Family pride. I can't believe I haven't mentioned this yet: my cousin Nikki is a freshman soccer player at Mount Vernon Nazarene University, and on November 20 the Cougars won the National Christian College National Championship. Here is the story (Nikki is the one in the shorts on the left). I hear she played well in the tournament, especially in the semifinals.

This one time in college, I remember, we won a football game, so I know just how she feels. Or maybe not.

Way to go little cousin. That is frickin' cool.

I can't help it. Every night, when we put the oldest boy to bed, I read to him out of a chapter book of some sort. So far we have read him Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book; Jean Fritz, Why Not Lafayette?; the entire Chronicles of Narnia; Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone; and some of the original Grimm's Tales. We cut off the last because there was a little too much head chopping off, hanging, and cannibalism for two-year-olds--although I'm told that a fully accredited Ph.D. historian from a school you've heard of says scary stories help repress childrens' burgeoning sexuality. Which is awesome.

Anyway, we've been reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and all the little British children are always running around eating treacle tarts and treacle fudges, and treacle this and treacle that. Not knowing what treacle was, but noticing that Derek keeps talking about things having "treacle" or being "treacly"--do a "search this blog" on DCAT, it's excellent--I figured I ought to look it up.

Turns out "treacle" means "cloying sentiment," and is what Brits call molasses. So that solves that little mystery. But in the course of my research, I ran across a little matter of local history from New England. Apparantly, I'm not making this up, in January 1919, there occured the Boston Molasses Disaster, known also as the Great Molasses Flood, when a large molasses tank burst and flooded a section of town, killing 21 and injuring 150. There is even a book about it, called Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919.

I can't help it--I find all that really, really funny.

Have a nice weekend, if you can stand the terror.