The apple does not fall far from the tree in my family. We tend to have such strongly recognizable stamps from generation to generation that one could accuse us of cloning.

The point here? I went to watch my brother teach World Civ at the local college. He’s good at it, but he’s the kind of zany teacher who makes wise cracks that everyone loves. His lecture on the Byzantine Empire was fast but thorough and I learned stuff I didn’t know. That was cool. HOWEVER I also know that if it wouldn’t get him fired that he’d just lie through his teeth to these kids for the sheer fun of it. I mean, he’d fess up eventually, but the urge to see how far he could push the lie would be very tempting.

This comes to mind now, because I just got off the computer after spending an hour hanging out with my nephew IMing. My nephew enjoys being off the wall just for the sheer fun of it. (I would show you some of his fiction, but he was very quick to claim copyright.) But they also both enjoy being smarter than the other person.

What’d we talk about? I showed him this puzzle, which took me a couple of days the first time I solved it. He just finished it. Now, it’s possible that he found a spoiler sheet, but he also learned to play chess over a weekend from reading a book.

Lord knows when he’ll show an interest in me again, or why he did tonight, but I’ll have another puzzle waiting for him. I’m not even going to try chess.

My palm pilot has a very discreet little camera on it. This is handy because it means that when Grandma is telling a story I can record her without her feeling self-conscious. This is great, except when said palm pilot freezes dumping ten minutes of really interesting stuff about the school wagon she rode. I can tell you that it was a wagon with an oil cloth top, two horses and that, in good weather, the boys had to get out and walk at the hills to make it easier on the horses, but it’s just not the same.

Oh my. Jen Stark creates amazing sculptures out of construction paper. That’s right, you remember the stuff you used in elementary school, and how it would come in that fantastic pack of rainbow colors. There are gorgeous things at her site, including a short animation done with construction paper that’s like a kaliedoscope, spinning and twirling paper that changes shape and color.

Definitely check her out. Oh, in the middle of the sculpture section, there’s a set of cut leaves, in which she cuts patterns out of actual leaves.