So I was doing something goofy on Friday night (don’t ask; it involved some clowning around with a Swiffer), and my wife was rolling her eyes and chuckle-snorting to herself. And then she came out with the following: “I could Tweet this, but I won’t.”
That’s right, people: I was (deservedly) threatened with tweet-shame. It worked, too.
Can you imagine what technologies our kid, a dozen years from now, will be deploying this way? Yikes.
Seems like everywhere I travel this summer, flights are oversold or overweight or overtired or whatever: and they’re invariably looking for volunteers to get on a (much) later flight.
A good idea when traveling solo, but at 7:30 this morning, packed and screened and geared for movement with two parents and two kids under five, is it really that tempting?
Yes. We may have no sense, but we’re still into chasing that dollar. $600 vouchers on Continental, because the piddling airplane (was it a 737? It looked like a Cessna) that they had to fly from Newark to San Francisco had no room for both passengers AND enough fuel to make it around several weather systems.
A good flight to stay off of anyway, in my opinion.
Anyhow, the unexpected beauty of having paid–for the first time–for a ticket for our now-two-year-old is that all the perks of volunteering were now magnified by four. Four breakfast lunch and dinner vouchers for the group (good for any of the plasticky food items at the airport), and the real payoff– four $600 vouchers for Continental flights in the future. We look forward to flying on one of their dingy Cessnas a very long way next year when we have some time.
The key in the bargain, though: a “day room” at the lightly tarnished EWR Ramada hotel. We just woke up from our naps, which were a must after the 4:30 alarm this morning. And we are going to try this again.
The real question, though, is whether we’re going to actually make it for the remainder of our voyage. We don’t reach San Francisco until 12:30am our time. Then rental car, driving, situating, etc.
Greed may have gotten the best of us yet.
I’ve already said here that I think Goodnight Moon falls way short of its reputation. But my son picks it up nearly every night lately, demanding that it be read to him before sleeptime. Needless to say, we cave in.
Except that he doesn’t quite read it. As soon as we get to certain pages, he gets very agitated, and begins to point to the upper right-hand quadrant of the illustration. Why? Because the red balloon, emphasized in the book’s early pages, disappears. It’s missing from two of the color spreads in the center of the story. Then it comes back. In other words, this title has been in print for 60-plus years, and it has been read by millions of children, and my 17-month-old has just now flagged a major continuity error. (Though admittedly, he’s not the first.)
I’m so proud. And slightly frightened. The kid’s shaping up to be a copy editor, poor thing, and (as a former c.e. myself) I wouldn’t wish it on him.
Last weekend, while Jean and I were walking Sasha home, we were passing by one of the housing projects when we spotted a girl, about 11 or 12 years old, riding a small BMX bike. We didn’t think anything of it until we’d walked by, when suddenly we heard a CRASH! We turned around:
She’d ridden her bike directly into a parked car, and was lying on the ground, screaming. No, laughing. In one hand was her cell phone, which she’d been writing a text message on. She was still writing the text message. And laughing. And then she shouted, “Again!”
Oh well, kids are idiots. At least she wasn’t trying to rob us.
