Chris is doing some TA stuff, she lectures with 5 sections from the Intro to Communications class. She’s liking it, which is handy because she’d like to be a full time academic one day… hating class would be a bit of a drag on that. 

Anyway, as if to provide an example of their current subject matter Lucas asked a question the other day. 

A bit of context: Twang Town is a really good guitar (base/uke/etc) store here in Dunedin and Hyam who owns it is a really interesting character. He has a illuminated sign in his window to tell you if he’s open or not.

So we were walking by and Lucas asked “Why is the ‘Open’ sign red and the ‘Closed’ green? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Our boy. Already criticizing other’s designs.

But first, at breakfast today Lucas asks “Mama, what’s the French word for snotz?”.. sadly I was laughing to hard to hear the answer.

When exactly did the world “conservative” get redefined to mean “social conservatives/raging nutbars”?

All last night CNN and other media outlets were on and on about how McCain wasn’t doing well with “conservatives”. I kind of thought to myself “hmm.. he’s winning states, as a Republican, in the Republican primary, doesn’t that make him a conservative?”

Then they started to unpack what they meant during one of those little segments about demographics and exit polling and I discovered that what they meant.

At some point we have to stop and leave some words and their meanings be, right? Otherwise all this meaning creep will just lead to nothing having any meaning.

Also, if Wolf Blitzer says “the best political team on televison” or whatever it is he says one more time I vote he gets sent back to a war zone.

So it turns out that several beers and several glasses of good port and a bunch of good food and conversation with interesting people and cute kids doesn’t actually make your cold go away, but only makes it feel like it has.

So I taught Lucas this:

and now he thinks there’s some big guy named Bad Karma running around stealing and breaking people’s bikes.

Trying to explain the concept of karma to a 3 year old is some seriously tough sledding.

Lucas has a pair of overalls that he hasn’t worn for a while, the other day he asked about them.

The proper French word for overalls is “salopette”.

So Lucas asks for “salade de pets”, which would translate to “fart salad”.