Chattanooga girl slow routed to a blue dog

Kara came home today. She's been away with her Grandparents visiting the sights in Chattanooga, TN. She rode the incline to the summit of Lookout Mountain. She wandered the warrens of Rock City. She gazed on the over-hyped-but-yet-still-pretty Ruby Falls. And she did lots of other things, such as the aquarium and the children's museum. She came back buzzing and brown as a nut. She and I sorted through the stack of brochures she brought home, and, at 10:49 p.m., she still isn't sleeping. L. says she's older. "She's been away from Mommy and Daddy. She's seen things we didn't see." She does seem taller, I suppose.

Caleb could watch Blue's Clues every minute of the day. And, strangely enough, he actually learns something from watching. To be honest, I thought that whole thing about children's television being educational was a load of crap to make parents feel better. Yet, Caleb truly picks things up from this show, words and shapes. The other day, he pointed at a circle and said "serkul!" (He talks like his mom: fast!) And now "cookie!" And when he says, "I-doo" when you ask him if he wants something . . . well, its is pretty darn sweet.

L. and I have been fighting the computer wars. First, our e-machines motherboard fried, and it took the power suppply with it. And then our router freaked out. Routers, despite their ubiquity, are still like black boxes. A friend said to me, "They are like printers. When something goes wrong, you don't fix it. You just throw them away and buy another one." (How American.) Determined--and poor--I swore at it for two nights and managed to get the thing working. Turns out, it was working fine, I just hadn't read the manual closely enough. And finally, the laptop started working as if we'd poured Vermont maple syrup in through the UBS ports. The problem has something to do with the router. Yeah, better not get going on that one.

Finally, two changes for me this week: a new pair of glasses, and a gleaming silver iPod Nano. I'm a 24/7 lecture-listening machine now; hear me learn! (I also put some Hendrix, Cash, and Bach on there.) By the way, I saw this cool video on CNet today about mashups, the future is looking cooler than ever. Almost makes me want to learn C++.