“Why is there always water in the hose?”

I explained that there’s always water in the hose because it’s connected to the same pipes that are in the house. Just like there’s always water in the pipes ready to come out of the faucets, there’s always water in the pipes ready to come out of the hoses.

So of course then he asks why there’s always water in the hoses. Then I explain that there are pipes that go under the streets and connect to all the houses to bring everyone water, and the water in these pipes comes from the city, who sends it to everyone so that they all have water.

Then he asks if the water comes from water towers—I have no idea where he got that from—and I say that yeah, sometimes the water is stored in water towers, but I don’t think we have any around here. I think all our water comes from rivers or something. (Turns out it actually comes from springs.) So the water comes from the rivers to the city, where it’s cleaned up and sent through pipes under the streets to all the houses, so that whenever you turn on the faucet or the house, there’s water.

Lego mulls this over for a second and then declares, “That doesn’t make any sense.”

For a moment I’m so caught off guard by this that I don’t know how to respond. I mean, what part of that didn’t make sense? So I ask him that, and he says, “Maybe it’s one of those things that I’ll learn when I’m older and go to school.” And that was the end of the conversation.

Seriously, where does this kid get it from?

But (no offense to my friend Dan, who saw the movie about 17 bajillion times in theaters and was personally responsible for about 3 percent of the movie’s gross earnings), I thought the entire thing was one giant cliche—including the plot, characters, and dialog—from beginning to end. Not once was I surprised by anything; you see everything coming from about a mile away, and as a lot of critics have said, it really does feel like it’s little more than a mashup of Pocahontas and Fern Gully. Maybe throw in some Dances with Wolves in there for good measure. But that’s not to say it wasn’t entertaining, despite its predictability.

On a different note, some designers have criticized it for using that most hated of all fonts, Papyrus, in the subtitles and the movie’s title. And while I agree that it’s a bad font that screams, “I’m an amateur!”, in a strange way I think it was actually the perfect font. It’s hackneyed and cliche and almost universally beloved by non-professionals. And it says little more than “I’m vaguely and generically exotic,” which is exactly what Pandora and the Na’vi are.

The planet is described as being worse than hell, but in reality it seems like a rather pleasant and enchanting version of Earth with a few slight twists—the animals mostly look like Earth animals, except they have six legs and breathe through their necks (ooh! exotic!). The plants mostly look like Earth plants, too, except they all luminesce (again: ooh! exotic!). The Na’vi, in the grand tradition of Star Trek, look and act almost exactly like people, but their skin is blue and they have tails. Oh, and there are inexplicable floating mountains and energy fields and some mineral that’s extremely valuable, though we have no idea why. Again: it all has the thin veneer of exoticness, but underneath it’s all comfortably bland, familiar, and unoriginal.

But I still kind of wish I’d seen it in IMAX 3-D.

It’s frustrating at the moment because I need to work on my car, and the only place I have to work is the gravel driveway (read: mud pit) on the side of the house. I fixed Brinestone’s broken car in the snow because it was a necessity; I generally don’t prefer to lie on my back in the gravelly mud with rain spotting my glasses while trying to dismantle the front end of my car.

And meanwhile, at work, I’m in the middle of the interminable project of posting all of our past publications to our web site. This involves taking dozens upon dozens of Word documents (most of which look fine on the surface but are a formatting mess), converting them to HTML, cleaning up the nightmarish code, and posting them via our content management system. It’s making me realize once again how helpful it would be to know how to program. I could put together some Visual Basic or Javascript that would automate a lot of the steps.

Thankfully I discovered that one of our PCs at work has Dreamweaver CS3 on it (it used to have Adobe Creative Suite Design Standard on it, but recently the computer guys wiped it and then—accidentally, I think—reinstalled Design Premium), which speeds up the HTML clean-up considerably. Still, it takes a long time to clean up and post all those files. Blah.

I’m ready for some real work again.

And yeah, I’m sure I will be fine. I’ve only got two classes semester, so that’s one paper and one final. I’ve done pretty well on all my German tests so far, so my biggest concern right now is the fact that the final is scheduled for 7:00 Monday morning. Seriously, that’s obscenely early.

I’m not too stressed about the paper, either. The results of my survey seem inconclusive so far, but that’s still something to write about. Plus, it’s a subject near and dear to my heart, so it shouldn’t be too hard.

Still, I think I could use some Nutella and Ritz right about now.

Or maybe you don’t think about those things at all. Maybe it’s just me.

School’s going pretty well. I’m three semesters into my master’s, and I should have two more semesters after this one. (It’s supposed to be a two-year program, but with foreign language prerequisites it takes a little longer.) The end is rapidly approaching, and I still don’t really know what my plans are afterwards. I’m still not sure if I want to make a career out of academia or if I’d rather stay in the publishing world. Unfortunately, my previous experiences in the real world of editing jobs was pretty depressing, so I’m not exactly eager to give it a second go. But on the other hand, I feel rather ambivalent about the prospect of making lesson plans, grading papers, and publishing or perishing—assuming I can land a tenure-track position in the first place.

The decision is complicated by the fact that I’m enjoying both school and work at the moment. I’m editing and designing books (or at least book guts—I haven’t really done covers yet), which is a lot of fun. Plus, everyone there seems to think I’m nearly omniscient, which is great for stroking my already-too-large ego. And as for school, what’s not to love about learning cool stuff and putting off making big decisions about one’s career?

Angst about my future aside, life is pretty good. I have a wonderful wife and two awesome little boys. And I’m sure that in the end, everything will work out alright.

I continued to feel pretty miserable for the next few days, with killer body aches and congestion bad enough to make me want to drill holes in my forehead to relieve the pressure. I was popping Mucinex and Ibuprofen like they were candy to try to get some relief.

I went home early from work on Monday, skipped all my afternoon classes on Tuesday, and went home early again on Wednesday after missing my morning class. I’m finally feeling almost kind of sort of back to normal today, even though I’d still rather be home taking a nap.

I hate being sick for long periods of time. After a few days I start to feel like a worthless lump of flesh, and I can’t stop thinking about how far behind I’m falling. And all the while, of course, I’m getting emails from the university and seeing flyers around campus urging everyone who’s sick to stay home so they don’t give it to everyone else.

Of course, everyone knows that this is the right thing to do, but it seems to be an awfully hard thing to do. Granted, the university has encouraged instructors to be flexible with those students who are ill, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s very difficult to catch up after missing a week of school. The last thing you want to do when recovering from the flu is push yourself extra hard to make up for the last week.

And work is even worse. I’m essentially the sole income for a family of four, and I work part-time earning student wages. I have no paid time off when I’m sick, so if I stay home for an entire week to rest and recuperate, my paycheck is going to suck. I’m already broke enough as it is; getting the flu is a minor financial disaster.

So here I am, caught between a rock and a hard place. Do I drag myself to work, where my productivity will suffer and I may very well infect the entire office, but at least I’ll still get paid, or do I lie on the couch for a week straight while homework and midterms pile up and my bank account runs dry?

Well, unfortunately, money is a powerful motivator. I just hope that anyone I infected will forgive me.

I woke up feeling no better. I was so dizzy and nauseous I could hardly sit up straight and started breaking out in cold sweats. I lay on the couch for most of the rest of the day and watched TV, even though I had a hard time focusing. I managed to get some ginger ale and jello down, though it was quite an effort, but every time I got up and walked around at all, I threw up. I took some Alka-Seltzer to try to calm my stomach down, but I even threw that up. I took two more naps that day, which is really unprecedented, and went to sleep feeling terrible. I hadn’t had a fever at all, but I was effectively bedridden by the nausea and vertigo and hadn’t been able to keep anything down all day.

On Saturday I felt much better, though still sick. I managed to have some ramen soup for lunch and even ate a regular dinner, though I still felt queasy and had to lie down most of the day to keep the room from spinning too much. When I did get up, I had to walk slowly and be careful not to turn my head too fast, or I would nearly fall over. Fortunately, I didn’t throw up at all that day.

Sunday, though, was worse again. Still no vomiting, but I was so nauseous that even ginger ale was hard to get down. I seriously began to wonder what was wrong with me. I’d never had a stomach flu that lasted this long or caused dizziness, and it actually seemed that the vertigo was the primary symptom, with nausea being a result rather than a cause.

On Monday I stayed home from work and school again and made an appointment to go to the doctor. Brinestone drove me to the student health center, and it was a pretty miserable ride, as every little bounce and bump made me sick. The doctor checked me out and said it was probably an inner ear infection, or labyrinthitis. She gave me a prescription for an anti-vertigo drug, but somehow the pharmacy didn’t get the prescription, though the pharmacist said that over-the-counter Dramamine was effectively the same thing.

I took some Dramamine when I got home, and it seemed to help quite a bit. I was able to eat dinner again that night, and I felt well enough the next morning to drag myself to school, though I still didn’t feel very well, even with the Dramamine. Luckily the only class I’d missed was German, because all my other classes are on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but that also means I’d missed about eleven hours of work. My next paycheck is going to suck.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so miserably sick in all my life. I’ve been uncomfortably motion sick before, but never completely incapacitated by vertigo. Of course, this is slightly remedied by the fact that I get to tell people that I had something labyrinthitis. You’ve got to admit that sounds pretty awesome.

Here they are playing on top of their new bunk beds. (Though I should point out that Duplo still sleeps in a crib.)

Here’s Duplo trying on a puppy costume that Brinestone found at a garage sale. He really loves wearing it.

Here are the boys going for a walk one morning. Don’t ask me why Duplo took his shoe off.

Here are my little buddies. And what handsome kids they are, too.