Sun, at last!

I woke up this morning and thought, "Look, blue clouds. How strange." Took me a minute to realize that the sun was out. I blame my lack of sleep.

Aunt Thelma apparently came out of surgery well. She doesn't have telephone service in her room so I haven't talked to her, though.

There's an interesting article on NPR this morning about teaching Mandarin in schools -- Christopher and I are determined to make sure that May speaks Chinese. Combined with a fascinating article in Wired a few months ago about the same subject, it paints an interesting picture of the educational landscape that May is going to have to deal with.

(Why, I can hear some of you asking, do we want May to speak and read Mandarin? Well, Christopher and Steve -- both of whom know more aobut history and war than any two geeks should -- have managed to convince me that the Middle Eastern thing is just a Red Herring and the next big conflict is going to involve China and India. It's not an original thought, frankly. Great minds from Joss Whedon to Kim Stanley Robinson to Steve Jackson to Herman Mast have all thought that. Probably some more academic minds have, too, but I know more about books and sci-fi movies than I do about academia.)