Jesus comes across a group of people about to stone a woman to death for adultery and stops them, saying: Let whoever among you is without sin, cast the first stone.

There is silence, and people start dropping their stones and drifting away. Suddenly a rock comes flying out from somewhere behind Jesus and hits the woman on the head. After this, the crowd gleefully picks up their rocks again and go back to stoning the woman.

Jesus whirls around angrily, and shouts: "Ma! How many times do I have to ask you to quit following me around!"

Spoke too soon

I take it all back, Beasties are not in school. They are home with some kind of Evil Crud. I thought the onset of upper respiratory disease exactly 7 to 10 days after the start of school ended after Kindy? Guess not.

They are not dreadfully ill, but they both keep popping fevers in the afternoon to evening which prevents their going to school the next day. If I could send them to school just for the morning they would both probably do fine. Of course they would infect their classmates, but hey. Somebody's already infecting their classmates it seems to me.

Both sets of teachers (the teachers called to see how they were doing) advised me not to send them back too soon as there are apparently two different illnesses going around their classes -- a respiratory and a stomach flu thingie. Daan's teacher said it seemed to her a bad idea to send him back with a minor cough just to have to keep him out next week with the stomach flu.

Yesterday they both sat on the sofa and moaned most of the day. Today they at least got up now and again, so they are a bit better.

Back to school

Beasties are back in school and having a lovely time. I kept waiting and waiting for Douwe's teacher to call me in about some thing or another and she never did. Finally last week she asked if I wanted to make an appointment to talk about how the school day goes now that he is in the equivalent of first grade.

Uh huh, I thought. Here it comes.

So off I went all ready to give her some pointers in dealing with Mr. Difficult.

Turns out she just wanted to, um, tell me how the school day goes. She has had no issues, wanted no pointers. The only unusual thing she has noticed about Douwe is that he tosses in an occasional word in English now and again -- the funniest was when he was looking at his little reading workbook at the word "mier" which means "ant". He looked at the word and said "ant". She asked him again and he said (in Dutch) "you know, it's a bug, lives in the ground, digs holes, has a queen". (then in english) "you know, an ant". She said, "what is it in dutch?" He said (in dutch) "it's in the book, here, muh-ee-rr, that's what I said".

Uh huh.

Daan's teacher got a call from a woman in Israel who wanted to know about the school and how her kids would do given that they speak primarily english. The teacher was asking me what I thought and the other teacher said "you should have just put Daan on the line, he speaks better english than either of us, and he can translate, too,".

Which should be comforting to you all, he can at least speak english when he is in Holland. *ahem*.

Remember that bug bite?

I was bitten by a bug when visiting in Georgia this summer. The bite got bigger and horrible and green and very icky so I went to the doctor. He gave me some antibiotics and it all but went away. Just a little rosy mark which I paid no attention to, since as you all know I am so pale I am blue and those kinds of things can leave marks on me for months.

Last week it started getting darker. Then it started getting bigger. Now the stupid thing is about 4 inches in diameter and red. So I went to the doctor again.

He of course knows nothing about bug bites. This is Holland, even the bugs are civilized and do not bite. Well, he does know about ticks and Lyme disease but I was able to assure him that it was unlikely that I was bitten by a tick. In the end he concluded that, since it went away and then came back that it was likely a secondary infection (also given my long history of secondary infections that are worse than the original illness) and is tossing a fairly powerful broad spectrum antibiotic at it. If it does not go away entirely he has promised to send me to a specialist in tropical diseases or some such thing.

So now I am on doxycycline, which he assures me should knock out a staph infection (which is what I think it is) or any other garden variety (sorry) bacterial thingie. And I should stay out of the sun, because this antibiotic makes your skin sun sensitive.

Arg. Oh, well, at least he comes by once a week or so to check up on Nel and has said he will look at it again then.

I am so screwed

This article explains why I shall never be rich. It appears that tall people earn more because they are, in fact, smarter.

Because we all know that being smart = making money. Well, doesn't it?

Well, I suppose this could explain why the gender gap still exists in terms of pay. Men are both taller and therefore smarter.

In any event it is good to see this kind of hard nosed relevant analysis still going on in the halls of academe. Oh, and the authors of the paper? Are both 5'8", well above the average for American women. Just thought I'd mention it.