is it just me?

Well, we survived Christmas Round 1 with my husband's relatives. We got to have turkey dinner and exchange presents, and do other Christmas-y things one week early, and next week we get to do it all again! Someone gifted baby Lizard this and while I am anti-plastic battery operated toys, especially pink ones drowning in princesses, of course she loves it. It has bazillions of buttons you can push and it makes noise and spins and flashes and beeps. At its heart, it is a fun toy - you can push it around with your feet and it has a secret storage bin under the seat, and what kid doesn't love things with wheels? In fact, we had a very similar toy that was a little bus, but in good 1970s fashion it did not have batteries. It just had a little red plastic air horn and a picture of people riding in it on the side. I don't really understand why all the toys these days must be so elaborate. In fact, the buttons on Baby Lizard's new bus are so distracting to her that she does not move it around, she just sits on it and activates all the noises. Which kind of ruins the whole idea, you know? The real reason I oppose all these battery operated toys is that they encourage passive play - you just sit there and make them do their thing rather than having to do anything to them, which I have to imagine is not good for our brains. Just like maybe it is not good for our brains to have toothbrushes that tell us how long to brush, when to switch sides, how hard to brush, etc. (Thanks Nicole!) I mean, maybe it is actually good for us to have to think about things once in a while, wouldn't you agree? Maybe we should take charge of things such as how long to brush our teeth. I worry that kids are going to be really lazy because they are going to want the life-version of the magic princess bus, and rather than wanting to figure things out they will just want someone to figure them out for them and tell them which button to push.

We were discussing the devolution of American intellect this weekend after playing the board game version of "Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?" While I have only seen the show a couple of times, and have never lasted the whole half hour, I do recall there being questions that were kind of hard. I mean, nothing that you shouldn't know, but definitely some things that I didn't remember. But the board game version sucks. The questions are ridiculously easy and the format is really boring. However, this is beside the point. What we were talking about is that we went from Trivial Pursuit, which was very hard, to Trivial Pursuit Millennium edition which was substantially easier, to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, which was easier still, to 5th Grader. No wonder the Chinese are preparing to take over the world. They have figured out how to generate thousands of students that basically ace their GREs in their non-native tongue, and we are playing board games that ask questions like "what are numbers that are less than zero called?" In fairness, there are some harder questions thrown in there, but there is a lot of fluff. Also, we decided that board games based on TV shows are a bad idea. All the fun board games are just board games. Especially since it is a lot less exciting when there is no money involved. This is sort of a fatal flaw in board games based on game shows. The real question is - how many bad game shows are they going to invent while the writers are on strike? My guess is a lot. And I am not sure I can handle one more ad for America's next whatever. However, I am happy that my old summer buddy Project Runway is back. Good times.

Is it a sad commentary on my life that a 50th birthday party I attended on Friday for a guy I work with was one of the most fun parties I have been to in a while? In fairness, he is much more fun than your average 50 year old, and he cooks incredible food, and the wine was free flowing. Not to mention that he bought new speakers and has a love affair with iTunes. overall it was a good time.

I have decided I need a day off to prepare for my vacation which is a clear indicator that I have been a state employee for just a little bit too long.