We’re getting close — Baby #3 is due this month, so we started a baby pool here: http://www.expectnet.com/games/KurthBaby3. Get your votes in! We’ve been known to name babies after the winner, but I can’t guarantee anything

…we are finally saying Merry Christmas!

…and Happy New Year!

You can really get a handle on what people care about by going to Google, typing a word or two (without hitting Enter), and seeing what it suggests in the drop down.

I just went there and started a search “how do I know when to” and it suggested (in this order):

• put my dog down
• put my dog to sleep
• harvest
• kiss her
• put my cat to sleep
• end a relationship
• get a divorce
• replace my tires
• break up
• get married

From this, I gather that roughly the same number of people wonder about the right time to change their tires as wonder about when to get divorced.

I typed in “how” and got:

• to kiss
• to get pregnant
• to lose weight fast
• to solve a rubix cube

The higher the suggestion, the more people are searching for that thing, so this means:

1. A lot of people wonder how to kiss.
2. 2. Those who are successful with the kissing then wonder how to get pregnant.
3. 3. Those who managed to get pregnant wonder how to lose weight fast.
4. 4. Having conquered the physical realm, those who lost weight now move on to the mental realm by tackling a Rubik’s Cube (but without learning how to spell “Rubik’s,” apparently).

Finally, I typed in “what” and got:

• time is it
• is my ip address
• not to wear
• aburger

So lots of people use Google to find out what time it is!

Yesterday I logged into Netflix and clicked the “Watch Instantly” link. At the top of the page, it recommends shows based on what you’ve watched in the past. Check out the “Suspenseful TV Shows” they recommend!

It just doesn’t get more suspenseful than Inspector Gadget, people. And I’d love to follow that with some Mario Bros. Super Show, but I get uncomfortable after so much time on the edge of my seat.

Kaeta has been asking “Why?” questions a lot lately. This week I took her with me to the grocery store, and while we were walking through the store, out of nowhere, she asked, “Why do people have to die?”

I don’t know what prompted that question, but she seemed genuinely troubled. I picked her up and sat her in the cart in front of me and talked to her as we walked. I told her that we weren’t made to die, and I asked her if she remembered what Adam and Eve did. “Disobeyed,” she said. So I told her before that, nobody had to die, but when they disobeyed, they broke things between people and God. But because He loves us, God made a way for us to live again after we die through Jesus, so even though we have to die, it’s not forever.

(If that last paragraph seems rambly, imagine trying to come up with it off the cuff — it’s a tough one!)

That answer seemed to take the sting out of it for her. She thought about it for a minute. She looked up at me, very thoughtfully. And then she said,

“Why do we have to buy shredded cheese?”

That one was a little easier! I told her, “because Mommy wrote it on the list.” Then she told me that “two plus two equals four!” Who can fathom the mind of a child?

Yesterday I read the book “The Prince of Ireland and the Three Magic Stallions” to the kids. It includes some Irish expressions, which I generally don’t try to explain — I just keep reading. For example, at one point the prince of Ireland comes upon an old washerwoman who was “keening as if her heart would break.” He asks her what’s wrong and then helps her.

Well, after bathtime last night, I was helping Kaeta put on her pajamas, and she said, “Does keening mean crying?” This was a couple of hours after reading the book. I wonder how long she had been thinking about that.

Hooray for context clues!

Whenever we do our phonics lesson, I give Kaeta some letter blocks so she can “build the letter” that we learned.  Usually I give Jonah the blocks too, because he likes to “make an A” (which usually means he lines the blocks up or sets them up side by side or something).  But last Friday when we studied the letter J, I was watching Kaeta make her J, and when I turned around to look at Jonah, I saw this:

He made a J all by himself!  I ran to get the camera as he started to take it apart, but thankfully he recreated it briefly for me.  And then, of course, Kaeta wanted me to take her picture with her J too.

So there you have it.  More proof of how brilliant our children are.

When I read this article and started thinking of all the people I wanted to email it too, the list was so long, I figured I’d better just link to it from a blog post.  It’s called Confessions of a Car Salesman.

Basically, the author got a job with Edmunds and they immediately gave him an undercover assignment. Instead of coming in to the Edmunds office, he got a job as a car salesman, so he could report on their practices from the inside. He worked for a couple of weeks at a high pressure lot, then switched to a no-haggle lot.

Here’s one small sample:

The process begins by asking the customer how much they want for a monthly payment. Usually, they say, about $300. “Then, you just say, ‘$300… up to?’ And they’ll say, ‘Well, $350.’ Now they’ve just bumped themselves $50 a month. That’s huge.” You then fill in $350 under the monthly payment box.

Michael said you could use the “up to” trick with the down payment too. “If Mr. Customer says he wants to put down $2000, you say, “Up to?” And he’ll probably bump himself up to $2500.” Michael then wrote $2,500 in the down payment box of the 4-square worksheet.

I later found out this little phrase “Up to?” was a joke around the dealership. When salesmen or women passed each other in the hallways, they would say, “Up to?” and break out laughing.

The article is long but really interesting!

I’m listening to The Time Traveler’s Wife audiobook, and I noticed a character misused the word “momentarily.”  This is one of my pet peeves — “I’ll be with you momentarily” is wrong unless you mean, “I’ll be with you for a moment, and then I’ll be gone again.”

Anyway, now I’m wondering, did the author (Audrey Niffenegger) use the word wrong, or did the character use it wrong?  If it was the character, then the author was astutely observing that people use that word wrong all the time, and her characters should be no exception.  But in a way that’s worse, because it reflects poorly on our culture’s literacy.  So I don’t know who to be mad at, Audrey Niffenegger, or society!

On a different note, this is the second time I’ve read this book, and between readings I read The Odyssey.  It turns out that there are quite a few references to The Odyssey in The Time Traveler’s Wife, and I totally missed them the first time!  They aren’t crucial to the story or anything, but I enjoyed “getting” them this time around.

A couple of nights ago at dinner time, Kaeta said (apropos of nothing):

“If we get a new house, we have to bring the whiteboard, and the drill, and your tool stuff.  And the brownies, and the bookshelves.”

“Oh?  What else?”

(Looking around…) “Marty.  And his crate.  And the new baby.”

Now we can see what’s important to her  I second the vote to bring brownies and the bookshelves.  And the new baby.  Not sure about Marty.

(We’re not looking for a new house, incidentally, that’s just what she was thinking about.)