|
Carnival of Weird
Class was okay. Short. Topics tonight ranged from the Gulf War to how much Ka Leo sucks. (And no, I was not the one to bring it up.)
We're starting a new book — Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko) — but we're all still cleaning up our drafts for our first paper on the last book. When peer review time rolled around, it turned out there were few peers interested in any more reviewing (reeling as we were from the thrashing our work already received). Students started slipping out an hour before the class technically ended. I do have to tweak my paper a bit — my years of newspaper writing has adversely impacted my ability to write in "normal" paragraphs — but my immediate concern is my other class and its first test, which is tomorrow. It's on Polynesian geography, and I have to know where on a map to put Rapa Nui (Easter Island), my dear adopted nation of Niue, and two dozen other specks with complicated names.
This past weekend was the Punahou Carnival. A two-day madhouse, for which a quarter of the island's population squeezes onto a small patch of grass and mud to make noise, get sick, and be separated from their money. Even though it was only a couple of blocks away, Jen and I only briefly entertained the idea of going. We opted to wait for a larger, less cramped carnival at Aloha Stadium... preferably after William returns to town so Jen has someone with whom to go on assorted stomach-churning rides. As usual our neighborhood weathered the storm well enough — no one blocked our driveway this year, and the screams and loud music quickly faded when it was supposed to. Of course, there was the odd business of the stabbing... Yep. Two groups of kids got into a tussle on a back road, and a couple of 'em got acquainted with the wrong end of a knife. The cops swarmed and picked out a few suspects, the victims got whisked away, and absolutely no one who was at the carnival (save the punks involved) even knew anything of the sort had taken place. Of course, when the news first broke, there was the expected media frenzy. "Knife attack at Punahou Carnival!" Jen sighed and said, "Well, I guess that's the end of the carnival." Cute. She didn't know that, save a collapsing tower of half-ton logs and a pile of fatalities, nothing would stop that particular tradition. (And even if it did, it'd be back before you can say "obscenely rich alumni").
The most recent Katie adventure is potty training. Of course, she'd been in informal training for a couple of months now. She could go and would go if invited, but otherwise she didn't see any particular need to make use of toilets on a regular basis. It was just another fun thing to do, particularly when rewards ranging from stickers to ice cream were promised. But we started serious training last week. Putting her in regular underwear, and polling her every hour or so. She took to it like a champ. Apart from a little oopsie last week at the park, and in the car Sunday afternoon, she can stay dry for days. Through most naps and occasionally overnight, too. Just like weaning, we're frustrated most by the fact that this step was considerably easier than we'd imagined, and that we could've been done with it all months ago. That's maybe two, three $25 cases of diapers at CostCo we might have been able to do without. (Don't even get me started on the "training pants" scam.)
Too cool. They're running the "Pieces of Chloe" episodes of "Sleepless" on Public Access. I think we missed the part where Nate pops up, though.
In other news, I've recently taken a couple of steps up the geek ladder. After inspiring three of my coworkers (and my dad) to join the Palm Computing PDA revolution, I upgraded myself from my trusty old Palm III to a swanky Handspring Visor Prism. The switch was made possible only through some support from my now completely converted boss — he's snapping up modules left and right and I've already got him set up to get e-mail on his while traveling — a mysterious shortlived rebate offer, and the guidance of travel guru Lani. Fortunately it was a snap moving all my stuff over. The color screen is infinitely easier on the eyes than the sick green monochrome of the Palm III. And the Handspring line features the award-winning expansion slot, for which I've already nabbed one irresistable gadget: the eyemodule digital camera. (My fledgling online gallery has already caught the attention of the manufacturers, who are on the brink of announcing the next generation of the product.) Jen, meanwhile, inherited my Palm III. She's only got a few dozen addresses to keep track of, but she already had me install Tetris and the "PortaPam" digipet (think Pamela Anderson meets a Tamagotchi). Methinks that's about all she needs at the moment. My boss wants the growing PDA crew in the office to check out the local Palm users' group, where other PalmOS fans socialize and beam business cards and silly games to each other. But I don't think I'm quite ready for that advanced level of geekdom.
| ![[ PGP ]](/pgp.gif)
· Created: 13 November 1997
· Last Modified: 14 January 2008