News

1. I survived Boot Camp for New Dads, sponsored by Babies 'R' Us. I basically learned that I need to be nice to Mom, and that I shouldn't shake a baby. Oh, and most babies aren't shaken by their fathers anyway.

There was this demonstration where the instructor put an egg into one of those semi-disposable Ziploc containers and shook it around vigorously, to demonstrate what happens to a baby's brain when you shake her around. The egg actually ended up nearly destroying the container - so basically, the lesson I learned is that babies' brains are just about indestructible.

2. I was told by a Babies 'R' Us employee that when people pay with personal checks, they often write the 'R' backwards, as it appears in the store's logo.

3. If you ever buy a Graco Pack 'n' Play, just throw away the instructions, or, if possible, burn them. They're written by a bunch of half-literate Quebecois, and the illustrations were drawn by Salvador Dalí. Instead of actually writing out what you have to do, they just say "look at the picture," and the picture suggests that you get the thing's frame mostly assembled, and then you wait until some sort of mutant squid to come along and try to eat it.

4. France managed to elect someone who isn't a complete flaming socialist. Sarkozy's most interesting proposal is to relax the 35-hour work week, which even the other EU countries have rejected. I say it's interesting because I find it strange how France got into a position where such a debate should even be occurring.

5. The spring semester is over, so I'm done taking classes until the fall. Hurray!