In honor of our great American presidents, who run the gamut from heroic and awesome to Bush, today's entry is a mish-mosh of unrelated topics.
First off, (as we like to say here in Pittsburgh. Is "first off" another of our peculiar speech patterns, or is that a common expression elsewhere as well?) let's begin with a picture from last Halloween that one of the neighbors gave me yesterday. I present it here not just because of its awesome cuteness, but also because (at least in the original, I don't know about on your monitor at this reduced resolution) it's one of the few pictures we've taken that show Adam's two different eye colors.
And just in case you missed the eye thing, here's Adam's most recent self-portrait:
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I've been holding on to the following clip from the P-G for a few weeks. It appeared in a Saturday "In Memorium" classified. I have nothing to say about it, except that it's oddness kind of creeped me out. I'll transcribe it, verbatim, below.
Transcription
Woman's Name
6/7/17 - 8/3/00 - 2/2/06
they know what they really did and are tormented by what they should have done and will be haunted by secrets they keep until facing Her vengeful God.
You were shown no mercy deprived of a higher caring conspired and colluded against wrongly inaccurately portrayed as fat old worthless having no meaningful existence.
given no true consideration tritely unconsionably overruled alloted no serious deliberation rendered a heartless verdict which was hurtfully insulting and an egregious mockery of justice
Ever calm cheerful and healthy never claustrophobic or anxious not some "unlucky soul" rather you were that 1 in 1,000,000 and would be alive and well today not laying wrathfully restless needlessly inscrutably butchered illicitly impurely debrained profanely irreverently desecrated unethically buried in p-i-e-c-e-s
Caring Giving Beautiful
INNOCENT MOTHER
Deeply Missed
Always Remembered
Eternally Loved
Your Devoted Grieving
Truthful son James
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Today's Mary provides a nice postscript to my totally uncalled-for and none-too-subtle entry from last Friday:
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And speaking of comic strips, the whole family got the chance to meet Robb Armstrong, the creator of Jump Start, at the Pittsburgh Children's Museum over the weekend. I started reading Jump Start during my stay in Syracuse, where the Post-Standard was one of the first papers to pick it up. The strip varies from decent to pretty good, and the artwork is always good. Armstrong himself is a pretty neat guy -- he really engaged the kids with a high-energy presentation. Adam got an original drawing, which is pretty cool.