Robbie is a close friend of Katherine's, and we're close to his parents too (my wife and I went to high school with his mom).  And he had his fifth birthday party today, so we spent the afternoon there.  It was a pretty cool party.  They rented a Spiderman Moonwalk, which the kids really loved.  There were about 10 kids there, most between around three to six years old, and a few older than that.  They jumped and jumped and jumped in that moonwalk.  There was also a pool, but we forgot to bring Katherine's bathing suit.  She's still young enough that we just let her go in the buff, although I'm not posting pictures of that.  Here's Katherine with some of her party favors.  Note: if you ever throw a party for a bunch of little kids, DO NOT include whistles in the party favor bags.  It got quite noisy there for awhile.  Katherine, in particular, has some really serious lungs and she was really loud.  There was a bar-b-que too, of course, which was very good.  But after about three hours, Katherine, who hadn't napped, did a sudden turn around into fussy girl.  This happens from time to time.  She didn't eat all that much either, and she just lost it.  So we packed up and came home.  She slept in the car, which kept her sane for the rest of the afternoon, much of which was spent at home in the backyard playing in our pool.

Friday night.  5:10 PM EDT.  We go to the Burlington Mall to purchase a birthday gift for a friend's son.  Katherine is wearing a blue dress.  She gets a lot of stares, since we've only performed mediocre attempts to get the marker off.

 

7:05 PM EDT.  Kara and I are eating spaghetti in the kitchen, and Katherine comes in from the living room.  She's added magenta and yellow to her body.

 

This time, it's a bit easier to get angry.

 

7:25 PM EDT.  I scrub Katherine in the bath.  I discover that washable marker doesn't come off skin very well after it has dried thouroughly.  I guess it's like that old Peanuts cartoon where Pigpen discovers that he can't get himself clean.  Katherine is just going to have to live with the 'Red Dawn' look for awhile.

 

By the way and in case you were wondering, the washable markers are now on top of a very high shelf.

Well, it seems whenever I run out of content, my daughter provides it.  Today, while I was on a Skype call, Kara was reading in the kitchen and Katherine was playing in the living room.  The next thing I know, she comes upstairs with Kara, and she's drawn red magic marker all over herself, paying particular attention to her "body dots" as she calls them.  Since it's washable marker, I didn't worry too much about it (I thought it was pretty funny).  Also, she didn't write on anything other than her body, which was a huge relief.  So I finish my call, and go down to join Katherine and Kara.  Then I made lunch for myself and Katherine.  Kara was reading in the living room at this point.  The next thing I know, she comes in having added green to the mix, including trying to color her lips.  I have to admit, it just doesn't bother me that much, although Kara and I manufactured enough emotion to give her a mild scolding.

And two stitches to boot.  Actually, the Dermatologist was pretty laid back - once he saw I was in a good mood, he was kinda funny.  When I asked him what he thought the rash was, he just kinda said, "I don't know."  Not satisfied with this, I said, "well, do you have any theories?" 

 

He did, but they were diverse enough that he thought a biopsy was necessary.  That was a bit of a shock to me, but I'm not generally one to freak out about medical problems, so I just let it happened and tried to enjoy myself as he extracted a tic-tac sized piece of flesh from my leg, stuck it in a specimen jar, and put two stitches in my leg.  They're not even dissolvable - I have to actually go and get them removed in two weeks, and it will leave a scar.  Bummer.

 

So I asked him if he wanted to run down the list of possibly maladies with me, or if I should just wait for the biopsy, and he looked at me and said, "just wait".

 

That might be very unsatisfying for some, but I'm actually fine with it.  No sense in freaking out over something that might be nothing until it is proven scientifically one way or the other.

The interesting stuff is happening over there right now.  I'm trying to release at least a picture a day of interesting photos from my recent main trip, so check it out if you so desire.

On the Monday of my vacation, I remembered that I had forgotten to do the electronic sign-off for my unemployment benefits.  Although my phone has Internet access, it didn't work from the cottage, which had no computer.  So I trudged off into Bath to see if I could find an Internet cafe.  While I did see places that advertised wireless (some 802.11 variant, no doubt), I did not see any computer terminals.  Finally, I wound up at the public library.  I go up to the main desk, and talk to the librarian.

 

I say, "is there any place in town where I can get access to the Internet?"

 

She looks at me with a totally straight face, and replies, "Not really.  The only place you can do that is at the library."

 

So I think about that for a second, because, of course, I'm standing in the middle of the library.

 

"Do you have computers here I can use", I ask?

 

"Yes, go straight through those doors and sign in."

 

Sheesh.

 

My dad tells a similar story, from back when I was young, and we were driving around looking for a campground or somthing.  He sees some grizzly old Maine type in a parking lot, and asks...

 

"Do you know where Camp Seguin is?"

 

The guy says, "Ay-yup", and drives away.