YAY!

Dear Kensington Customer,

I have placed an order for new adapter and you will recive it within next 10-12 days.

Thank you for contacting Kensington Technical Support.

Regards

Abhijeet
Kensington Technical Support.

Whee. I'm so so SO happy :) *does the adapter dance of doom*

Ana didn't do anything especially cute today, though we're making great strides with the question "What's your mommy's name?" I hope we make similar progress when we get to "What's your daddy's name?" I don't think I'll do "aunt" or "grandmother's", because I doubt those'll be asked.

Progress is one of those English words that used to bother me a lot, like interject or detail. You've got a prefix, and you've got a stem, but the stem doesn't mean anything. Progress, regress, agression, digress, gress is meaningless. Ject is meaningless, tail has a meaning, but that's not one that's related to detail, retail, entail. Of course, now I understand why that happened, but those words still bother me. I wonder if I can start using "gress" in sentences....

Oh, and Jenn complained about how I moved Goldilocks to a park, saying that "woods" is just fine, vocabulary building, so I filled the rest of the story with bears that enter their houses "full of trepidation" and girls who "defenestrate" themselves. I'm not sure that's what she meant, but it was fun, anyway.

Actually, she did do a few cute things today. First, while trying to find a radio station she could dance to, she found Air America Radio (at least, that's what I think it was, it sounded "liberal" to me, whatever that means) and kept it on there. She lowered the volume a lot, but she never changed stations. So we listened all about the hunger strikes at Gitmo while I brushed her hair. I'm so proud :)

And then today... See, at the Museum, at the end of the programs, they sit on a parachute and go around singing "ring around the rosy", two or three or four times. And then they go under the parachute for a while while the adults lift it up and down. At Battery Park City, there's more kids, so they sit on the parachute while singing a song and telling a story, but that's it. No going around, no going under. So for the past two days, Ana's been sitting on the parachute at BPC, lifting the edge and going "Aka? Aka?", while I'd say "not today". So today, when she realizes what they're doing at the museum, she could've lit up the room. "AKA! *scrambles to the middle* AKA!"

I do love her. She's so cute and sweet.

Need help.

One of my friends (who's neither confirmed nor denied that this is okay, so I'm saying this vaguely) needs a bit of help. She's looking into schooling/therapy options for her young son who is very likely (but not confirmed) autistic. Big issue right now is communication. She understands him to some extent, but he's not talking or signing or anything like that.

I'm hardly the expert on autistic education here, so if people who know more than I could just give a quick rundown of things she wants to look out for because they're Very Very Bad, and provide links on what they think is more useful, that'd be good.

Thanks. Most of my friends who know about this know more than I do, so I'm really counting on youse guys to help.

Two major hurricanes in a month? Less?

I know it's hurricane season, but damn.

In the wake of Katrina, several people chalked up the severity of the storm to global warming, and blamed it on Bush.

While I'm willing to go along with "we're getting bad storms because of global temperature changes", I don't think it's fair to blame Bush for this. That's like blaming him for a lack of gays in the military. Sure, he's not helping the problem, but the problem started long before he came around.

Additionally, here's the sad (or not so sad, depending on your view) reality of the situation: We don't know for sure what's causing global warming. We know that pollution is a problem, we know that it *can* change the average temperature of the world - but we also know that, historically and earlier, the earth has gone through numerous warm and cold periods. Some of them were fairly short, while others were decently long. And within cold or warm cycles, there have been miniature cycles that were colder and warmer than the prevailing temperatures of the period - anybody remember the Little Ice Age?

I don't know what causes these changes. I don't know if the current temperature changes are natural or not. I *do* know that, whatever the cause, the planet can survive a warm period. It can even survive a mass extinction - this is the sixth one, meaning we've gone through five before. Indeed, I wouldn't be too surprised if humans can survive, unless the future is far more apocalyptic than I'd previously imagined.

Kinda sucks for the individuals in the way of the storms, though.

Well, I found my statue and entered my prophecy... 12th door I tried....

That was *really* stupid. ( A pile of scarabs? )

Now what? I go read a scroll in a library or something?

I should ask on NC. I keep forgetting it's up again.