Today's activities include: TJ Maxx, Roche Bros, Quill and Press, school

No B. today as she was ill. I took A. in the new stroller (Maclaren Quest Mod, and honestly, I'm still thinking I should have used the jogger; there was a lot of crap on the sidewalk) on some errands. We returned an outfit to TJ Maxx which we had bought yesterday. We used the van on the Sunday outing, which had as primary goals stocking hangers (fail), a reindeer car kit (fail) and a santa hat big enough to fit over a bike helmet (fail), and a secondary goal of 24 months clothes for A, since she has decided to stretch her plump little baby fat body onto a slender, willowy toddler frame. One of the outfits had a 24 months jacket and pants but when I started taking it off the hanger to put it in the laundry I discovered it had a 12 months shirt.

A. pitched a fit for unknown reasons (possibly because she was tired, but the crap on the sidewalk was jostling her too much to fall asleep in the stroller) that was a full on tantrum by the time we got to the store. When we were done there, we went to Roche Bros to get some turkey for T.'s lunch to drop off at the school along with his updated list of vaccinations to date. While there, I bought some binkies, which helped A. be much, much happier for the next leg of our outing.

She was happier enough that I took a gamble on Quill and Press, a stationers shop I've ridden past dozens of time but never stopped in. I figured I'd try to buy some journals -- ideally reader's journals -- for small Christmas presents. I cleaned out there book-related stock and filled in with a gardening journal and a couple just plain journals. That made up for the tantrum, and went a ways to making up for not having B. today.

We dropped off the turkey and paperwork at the school, where once again I had no idea how to answer what was probably a completely reasonable question. The list of things T. is willing to eat is _really_ short; getting him to eat a slice of deli turkey is pretty amazing. But if you hand over a baggie of deli turkey, and someone asks, does he have what he needs for a sandwich, well, what do you say? No is probably not going to satisfy someone who asks a question like that (especially after specifying it's going to Room #1, with all that entails), but I'm not sure I'm interested in sharing what it would take to satisfy someone who asks a question like that. I'd vastly prefer it if someone else at the school laid it out for her if she really needs to know.

Whatever.

I watched the mid-season finale of Stargate Universe yesterday and I am now glad I've stuck with the series (mostly for Eli, fwiw, altho secondarily for the medic). Watching the Captain and Rush go at it was awesome. However, the commentary I've seen online seems to miss some obvious options available to Rush and/or the Captain and/or the show. Assuming Rush remembers the gate addresses of the planets they have previously visited, he should be able to get food (carefully) and water to survive indefinitely. If life isn't worth living, he can randomly dial a gate and try somewhere new. The Captain can, at the next stop, gate through to see if Rush has survived and possibly had a change of heart, rescuing him from the "rock slide". If Rush tells everyone what actually happened, as long as the Captain sticks to his story, no one is likely to believe Rush. If people _do_ believe Rush, the Captain has evidence to show just how untrustworthy Rush is. And the Captain can further point out that Rush got hit on the head pretty hard and it may have scrambled his brains -- he might really believe that what happened happened but that doesn't make it true. This isn't a straight-up case of Must Fix Alien Shuttle vs. the Captain Thinks He Murdered Rush. I would argue that the Captain made a decision that if Rush is the Hot Shit he thinks he is, he'll still be around later to be rescued -- hopefully after having had some time to realize what a jackass he's been, and the importance of Playing Well With Others. If Rush is so pathetic he can't stay alive on that planet, with a functioning gate on it, then Rush _really_ isn't needed aboard the Destiny and his proclivity for causing trouble is enough to legitimize leaving him somewhere to die as a result of his own incompetence.

I look forward to seeing how the show decides to play it: does the Captain go back, does the shuttle show up, if the Captain goes back (or someone else goes back to investigate the "rock slide" -- and if so, do they do this with or without the knowledge of the Captain, and who is it), what does he find, or, more relevantly, what doesn't he find.

I'm most of the way through _Alice_, which I enjoyed, partly because the casting is clearly an effort to mine popular science fiction shows for actors. The doc from Stargate SG-1 is Alice's mom, as an example.

dunno what to make of this

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/magazine/06marriage-t.html

It's 10 pages, so it's hard to recommend it.

Two writers who have been married for most of a decade and produced two daughters, decide to engage in some self-help with respect to their marriage. They recognize some of the risks inherent in this activity, so kudos for that. And it's written by the woman, so we don't really know what he thinks of all this. Also, it's hard not to immediately think NPD MUCH!!! more or less every time he's mentioned. Predictably, she's clearly got some boundary issues. The fact that she's concerned about the pulling-away, as opposed to the, good lord you spend _how many_ hours a day together issues, was sort of the red flag on that.

It's a train wreck in progress, but I think I primarily would like to point out this error in judgment.

"Shortly after our first child, Hannah, was born, Dan and I started having the same conversation every night: do you want to cook dinner or look after the kid? He always picked cook, I always picked kid, and now, seven years later, Dan was an excellent, compulsive and profligate chef. We spent far more money on food than we did on our mortgage."

Both parties are responsible for this set of interactions and its predictable outcome. The problem was a simple one: they did not require that Dan participate in the life of the children. This could have been done in any number of ways, but mostly, these two idiots needed to quit thinking in terms of "what do I want right now" and think more in terms of "how is this going to develop over time". If you give one parent all the kid-time, the other parent will, utterly predictably, feel left out of the family and will get creepy and weird and dominating in an effort to compensate.

Arguably, Dan's that way by nature. I wouldn't know. But this set of choices would absolutely contribute, and there's plenty of evidence later in the article that they got exactly the outcome one would expect. Altho I will note that Dan and his checklist approach to cookbooks may be creepy enough to count towards some sort of diagnosis.

Besides. What a fucking cliche. The hands-down most creative and applause generating part of everything to do with the house and/or family is cooking (a limited case can be made for decorating -- but it is limited). Guys have been taking over the cooking and turning it into some huge task that prevents them from doing anything else around the house ever since women started making enough money to insist that they do something around the house. This couple doesn't need psychotherapy. They need consciousness raising. Because this is _not_ an equal relationship. And the woman needs to start kicking that guy's ass. I don't know if his ass needs kicking, but she clearly needs to start kicking.