Getting ready to leave the house the other day, Grace said, “Mom, you forgot to brush my hair!”
“That’s okay, honey,” Char responded. “We’re running late, so we’ll have to do it later.”
“Mom!” Grace hollered, “I’m gonna get cavities!”
"Follow that cab!"
On the way to tour the White House, we had to take two separate cabs, so Char, Marj, the twins and I jumped into the taxi behind Mom, Dad, Lily and Jack. Marj says, “Follow that cab!” I made some sort of off-hand remark about how she’d probably always wanted to say that. A few blocks later, the lead driver turned right and Abby yelled, “Follow that cab!”
The White House tour, in my opinion, was a little anti-climatic. It was actually cooler standing outside the fence a couple days prior and seeing Marine One land and then take off again. The House tour only lets you see about five rooms, and the docents do an admirable job of making sure that everyone moves quietly along. And keeps them moving. I think it took about 10 minutes to walk all the way through.
The Capitol tour, on the other hand, was fascinating. To hear the story of the rotunda painting and all the statues was pure delight, and our tour was very impressive. Someone asked how many statues of presidents were in the building, he thought for about a minute and then said, “Seven.” Of course, he could have been bullshitting us, but he was convincing, nonetheless. (To add credibility, he was able to name the two statues from each state for every member of our tour and knew detailed histories of many of them.)
All in all, it was a great trip. I’ll post more photos soon.
I can’t improve on Colbert…
Comedian Stephen Colbert, mocking a report that one ethanol-fueled flight from London to New York would require a year’s worth of corn from thirty soccer fields, remarked “You get to fly across the Atlantic AND destroy soccer at the same time!”
The Ultimate Arrogance
I’ve long thought that taking a basic food staple and turning it into fuel for our cars was the ultimate arrogance. The nose-thumbing equivalent, say, of turning down a friend needing a $4 loan and then using that $4 to buy a venti vanilla latte.
“Yes, I know you’re hungry,” we seem to be saying, “and I know you have kids to feed, too. But if I turn all of this corn into ethanol, there’s a chance I could save ten cents a gallon.”
The good news, I guess, is that we’re developing new ways to create ethanol from the solid walls of plants that will be more efficient than the current method, which only uses about 50% of the dry kernel mass of corn. The bad news, which goes largely ignored, is that mileage decreases fairly significantly with E85, thus causing us to burn more in the first place. The rest of the bad news is that the “demand” for ethanol is driving food prices up and creating a food shortage.
You may have already noticed rising rice prices. Some retails stores in the US have begun rationing the amount of rice you can buy. Why? We’re consuming (both eating and burning for fuel) more rice than we’re producing. “For the first time, it’s been clear that we are consuming more rice than we are producing globally,” said Robert Zeigler, head of the Philippines-based International Rice Research Institute.
Honestly, it all makes me just want to ride my bike.
I can't make sense of this math…
Last week, while they were on Spring Break, Char piled up all the kids and took them to the YMCA to play in the morning. Then they went to an early showing of “Horton Hears a Who.” After the movie, they went out to lunch. When they came home, got out of the car and were walking up to the door, Lily said, “Mom, I’m bored.”
Char and I got married ten years ago in January, 1999. Lily was born almost two years later in September. So here’s the thing: If she was born seven-and-a-half years ago, where did this teenager come from?