A Short Trip to Austin

Gary and I went to Austin on Thursday and stayed in a lovely motel. I-35 splits at that point, not to the east and west, but up and down, into two layers. This feature means you get twice the highway noise per mile than your ordinary freeway. Besides that, the toilet didn't flush, the temperature was either too hot or too cold, and one of the wall circuits didn't work. But it did have high-speed internet access, and after all, isn't that what's important these days for the saavy traveler?

(If you want to see the surprise I got while there, check my other blog.)

Do We Ever Really Know Our Kids?

First I have to read his blog to find out he's having his broken heart checked out.

Then I have to read his myspace to see all the girls flirting with him.

Now I discover on the internet, of all places, that's he's been hiding secrets about neutrinos!

I wonder what else I'm missing??

Unique Names, Please

I have nothing at all against Andrew or Rachel as people, but I am somewhat glad that my two as-yet-unmarried children are no longer dating people with those names. Just too confusing.

At one point, shortly after Laura joined the family, David was dating someone named Lori. I told Rachel she absolutely could NOT date anyone named Larry. Just too confusing.

I do know a man who married someone with the same first name as his mother. That led to two closely related women with the same first and last name. Just too confusing.

That reminds me of a favorite linguistics story in our family. (If you don't understand linguistics, you might not think this is funny.) We were living in Papua New Guinea and we went to market one Saturday morning. There were dozens of different kinds of bananas for sale (have you noticed we only get one or maybe two varieties here in the States?). So we asked someone, "Well, how do you tell all the different kinds of bananas apart?" To which they responded, "It's easy--they all have different names."