The American Adventure - Vol 28

1 - 30 September 99

If you want to go straight to Vol 29, you may do so now!

...

Many things happened during the month and there were a range of issues we had to deal with, both as a family and as individuals.

The primary (ha ha) issue was the commencement of school for Kalle and Taltarni. As mentioned last month, Kalle started First Grade and Taltarni started full-time pre-school. Both had to put up with many long days in both before and after school care, as their parents tried to deal with work, traffic and scheduling problems. While we benefit from living within five minutes of the school (either driving or on foot), the routes to and from Tim's work are unpredictable and that led to two instances in which Kalle and Taltarni were the last to be picked up after 6:00 pm in the evening. Kajsa's work hours are such that she has been able to let the kids skip before school care, but there have been days when the kids get dropped off at 8:00 am and are picked up just short of ten hours later. Fortunately both of them enjoy school and out of hours care largely consists of letting the kids muck about in the playground, so it was not much of a trial for them.

Taltarni has adapted reasonably well to school. It is possible that the school has not adapted that well to Taltarni.

We have certainly had our ups and downs with the Annihilation Empress (her godfather's favourite diminutive) during the month. At first she refused to sleep the whole night through. That meant that Kajsa rarely got a good night's sleep (due to Tim's learned ability to sleep through just about anything). We tried everything to get her to sleep and, for the most part, this consisted of shouting at her. Not very politically correct and all that but, as you are being slowly driven out of your mind, such moral issues carry far less weight. She managed to break us out of the habit by peeing in her bed one night.

One of the biggest problems is that Taltarni remains balanced precariously on the cusp of real communication. We are sure that, in her own mind, she is communicating perfectly. It is just that these lump-headed big people aren't trying hard enough to understand her. She spends an hour shouting about how she wants to go to the toilet and they keep going on about sleep. Hey, a girl needs to pee sometime!

This communication problem manifested at school also. Her teachers were concerned that she was not understanding them and they found it very difficult to understand her. It all came to a head towards the end of the month when we got a note from her teachers. Apparently two concerning incidents had occurred during the day. The first was nothing that we worried about. The second was a little more concerning.

Everyday in the lower classes, the children are forced to have a nap, or quiet time. Taltarni is not that usually good about going to sleep but she surprised us in the first week by sleeping at school once or twice (according to the semi-daily reports). Other days, while she doesn't sleep, she at least rests. Not this day.

We are used to going to wake Taltarni up and finding that she has undressed or changed clothes. The teachers, who are not so used to it, were mortified when Taltarni insisted on taking her clothes off.

Have we mentioned that Taltarni is stubborn? If Taltarni has decided that she needs to take her clothes off, she takes them off. No big person is going to make her change her mind. Well, the teachers had something to say about the fact that she did not seem to understand them when they sat with her and tried to explain that she couldn't take her clothes off. "Oh, yeah," Taltarni probably thought "Is this a new rule you just made up or what?"

It is quite possible that Taltarni just didn't want to listen, after all they probably didn't try to establish why she was taking her clothes off. She might have had a perfectly logical reason.

The second incident involved a swing, which is probably one of the most dangerous elements of a playground. Taltarni was walking in front of one of the swings which was in use at the time and was being yelled at by a supervisor (ie Playground Lady) to stop. Taltarni didn't stop. She didn't acknowledge being shouted at either. Fortunately, she also didn't get hit by the swing. She did manage to scare the Playground Lady though.

We stressed about Taltarni a lot over the following days. We wondered whether she might have difficulty hearing, might be colour blind, might have some developmental delay (nothing too serious, though, because she is dangerously clever in other areas - she works most things out for herself, she just doesn't seem to learn lessons she doesn't want to learn). Kajsa came to the conclusion that she was just having to cope with too many things at once. The departure of Meike, the start of school, Kajsa's change of hours at work and second-hand stress from her parents who were trying to deal with a few things also. Tim noted that the kids did not have a very good routine and that that made things very difficult for them. They didn't really know what to expect from one day to the next and that was detrimental to their sense of security.

By the end of the month we had put a lot of effort into establishing a routine and were trying to limit the effect of our stress on the kids (and Taltarni in particular).

Earlier in the month, Taltarni and Kalle received belated birthday presents from Taltarni's godfather (Anthony J Tham, Leut. Rtd). Kalle really liked his Lego but he showed nothing close to the level of excitement that Taltarni did about her fairy costume. She loved it. She wanted to wear it straight away (greeting Tim in it when he came home from work). It was a real struggle to get her to change into more appropriate clothing for dinner.

That night, she was surprisingly quiet after being put to bed. Usually there is about an hour of shouting (Natt Natt, Sov Gott, Bye Bye, etc), lots of stomping around as she gets out of bed and does her nightly chores and a bit of crying about being sent to bed ridiculously early. When we went to bed and looked in on her, she had obviously changed out of her pyjamas and into the fairy costume. She was fast asleep but still looking very happy. She did the same thing almost every night for the next week or so.

She did have quite a number of nightly chores during the month. There was the normal restacking of books. That is, taking of books out of her bedside chest of drawers and putting them all over her bed. In addition, there was the frequent changing of the lamps. Through some bizarre turn of events, Taltarni now has two night lamps. Unfortunately, there just isn't room for two lamps in her room. So, she often decides that she wants to make a change. This means that she climbs into one of the cupboards, drags down the lamp that is not set up and plugs it in. At the end of the month, this little game was no longer as much fun as one of the globes blew.

(Note that Taltarni's mother is truly certifiable and, despite having the dangers explained at great length by her loving husband whom she almost killed in the same way, she took the globe out of the lamp, rather than leaving it in. Little fingers [such as Taltarni has] which can slip into a small globe socket, or not so little fingers [such as Tim has] which fit nicely into a normal socket, can lead to the electrocution of the owner of the fingers. One day Kajsa removed Tim's bedside lamp's globe and he shocked himself when he tried to remove the non-existent globe to change it.

Hint for wives out there with plans to kill your husbands. Not telling hubby that you took out the globe is an essential element of this plan. You just take the globe out and let him find out why the light isn't working. BZZT. Children are much easier to knock off in this manner, especially when they are as curious as Taltarni. "Ooh, the lamp doesn't work. Hmm, I wonder what this little hole is for." The next thing you know is that you have a little girl with strangely permed hair and a smoking finger.)

Taltarni began talking a lot about being a big girl during the month and started to give hints that she wanted to move into one of the spare bedrooms (the one most recently occupied by Meike). We ended making a compromise, with Taltarni moving out of her cot and getting the spare single mattress on the floor. We got to keep two spare rooms that don't need as much maintenance and can easily house any last minute guests. She was very proud about having a big bed and it has worked quite well. It was not as if she had any problem with climbing in and out of her cot.

"Yep yep yep" has become a favourite phrase with the Annihilation Empress. - Do you want something to drink? "Yep yep yep." It is very cute and those with children may recognise it a quote from "The Land Before Time".

For Kalle, the month was "Insect Month". At some stage in the first week, we got some papers back from school which talked about the month's theme for Kalle's class. The were going to focus their studies on insects or, as the Americans say, bugs.

It is still not clear what they mean by "bugs" because some people here seem to use the word interchangeably with "insects" and others use to describe any insect like thing (including spiders and wood lice, for instance). But then some Americans are not clear about what are and aren't insects. For instance, a book we bought recently on Greek myths refers to a scorpion as an insect. Not a terrible mistake for an everyday person (after all what normal person would know that a scorpion is an arthropod, in the same phylum as insects but not an insect? or what the heck a phylum is? or that a scorpion is more closely related to spiders than to lobsters, which are both also in the phylum arthropodia?) but it's concerning when even an esoteric error like that gets past the editorial process.

The month's assignment for Kalle's class was to collect ten or so insects and put them on a board with a description of each of them. He was very excited about the subject and was overjoyed when, on the first Friday, he was able to take his first insect into class. A live insect. A big green one that looked, for all intents and purposes, to be an enormous Katydid. We just called it a big green leaf insect and that seemed to describe it accurately enough.

The big green leaf insect was far from the only insect that Kalle collected. Though it really was big, it wasn't the biggest. That honour went to Barry the Praying Mantis (and Old Barry the Praying Mantis). Some people may remember that we went to an orchard earlier in the year and picked berries. We recalled that there had been a lot of insects there and so we undertook to visit the orchard again, to pick some in season fruit and collect some insects.

It was a great success. Kalle got a couple of butterflies, a couple of grasshoppers and a little cricket. The woman who owned the orchard noticed what we were doing and started complaining (partly in jest) that we were stealing her livelihood. She asked us whether we were entomologists or just weird about insects. When we explained why we had been running around her orchard with a little butterfly net and a bunch of collection jars, she told us that if we could find a male or immature female praying mantis, we could take it.

She knew her garden and directed us precicely to where there were a couple of mantises to choose from. Kalle was very proud of his live insect collection and of the praying mantis in particular (which was the only insect to get a name).

Unfortunately, a week later, Barry Mantis died. Fortunately, by this time, Barry was not the only praying mantis we had. During the week, Tim had been out the front with the kids trying to get Barry some food (moths, flies, butterflies) and the neighbours asked what we were up to. Tim explained himself and Janet said that she would keep an eye out for any interesting insects. A couple of days later, she came over and said that she had seen a praying mantis. After a couple of searches, we found it (it was much more difficult to spot than Old Barry). To be fair, and to teach Kalle to share, Tim declared that this new mantis was Taltarni's.

Luckily, Taltarni never realised that she had a mantis. She was happy with her two dead crickets (Christy and Christine). So, when Barry started slowing down and finally expired, we had to make a switch. We told Kalle that, if he didn't tell anyone, we would give Taltarni's mantis to him. Therefore, there was a new Barry Mantis and the original became Old Barry Mantis (deceased). Old Barry Mantis ended his days stuck to a sheet of paper along with a bunch other insects (including three bits of a dragonfly which had been around since mid summer and had begun to fall apart).

Young Barry Mantis is still doing fine but, as the days get colder and insects are few and far between, we will soon need to "Welease Bawwy".

We did learn something that we didn't know before. Crickets are insectivorous. We didn't know that before we tried to give Old Barry a cricket to eat. Dinner decided to become diner and there was a death match between the two sort out their respective positions on the food chain. Poor Barry lost a leg before he put paid to the rampaging cricket. If anyone is thinking of getting an insect as a pet, you can't really go past a praying mantis. Far more interesting than a ladybird.

We had a number of problems at the beginning of the month with Kalle's schooling. Mostly to do with homework. We got a note back from his teacher early in the piece saying that students were going to get in the order of thirty minutes of homework every night. This doesn't really sound that much when it is written down on paper, out of context. But when you take into account that the kids are at school for eight or more hours everyday already and there is limited time in the evening, half an hour dedicated to make-work seems unreasonable.

We worried a lot about it in the first week, wondering what would happen if we just tried Gandhi-like non-violent non-co-operation. Then we heard that some of the kids in Kalle's class were finding the transition to First Grade hard and didn't want to go to school anymore. This was our worst fear realised. Kalle loves school at the moment and we would really like to put off the day when he doesn't eagerly look forward to going to school. Too much pressure and a change of focus from the joy of learning to the need to be prepared for 40 to 50 hour weeks as a corporate slave seemed to be the quickest and best way to destroy a child's love of school.

Tim was in New Mexico at the beginning of the month. Although a nice enough state, the problem with visiting New Mexico is that it is so far away. It's a long flight or, more accurately, two long flights. On the first flight, Tim was able to do his normal thing - that is, sleep. On the second, the plane was full and he was placed next to a woman from Roswell. Tim was polite enough and tried to quietly read his book about "Evil" (no, it is not a DIY guide, it is about violence and cruelty and why we do it - not how to do it). It seems that he overdid the polite bit and was thus forced into a conversation that took up the whole flight from Cincinnati to Albuquerque.

The woman, who we shall call Barbara (because that was her name), was the wife of a School Administrator and was a teacher herself. They talked at length about schooling. Tim explained that he was concerned with the topic because of the recent commencement of Kalle's First Grade studies and some of the horror stories he had heard. Unfortunately, Barbara was not able to soothe his concerns. She and her husband were also concerned about the education system, so much so that they took their kids out of school and are home-schooling them. Not reassuring.

Barbara told a story about when she was a teacher and had a newly graduated teacher working for her as a teacher's aid. She told Tim that this college (university) graduate, who was embarking on a career of educating kids, was unable to put the class list in alphabetical order. Scary. From Barbara's perspective, the decline in the standard of professional teachers is due to the opening up of other opportunities for women and the almost absolute lack of recognition of the importance of good teachers. If you are bright and enthusiastic, why restrict yourself to traditional (and lowly paid) female employment like teaching or nursing? Go for being a lawyer or doctor. She did not say that there are absolutely no good teachers out there, just that there are no longer so many of them.

Tim explained that one of the biggest concerns he had was about the amount of homework, that we had heard horror stories about it. He asked Barbara what she thought about it and she said that there are a number of reasons for the increase in the amount of work assigned. It is partly to do with the inability of teachers to teach all that needs to be taught - that they are inefficient or trying to cope with too many student problems in class - and partly to do with the increased number of subjects and issues that are now devolved to teachers rather than being handled by parents (who are too busy to have the occasional heart to heart with their kids). She is a little surprised that First Graders are being assigned homework, but only a little.

While we were aware that Kalle wouldn't be getting that much homework, we were concerned that he was getting any. He's six. Why does a six year old need to do homework. It really seems to be there to prepare the kids for even more homework in higher grades. In the American system, you have kids in Fourth Grade coming home and doing two hours of homework every night. Add to that things like sports and music or other cultural events and you have no time to just be a kid. You're already on the treadmill and you haven't turned ten yet.

This may be an indication that he is getting old and senile, but Tim can remember that back when he was a lad, he didn't have homework. (It is vaguely possible that he had homework, but he can vouch that he never actually did any homework.) In fact, he never did any work at home until Fifth Form (or Year 11, if you prefer). It just wasn't possible - if every teacher regularly assigned twenty minutes of work to be done each night how would have been able to fit in time to watch "Doctor Who"?

Anyway, during the first week, the homework wasn't too bad and there didn't see to be much to worry about. Kalle seemed to really like doing it and we came to the conclusion that we had been overreacting.

Then on the Monday of the second week, Kalle got four bits of homework to do. Tim was at home by himself and, after making dinner, tidying up and putting Taltarni to bed, he sat down with Kalle to go through the work. It took considerably more than half an hour. It took closer to a full hour. By the time he had put Kalle to bed and read a story, it was close to half past nine. There was no way we were going to put up with a full hour of homework every night. And, as this was only the the second week of homework, there was a chance that they were still ramping up to the standard. Tim was furious.

We got a note back from school the next day. The homework that had been sent back the night before was for the whole week. There had been a problem with the photocopier and the guide for the week had not been sent home. There was palpable relief but there was a still a residual concern about what exactly it was that the school hoped to achieve by assigning homework to six year olds.

We met with Kalle's teacher on the Back to School night on the following Thursday.

Poor woman.

Town and Country parents are generally well educated themselves or at least put great importance on the education of their children. They expect a lot of the teachers and this certainly showed on Back to School night. All the parents (us included) lay in wait for Kalle's teacher and were very aggressive in making her explain herself and what she intended to do with our children. We raised the homework issue and she made a lot of friends when she told us that she was not personally in favour of homework for her class. Unfortunately, hers is but one of three First Grade classes and she is the new girl on the block. Homework is set centrally, not by the individual teachers. We walked away happier with her but in retrospect, we have still not had any explanation as to what the central committee wish to achieve by setting the homework.

Given that Kalle quite enjoys the doing the work, it is not too onerous, we will be out of the country before it becomes ridiculous (in Second Grade) and we have established a workable routine wherein Kalle does his homework while Taltarni goes to bed, we have decided not to fight the issue any further.

Something that may become a continuing fight is the cancer they call Pokémon. Kalle is starting to become a Pokémon freak. For those who have been living in a cave for the past year, Pokémon is a TV show about "Pocket Monsters" that you collect. You can use the Pokémons you have to fight other people's Pokémons and "capture" them. As well as the TV show, there are also cards with which you can play a game (very similar to "Magic: The Gathering"). The motto and theme song of Pokémon is the very catchy and blatantly merchandising based "Gotta catch them all!" (There is also "I choose you!")

Remember that you read it here first: soon they will start releasing collectable toys similar to Beanie Babies and kids will go crazy over them. Already there are people paying big dollars just for the cards. It is our guess that the marketing guys want to make as much as they can from the cards (low cost, big returns) and then start putting out the action figures.

Collectables are big business in this country. This is where they used to put baseball cards in packages of bubble gum, then they were putting gum in with the baseball cards and finally they gave up on the gum altogether. Idiots were willing to pay their money for a pack of ten or so cards just for the chance (not the certainty) that they might pick up a card they don't already have. Actual value of such card: zip.

Collectable collection is really pure capitalism. None of the the cards have any real value. The way that value gets assigned to a certain card is by it becoming in short supply. Look at baseball cards. A good baseball player may have a valuable card because everyone wants one. In future years, a player who bombs may also get to have a valuable card but only because almost everyone threw his card away when he was playing badly. To inflate the street value of a card, the manufacturer may reduce the number of cards produced. This is what the makers of Pokémon might choose to do.

Doing this makes sense in terms of the game too. A super strong Pokémon is attractive because you will in more often. But if everyone had a handfull of MegaPokémon, then the game would become pretty pointless (well, more pointless). So, such a card is attractive, people want to get it and hold on to it. It starts in short supply and supply gets shorter. Hmm, reading back over this, it becomes clear that there may be something in the claim that "Pokémon is Evil"!

Tim wonders if his parents ever got together with other parents and worried about the abnormal interest he showed in "Kimba the White Lion" (Who lives down in deepest darkest Africa, Africa? Who's the one who brought the jungle shame? Who believes in getting laid and sleeping round? Kimba the White Lion is his name.)

Kalle's other abiding interest during the month (heavily promoted by his father) was in Greek mythology.

One weekend, while Kajsa was working, Tim took the kids for a visit to Borders Book Store where they got to meet Arthur (a cartoon aardvark) and have a story read to them. Tim spent the time hunting around the shelves for a few good books for Kalle.

During the previous weekends, Tim and Kalle had been watching a television adaptation of "The Odyssey". They had also recently seen Disney's "Hercules" and Tim had been appalled at how the story had been totally butchered. Please note that the next two paragraphs could be justifiably characterised as self-aggrandisement on the part of the author. Feel free to skip them. They just go on and on about how horrible Disney is and try to make out that there really is a point to being familiar with the classics in some small way.

In Disney's Hercules", Hera, the number one wife of Zeus, was no longer the Bad Guy. That role was now filled by Hades. Hercules had also been given a transfer from Roman Mythology, ending up in a form of Greek Mythology. ("Hercules" was the Roman version of "Heracles". Zeus, Hera and Hades plus many of the other characters most people are familiar with, such as Apollo, Athena and Achilles and Paris, Pandora and Pan, were all Greek.)

Philoctetes ("Call me Phil!") had been changed from a mortal friend (who was given some poisoned arrows by Heracles on his deathbed and subsequently gave them to Paris who in turn used them to kill Achilles in the battle for Troy) into a hero manufacturing satyr. The gods only know where Megara came from. There was also some rather major reconditioning of the story for a PC audience. The whole reason why Heracles/Hercules had to perform his ten/twelve labours was changed. No being punished for killing the wife and kids [not once, mind you, but twice]. Not in a nice family Disney feature, oh no. It was now all about "proving yourself" to be a real hero. And, of course, the merchandising.

Anyway, Tim was peeved and had tried to make it clear to Kalle that Disney's "Hercules" was not the real story of Hercules. "But what is the real story of Hercules?" - Um.

Tim was stumped. He didn't actually know the real story. He thought he knew bits, like the bit with Medusa and the bit about meeting a blind cyclopes and having to talk it into trusting him (all of which were completely wrong). All he really knew was that Hercules didn't come home from his hero making work to sit around in Nike Hercs.

So Tim bought a book which told all of the Greek Myths from just prior to the birth of the Titans to the fall of Troy. As they had been watching "The Odyssey", which was really a combination both The Iliad and The Odyssey, he also bought adaptations of both epics. To complete a rounded education in the classics, he also picked up an anthology of myths from around the world (just in case Disney thinks about making their next animated feature about Odin and the merry chaps from Valhalla (minus all the battles to the death complete with daily resurrections followed by riotous wenching and orgiastic feasts) or about Ra (but without that ticklish bit about creating the world through use a certain masculine fluid - sometimes known as "gentleman's relish").

Tim wonders if they are thinking of doing Oedipus. How they'd do that story is an interesting one to think about. Perhaps they could combine it with Romeo and Juliet. "Disney's new animated feature 'Oedipus'. The amusing story of a young lad who accidentally kills his father and marries his mother. Then, after they have a bunch of kids, everyone dies. Fun for all the family!" Don't forget to buy the action figures (not anatomically correct).) He also got a volume of Aesop's Fables.

Kalle really got into the Greek Myths books, which he calls "Zeus and his family". He lay awake many an evening, flipping through the book and checking out the pictures. His interest lead to a funny little exchange one evening.

Kalle had been getting over a bad habit of throwing a bit of a tantrum when he was sent to his room. He used to yell (more whine) on the way up and then cry very loudly and theatrically when he got to his room. This only got him in more trouble, but he'd already been sent to his room. What else can mamma and pappa do?

Basically we ramped up the punishments, "You have to stay there for five minutes unless you scream and carry on. If you scream and carry on, you have to stay in your room for ten more minutes after you stop."

One day, he also tried throwing things. Tim went up and gave Kalle the patented "I'm very disappointed with you!" look. He calmly explained that, if Kalle threw thing around his room, we would have no choice than to take everything out of his room and throw it all away. We wouldn't be able to trust him not to throw them about and destroy the room.

A few days later he was sent up to his room again and almost immediately there was the sound of something large hitting the floor. Tim raced up, ready to make good on his prediction and saw a very worried looking Kalle trying to pick up the conch shell he got from Max. "It just fell, honest. I didn't throw it. I was here reading, look ..." (jumping on the bed and pointing to the book) "'Greek Myths', 'Greek - Myths!' "

Kajsa had a very stressful month. Her work went crazy for a number of reasons.

Just at the same time as the kids went back to school, many of the people at Kajsa's work started or recommenced college. This meant that Kohls needed to do some pretty heavy duty recruiting to replace about forty empty positions. The major problem with this is that the "Route 7 corridor" is blooming like a crazy blooming thing in a tropical rain-forest used to bloom before McDonalds moved their cows in.

There is a lot of new housing going up and a dozen or so new strip malls and a brand new covered mall. All these new businesses are sucking up any available talent. Not only by getting to them first but also by headhunting people from Kohls.

The bottom line is that Kajsa had only one other full-timer in her section, with only three part-timers who had very restricted availabilities. That meant that our whole life was shot for the month. Kajsa was working every Friday and Saturday night plus another night in the week and we had very little social life (and no way to plan one in the future). It also meant that Kajsa had to rely heavily on the other full-timer. Unfortunately, this person was not the most effective worker. She was very nice and meant well but was, to put it plainly, hopeless when is came to working undirected.

The relentless stress of never being able to be on top of life either at work or at home (because of work) was really getting Kajsa down and that flowed on through the family. Something that, in other circumstances, would have made things a little better but in reality made it worse, was the fact that Kajsa was told that, if she wasn't heading back to Australia so soon, she would have been promoted into management. The company cannot justify promoting her into what is effectively a trainee manager position when they know that she won't be around long enough to graduate and take an effective position. In some ways, being told that you could have been promoted but sorry, no can do, is worse than not knowing. Still, if the company can note in a reference that she was under serious consideration for management, then it might open doors in Australia, if Kajsa were ever to consider working again in retail.

Just to make sure that no-one worries too much, we can bring you a little update from the future (in October). Kajsa's full-timer resigned and it lifted a weight from her shoulders. She now could be singularly responsible for the section and she now had the highest priority for a new staff member. She was very happy when she came home and reported that she now was the only full-time worker in the shoe department. Crazy but true.

Tasha got over her infection and should now have a clean bill of health. She should be coming into heat soon and we can only hope that she doesn't get herself knocked up by the dog that lives two doors down. That would be a disaster.

Tim was his normal self. As he tends to have a central role in the American Adventure (author's privilege), there is no special section for him here. From here on in, we'll just revert to the normal, sequential description of the month's activities.

At the beginning of the month, Tim was still in Albuquerque. He flew down there on the Monday after his birthday weekend in order to talk to the Air Force about laser research.

Well, that was the official line.

There was an element of "Hey, this is a great opportunity to go look at New Mexico on company time!"

When he arrived in Albuquerque, Tim was in a funk of depression, resulting from the conversation with Barbara, and the realisation that Kalle was already being shaped into a corporate slave.

The depression didn't last long. It pretty much lifted as soon as he was assigned a little red Mustang to drive around in. He dropped his bags off in the hotel and then drove off for Santa Fe.

Luckily, he had flown across country with the sun and he had a few hours of daylight to get to and explore Santa Fe. It is a nice little town (and it is little) with a couple of enormous churches. As the town used to belong to the Spanish, it has that Three Amigos look. The centre is a square surrounded by restaurants and various other tourist traps.

Although it was reasonably early, Tim's body clock was still on Washington time and he decided to stop in somewhere to eat. He walked around for a while trying to find an authentic New Mexican restaurant that wouldn't break the bank. There is obviously a big difference between Mexican and New Mexican food. In all other parts of America, Mexican type food is guaranteed to be inexpensive. Not in Santa Fe. It was shocking. Half of Mexico city could eat for a month on the price of a meal in some of the restaurants he checked out. Probably the fault of those fat wallet Yankees. (It is worth noting that New Mexico does share some attributes with its southern neighbour. New Mexico has the highest level of poverty in US, lowest level of government funding and a hell of a lot of Mexicans.)

Eventually, Tim settled on having dinner in an Ore House. He liked the name and he liked the food (salsified lamb). Once his belly was full, he took to the road again and set off back to Albuquerque.

The next day, after spending the working hours at Kirtland Air Force Base, he took a cable car ride up the side of the mountain that is directly south of Albuquerque. This "tram" is the longest in the US and goes from the foot-hills to just short of the peak on a ridge that looks down on the flood plain Albuquerque on which is built.

Tim was amazed when he got to the top. New Mexico strikes you as being a desert sort of place. Deserts are associated with parched heat. Not snow. At the top of this little mountain though, there are all these signs about taking your skis off and so on. Then you walk a little further and you see that the other side of the range is set up to be a ski-field during winter. Hm. Then he recalled that the base of the mountain is at something like 6000 ft and he was therefore on a mountain which was itself set on a huge table land that includes Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, etc etc. It's high up and that is why they get snow. If parts of Queensland were at 6000 ft, they would get snow too!

Tim took a little walk down a nature trail and gloried in the silence. And it really was silent. It was one of those imposing silences, a lack of noise that amplifies the sound your shoes make on the rocks. Probably the result of oxygen deprivation.

Later in the evening, Tim went walkabout in Old Town Albuquerque. He had been told by Glenn Doherty that there was a good restaurant there. "I can't remember the name of it but it was good." Tim asked a few people who were spectacularly unhelpful - "They're all good."

Eventually, through a process of sheer guesswork, Tim found the right restaurant. It was in one corner of the Old Town's square and was set in a very historic building. It was built hundreds of years ago and has amazing three foot thick adobe walls to keep out the heat (in summer) and the cold (in winter). Additionally, it was built in the normal Spanish style with a central courtyard. The courtyard has a huge old tree in the centre. Or rather, the courtyard had a tree. There is no longer a courtyard. It has been covered and is now the central room to the restaurant. The tree is still there and is therefore central to the central room. It was a beautiful place to have dinner and Tim even felt a little sad that Kajsa couldn't be there to share the experience. (He didn't say that to his date, of course.)

Back in Washington, the kids were having their first week at school and it was Meike's last week before she returned to Germany. Both Kalle and Taltarni were proud about their school and really seemed to be enjoying the experience. Unlike Jesper, Taltarni experienced no disappointment about "English School". Jesper had got it into his head that our basement was "school" and Kajsa was his teacher. He was very happy to see Kajsa in his classroom when he got there and little put out when all she did was drop off Taltarni (who is in the same class) and disappear.

Despite some plane woes on the return leg, Tim was able to get back to Washington in time for Meike's farewell dinner from the family. We took her out to the Rain Forest Cafe, where it was so noisy that only Kajsa could talk to her intelligibly. Tim had to content himself with yelling at the kids.

When we got home, and the environment was a little more peaceful, we exchanged gifts and tears were spilt. Meike had put together a beautiful memento of her time with us, a photo album spanning the entire nine months with commentary. She had also put together a cookbook (Meike's Never Complete Cookbook), which included many dishes that she had cooked, and in some cases invented, while she was with us.

As she knew how much the kids love the water, she gave them a huge water toy each. Kalle got an inflatable pod-racer and Taltarni got a dolphin, both of which will be excellent in the pool in Canberra. She also gave us all some chocolate (which is always welcome!) We gave her a nice set of earrings which, hopefully, she will be able to wear in the future and remember her time with us.

The next night was the real farewell. The girls night out. Kajsa and Petra took Meike out to a restaurant and a few all-male revues. They came home in the early hours of the morning smelling of cigar smoke, scotch and cheap after-shave.

On Friday, though, we truly said goodbye. We drove Meike out to the airport and saw her off. It was like many farewells at airports. You want to get it over with as soon as possible, because you hate to have to say goodbye. But, even more, you want to hold off actually saying goodbye for as long as possible. So, we sat, drank coffee, ate cakes and Kajsa and Meike tried, rather unsuccessfully, not to cry.

Then, once we had seen Meike walk on the plane, we went home and waited for the fact that we now had to cope with the kids all by ourselves to finally sink in.

To drown her sorrows, Kajsa spent the whole weekend at work. Tim spent the weekend on the computer trying to reverse a problem that had come up on Friday morning. Someone had stolen Dave Wakeling's AOL password. No big deal, you might think. Except that the said person used the password to log on and send upwards of 20,000 spam emails advertising porn sites.

This is not the first time that something like this has happened in the office. Several months earlier Tim got a handful of emails complaining about porn spam that appeared to have been sent from his account. Then Glenn Doherty had the same thing happen to him. But in each of these cases there was no more than a dozen return emails complaining about spam. Dave Wakeling got hundreds, with themes varying from "DROP DEAD" to "John 2:13" (or some such). Of all the people in the office to have this happen to, it is quite ironic that Dave should get hit so hard, being the good little Baptist that he is.

Anyway, Tim spent the weekend monitoring the damage, just making sure that he did all he could to inform the authorities and thereby ensure that there could never be a thought that a righteous and proper Naval Officer like Dave was, in a secret life, "Porn Boy".

The following week went okay, given that it was the first for the new regime - minus Meike. We are still (in October) finding our way, trying to get a good routine that allows us to spend some time with the kids, do all we need to do, get the kids into bed early enough and not make us totally exhausted. We cannot imagine how two working parents with three or more kids ever manage to cope. It seems impossible.

Rusty started playing up badly during the month. Tim noticed a shuddering when he was driving to the airport to drop Meike off and from then it just got worse. We were brave and took him to Merchants (the people who fixed the air-conditioning - three times). This would not have been a big deal if it wasn't for the fact that there was just the two of us now. Now, to get the car into be repaired and get the kids to school and have Tim get to work before lunch-time, even when Kajsa is not working, was a real logistics nightmare.

Getting home from work, however, shouldn't have been difficult. Tim just needed to tell Kajsa what time he needed to be picked up, jump on the right train and, Ta Da!, Kajsa would take him to Merchants where they could buy back the car. That would have worked perfectly if the train station where Tim got off, and the train station where Kajsa was waiting to pick him up, were the one and the same.

Nope.

Tim was at East Falls Church and Kajsa was at West Falls Church.

About an hour after the designated pick-up time (after both of them had assumed that the other would realise their stupid mistake and go to the other station), both gave up on the other. Kajsa drove home and Tim caught a taxi to the car repairer.

Tim was particular irked because the easiest way to solve the problem would have been for him to call Kajsa on the mobile. And it would have been easy, if he could remember the number. Which he couldn't because, for some arcane reason that escapes even him, he has never made the effort to memorise Kajsa's mobile telephone number.

Instead he had to run about in the rain, looking for a public phone, trying to ring friends to see if anyone had the number. No such luck. So, not only was he as bad off as he was before, but he had also advertised his distress to whole a bunch of people. Bugger.

The taxi trip was agonisingly slow as one of the most impressive downpours of the year was going on at the time. The water was bucketing down and cars were inching along. When he finally got home, it should suffice to say that he was not happy.

There was a moment of complete insanity at the end of the week when a decision was made to try to watch a video. We decided on one that Tim had been given for his birthday. He had remarked on a poster advertising a new movie while we where in Sweden and said that he had to have it. At the time, he actually meant the poster but, as it turned out, he got the video being advertised - "Fucking Åmål" (just for reference, Åmål is a hick town in Sweden and the other word doesn't carry the same baggage in Swedish as it does in English).

Watching the video wasn't such a bad idea. Trying to get the kids, who were exhausted from a full week of school, to sit down and watch the video was an act of extremely optimism, to say the least. It turned out to be a disaster with two whinging children making the experience totally unenjoyable. Eventually we gave up, stopped the video and put the kids to bed before watching to the end. It was a good movie, very un-American.

Kalle started Swedish School the next day. That meant that Swedish School in the Basement also started. But Tim's "Swedish School for Adults" wasn't starting before the following week. That meant that he could either hang around to help Kajsa ... or .... go out with Staffan and play golf.

He played golf. This was actually the first game of golf that Tim has played over here that hadn't been during working hours. It was also the first without a motorised golf cart. They actually walked! Bizarre.

It was a beautiful day, the only problem was the extremely slow play of the group in front and the limited time that they had available. Tim's game seemed to be improving with a couple of nice approach shots before he totally humiliated himself on the last hole they were able to play. He had been hitting his drives straight up the fairway, not too far, but straight. On this last tee, he managed to hit a huge drive. A magnificent, monster drive. With a monster slice. Right off the golf course and into a forbidden zone (Trespassing Prohibited, Offenders Will be Prosecuted).

"Forget about it. Just hit off again," suggested Staffan.

Tim did. And exactly the same thing happened. A monster drive with a monster slice. The balls probably ended up a couple of metres from each other. Astute readers will note that this marks an improvement in Tim's game. Finally, he had achieved some level of consistency.

Yet again, wildlife figured significantly in the day's game. The most remarkable thing we came across was a "talking tree". Tim, Staffan and Anders (an old friend of Staffan's) were standing at a tee when Tim noticed a strange noise. As they needed to wait for the group in front anyway, Tim wandered off to try to see where the noise was coming from. It was a tree that was making a sort of rushing, buzzing sound. They all stood around it and came to the conclusion that the noise was the sound of water being pumped around inside the trunk. Truly amazing.

Tim spent some time during the game running around like an idiot chasing butterflies for Kalle's insect collection. He wasn't very successful with the butterflies, but did manage to catch a cicada. Well, he didn't so much catch it as scoop it up as it lay on its deathbed by the cart path. "Caught" sounds too much like a worthwhile achievement.

As mentioned, they didn't finish the game. We had been invited over to Staffan and Anna-Carin's for dinner that evening and Staffan needed to get home to help prepare. Anders also needed to get home as he had only just returned from Georgia, where he had been for the previous week.

"Hi honey, I'm home. Well, now I'm off to play golf!"

It seemed strange that Anders' beloved let him go. Shortly after we arrived at Staffan and Anna-Carin's, Tim realised why. It was Staffan's birthday and Anders had been let out of the house for Staffan's sake. (This has been duly noted and may be used for future reference, "Yes, älskling, I know I haven't been around much, but it's (fill in blank here)'s birthday, what can I do?")

Dinner was a lot of fun. Basically it was all Swedes, with the exception of Tim. He wanted everyone to stick with Swedish, after all there were eight adults and only one was not a native Swedish speaker. At a couple of points Anna-Carin, the perfect hostess, insisted that everyone speak English for Tim's sake.

Tim protested - No no no, please, stick with Swedish, it's good for me anyway.

Then Anna-Carin really put the pressure on by saying that she wanted everyone to speak English so that Tim could regale everyone with his wittily ironic little comments. "I know that it is hard to do that in another language."

- Whoa, you want us all to speak English so I can be funny? Then I definitely want to stick with Swedish!

The running joke for the evening was something from a Swedish comedy something that runs along the lines of a couple speaking about what the husband wants for his birthday. The wife asks "What would be a good birthday present for you?" - A happy wife. "And how should I be that then?" - What's wrong with 'happy, horny and grateful'?"

Later in the evening, we got into a discussion about bed habits. Nothing graphic, just about how some partners like to read in bed, some can't or don't like to and, the worst sin of all, how some partners read to exhaustion and fall asleep with a book on their chest - without turning out the light. Ulrika, one of Staffan and Anna-Carin's friends got a bit defensive and during a little exchange, after someone said "So you're not happy with him then?" blurted out "I am happy, and grateful."

The next logical question was asked "But nothing else?"

She stopped, realised what was implied, went bright red and burst into laughter. "No, nothing else."

Anna-Carin, she of the perfect semlor, spent most of the dinner apologising in advance for dessert, which she said was a catastrophe. Well, that is not completely true. She spent much of the time trying to say that desert was a catastrophe. She just couldn't say "catastrophe". Most of the time she said it was going to be a "catta-stroffy" or reverting to Swedish and saying "katastrof".

When this much dreaded disaster finally skulked into view, everyone with any cooking experience was shamed. It was a delicious apple pie. The reason that Anna-Carin thought that the pie was catastrophic was merely that the covering pastry didn't quite cover the contents entirely, very nearly but completely. Not exactly on a par with the San Franciscan-style gingerbread house that Ingela (Kajsa's sister) presented one Christmas (which, for the record, also tasted very good).

An indication of how good the night was comes from the time that we got home, past midnight. Even though we had the kids with us. This might also have been an indication of the lack of consideration Kajsa gives to time when she is in "Serious Woman" mode. Tim spent the last two hours passed out on the floor while Kajsa was speaking slowly and forcefully (with all the appropriate hand motions) about something to do with children and the education and protection thereof.

Whenever Kajsa's monologue woke him up, Tim tried to give hints that perhaps we should go home. He waited patiently for Kajsa to take a breath or otherwise indicate that someone else was allowed to speak. While waiting, he checked on the kids, came back, fell asleep again, woke up again, checked on the kids again, chatted with Anna-Carin about how they really must be going and, finally, fell asleep again.

We went to pick apples (and catch insects) the next day. On the way there, Kalle piped up about the civil war. He had realised that the orchard was the same one we had been to before we visited Harper's ferry. Somehow he had got it into his head that there was a person called "Mark Brown" who had had something wrapped around his neck. - Ah, no, that was John Brown and yes, they did hang him.

"Why?"

How to explain capital punishment to a six year old? Especially when it was pretty much a political decision, even though the North (who hanged him) were nominally in favour of Abolition?

As well as catching various insects, we picked a lot of apples, about ten kilos' worth. We headed home with two very tired children (who had been up ridiculously late the night before with their now rather tired and hung-over mother). Eventually, both mother and children had fallen asleep and Tim drove home slowly so they would be able to sleep as long as possible.

When we got home Tim tried his hand at baking and made a pie. An apple pie. He figured that as they now had in the order of eighty apples, we needed to do something to use them up. The pie (which was not a catastrophe) did consume some of the apples, but only eight, leaving us with more than seventy!

The following week was a full one. Kajsa worked a lot, the kids were at school, Kalle started soccer, Tim was at a course on Directed Energy Weapons (lasers and (directed) high powered microwaves) and the drought broke.

Remember how, in the last month's chapter, it was reported that the only way that the drought could be broken would be if a hurricane came through and drenched the whole area. Well, a hurricane (Floyd) came through and drenched the whole area. We went from a month of water restrictions to a month of flooding. There was in the order of ten inches of rain over the whole month and something like five inches fell in our area over one day. Other areas got something like twelve inches and, in North Carolina, the flooding had not yet peaked by the end of the month. People were forced to abandon their homes and some had to wait more than a fortnight before they could return.

There was nothing so dramatic here, just the normal panic buying of milk and toilet paper. Tim got to stay at home looking after the kids because the schools shut down in anticipation of potential problems. As it was, there was a lot of rain but no great winds and no tornadoes so it seemed that, yet again, the school administration had overreacted. That was until we saw the news that evening and saw that parts of the Washington area were under a foot of water. That sort of thing never happens in a good area like Great Falls.

There are still signs of the very wet month around. We have never seen so many mushrooms and toadstools before. They are everywhere (and they play havoc when you are playing golf because you can easily mistake a budding mushroom for your lost ball - of course, not losing your ball is a good way to avoid this problem). Even weeks later, the ground was still saturated from the inches and inches of rain, which had made the month of September the wettest on record. Not a bad way to break a drought.

It was during this week that Tim found out that his relief will arrive here in the US on 31 Jan 00 and will be taking over his position on 14 Feb 00. This means that we will leave the Washington area on either 11 or 14 Feb. Our plan is to put Tasha on the plane back to Australia and then get on a plane ourselves and head off for Minneapolis for three days, then Denver for another three days, followed by a week in Las Vegas and finally a weekend in Auckland before returning at last to Australia.

We will visit Tim's family and various friends in Melbourne for a few days and then fly to Sydney where we will visit as many of our Sydney friends as possible. (A lot depends on how many remember who we are and/or are willing to be visited - we might need to get a social secretary on the ground so we can catch up with everyone in a short time. Alternatively, if no-one is interested in catching up with us [boo hoo], we will only need to be there a day or so.) Our plan will be to pick up Tasha from quarantine on about 16 Mar and then drive up to Canberra where we will start to move into our house on the 17^th.

At that point, hopefully, life will return to some semblance of normality. Kajsa will return to her job in Defence and, as things stand at the moment, Tim will start a job in the ANZAC Ship Project.

Tim started Swedish School the following weekend. As usual, he was running late after dropping Kalle off in his class. As it was a new school year, Tim's class was supposed to have moved up from Level 3 to Level 4. As part of the move, they changed classrooms. Tim wasn't really sure where the new room was so he was charging along the the school corridors in a bit of a fluster.

He got to the wing where Adult Swedish School is held and started reading the signs outside each door. Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, ah, here it is.

When Tim opened the door he was saddened to see that everyone from his previous class had wimped out. No-one else had moved up to Level 4. It was sad but not a total surprise because there had been a few people in the class who, at the end of the previous semester, had said that they didn't think that they were ready to move up.

As the class progressed, Tim realised why they thought this. It was hard. Really hard. While he was aware that they tried to only speak in Swedish in the fourth level, he didn't think that the fourth level would be so much harder than the third.

Naturally, there wasn't. Any normal, unstressed, clear thinking person would have realised that he had gone into the wrong class. When the break came (not a minute too soon!), Tim saw his old class-mates who exclaimed "What are you doing in the Fifth Level? Didn't you want to stay with us?" Oh great, thought Tim, it wasn't that he had forgotten all his Swedish over the break, it was just that he was stupid enough to have walked into the wrong class.

He immediately went to the teacher and tried to quietly explain his mistake. He said that he was going to return to the right level. The teacher had other ideas. He said that he thought that Tim could actually hack Fifth Level and encouraged him to try it. Tim relented and is now having to actually work in the class. He used to be the smart-arse up the back who knew all the names of the animals (a benefit of having kids) and was now the dumb guy who was trying to hide up the back, hoping that he won't be called on to make a fool of himself. Still, there is possibly more chance of improvement if he can just stick with it and this is the last semester before we return to Australia. The sad thing is that he really enjoyed being in the previous class and the new one is a little more serious and of a somewhat more fogey-like demographic.

Kalle went to birthday party at a bowling rink that afternoon. While he was there, we went on what is hopefully our last Costco Frenzy. We went in with the intention to buy an esky with wheels and some outdoor speakers. We came out with $600 worth of stuff but no esky and no speakers. Costco (the huge warehouse of low-price food, electronics and house and garden goods (often bulk quantities)) is very dangerous like that. Some people call it the 400 Club, because it is hard to walk out without having spent more than $400. It's been a while since our receipts have been anywhere near as low as $400!

The last two weeks were reasonably quiet. Taltarni was sent home one day because she was "unresponsive" and had runny nose. Tim left work to look after her. She certainly had a runny nose but seemed quite well apart from that. Anna-Carin came to the rescue the next day, taking Taltarni for a few hours in the afternoon, between when Kajsa went to work and when Tim was able to go get her. As usual, Taltarni behaved like a little angel. She never seems to show her true colours in the presence of others. Perhaps this is part of her life's plan to drive her parents insane.

We had a rather busy Saturday on the last weekend. First it was Swedish School, then Kalle went to a birthday party about half an hour's drive away. Tim got back home just with enough time to have a shower before we all went to pick Kalle up and make our way up to Clear Springs to have dinner at the Hemschrodts'.

As usual, the experience was classic American heartland. We ate old home style cookin', had a beer or two (cider for Tim) and played horseshoes. This is a variation of quoits, but you use two-pound horseshoes. It is potentially a very dangerous game as they set up two metal pegs and teams of two have one member each throw to the opposing peg. The shoes roll quite well and Tim can attest that they hurt if they hit you.

We spent the afternoon of the next day putting Kalle's school project together, gluing all his dead insects onto two pieces of paper and writing about them. We had worried about the possible need to kill some of his insects so that they could be used for the project. As it was, the insects that we had collected for him died in sufficient numbers to more than make up the quota of insect corpses required by the school. We wonder what the teacher made of the notation against the praying mantis: "Old Barry Mantis".

Two events of note happened in the last week.

The first was Tim's wettest ever game of golf (wetter even than the day he, Jeremy and Kajsa played in Melbourne). There was a large storm system moving up from the south and it rained the whole time. Tim had invited the ever cheerful Tony Halberg ("Oi, this is as close to a smile as I get!") to play. Despite not being the keenest golfer around, Tony accepted the invitation and Tim is sure that the experience has set back Tony's interest in golf about ten to fifteen years. Some may recall Tim's unkind words about how badly Glenn Doherty played the first time (and how having such a bad player as a partner made Tim, who is only marginally better despite having played the game for years, feel a whole lot more relaxed than normal). Tony played worse. Much worse.

Admittedly Tony doesn't play at all, he has very little interest and the clubs he has are about half the length that they should be for someone who regularly bumps his head on door jams. There must have been a sale in the kiddie golf section where he bought the clubs. (All right, that was unkind, Tony's clubs were passed down from his beloved grandfather who is of normal human proportions, that's why they were too short. So, you happy now? You happy? You happy or what? Oi vey!)

The positive bit about the game (apart from the fact that, although it poured down all afternoon, it was pleasantly warm) was that we had to leave before the end. We escaped. Partly because Tony had a football game (which had to have been called off, or it would have turned into some bizarre form of mud wrestling) but mostly because Tim had to get back in time to pick up the kids. Kajsa was working late that night. Very unreasonable of her.

(On the trip back Tony and Tim had a nice little chat about capital punishment, one of those arguments for arguments sake in which Tony tried to establish is there was any circumstance in which Tim would think that it was justifiable to kill someone. Tim was obstinate and refused to accept any of Tony's scenarios as either acceptable justification or realistic enough to consider. Fortunately, Tony is one of these people who usually likes to have these sort of arguments.)

Finally, on the Thursday, we celebrated our "going out" anniversary. Due to Kajsa's many commitments and the limited time that she had spent with the kids in previous weeks, we decided to have a nice dinner at home. Tim demonstrated his purchasing prowess by procuring a few containers of gourmet foods (including lobster bisque and crab-cakes) which he reheated while Kajsa reintroduced herself to the children (thereby ensuring that they didn't come down uninvited). To cap it all off, we drank a fine Australian red in candlelight while we ate from our fine china with the silver cutlery. Much better than pizza!

Ever since the summer, Kalle and Taltarni have been getting private swimming lessons at a local recreation centre. The intention was to capitalise on Kalle's vast improvement during the summer, when he had been getting lessons at Hans and Petra's local pool. We also thought that it would be good to get Taltarni started as well. She doesn't have the fear that Kalle had but, for that self same reason, it is important to ensure that she can swim well enough to save herself, just in case she was to get into any trouble.

The instructor is excellent with the kids and Kalle's swimming has shown exponential improvement. Taltarni is also showing that she understands the basics but she tends to be more tired on week nights so, by the end of the month, we cut her back to one lesson a week (on Sunday).

Unfortunately, at the end of the month, something happened such that Kalle started getting scared again about deep water and he began to regress a little. His fear was transmitted to Taltarni and then it was on for young and old. Greg (the instructor) had to move the kids back into the shallow part of the school where they had been practising the art of floating where they felt safe.

A big problem that the kids have is that neither Tim nor Kajsa are good at swimming freestyle (or the forward crawl, as some people call it). Kajsa is excellent at breast stroke (which she actually taught others in Sweden) but Tim is basically a hopeless swimmer in all strokes. He can swim from one end of the pool to the other as long as he doesn't need to breathe on the way. He used to excel at swimming underwater for that reason, but that's not something that you teach children first up. As he is so hopeless he has actually been able to learn to improve his swimming from watching the kids' lessons. Now if they can only him get a larger kickboard!

Of course, the imperialistic Australians invaded the sovereign Indonesian province of East Timor. There is one radio station that covered it and there was the occasional newspaper article but, as there is no oil there, in general there was very little about it in the media.

There were a few articles about the earthquake in Taiwan. Taiwan, surprisingly enough, was described as "a small South East Asian nation". A strange description for a country that America is basically committed to going to war to defend. Anyway, there was much less coverage of the Taiwanese earthquake than there was of the one in Turkey and, while there was more said about Taiwan than about Greece, you could tell that there was a feeling of "Oh no, not more earthquakes. Earthquakes are so yesterday."

We now turn to America's premiere news journal, the Weekly (end of the) World News. September 14's issue had them fainting in the aisles again. Most of them would have been fainting from confusion over the statement "World Exclusive Story and Pictures". The confusion would be due to the fact that the front page included a xeroxed copy of an article from the New York Times which, you would think, makes a claim of an exclusive story a little tenuous. Anyway ...

It is our duty to inform you that there is "mystery light in the northern sky" which is baffling scientists. (How do these reporters get to know these things? Do scientists just ring up and ask for the science reporter and exclaim that they are baffled? Or do they respond to questions like "How do you feel about this new finding?" with "Well, a bit baffled to be honest!"? Or do reporters scout around specifically looking for baffled looking scientists? "Baffled scientist loses car keys! Exclusive story and pictures")

It is hard to say whether the accompanying questions on the cover are evidence of valid insightful inquiry or wild (possibly deranged) speculation. "Is it an alien space ship? Is it Heaven? Or is it Jesus coming back?" and "Is this another sign from God that the Last Days are here?" With worries about such important, pressing issues on your mind, you open the news sheet to find that even more scientists are baffled. Not astronomers this time, forensic scientists who have been looking at nails that purportedly were used to nail Jesus to the cross and are now emitting a form of radiation that has never before been seen.

When you turn the page again, you are presented with an opportunity to rest your worried mind by looking upon the pleasing curves of the bikini clad "Gorgeous Juliet Bonnie".

Flick flick flick, past a lot of "gal" talk and you find a report claiming that even President Clinton was concerned about the baffling "mystery light in the northern sky", secretly bringing in leaders of G-7 (not G-9, mind you). Look deeper in the article and you find that the thing has been under observation for three years. Three years, three full years, of being baffled must really put a lot of stress on a person.

Fortunately, the Weekly World News didn't add to that stress by quoting the astronomers (at least initially). No, "famed French theologian Dr. Louis Dauxerre" was quoted instead, with three full paragraphs. The leader of the astronomers got only the one sentence (but we can rest assured that this sentence was not taken out of context). We were pleased to see that the old faithful biblical scholars got a mention at the end of the piece, in this instance it was the extremely well known Reverend Stefan Bauer.

They question that springs to mind is: why are we getting such esoteric hints of the end of it all?

"Hey, look at the date! It's almost time to put an end the world. Suppose I should remind them. Hm, I know, I'll put a very small light in the sky with unusual spectral characteristics that can only be identified by a tiny group of people with very powerful telescopes. Great idea." (Rubs hands on thighs in excitement.) "Oh, I can see them now: 'Hey, look at this strange anomaly! We thought that we knew everything there was to know about the universe and now our arrogance is truly shaken by this find. It must mean that we aren't living in a chaotic universe which appears to be Einsteinian at certain levels and Newtonian at others, governed by such inscrutables as the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and the Zeroth Law of Entropy. Ergo that must mean we are about to be judged by our creator.' Yep, I can see how that'll make them buck up their ideas."

Hm.

You will all have noticed that the world did not end on J.C.'s 2000th birthday. Perhaps there was a problem with the calculations.

(Here's a prediction for you. Nothing amazing is going to happen in the next couple of years. No Armageddon, no Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, no End Days, no seas will turn to blood, no stars will turn fast in the sky, no darkness will cover the sky. Biblical scholars will regroup, have a bit of a chat and come to the conclusion that, slap yourself on the forehead, they stuffed up, it's not going to happen until 2000 years after Christ died. Therefore, about thirty or so years into the new millennium, there will be a new band of doomsayers talking of End Days. Please standby for that one and remember that you read it here first.)