Wallow free zone...right here.

Ok, so I've wallowed enough and today I am going to choose a new agent. Wish me luck.

For long time readers of this blog (lol) I should provide a quick update of the goings on in the lives of my children, Princess and Little Man (not their real names). Well, Princess absolutely loves school and its extremely gratifying to see how well she has taken to it. Her reading is going ahead in leaps and bounds and she is soaking up knowledge like the proverbial sponge. Is there a proverbial sponge? None of the proverbs I know have sponges in them. I'll fix that in my Thought for the Day. So Princess loves to learn and while the topics are far and wide, the current favourite is the Olympic Games.

Princess has a new computer game that she loves. Its called Google Earth and with her new found enthusiasm for the Olympics, she can actually find not only China, but also Beijing. Once she has found these targets, she then likes to search the oceans for the tiniest islands she can find. I don't know why exactly, but she seems a little obsessed. Still, its better than playing Duke Nuke'em or some other "blow-things-up" type of game. That's best left to the professionals.

That also reminds me. She was watching a kids education program the other day when the main character relayed a fallacy as fact. She said that the Great Wall of China is the only man made object that can be seen from space. Apparently many people believe this to be true. It is not, I tell you. The Great Wall of China is an engineering feat to be sure, but it is mostly bloody long, and while it is pretty damn solid, it is not more so than a dam or major freeway. Also, I'm pretty sure dirty great big shopping malls don't grow in the wild. So I did some research and found Wikipedia had some interesting things to say about the subject (other sites too but mostly Wikipedia). Being able to see the Great Wall of China from space would be like being able to see a single strand of human hair from 2 miles away. It MAY be possible, and I stress the "may" part here, to see the Wall from a low Earth orbit (which is technically not "space") but the seeing conditions would have to be nearly perfect. So far there have not been any confirmed sightings from those in such a position (though there have been a few claims - see the Wikipedia page), it is technically possible. Aha! you might say. It is possible depending on your definition. Not really. The main point of interest is the uniqueness of the Great Wall of China's visibility from space and from a low Earth orbit, there are lots of man-made objects that could be seen. Sure, none of them are as long as the Wall, but that wasn't the claim, now was it.

Ok, on to Little Man. What a pain in the butt he can be. Today might not be the best day for me to write about that little punk as he played up something shocking last night before he went to sleep, and then woke me up several times during the night. Oddly enough, he seems to have had a really good day yesterday. While he has yet to start Kinder, it seems to me that he is VERY ready to go. Granted, not more than we are ready for him to go, but very ready nonetheless. His little mind is absorbing almost as much as Princess', perhaps more, and he is trying to verbalize every damn thought he has, whenever he has it. Mostly this is amusing and reminiscent of the kid on TV whose legs went one way and even his head went the other. At 2am, it is mostly annoying.

Later this month Little Man turns 3, and we are still pretty confident he will make it. The odds waver a little during the night. Still, 3 was a bit of a turning point for Princess so we are hoping it will also be so for Little Man. He needs kinder and the stimulation of other kids and while they don't really teach kids much in the way of formal lessons, a lot is learned. Its only twice a week for two hours and while that doesn't seem like much, it is a nice gentle introduction to school life. Mind you, this is only three-year-old kinder. It gets slightly more intense at four-year-old kinder. So now we just have to make it through to the end of the year. At least he will be three soon and I can buy him a whole new range of toys.

Ciao!

Thought for the Day: The sponge holds more water than the hand.