He Invented A Written Language For The Karaoke.

Since something our son Jeffrey said got title status Tuesday, it seems only fitting that something Sarah said got today's. It was when we were doing their reading at home after school and choir practice and our dinner of rotisserie chicken and Pringles -- both of them read from a first book of biographies we have that I bought a few years ago, and Sarah going from Peter the Great to William Shakespeare came upon Sequoya (or Sequoyah, the spelling I grew up with for his name) and the introductory sentence to the page -- which reads "He invented a written language for the Cherokee." -- came out as today's title from Sarah's mouth. And remember, Dad, do NOT pronounce something for her the first time, let her try or she gets frustrated when you do it!

Jeffrey on the other hand will skim until he finds something he likes! We were skipping through and finding the bios of U.S. presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin (who shares the page with his wife Eleanor) Roosevelt. To use a Homeric analogy that I just thought of, Sarah's my Iliad and Jeffrey's my Odyssey. And I need to never be in a rush to have them grow up; they'll do that soon enough. Meanwhile, Martha and I are officially the owners of the insured 1999 Chevy Lumina we bought last week -- for more details on that I direct you to Tuesday's entry -- and our Hyundai Elantra of the same year was towed away last night for $150 before I got home from work. We're taking what we can get and paying her parents back EVERY PENNY.

Last night a man from our church brought us a rolling bedframe -- I don't know when or how he heard we could use one, but we can and I'm thankful. When we will set it up in our room (right now Martha and I sleep on two stacked queen-sized mattresses) is another story. Speaking of stories, I need to get updated on what I've been reading, for the record. Last night I finished Ralph Steadman's Tales of the Weirrd (not a typo, ISBN 1552976440) that adds his illustrations to a Victorian miscellany of grotesques, oddities, impostors, and eccentrics like Old Boots who could hold a gold piece between his mouth and chin, Guillaume De Nittis who tried to eat himself, and Alexis Vincent Charles Berbiguier the demon bottler, and Eve Fleigen who lived on the smell of flowers.

Genuine Weirdness is a rare quality. To be truly weird demands character and a wanton regard for the social mores of the day. (from the author's Introduction)

Now for the ... less weird, I've gone through two of Scott Adams' Dilbert collections (Another Day In Cubicle Paradise, ISBN 0740721941 and I'm Tempted to Stop Acting Randomly, ISBN 9780740778063), and screenwriter Randall Wallace's novelization of Braveheart (ISBN 0671522817) which includes scenes of William Wallace's (no known relation) travels in France and his meeting the Pope in the Vatican which doesn't add much to a fantastic movie. Oh, and biographies of Hatshepsut the 18th Dynasty queen of Egypt who ruled as pharaoh for twenty years and the Chevalier de St. George who fenced and sand and played music in 18th century France. And if you want to know more about those, please call me.

Time to invent a written language, David