoff
14. Winnie-the-Pooh, by A.A. Milne
15. Stig of the dump, by Clive King
16. Ballet shoes, by Noel Streatfeild
17. Howl's moving castle, by Diana Wynne Jones
18. Just so stories, by Rudyard Kipling
19. The Borrowers, by Mary Norton
20. Struwwelpeter, by Heinrich Hoffman
21. The Magic faraway tree, by Enid Blyton
22. Danny, the champion of the world, by Roald Dahl
23. George's marvellous medicine, by Roald Dahl
24. Underwater adventure, by Willard Price
25. Tintin in Tibet, by Hergé
26. The Complete Brothers Grimm fairy tales
27. Erik the Viking, by Terry Jones
28. When the wind blows, by Raymond Briggs
29. Old Possum's book of practical cats, by T.S. Eliot
30. The Iron man, by Ted Hughes
31. The Owl and the pussycat, by Edward Lear
32. The Wind in the willows, by Kenneth Grahame
33. The Worst witch collection, by Jill Murphy
34. Peter Pan, by J.M. Barrie
35. Mr. Majeika, by Humphrey Carpenter
36. The Water babies, by Charles Kingsley
37. A Little princess, by Frances Hodgson Burnett
38. I'm the king of the castle, by Susan Hill
39. The Wave, by Morton Rhue
40. Pippi Longstocking, by Astrid Lindgren
41. Charlie and the chocolate factory, by Roald Dahl
42. Bambert's book of missing stories, by Reinhardt Jung
43. The Firework-maker's daughter, by Philip Pullman
44. Tom's midnight garden, by Philippa Pearce
45. The Phantom tollbooth, by Norman Juster
46. The Silver sword, by Ian Serrallier
47. Cue for treason, by Geoffrey Trease
48. The Sword in the stone, by T.H. White
49. A Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula K. LeGuin
50. Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban, by J.K. Rowling
51. The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis
52. His Dark Materials, by Philip Pullman
53. The BFG, by Roald Dahl
54. Swallows and Amazons, by Arthur Ransome
55. Clarice Bean, don't look now, by Lauren Child
56. The Railway children, by E. Nesbit
57. The Selfish giant, by Oscar Wilde
58. Black Beauty, by Anna Sewell
59. Just William, by Richard Crompton
60. Jennings goes to school, by Anthony Buckeridge
61. Comet in Moominland, by Tove Jannson
62. The Bad beginning, by Lemony Snicket
63. Call of the wild, by Jack London
64. Alice in Wonderland and Through the looking glass, by Lewis Carroll
65. The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton
66. I capture the castle, by Dodie Smith
67. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, by Joan Aiken
68. To kill a mockingbird, by Harper Lee
69. Great expectations, by Charles Dickens
70. The Owl service, by Alan Garner
71. The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Arthur Conan Doyle
72. Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë
73. The Diary of a young girl, by Anne Frank
74. Roll of thunder, hear my cry, by Mildred D. Taylor
75. A Kestrel for a knave, by Barry Hines
76. The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien
77. War horse, by Michael Morpurgo
78. Beowulf, by Michael Morpurgo
79. King Solomon's mines, by H. Rider Haggard
80. Kim, by Rudyard Kipling
81. The Road of bones, by Anne Fine
82. Frenchman's Creek, by Daphne du Maurier
83. Treasure Island, by R. L. Stevenson
84. Little women, by Louisa May Alcott
85. Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery
86. Junk, by Melvin Burgess
87. Cider with Rosie, by Laurie Lee
88. The Go-between, by L.P. Hartley
89. The Rattle bag, edited by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes
90. The Song of Hiawatha, by H.W. Longfellow
91. Watership Down, by Richard Adams
92. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain
93. True grit, by Charles Portis
94. Holes, by Louis Sachar
95. Lord of the flies, by William Golding
96. My family and other animals, by Gerald Durrell
97. Coraline, by Neil Gaiman
98. Carrie's war, by Nina Bawden
99. The Story of Tracy Beaker, by Jacqueline Wilson
100. The Lantern bearers, by Rosemary Sutcliff

I guess the question is: should adults go back and read the ones we've missed? With some of these, I'd say "Absolutely!" But I don't think you should bother reading Yertle the Turtle unless you have a kid available to read it to. I think some are not available in the U.S., except in the flat-world sense in which we can have all Raymond Briggs's books if we are willing to pay the shipping from the UK.

If there are any here that I haven't read, but which you think I ought to go read for pleasure, let me know. I don't have to read things for my own good any more, and I have plenty of stuff that I read for class or work or study group or book club, so please do not recommend things that would be, say, the equivalent of reading Hiawatha (which you should read, kids, but grownups, just skim it so you can follow along in conversations on the subject).

I've come back to say that I happened to see this post at Bloglines, and it was bolded all wrong. All the books that Scriveling and I both have read are not bolded. I am not sure why I couldn't bear to have people think I'd never read The Cat in the Hat, but I guess the whole point of this game is to discuss the books we've read and not read and whether we should read the others or disagree with the list and whatnot... Anyway, if you are reading on a feed and The Cat in the Hat is not bold, click on over and see the list accurately before telling me which of the non-bold ones I ought to read.