Avatar

With cable (well, satellite TV), which was necessary to get any TV reception at all, came Casper's discovery that there are television channels with kids things on that aren't PBS. The only ones we really get are Nickelodeon, but there are about 5 different Nickelodeon sub-channels. Sponger Bob appears to be on almost all the time, and Casper is also fond of the Fairly Oddparents and (new discovery) Danny Phantom. She also wants to watch iCarly sometimes, and dear lord she only just turned 5 and can't possibly be a tween yet, right? Thankfully, while she has a Hannah Montana shirt and recognizes her in ads, she has never watched that show, and she appears completely unaware of High School Musical.

Thankfully, there is Avatar the Last Airbender, with which she is currently obsessed, and which I both enjoy and think is actually good (not necessarily overlapping categories). I bought the first season on DVD for mr. flea's birthday next week (he is at least as obsessed as Casper) and we are most of the way through it. Casper is, perhaps not coincidentally, interested in starting Tae Kwan Do, which is available at her after-school twice a week, and she and Dillo practice their bending moves around the house (Dillo saying "fire nation!" and making raaar face while moving his arms is oh so cute.)

In other TV news, I can still get her to 'choose' PBS kids most of the time (when it's on) by pointing out that Dillo isn't really that interested in the big kid TV shows. He loves Super Why, though, and Casper does too when she actually watches it, and can mostly shout out the right answers now. She also likes Word Girl, and Sid the Science Kid, and especially Wishbone, that little dog who visits history and literary works. Dillo's favorites are the more age-appropriate Clifford, Curious George, and Sesame Street.

And really, I swear we don't watch as much TV as this makes it sound!

Antwerp

mr. flea is spending a week - 8 days, actually! - in Belgium next week, and so I started poking around to see if I could recommend any travel guides online to him, and now of course I am getting very jealous.

He (and a senior colleague whom he describes as a workaholic) are flying into Charles de Gaulle and taking the TGV to Antwerp. Antwerp is in the Flemish part of Belgium, and is (with Rotterdam) one of the two major ports of Europe. Home of Rubens, Antwerp lace, lots of 16th century architecture. Sigh. I miss Europe. I haven't been outside of this country since 2002, and I was used to spending a lot of time traveling. He doesn't think he'll have much time to sightsee (given the workaholic colleague), but based on my experiences of academic conferences in Europe (Liege 1998!), there should be good food and long lunch hours for walking around. And Belgian beer...

mr. flea being an engineer and a scientist and not much of a humanist, historian, or European traveler, was unable to tell me what city he was going to until recently. He said he was going to a conference on (and about) the Scheldt river. (Which is of course where Antwerp is, but didn't exactly ring a bell to me.)

hmmm

I think I've found a blog by a woman who was my best friend ca. 1978-1982. We didn't keep in touch much after I moved away, since I was only 9 (she was 18 months older), and she lost both her parents in short order and moved in with a sister (she had a bunch of rather older siblings - I think she was a menopause baby). I've Facebooked her to ask if it's her. I don't think I'd have gotten in touch except via Facebook - it seems to make this sort of thing a little easier than email would be. I'm not sure that I expect anything even if it is her - but it's nice to read the blog and see that she seems to be a sensible person, the sort of person I might even choose as a friend as an adult, and she can use grammar and spell and so forth.

So now my head is all full of playing with her Barbies and watching General Hospital with her mother and talking on the phone after I moved about who we though was cuter on CHIPS, John or Ponch.