Titles of Future Books

For Christmas Ian gave me a hand-written and hand-illustrated book called The Kingdom of Letters. It is one of the finest stories ever written by a six-year-old and I keep it on my bookshelf right up there with the other classics. He just showed me a hand-written list of other titles he came up with when he was writing The Kingdom of Letters, and I think you'll agree that many of these books sound like they would be a good read:

The Nutcracker's Bad Day
The Cake of Caring
The Ocean Blue I Give to You
The Adventure of Time
What You Do, What You See
The Rainbow Dolphin
Emperor of the Armored Dinosaurs
When Santa Comes to Town
Stars, Stars, and More Stars
The Fantastic Fan
The Love and Kindness
The Stars Which Look Upon Us

If you want to use any of these titles to write your own children's book, feel free to ask permission. We've got student loans to pay and could use the royalty checks.

[I retract that last paragraph: Ian has just informed me that he wants to write these books himself, but says to feel free to come over and read what he's written so far.]

Sage's Corner: Some of My Things

I'm showing you these pictures just because they're the only things I could find. In this picture it shows my necklace and I made it all by myself. It took a very long time. It is my "apple-picking necklace" because it has a lot of apple-picking colors.

I look like I'm upside down, but I'm really lying on the bed.

This is my case with some things that I don't want Lucy to get inside it. It used to be a mint case that holded mints but then the mints were all gone and Dad said I could have it.
Ian lost his skeleton, so we decided we could share this orange one. I got those rocks for Christmas. It's a whole rock collection but they're getting lost.

This is my valentine. I got it from Grandpa Clawson on Valentine's Day and he loves me and I love him.
It's a valentine with pictures of the Incredibles. I like it so much. We have the movie The Incredibles and I got lots of other valentines, too. Goodbye.

Ian's Corner: The Kardason Fortress

Here's a fortress made of legos. I call it the Kardason Fortress. It doesn't have very much armor, but it does have lots of protection instead.

It has orange healing systems next to the lasers, and a massive zamor cannon that can be launched to chop enemies with the yellow sword on top. If you look closely you can see a green knight in full armor defending the fortress.

In back the fortress has weapon storage, a place to man the zamor cannon, and storage for a wall-smashing ram.

As you can see in the bottom middle of the screen, the person in the brown cape is the magical emperor now working magic.

I feel good about making this fortress because it's the first fortress I have ever built. I built it out of four lego sets, and I like playing with it. And that's all about the Kardason Fortress

Fargo Experiment

I actually do watch films not written and directed by the Coen Brothers, and some of them are even good. However, this post is more a test of my web-savvy than a defense of my weird taste in film, so here's a little more Coen Bros. silliness condensed for your convenience:

What I'm Reading

One of the few joys of taking public transportation to and from work every morning is that it affords me approximately one hour every day to read without interruptions. What follows is my Bus Route #10 Required Reading List:

By Patrick O'Brian (from the truly wonderful Aubrey-Maturin series):
The Mauritius Command
Desolation Island
The Fortune of War
The Surgeon's Mate
The Reverse of the Medal
The Letter of Marque
The Thirteen-Gun Salute
The Nutmeg of Consolation
The Truelove

By Elmore Leonard
Fifty-Two Pickup
Bandits
Touch
Freaky Deaky
Killshot
Rum Punch
Pronto
Riding the Rap
When the Women Come Out to Dance

Other Authors:
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey (working on this right now)

The list seems pretty long for seven months, but since I'll be settling into the traditional big firm lifestyle next September I figure I might as well clock in the leisure reading time while I still can. I find both O'Brian and Leonard to be compulsively readable, so I have no idea what I'll do once I've finished strip-mining their works. Time to work a new author into the rotation, I suppose.

Introducing: Some Pretty Great Kids

A friend of mine recently surprised us with a webcam, and we're still figuring out how to make it do stuff. Here are a few of our early attempts that we took late last year.

First, here's a picture Ian took while we were trying out the new webcam. It looks like he's trying to drink a shake but he forgot the shake.
Here's a picture of Miss Sage, offering the camera a very Sage-like smile. You can see a little imp creeping up behind her.

And here's the imp in full view. I think someone stole Lucy when she was born and left us this magical sack of trouble instead. If you look in her eyes you can see how messy the room will be in ten minutes.
Updated pictures to follow.

The Double Stitch Will Last Forever

Those of you well-versed in The Hudsucker Proxy know that the Double Stitch might just save your life one day, provided your suits are made by a kindly Italian tailor. It also wins my award for Most Whimsical Use of Flashback in any Coen Brothers film.

Without giving too much away, the Double Stitch is pretty good shorthand for those unexpected and unearned blessings that a benevolent universe occasionally sees fit to orchestrate. Long live the Double Stitch, Saviour of Pants!