Yesterday in Grade 5 the children were talking about jpgs and gifs, except they thought it was GIFT. Heh - I thought it was cool that they got that far. It's a triumph for them to ask me, "What's a gift?" For right now they understand it's an image format that they can't use in the virtual world. Yesterday Alina told them to find pictures of Rhodes Hall, at Cornell - and then went on to describe what floor she was on and which window they'd have to look in to see her. After exhaustive searching (they can't do image searching because of the school protective software, which doesn't function very well, I don't think) they all type-type-typed to Alina: "Give us another thing to find they are all gifts."

I just cleaned the deadness out of my refrigerator (not the freezer yet). Now it is empty except for a bag of organic greens and condiments (I always call my fridge an old-age home for condiments).