Day 2.054: Literally literary

I've had another busy day conferencing. I'll be home tomorrow.

I took this picture before I left, but today was 'Read Across America Day' and Exile #3 went to school dressed as Amelia Bedelia looking something like this.

For anyone not familiar with Amelia, she is a very literally minded housekeeper. On her first day she follows instructions in a list including sitting down to do a sketch of the window dressings when she read 'draw the drapes'. I suspect it appeals to Exile #3's pedantic punning sense of humour. I don't know where she gets that from.

Day 2.053: Hit record?

I have had a good day - seven hours on the road (I was not driving) followed by eight hours of conference. Good conversations throughout but I'm quite tired right now.

At the weekend I found Exile #3 and Exile #4 drawing pictures on the OLPC laptop I won at the school's silent auction last year. They also use it to make videos and audio recordings of themselves doing little plays and singing songs. I remember spending several hours with one of my sisters when we were about their ages making similar recordings of ourselves on an ancient desktop dictation machine that Dad had brought home from work.

The technology may have changed, but the fun remains the same.

Day 2.052: Togetherness

A pair of Northern Cardinals experiencing true togetherness.

I am leaving early in the morning to drive down with some friends to the outskirts of Washington D.C. In fact to a place called Chevy Chase Maryland. Which depending on your inclination sounds like an homage to a comic actor or possibly a very place to be named after the Blessed Virgin. I'm going down for a church-related conference and leaving Exile #2 and the kids to their own devices for a couple of days. We're going by car which should be interesting. I'll try to take some pictures and write interesting blog posts, but if not - forgive me faithful readers.

Day 2.051: Driver discretion is advised

Almost all the TV programmes we watch are preceded by the warning:

Viewer discretion is advised.

I hope I'm not being indiscrete by talking about it. We were also advised by the National Weather Service that we would be having 'Winter Weather'. Yeah.

In fact the 'Winter Weather Advisory' was a step down from the 'Winter Storm Watch' which was superceded elsewhere by a 'Winter Storm Warning'. Not for us this time though. Somehow we had steady snow for most of the day, temperatures never got above 20 °F (-6 °C) and yet we had only about an inch to show for it.

The roads however were treacherous all day. We took care on all our journeys although I did do one not-strictly-needed excursion. I trust I don't have to ask for your discretion?

Day 2.050: Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Sant

Happy St David's Day - well to anyone West of me and/or with a late-night blog reading habit, otherwise Happy St Chad's Day. We celebrated Exile #2's national day with these yummy Welsh Cakes and the girls coloured some flags. Exile #3 included a border of daffodils and leeks on hers:

and Exile #4 gave the dragon a rather-optimistic-for-Wales blue sky:

One of the unwritten (until now) rules I have made for myself is to avoid repeated blog post titles (ignoring the nearly-always-unique day number of course), so I check back on days such as this for possible calendar related dangers. No problems today as it turns out - last year I was returning from Japan and the year before, worrying about a snow storm and yes we have one coming in tonight too). The other day one of my colleagues mentioned that you can buy books of the unwritten rules for various areas of life. Does anyone else have a problem with that?