Grits ain't groceries

Friday nights I make pizza. Saturday mornings Ames makes a huge breakfast.

This last weekend, it was very hot here in the Northwest. I think it was 90 F on Friday when I was biking home. Not perhaps hot by Southern standards, but people here don't generally have air conditioning. So yeah, it was hot. It was hot enough Ames decided to have a light breakfast: she sauteed some onions and peppers, scrambled some eggs, and cut some fruit.

When she called us all for breakfast, the youngest asked what was for breakfast. Ames told her, and she demanded in her most stentorian, Ghost of Christmas Present voice, ``Are there no grits? Is there no bacon?"

Sometimes I'm overcome with pride.

Silver Screen

So I took the kids to Prince Caspian today on a whim. All in all a very good movie... unless you wanted to see the plot of C. S. Lewis' novel Prince Caspian in movie form. I mean, they didn't change the entire story: the characters generally have the same names, for example.

I was generally impressed with the movie adaptation of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which led me to actually see Prince Caspian in the theatre, rather than waiting for the DVD release. Even The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was not completely true to the novel, but it was as close as Disney can reasonably be expected to get, so I tolerated the minor plot deviations, and very much enjoyed the movie.

But Prince Caspian took so many liberties, it went beyond "liberty" into "anarchy". They inserted at least one major battle, gutted Trumpkin's role, didn't even name most of the major Narnian characters, ignored Dr. Cornelius' long relationship with Caspian (briefly alluded to it, but also indicated it was substantially different than in the novel), totally changed Aslan's return (neither Bacchus nor Gwendolyn are even mentioned), and developed an entirely weird romantic interest.

All was not lost: the movie is really very well made, and the story is not bad, just... er... novel. The actors were very good, the battle scenes epic, the score very good, and the filming well done. All in all, it was a good movie, and I shall certainly buy the DVD on release. I did enjoy it, if not so much as Spiderwick earlier this year. Of course, I haven't read Spiderwick, which could have a lot to do with that.

Train up a child

This morning, over steak and eggs; Ames asked my youngest daughter, "Do you know what people celebrate on Easter?"

My youngest daughter replied, "Well, it's just a legend, it didn't really happen, but a Goddess came out of an egg. And they named it 'Easter' after the Goddess."

I was so proud.

Over-burdened

We were out the other day, and decided to stop and eat at Subway. Nothing special: just some sandwiches to provide fuel for the day. It was fine, but the staff was a little on the thick side. My ten-year-old told me "I don't want to come back here. The people working here are not over-burdened with intelligence."

Cardinality

A couple weeks ago, my daughters were talking about something. I don't remember what it was: for the sake of argument, let's say they were talking about horses. It was a typical little kid conversation:
"I want a horse"
"I want two horses!"
"I want a hundred horses!"

My six year old pipes up: "I want aleph-nought horses!"

I was so proud.