Ask him some really technical question to throw him off his guard.

Is this Microsoft SQL Server?

sad. my babysitter's grandfather died this week. poor thing.

Is this Microsoft SQL Server?

Oracle 10g. He wrote some queries on data that I know really well from a business POV, so I know what the results should look like. His look wrong, and don't match the app or the simple queries I run. I'll be damned, though, if I can tell where in his nested SELECTs he's gone awry. I just watch the guy flip around Toad and I blanch. I'm still stumbling around that app. I haven't used it in years, and it far exceeds my needs or abilities.

They have the good tea on my floor now! No more stealing from the bigwigs! This is, of course, just as they run out of the good hot chocolate, but good tea is more important to me. Let us not speak of the Krispy Kreme that showed up today.

my babysitter's grandfather died this week. poor thing

Is this your regular babysitter, or the new black guy? Do race issues come up a lot in your adoption? I wonder what it's like when everything is so different. I never identified well with black America, but I've been a fish out of water my whole life, and not one seeking wetness. Mac's experience and needs are very different. I know a lot of African people who see black Americans as practically white, but to a kid visual like is like.

My migraine specialist looks so like Mac. He's not East African. Black and Spanish, he told me, with some disappointment. He just found out about the Spanish part, and wasn't excited. My non-African roots are very simple. Scot to about the last ribosome. Such is Jamaica.

It our regular babysitter.

Race doesn't really come up often with mac and me, but he can get focused on our differences. He is bothered if peers say something about our different skin tones. His school doesn't have hardly any black students, not African American or Hispanic. Lots of shades though with Indian and East Asian and Mexican and S. America. He is darker skinned than most of the kids, but he focuses on his hair as the big different element and he is not going to feel a connection with the African American community on that issue. When people share with me their thoughts, most assume he is bi-racial, but a few have thought he was Puerto Rican or Dominican - not surprising for the neighborhoods we were in when those observations were made. I find people tend to assume whatever is the closet to them or common in their hood.

Woman gives birth on Southwest Airlines flight 30,000 feet above Denver:

[link]

Jessica, do not get any ideas.

I hate flying under the best of circumstances, so my current plan is to avoid planes altogether during my 9th month of pregnancy!

Ick! Someone nuked stinky, stinky fish in the kitchen here at work. It is teh nast!

I guess I should be greatful it didn't have brocolli or garlic in it as well.

And in Times Are Tough news - buy a home before 12/31/09, get a free can of pork & beans!

Someone nuked stinky, stinky fish

Stupid hobbits!! Supposed to eat it raw and wriggling.