Friday, 04 March 2011
This evening, we dined at Ray’s Mediterranean Restaurant again. The family who owns and runs the place is from Egypt, so it was no big surprise that they’ve capitalized on King Tut’s visit to the Science Museum with posters saying things like “Come in and eat like a Pharoah!” (I wonder if that’s such a good thing to say when the Pharoah on display died at age 19…)
I ordered the vegetarian platter which featured several different items. Apart from the potatoes and the salad, I couldn’t recognize any of it, but that’s okay. It all tasted great. Last time we ate at Ray’s, Owen ordered the ravioli, but this time he decided to go with a salad. That’s it. Just one big salad. And he ate it all, too. Jennifer decided to go with the pasta (like she always does), and Isla tried to eat the tablecloth (like she always does).
Saturday, 05 March 2011
Today, my sister and her husband came over, complete with Papa Murphy’s pizzas in tow. My sister even called me as they were driving an told me to get the oven heated up.
My sister and her husband seem to get a real kick out of watching what it’s like to be a parent. They keep laughing, saying things like, “We could never be a mom and dad because we would just laugh at everything they do all day.” They thought it was quite funny that we just strip Isla down to a diaper before sitting her at the table to eat. They found it even funnier that we let Isla take the spoon from us whenever she wants and that this causes her to get food all over her face, hair, arms, and chest, and this, in turn, causes me to take the spoon back, wipe the food off her chest, then feed it to her.
Later, we stood Isla up on the table (showing off her dimpled thighs, which my sister termed as “hail damage”) and then gave her a bath in the kitchen sink. This is, evidently, also very funny stuff.
Sunday, 06 March 2011
My wife likes to take pictures of our places of dwelling before we move out of them, so today she took pictures of the office, living room, and dining room. Of course, we are not getting ready to move at the moment, but we need to baby-proof the rooms, and so Jennifer wanted to photograph our opulent luxury in all its beauty before she began baby-proofing.
Most importantly, Isla keeps crawling over to the entertainment center and pulling off the DVDs. It’s not that the DVD cases could cause her any harm, but we don’t really want her drooling all over them or opening them up and breaking the DVDs.
On a related note: I’m not sure why we don’t want Isla to ruin the DVDs. IF there’s one thing I’ve noticed about our movie collection, it’s that there is no surer way to ensure we will never watch a movie again than to purchase it. It appears that, once we own a movie, we feel that we could watch it any time…and so we don’t.
By night-fall, the DVDs, the scanner, some framed photographs, and a few other easily-accessible possessions had been squirreled away to another part of the home. In their place: board books, blocks, rattles, a boppy, and some other things that 7-month olds think are awesome.
Monday, 07 March 2011
After being in the lab for a little while this morning, I came out to my cube and noticed that it was 8:01 AM. I wrote on my calendar a few weeks ago that 8:00 AM on Monday, March 7th is the time that the Science Museum opens up their registration for summer classes. Since I wanted to make sure that Owen got into the Egypt class before it was too late, I tried to make sure I registered as soon as possible.
Well, by 8:04, guess what? Yeah, that’s right, the class was already filled up! Wow. That was quick. But fear not! Turns out, only the June 20-24th dates were full, so I was able to get Owen in to the August 15-19th class. Whew…safe.
Also today, I tried squeezing in every moment I could to study for an exam that will be taking place in class tomorrow. I studied during lunch, while in the work-out room, and right before bed.
The exam will consist of two parts: first, there will be 10 passages from 10 texts, and we have to identify the author of the passage. Second, we have to select four of the passages and write about what they are describing or demonstrating (e.g., “This text show the Puritan world-view was glum and creepy…”).
So as you can see, part one is vitally important. Because, for example, if I erroneously attribute a text from John Smith (his real name!) to William Bradford, then I won’t really get the second part right either. Even more confusing, I don’t want to wrongly assert that a poem from the Inuits was from the Aztecs.
So, I spent the day trying to fit in some studying. I’ll report back later.