Miser Family update: Bahrain, not Spain, is plainly on my brain

Where my husband has been this week.

Life continues to be rich and full in the Miser Family household.  This week, my nest has been especially empty, because my husband flew to Bahrain, leaving me and Prewash alone to referee math papers and make sense of the leftovers in the fridge.   We make a good team, Prewash and I!

J-son is earnestly applying for jobs, and getting some nibbles.  N-son tells me he was planning to go to a dance at his school.  I tried to pump him for more gossip, but he went all Clint Eastwood on me.  Darn it.

Since I'm flying solo, I got to go to some fun talks and movies:  a documentary (The Sign for Love) about a gay, deaf man in Israel who fathers a child with his best friend, a lesbian deaf woman.  It was an enlightening documentary, and reminded me that parenting is darned hard and more of sacrifice than most potential parents realize.  And perhaps on the same lines, I went to a talk on the evolution of altruism that was a lot of fun.  (Take-away: altruism probably does have genetic components, but because of that our altruism tends to be  parochial and irrational).  And to counteract all that altruism, I attended a great Info Security lunch, that reminded me that basically everyone should make sure they set up their own accounts at the places below before the BadGuys do:

• IRS
• Social Security
• USPS (Informed Delivery)

With my guys dispersed across the globe, our family Valentine's dinner was genetically the Double-X crowd:  me, I-daughter, K-daughter, A-child, and a young friend.  I learned that K-daughter now owns steel-toed boots.  (She says, "Ever since I nearly got electrocuted, there are a lot more safety rules where I work").   And I-daughter has decided that sometime this spring, she's going to take the plunge and buy . . . (wait for it . . . ) a spinning wheel!



We festived up the table and chandelier; we had heart-shaped pizza with black olives (because olive you so much!), and mini-heart-shaped bacon quiches (because hogs and quiches; mwah-mwak).

And we followed it all up with apple pie leftover from Thanksgiving.  (Because you're the apple of my pie.  And I'm thankful for that).

By the way, A-child's name has a bunch of variant spellings, and sometimes people ask me how she spells her particular version.  Wonder no more!

Here's how A-child spells her name.  Now you know.

Finally, kudos to L-daughter, my most academically driven child.   She is a fan of warm weather, and so when she decided which grad school to go to she chose . . . the University of Minnesota.  Right? Well, UM's not exactly warm, but it had just the program she wanted to pursue.   At any rate, she's close to finishing up and had a nibble for a post-doc in central California so she could finally get out of the frozen tundra.   And so she accepted the postdoc at Northwestern.     So she's truly an egg-head, who chooses her brain over her body.  I'm so proud of you, L-daughter!

And that's the news from our family, which continues to be wealthy in our adventures.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous.