Friday Four

1. Although Little Man has been working on potty training, he will still occasionally opt for a diaper shot, followed by evasive action. One day, after I'd picked the kids up from school, I was cleaning things up in the kitchen when I heard one of the doors close. Knowing something was up, but being unable to do anything immediately, I knew where to find him when I was ready.

A few minutes later, I walked into the living room, where I saw Little Man striking an adventurous pose and looking around with a pair of toy binoculars. As I quietly approached, he reversed the direction of his search, towards where I was headed. The moment he saw me, he startled and dropped his binoculars. Foiled again!

***

I have noticed lately that the boy has also realized that other kids have parents, that I am not the only Daddy out there. Apparently drawing some alarming, if mistaken conclusions from his new knowledge, Little Man decided to protect what was his one day when I was picking him up from school. When I entered, another boy started approaching me, which didn't sit too well with Little Man. So he outran the the other boy, and turned to face the interloper. Arms akimbo, he stared down the other boy and said, "My Daddy!"

***

Pumpkin, who has tended to put on her drama queen crown before her thinking cap a lot lately, pleasantly surprised me one morning when she noticed her shoe coming off her foot. "Calm down," she said, echoing my usual admonition. She then did just that, and fixed her shoe.

2. Have kids? You can now answer a frequent question down to the second, thanks to this web site. Or you can reply with a question of your own, like, "Is it cold outside, yet?"

3. Reader Snedcat recently tipped me off to a collection of classic programmer paintings. I like "RTFM."

4. Scott Holleran marks eight years of blogging with an enjoyable retrospective, which I excerpt here:

Subjects include everything from discourse on race and religion to Steve Jobs, Ayn Rand and Aristotle. I've looked back at Brokeback Mountain, critiqued The Sound of Music, examined ebola virus and I was among the first to herald Edward Snowden as a hero. I've denounced Duck Dynasty's patriarch, Hillary Clinton and, pointing out his causal relations to today's sensationalistic media, Donald Trump. I have warned against censorship and dictatorship. I've remembered Robin Williams, Lizabeth Scott, David Bowie, Katharine Hepburn and Neil Armstrong.

Mostly, I aim to stimulate the reader to think, whether about the deaths of unarmed Americans, playing football, Johnny Carson, the homeless, creating a new album, making movies or writing a book. [format edits]

I first encountered Holleran's writings through Box Office Mojo, and have followed him since. If you're unfamiliar with his work, this post is a great introduction.

-- CAV