This land is your land…

So Robert, no doubt inspired by the on-going reasonable accommodation three-ring circus consultations, is drawing an elaborate map of a country he calls Peace. This is an interesting example of how Robert’s brain works – his older brother is obsessed with maps and all things logical, and naturally Robert wants to emulate his big brother, so he is drawing maps. On the other hand, Robert is a much more creative, fluid soul – so the main island of this “country” is a random shape divided into various “provinces,” each of which represents something that Robert thinks of as peaceful: babies, poppies, lullabies, rainbows, doves, and so on. Smaller islands, with bridges connecting everyone, represent world religions, because (regardless of the aforementioned reasonable accommodation utter fiasco consultations) we’ve tried to teach our boys that every religion we know promotes peace.
Now, to be fair, although the concepts are crystal clear, Robert’s spelling is filled with unintentional double-entendre – the country, for instance, is actually called “Piece.” Also, there’s an island of Muslins.

Your daily dose of perspective

In the process of moving our home office, we’ve come across a 1988 price list for a computer company where Dr. T worked once upon a time, which reveals a couple of things:
1 ~ this is exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about when I complain that the man never throws anything out. I mean really, 1988??
2 ~ computer technology (in case you hadn’t noticed) has skyrocketed in terms of capability and plummeted in terms of price. We are all pretty much aware of this, but the 1988 price list offers some concrete examples:
HP laser printer: $6,750
Hayes 1200 baud external modem: $649
IBM PS/2 (featuring 2 Mb RAM, 115 Mb hard drive – and that’s Mb, not Gb; and there’s no monitor): $14,000 (add $350 for a 12″ black & white monitor, and at least $850 for colour)
Compaq portable 386 (featuring 1 Mb RAM and 40 Mb hard drive): $10,595
Right now, I am creating this entry on my sexy new laptop, which features 2 Gb RAM, 160 Gb hard drive, 17″ anti-glare screen, integrated webcam, wireless, etc., etc., for which I paid about a thousand dollars – one-tenth what I would have had to shell out for that portable Compaq. And my SNL is ‘espresso’ brown – it’s like a huge slab of cyberchocolate.
Just the way I like ’em: sexy, powerful, chocolatey, and, as it turns out, cheap.

Moving day weekend week in perpetuity

In the past week, we’ve undergone some changes here at the old homestead. We decided last Friday that the boys, who have been sharing the largest of our four bedrooms, should have separate rooms. We also figured that it wouldn’t be fair to keep one in the big room while the other moved to a small room, so both boys got a new room, and we lost our home office and guest room.
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Colin’s new room
Here’s how it’s working – we dismantled the guest bed, and found a cheap futon frame on craigslist upon which we have set up the futon mattress that used to be on the guest bed. Colin, who was on the upper bunk when the boys were sharing, is in the former guest room with what’s now a loft bed. Robert’s in the former office, and the office – two desks, two chairs, a couple of filing cabinets, half a dozen computers (more on that later), and approximately 2,749 books, along with the “new” futon, has been transplanted to the biggest room.
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Heidi relaxes on the “new” futon
From my new office window I have a gorgeous view of the night skyline.
We took this moving exercise as an opportunity to do some book purging:
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Robert poses next to the stack of purged books
Of course, this stack represents less than a quarter of my books, so it’s a giant pile, but a small step…
We’re still living in chaos, with closets to be emptied and files to be sorted, not to mention rooms to be “customized” in Colin’s words, but everyone appears to be sleeping well, particularly the cat, who is thrilled to discover beds in every room.