The internet is forever?

I was just setting up a new site for W (formerly L) and kept wanting to add! and customise! and it dawned on me that I do have my own blog, somewhere, I could go edit that, so here I am.


Internet, a lot of stuff has happened since last we spoke. We haven't moved continents, or time zones, or even cities, in nine years, which is pretty different to before, and it's what I was hoping for when we came out here. I couldn't say it out loud then - I would say "I'm not superstitious", but when it comes to things I want that are hard to get, I guess I am. University job? 2014. Tenure? 2017. Not getting laid off in the wake of coronavirus? I feel like I should only write that in tiny font, if at all.

Knitting? I haven't done much of it in a while. The climate's not really right for it, and I haven't had a lot of downtime. Twitter? I joined it, but I mostly lurk. Podcasts? I love You're Wrong About, Flash Forward and a few others but I can't write and listen at the same time, so podcasts are mostly for when I'm making dinner. Being a Public Science Person? No thanks, my introvert tendencies really don't enjoy that.


Politics? Have radicalized. There are bad actors in charge of important things, there are intersectional oppressions, there are gatekeepers and algorithmic biases and conspiracy theories causing a lot of problems. It'll take big intentional moves and steady cultural shifts to change any of that, and I'm trying to make things better in the places I can reach.

I'm not calling it karma

...because that would imply that there's something we could do to change it. C and I are fated, destined, dooooooomed to turn up in new countries on holidays, apparently it is just something that we do. I can't imagine what would cause that as a karmic repercussion - not taking enough vacation? Being too self-centered with our ambitious "plans" and "lists" and "need to get an apartment"?

We got to Germany at the beginning of October, and just when we were in the time zone enough to go out and deal with business things (like open a bank account so we could get moved into the apartment we'd arranged), oh yeah! It's reunification day! We didn't tell you because everyone knows that. Three-day weekend! Having our plans brought up short by reunification day was actually a theme for us, I think it happened every year we lived there.

We got here October 1st as well, and I laughed when we saw a note that Daylight Savings time started the first night we were here, because I thought that was this move's version of the welcome-to-town holiday. Not so fast! The 3rd was Labour Day (which I only realized after seeing signs about the "October long weekend" and having a familiar sinking feeling), so no apartment hunting, no opening a bank account, no dealing with Serious Important Things. We put the to-do list down and went to the aquarium instead, and I thought, look how much grace and flexibility we're showing here.

And then we needed to call our US bank, and it was Columbus Day, and hardly anyone even gets Columbus Day off any more, but banks do, and it was at that point that I started pulling out my hair. We've got an apartment, though (got the keys today!), so things are looking up.

Hey you guys, we moved to the other side of the planet

Man. MAN. We had a housecooling party 6 weeks ago, went off to the farm/hotel in the mountains, packed up and left the place we had been living for almost exactly 3 years, and I'm just now starting to *feel* like we've moved to this new place.

We spent 3 weeks back home, staying with family and catching up with all the people we rely on as our local roots, and then we went to Disneyland (and anti-MouseCorp me had more fun than expected, mostly because L had a blast and was tall enough for all the rides, and is on a major Star Wars kick lately, and I got to go on Star Tours 4 times), and then we went to LAX for a looooooong direct flight and now we're here.

But we're in a hotel, and we're getting dressed out of suitcases in the morning, so it still feels like the mode of the whole last month - temporary, on to the next adventure soon - but we're picking up the keys for an apartment tomorrow, and we've been getting used to the neighborhoods, and learning the bus routes, and once we've got the apartment livable (beds, fridge) there's the elementary school to call...

So this is home, huh? So far it's been great.

Relief, mostly

So after a job search that started last September, during which I sent research proposals, statements of teaching philosophy and curricula vitae to distinguished institutions from Victoria, BC to the south of France (and during which I threatened to apply for a job in Finland, but that was mostly to get a reaction out of C), I have a job! A pretty good job, actually, where they seem really interested in my work. All I have to do is move to the complete other side of the planet, again, with C and L in tow, again, and then in 3+ years I'll start looking for a new job, again.

This is a huge opportunity, and I hope I can make the most of it. Right now I'm feeling some whiplash from the sudden change in perspective from a discouraged thinking-through of backup plans (work for Google? go off-grid and raise llamas? teach high school?) to excited what-ifs, watching travel shows about the new city, trying to picture L with the new accent, and an all-in commitment to my research. The structure of academic science is terrible, and there is nowhere near enough room at the top of the food chain for all of the people down at my level, but that's kind of neither here or there right now: it's time to go do my best, because that's what I like doing. Whether or not I get the job I want next time I go through the grinder, the next few years are going to be worth it.

New perspective

I had a realization the other day that surprised me. I tend to get carried away when I'm worried about things (no, I knew that already, that's not a surprise), and back when L was a baby, I would worry sometimes that I was going to be a terrible parent because of all the stuff I didn't already know. I got really hung up on not understanding elementary school-aged kids, and when I told C that I was going to be a bad parent! because I don't know anything about 10-year-olds! he told me "you do have ten years to figure that out".

L just hit the halfway point in that timeline, and it occurred to me that "big kids" are a lot less incomprehensible than they used to be. I can see ways that they're just bigger kindergartners, and aspects in which they're totally different from littler kids, but I can picture L getting there from here.

Whirlwind weekend

I know that plenty of people spend their weekends in constant motion, because they've been cooped up all week in a cubicle and there's so much fun stuff to do, or because they have two kids in three sports and life is just a constant soc-vol-swim-ball minivan roadshow, or because they have ambitious DIY plans for their house or yard. Plenty of people, sure, but not me. Pre-kid, I spent as much weekend time as possible with a huge Sunday newspaper and a pot of coffee.

Lately we've been trying to get out on the weekends (Nice weather! Local cities to explore! Not giving L couch-potato habits!), and we're falling into the typical German pattern. Grocery shopping on Saturday (stores are closed on Sundays), some time for going out Saturday morning, but Sunday is the main day for doing weekend things. This last weekend we finally got out to the outdoor swimming pool by L's kindergarten, which we've been meaning to do since last summer, and had a great time. There were a lot of other people there, but there was space for everyone. The pool is big, and split up to make room for serious lap swimmers, loungers, and splashing kids, and there is a huge lawn for people to lie around on. We did a little of everything - splashing, showing L some swimming basics, lying around watching the clouds - and immediately started planning to go back.

World Cup madness

It's the World Cup! Did you know? C and I sort of paid attention to it when we lived in Santa Cruz, mostly because we had friends from countries where the football is important. We'd go over to someone's house late at night, or to 99 Bottles (owned by a futbol fan) to watch games, but we didn't have that much invested. The US doesn't always qualify, the tournament is usually held far away, and we didn't grow up in a strong culture of soccer fandom. The US also doesn't often compete as a single entity in international sports events - there's the Olympics, but the World Cup isn't treated like a big deal, the Tour de France is more about the individuals than their national affiliations, and we're not even invited to Eurovision.

People here in HD are psyched, though. Every game in the tournament is on the public TV station, there are public viewings of Germany's games in parks and stadiums all over the country, and even in our sedate little suburby neighborhood there are flags on cars, hanging from windows, and temporarily tattooed on our kid (courtesy of a big kid at kindergarten).

I've been watching a lot of the games, and I feel like I'm not watching the way people here do. I want everyone to win! I'd be excited if the US team kept doing well (hey, I'm even wearing red, white and blue because of the game this afternoon), but mostly I want to see good teams play well, wherever they're from. This is in sharp contrast to how I would watch the World Series, by the way - growing up in Seattle, there are definitely teams I couldn't ever support (coughYankeescough). I'm going to take this "happy whatever happens" attitude about the World Cup as an unexpected advantage of being from a place where soccer success isn't a big part of my identity.

So I'm trying this thing

I like Shapely Prose. A lot. The three people who were writing there when I first started reading (Kate, Sweet Machine and Fillyjonk) had a big influence in my "your problem with me is *your* problem" version of self-esteem. The essays they wrote said what they meant, they drew out connections between past and present, society and self, and they said, so clearly that it may as well have been on the banner at the top of the page, "there is nothing wrong with you." I hear a lot of societal messages about the necessity of fixing what's wrong with you, making yourself better, and the terrible vanity of being happy as you are. Vain, and don't forget selfish! Don't you know people can see you? And you look like that? When you take these messages as truth, they're motivations to keep playing the game, looking for approval that you're never going to find.

It reminds me of Sarah Vowell's take on Puritans in The Wordy Shipmates, that their sincere belief that you could never tell if you were on God's good side kept them all looking over their shoulders, never able to relax, miserable in the knowledge that they were probably damned. There's no rest for people in search of external approval, especially from the incorporeal.

I've wandered a bit from where I started out meaning to go in this post, which is this: Shapely Prose has added and lost writers over the past few years, and right now Kate is the only one writing there (in addition to writing here and here), and I've developed a bad habit. I check for new articles all the time. Even though I'm pretty sure essays like this take time and revision, even though it's apparently taken me two months to write this bit of fanmail. So not only am I an inconsistent blogger, I'm a hypocrite too! Enjoy the irony here: what makes sense to me as a response is self-improvement on two fronts. I'll try to write something here when I'm mentally complaining that there isn't something new over there.

Not the typical kids & food post

Last weekend was Easter, which (since we're not what you'd call religious people) involved egg dyeing, egg finding, stashing a basket of candy in Liam's room while he was sleeping, letting him eat jellybeans at breakfast, and gardening. It's Wednesday night, and we've still got most of a chocolate bunny and a couple of chocolate eggs in the kitchen cabinet. Heck, we've still got halloween candy in the kitchen cabinet. Are we stingy with sugar? Sort of, but we (C and I) are also kind of forgetful, and Liam seems to have picked up the out of sight-out of mind gene. He doesn't ask for candy or sugar much, in my perception, and we've been letting him have easter-basket candy when he asks (as long as he isn't tired or otherwise unlikely to handle a sugar rush well).

The philosophy we've been aiming for in general is that of course we have sweets sometimes, but it's not a big deal. This is just one part of an overall philosophy that's at least a little informed by Ellyn Satter, where we aim for intuitive eating, an acceptance and enjoyment of variety, and nutrition (integrated over every day or two). There's some conflict with Liam's kindergarten's philosophy, which has a very black-and-white "healthy"/"not healthy" food classification, while I have no interest in endorsing cultural messages about food and morality.

Of course he'll change as he gets older, and who knows whether he'll broaden his tastes, or how many all-cheese or no-veg phases he'll go through, but for now we're all about emphasizing what we like about food, the pleasure of cooking for oneself and for friends, and the good it can do for your body. We'll just have to see whether he winds up with as many forgotten things hiding in the back of the pantry as I tend to have.

Building on success

One of the other things I've been musing about since the Big National Conference is just how much feedback there is in My Science: in order for people to take you seriously, they have to know your name already, and once you're Somebody it is much easier to get the research funding and data access you need to do more good work. I don't assume that people have heard of me, with my mighty five (I think) publications in my old-school subfield, but I am trying to raise my profile by moving into sexier adjacent subfields, and by going to meetings and talking about my projects to try to make an in-person impression.

I have a good friend who is already On His Way. E is tremendously dedicated and creative, and also lucky to have thought up a timely and clever project with a well-known and socially adept advisor. He's a good speaker, the right people think well of him, and he just landed a highly respected research job. I'm glad he caught that wave, and hope he stays on it: he'll be great.

We have conceptual feedback as well, of course - research scientists tend to think of ourselves as meritocrats, respecting well-done and convincing work, and if Theory A was well-done and convincing, why should we entertain the possibility of Theory B? There's some ego acting here too: we couldn't have believed the wrong explanation for so long!

These are both deeply human tendencies, and will always play some role in the human scientific community. They can be mitigated with attention, and that's probably good: this article was eye-opening for me (in that makes-you-want-to-hide-under-the-bed kind of way). The effort to be fairer is both individual and institutional (or at least that's how I was thinking about it yesterday), and I think that the effort to be more flexible is mainly cultural. It's our job to not know all the answers, to keep thinking up questions we haven't solved yet, but it is hard to maintain a let's-see-what-happens attitude in a be-right-or-else environment.

On the advice of a total stranger on the Internet (what could go wrong?), I'm making up a new resolution for every month of the year rather than trying to do one thing all year. January's is to be a little easier on myself, to be less harsh a critic, and I see an opportunity for a corollary resolution here: I'm going to give more of a chance to papers whose authors I've never heard of, and I will try to see it as a sign of inquiry, not cluelessness, when people consider alternative explanations and make themselves persuadable.

Admission

I went to the big national (US) conference for people in My Science a couple of weeks ago. Most people will claim that they find this conference very unproductive, because it is so general, but it is an important venue for job interviews and maintaining personal connections. I actually got quite a bit of work done with some far-flung collaborators, made a point of spending time with people whose general good will I will need in the future, and had an all-around fun class-reunion-type experience.

The meeting itself was overwhelmingly large, so I did not go to most of the talks or read most of the posters. This more focused approach still left me dead on my feet at the end of the first day, and the talks and discussions I did attend kept me busy and engaged. The overall experience sparked a couple of post ideas for me, and this is one of them: promoting demographic diversity is very important in My Science, is totally dependent on the good-faith effort of people who are already in the club, and is pretty much doomed in an admissions and promotion system where we are overwhelmed with applicants and starved for time.

The last speaker in a session I went to on mentoring talked about his experiences as a black man from a small college going into a big-time graduate program: outright hostility, awkward social dynamics, undergraduate classes, and a lasting commitment to making that experience better for students who would come later. He's now a professor at Florida State, and had a lot of interesting and practical things to say about making graduate programs attractive and accessible to people with backgrounds like his: rural, few family expectations for college, no lab experience, not white, few demographic role models in the field, and less likely to maintain confidence in the face of setbacks (and the whole game in My Science is psychological: you need to realize that everyone's insecure, even the really clever people, and you can't listen to your self-doubt).

The things he does to make FSU a more diverse place are these:

• First, let them in

Obvious! But not done, and also not done in multiples. Admitting one test-case diversity representative is not going to change the systematic things that make your program a hard place for minorities to succeed.

• Second, allow for remediation without stigma

If you admit students who went to small or struggling undergraduate schools, they may not have covered as much ground as the students who went to world-class schools. Giving them the tools to catch up, without pretending like having gone to a small school makes them somehow less intelligent, will get you a well-prepared graduate class.

• Third, make a comfortable department community (peer mentors can make a big difference)

I spent this session listening, and not talking, as I have never been a nonwhite person in a [My Science] department, and was very disheartened to hear how strong the xkcd effect is: the pressure to represent everyone Like You, and not to show strain, and never to admit weakness or ask for help. Without those worries, you can convince yourself that everyone needs help sometimes, and having to ask for it isn't an indictment of All Of You People, and - poof! - you get help, and things aren't so hard. Explicitly removing shame from this situation can make a huge difference - if your students trust that you're working in good faith.

• Fourth, advertise at meetings of minority scientists and at HBCs

Personal connections are a big deal in My Science, and a personal encouragement from someone who is in the club that you should apply to a particular grad school, and that you do deserve a place there, can make a huge impression on young students.

• Fifth, involve your undergrads

Give them all the research experience and hands-on understanding you can: experience is one of the shorthands graduate schools use in evaluating commitment level and interest.

When I was in grad school, the students had some long conversations on the merits and methods of increasing diversity in My Science. The business-related arguments (that a diversity of backgrounds brings a diversity of problem-solving approaches and perspectives) don't really work in our field: at least from the insider's perspective, there's not much cultural to what we do. The main point, we figured, was justice: why should people gain or lose the opportunity to do science based on what they look like or where they come from?

Being on the graduate admissions committee for a year, it quickly became clear to me that "where you come from" has a lot of effects on where you can go: my institution was very highly ranked as a graduate school for My Science, and as such could be pretty baldly snobby about who was admitted. It didn't matter how good your grades were at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople; we've never heard of them, we don't know the people who wrote your letters of recommendation, so we don't know whether you are prepared to come here and keep up with people who had "good preparation" (read: known quantity) at the right universities as undergraduates. In order to maintain our prestige, we have to admit mostly/only students who we are confident will do well.

This is pretty obviously problematic for people who want to go to grad school to learn things, or to become professional scientists, and not just to boost the status of a particular school by their effortless brilliance. Overall, and this is something I was shocked to realize I hadn't been using as an admissions standard, admissions ought to be about what students can do, not just what they have already done. It's very difficult to evaluate that, and when you have three days to rank 150 applications, it's so easy to start using shorthands (where an applicant went to college, GRE scores, name recognition of their letter-writers). If your department is willing to work on cultivating the students, and not just putting them to work in the data-reduction mines, I don't think it would be that big of a gamble to shake up the admissions process.

Complaint, interrupted

This morning, I was all ready to write a complaint as a post here. I've been kind of bothered about this issue for a while, and have never found the right platform for talking about it (plus, Chris is tired of hearing about it). The problem? The (sometimes) terrible music in a knitting podcast I listen to regularly. Sometimes it's great (Jonathan Coulton), and sometimes it's all obvious lyrics and overdone vocals. The injustice! I listened to the two most recent episodes this morning, and had the angry wind knocked right out of me: the music wasn't bad. It wasn't the best thing ever (and one of the bands, though apparently comprised entirely of women, was called "Girly Man", which...no.), but it was a nice mix of fun and poignant and bouncy. Darn you, podcast author with musical tastes that differ from mine, and also impeccable timing!

This doesn't get you out of a complaint, though. The podcast has rubbed me the wrong way before - the theme of the episodes for a while was "alchemy", which is fine as a metaphor, but (and I'll keep saying this through gritted teeth until the rest of you give up and go along with me) magical thinking is not science. People who made themselves crazy with mercury fumes while trying to transform lead into gold are not a model for informed inquiry or the scientific method.

I...get a little defensive about this. Needless to say, I never wrote this to the podcast author (no constructive point), but it bothered me every episode until she switched the theme to "Make Do and Mend", which was lovely and thoughtful. I liked that a lot.

Productive?

After Liam's epic crankiness last night (and impressive, as-predicted 13-hour night of sleep), he woke up this morning, wandered in to our room while I was getting out clothes for the day, and promptly threw up. Mostly on himself, poor guy. So I'm home today, and he is acting perfectly fine, and I don't really mind the surprise sick day too much. I feel like he and I don't get enough time together during the week, so (although I haven't brushed my hair yet today) I'm feeling all right. I've also gotten more done than I expected.

Today I have made:

• lots of coffee
• the world's ugliest pumpkin pie
  
• more progress than yesterday on my current writing project
• the discovery that I have a lot to do before my meeting tomorrow
• a lot of clean laundry
• oatmeal!

Conflicted consumerism

I like the concept of Buy Nothing Day; I'm pretty anticonsumerist normally*, and I feel like reporting on Christmas shopping has taken this nasty turn, with stories built completely around companies needing to make half their yearly gross in December, and profits are down from this time last year, and you people need to go spend money or the economy will fall apart and it will be your fault!

This morning, I had failed at BND by 9:30 AM, and spent the next little while enjoying my capitalist-consumerist-traitor chai and wondering if it mattered that much. I'm not in the US, and today is just another Friday here, not the shopping-pocalypse. I'm not making a Statement to the German public if I don't go all out with the Black Friday madness: nobody else here is going shopping at 4 AM either, because that's crazy. Incidentally, you really don't want to take me shopping with a gajillion other people at 4AM. I'm grumpy enough about crowds and shopping when I'm awake.

*I think of this as simple pragmatism, because I don't see any point in trying to join a game I can't really compete in. This is actually a big leap in maturity, and not just foot-stompiness, as previously I didn't see the point in playing a game I couldn't win. If status can be bought, but I'm never going to have enough money to be Important, why play? Why give other people's opinions of me that kind of power? Since the goalposts will always be moving, why sign up for a life of feeling inadequate?

New perspective

It took me most of a year to get around to calling the dentist my co-worker R suggested shortly after we moved here, mostly out of a lack of momentum. There's nothing wrong, so what's the rush? C's devotion to all things dental-hygiene got me moving eventually, though, and Liam really loved his turn as the center of attention in the big chair.

The dentist wanted to replace my (5-year-old) fillings, and that seemed like a fine plan. But. The tooth waaaaay in the back is not happy with the change. It's achy when I eat anything cold, and there's this amazing stabby pain if I chew with it. I called this morning, when I'd had enough, and went in at the end of the day. I got a good look at an x-ray, and the filling itself was solid, but it was kind of close to a nerve. The dentist thought she should take it out (which I was all for, because nothing that hurts like that can stay in my head), but when she did, she found out that it wasn't just close to a nerve - the nerve was exposed.

She poked it a couple of times, causing the weirdest feeling way down in my jaw, and when I made the eyes-bugged-out what was that? face, she got a mirror and started pointing things out to me. On the inside of my tooth. Which I didn't know had so much empty space in it, yikes. Apparently I would not make a good dentist.

So, to sum up:

• Irritated nerve in my tooth=bad
• New filling=hopefully a calmer nerve
• Otherwise=root canal
• My record of getting my money's worth out of dental insurance=unbroken
  

Looks like I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue

Or the wrong month to write something optional every day. I'm totally obsessed with my deadline (tomorrow!). On the bright side, starting tomorrow I'll have a different, still close, deadline. Woo?

International Thanksgiving!

That's right, I did a low-effort non-post and then skipped the next day. This is why I'm a terrible diarist: I get caught up in living my life and don't want to detach and write about it. That, and I'm tired at the end of the day.

I figured out what it was I was going to write about Thursday: private space in public transportation. I have opinions! I guard my personal space jealously! I'll pick this back up later this week.

What I could have written yesterday goes something like this:

For several years now, ever since we moved 2 states away from our families, C and I have done Thanksgiving with a group of friends. Everybody brings something that's special to them from their family's get-togethers, hosting rotates so nobody gets stuck hosting 25 people every year, and everyone rolls home with leftovers afterward. A word of advice: invite someone from New Mexico to Thanksgiving this year. Our friend KT's green-chile cornbread is great, and is a big reason I'm wishing we could be "home" this week.

We're keeping up with the theme this year, extending our family to people near us, though the ingredients will be different: some of C's classmates will be coming over Saturday. They're bringing foods that are typical from their families, but their families are in Japan, Taiwan, and Serbia (and maybe Brazil).

Today I made cranberry sauce (I found cranberries at the grocery store last month, at the grocery store I almost never go to, and I was so excited I bought three bags), and tonight we're making apple pie and pumpkin pie. Pumpkin pie is a sticky point with non-Americans: if they haven't tried it, they tend to look at you like you're crazy for suggesting it. C's classmate whose spouse works for the US military here (and who therefore has PX access) surprised him with a can of pumpkin last week, so here's hoping the pie goes over well.

Turn it around

I had a really frustrating time this morning, between the post office's short hours, some badly timed clumsiness, missing two trams and a bus all at the same time, and yet another trip to the store for yogurt. During my third attempt to get into the post office, when it was only 5 minutes until opening, it occurred to me that I could be feeling better just by being less outwardly grumpy. Instead of sighing and checking my watch four times and rolling my eyes, I smiled at the other people in line. Fake it until you make it, right?

I had a similar realization at work: in the proposal I'm writing, I've been stuck on the last section, trying to find the right way to say that the current state of the field I'd like to get involved in is not good enough, and that I'd do things differently, and ask the relevant questions, and get the more useful results. It kept coming across badly, though, and trying to read the section from a reviewer's perspective I was really put off by the negativity. I switched the perspective to "hey, some work has been done already, and I'll expand on it as follows:" and it got so much easier, both to write and to read.

It's my birthday!

Hooray!

I always loved my birthday as a kid; I've pretty much always been up for a party with happy people and snacks. I always used to wish that my birthday was during baseball season, but even if the M's had made the post-season back then (ahahahahahaha), it still would have been over by now. As a kid with a November birthday, you can't really go to the park or go swimming for your party, so what do you do? Some birthdays that stick out in my memory involved going to movies, hosting sleepovers (with movies), and staying inside, hula-ing around in fake grass skirts, and eating pineapple upside-down cake (still a great idea, mom!).

These days it's more of a re-evaluation kind of day: I don't really go for New Year's resolutions, but a birthday is a good reminder that I've been somewhere and done something in the past year. I'm not the same person I was last year at this time. So what have I learned this year?

• Don't move via airplane. Didn't I already learn this one 10 years ago? Apparently not.
• Stop editing so much and just do it already. This is more of a work-related lesson, but also speaks to my tendency to think everything to death, and then not do unexpected new things.
• Brussels sprouts are good. Especially roasted with bacon and walnuts. This is something Chris has been trying to tell me for years: you have to try the new food before you decide you don't like it.
• Be happy. When things are good, enjoy it! At the very least it'll build up your reserves of Zen for the next time everything unexpectedly catches fire right before a deadline.
  

I don't think that's how the song goes

We just got back from our first attempt to take Liam to a concert, and oy. It went pretty much like we expected, but how can sitting still be so hard to do? C's language school has a choir, directed by one of his instructors, and he's been meaning to go to one of their performances for a while now. Assuming we'd have to duck out early, but figuring it would be an adventure at least and a good time at best, we took off at 5 to get dinner and go to a 7:00 concert. We just missed the tram, naturally, but the walk into town was nice. We got to the train station just in time to rush for the bus, and the sight of C dodging through the crowd with Liam on his shoulders saying "wheeeeee" was great - I hope the other people around enjoyed it too.

We made it about half an hour into the concert itself, and then Liam got squirmy. We mostly kept him from flopping around like a fish on a dock until we could duck out at the next break, but I feel a little bad for the people behind us, who were having a hard time seeing the choir over the rising cloud of mutual frustration. Once we were out and headed home, Liam was under the impression that he had had a really good time. There was singing! People clapped! We have been informed that he will be playing us music, and we will need to sit still and listen, and then we can clap for him.

By the time we were in the tram headed back out to our neighborhood, he was singing. A...modified version of "Mary had a little lamb", because he gets stuck repeating the first two lines and can't make it to the end, and because he doesn't quite know the words. There tends to be a lot of "Everywhere Mary went, Mary went, everywhere Mary went, Mary went, everywhere...", but tonight's version was about me for some reason, and included the lyrics "Mama laughed and play, laughed and play, Mama laughed and play..." and "All the way, Mama went, Mama went, all the way - why you laughing?" Awesome.