Me: “Do you know my phone number?”
::Evie, saying my phone number::
Me: “How did you know that?”
Evie: “Nala taught me.”
Me: “????”
Evie: “It says it on her collar.”
Ollie: “I like it when people get dead.”
Me: “You do??”
Ollie: “Well, not people I like.”
Me: “Ollie, were you doing something naughty?”
Ollie: “I don’t want to tell you if I was or not.”
Ollie: “I’m going to tell a story! Once a pot of time…”
That would make a great beginning to a time travel story.
So, recently I got to pick out something from the “employee gift catalog” for being employed for 5 years. Now, aside from the fact that I’ve actually worked there for more than 7 years, these catalogs. Yeesh. Have you seen these things? You browse through a glorified Oriental Trading Company catalog and pick from one of several cheap gifts. I’m sure they’re paying a lot of money to this company, but why? They’d be better off giving you a paper “certificate of appreciation” or something.
Nevertheless, I picked something out, because apparently free junk is better than no junk at all.
It turns out they were fresh out of my gift-of-choice, but I opted to wait. I mean, I didn’t really need a multi-tool all that bad in the first place, so I wasn’t in any rush. Finally, the magnificent day came, and there was my fancy new $5 multi-tool.
Shortly after taking it out of the package and playing with it, my eye caught a little warning on the package:
“WARNING: This product contains a chemical known to the state of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm”
What the? It’s entirely made of stainless steel, how does it cause cancer? Does it cause cancer just by touching it? IS IT CAUSING CANCER RIGHT NOW??
Now that the package had my attention, I gave it a little closer inspection. There are several other warnings, including “Do not run or make sudden movements when holding or using this pocket toolbox”. I assume sudden movements cause the cancer to spread faster.
There was a big picture of an American flag on the back, right next to the “Made in China” label. So which was it, USA or China?
I feel downright patriotic knowing the package was designed right here in the USA. Wait a minute, it doesn’t actually say USA on there…in fact, that’s not even a real picture of the flag! It’s bad enough enough that they tried to take credit for the nation of package-design origin, but it turns out they might not even be truthful with that dubious honor!
The multi-tool features 14 useful functions, including 3 types of screwdriver and a “Heavy-Duty Plier Handle & Pry Bar”
Don’t believe everything that you read:
“WARNING: This tool is not designed for pounding or prying. Strong impacts or twisting forces may damage the implements”
What good is a pry bar that can’t pry? A screwdriver that can’t twist? Pliers that are only good for causing cancer? I’m not sure, but I do know I’m going to be working extra hard at work this week in appreciation of my amazing gift!
So, it’s not Sunday anymore (or even Monday when you get right down to it) so it’s time to announce the winner of the double giveaway!
The winner of the custom headband from ThreadAbell is Anna, which just goes to show you, enter early! Random number generators take notice on that sort of thing.
The winner of the copy of OOMPH: A Little Super Goes a Long Way is none other than my mom! This is not surprising, because my mom was the *only* entry for the book giveaway.
(As a reminder, OOMPH is available in paperback, as well as for the Kindle or Nook. If you’ve already read the book, please leave a review on Amazon!)
I’ve never really had a giveaway here on the blog, so this was a bit of a learning experience. Twitter is the social network in which I interact with the most writers, so I was thrilled to see the link retweeted and retweeted again, by people with *many* more followers than me. I was sure the response was going to be huge, but none of the people who saw that link ultimately registered for the giveaway.
Some of it just might be the nature of the beast. The blog didn’t register a significant amount more traffic than normal that day, which means most people didn’t click on the link at all. I should say that going into it, I didn’t expect a lot of interest. I know a lot of writers who try to give away books that are pretty unsuccessful (if any of you out there are interested in getting free books, you could seriously make a killing entering these drawings).
However, I think at least some of it was that perhaps it was a little too complicated (read this, go there, do that, come back here, etc.). Lots of text. I think that would be my big takeaway: if I ever did another giveaway, I would try to make it as simple as possible. I don’t know how to solve the apathy problem (people not clicking on the link), but if they do click over, I can perhaps at least solve the second part of it.
Oh well, it was interesting at least, I’m glad I tried it. Anybody have any thoughts on the matter? Do you like the giveaways? Is there a reason you entered/didn’t enter? Did anybody even read this far?
Is this thing on?
Martin Luther King Jr. day was on Monday, and the kids were off school for the holiday. (Sorry for not posting this on Monday, but I didn’t want to step on the giveaway post!) I’m sure this is the first time that Evie has really realized there was such a holiday as MLK, so she was a little confused about what exactly this entailed.
“Do we leave out a gift or cookies or something?” she asked the night before. She seemed a little worried that if she didn’t leave *something* she ran the risk of angering the ghost of Mr. King. After all, Santa leaves presents overnight, as does the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, so it stands to reason that the Good Doctor would as well.
(“Can you imagine the ghost of Martin Luther King creeping around your house at night? What would he leave?” I asked my co-worker. “A dream” was his (obvious) response.)
In preparation for MLK, Evie has been learning a lot about civil rights leaders in school; Martin Luther King as well as people like Ruby Bridges, Rosa Parks, and Cesar Chavez. This of course leads into discussions of slavery, race, rights, the underground railroad and assassination. These are all sort of heavy topics for kindergarten, so I have to admit I was interested to see what Evie thought about all of this. These topics carry so much baggage that it’s practically impossible to see them on their own, without all of the history and controversy and discussion that swirls around it. But Evie’s coming at it from a completely blank slate.
Her take was refreshing: she doesn’t get it. At all.
A 6 year old is basically obsessed with fairness. “He has more in his bowl!” “Ollie, count how many raisins you have!” “Why does daddy get the extra pancake?” “Ollie took two turns on the scooter! He’s not letting me have my share!” To Evie it is inconceivable that someone should not be treated equally. EVERYTHING should be equal ALL THE TIME. Any unfairness is inherently wrong and should be rectified. Immediately.
This is not to say that little kids are somehow blind to race. *Quite* the opposite. I think that biologically speaking it was probably very important for children to quickly distinguish and distrust “outsiders”. I think when parents pretend that racial differences don’t exist, children just think we’re crazy. Our approach has always been to acknowledge that yes, that person is different than us. Isn’t it great that we aren’t all the same? (This does not always go over very well. If you recall, childhood does not treat people who are “different” very kindly, however you define different.)
In any case, when the ghost of Martin Luther King slipped down our chimney Sunday night, I’d like to think he smiled that, 46 years after his death, a little blonde haired, blue-eyed girl wanted to leave some milk and cookies to her favorite mythical being: the patron saint of fairness.
We’re not there, Mr. King, but we’ve made some progress.
The weekend before my birthday we were looking for a place to go out to eat. We don’t go out often, so when we do we usually try to make sure it’s somewhere we’ve been wanting to get to (in other words, we want to make sure it’s worth it and not waste our chance). We have other concerns as well; with two small kids we want something that’s casual and kid friendly, and probably not too expensive.
In this case, we settled on The Little Goat.
For those who are not local to Chicago, The Little Goat is sort of the little sister of chef Stephanie Izard‘s extremely popular Girl & the Goat (Stephanie Izard, you may know, was the winner of the 4th season of Top Chef). In Chicago, both restaurants are very well known.
I’ve never been to Girl & the Goat (and probably never will be), but I have to say that The Little Goat absolutely lived up to its reputation. Most likely because of the weather, but we were able to sit immediately, with no wait. It was exactly what we were looking for: absolutely casual, the kids were not out of place at all, and the food was amazing.
When you look at the menu, it doesn’t seem like anything special. Breakfast food, sandwiches, burgers. However, there really is something about a good chef, who can take something you’ve had a million times before and just make one little difference, like kimchi on a reuben, or just using really, really good bread, and suddenly it’s the best reuben you’ve ever had.
I tried the sloppy goat, the pork belly pancake, and (my favorite) the “Los Drowned” (a braised beef sandwich with au jus, but so much more than that). Even the smoked fries were amazing. One of the best parts of the meal was the “Little Goat” coffee, which is espresso with spices and steamed goat’s milk. I’ve seen it described as a “coffee/chai mashup” which was pretty accurate I think.
In other words, highly recommended, and I will definitely go back.
Shane Halbach 