Friday Four

1. When I take the kids to the park, I use a small "Pack-It" freezable bag to keep their snacks cool. On our last trip, my four-year-old daughter -- who has recently become enamored of a time and place of maturity and enlightenment known as "high school" -- also took a liking to the bag.

"Daddy, when I'm older, like maybe five or in high school, can I have that bag for my snacks?"

"Maybe, so, Pumpkin."

This makes me want to put the bag aside for a decade and present it to her when she starts high school.

2. We'll set aside the fact that my pocket is being picked, and my time is being wasted; it's still nice to hear the following from my new accountant regarding a crazy letter from the IRS and a fat "refund" check I had the sense not to cash: "This letter makes no sense."

Oh, and, "There's nothing wrong with this return, " was also nice.

3. From a Forbes article titled, "15 Critical Habits of Mentally Strong People," comes the following gem of a Thomas Edison quote:

Thank goodness all our mistakes were burned up. Now we can start fresh again.

This he said after his factory burned to the ground in 1914, "destroying one-of-a-kind prototypes and causing $23 million in damage."

4. At last! Someone has taken the time to debunk that silly eight glasses of water a day rule, as well as its various corollaries:

Many people believe that the source of this myth was a 1945 Food and Nutrition Board recommendation that said people need about 2.5 liters of water a day. But they ignored the sentence that followed closely behind. It read, "Most of this quantity is contained in prepared foods." [link dropped]

More accurately, I am now aware of the debunking, not that I ever believed this. Read the whole thing, especially if you have children: There's an effort afoot to scare you regarding pediatric hydration that this story also addresses.

-- CAV