Happy returns.

Me, by Tertius

It was my birthday on Monday -- thanks to anyone who sent me a greeting on Facebook. I spent a very contented afternoon with the boys, starting out by teaching them how to play Poohsticks, first on a bridge over the Blind Brook on Rye's too-busy Highland Avenue, and then further downstream in the relative safety of our glorious Nature Center. After the first game, they beat me solidly. Which is the way it should be.

Good to watch the guys thoroughly happy together for hours, basically messing about in a cool, shallow river with pieces of rope, sticks, wooden boats, soggy sandals, leaves . . .   Not a screen in sight.

Later, I'm talking to Tertius, who listens to me and comments placidly, "If I had a quarter for every word you['ve] said, I don't know what I could do with that much money."

ON again, ON again.

I'm in San Francisco, with only my iTouch to access the internet. So this can only be a brief message to say "Happy one-hundred and ninth birthday, Ogden Nash!"

What have we learned?

That it's not enough to remove the old, dried-up grounds from the coffee-maker. You also have to add fresh coffee before you run it.

Convent-ional Wisdom?

Nice slip of the tongue this evening by an NPR presenter, introducing a forum on the economy, when he nearly said the "International Monastery Fund."

Looking for puns linking monks and economics. Got nothing. (Could have gone with Lehman Brothers, but they went bankrupt in 2008.)

Kill me dead.

Trying to watch a "Transformers" movie, but it's hard to keep track of who's the good robot versus who's the bad when most of the action looks like an Erector Set in a washing machine.

But it seems that half the time, you can't keep a good Decepticon down. Megatron takes a licking but keeps on ticking through two sequels, while other robots are smashed forever with one blast.

"What decides whether a transformer is beyond recovery?" I ask Primus.

"You have to destroy it hard enough," he explains.