I'm not saying which year.

Things that happened the year I was born. Of course, I've deleted the ones that I think really don't matter...

Communist troops attack Saigon and 30 province capitals in the "Tet Offensive"
Martin Luther King is assassinated in Memphis, TN
Senator Robert F. Kennedy is shot in California after celebrating presidential primary victories
American troops destroy a town in South Vietnam in the "My Lai Massacre"
Peggy Fleming wins Olympics figure skating gold medal
Student protesters at Columbia University in New York City take over administration buildings and shut down the university
LL Cool J, Lisa Marie Presley, Jeri Ryan, Lucy Lawless, Céline Dion, Traci Lords, Tony Hawk, Kylie Minogue, and Sammy Sosa are born
Detroit Tigers win the World Series
Montreal Canadians win the Stanley Cup
2001: A Space Odyssey and Planet of the Apes are the top grossing movies
The rock musical Hair opens on Broadway
The Beatles' White Album and Simon and Garfunkel's Bookends are released
Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, debuts on NBC

found here: http://www.blogthings.com/yearborn.html

cooking...

...for a change. I'm so lazy! Oh well. I'm making a honey-carrot tzimmis for a passover seder we are going to tonight. I'm so lazy that I managed to wrangle us passover at someone else's house! Of course, that's my goal every year. Although it was fun doing our own alternative/ feminist/ Dr. Seussilian style last year, I have to say. Sam's favourite is always the matzoh-ball soup. I'm wondering how many years it will be before I have to admit to making it all from a package?

Last night was Sam's school's annual charity concert. This year, they were raising money for a school in Sri Lanka that they have sistered with - to rebuild it after the tsunami. Sam's school lost a whole family in the tsunami, so the concert and fundraising is in their name. It was a fun evening - each year Sam crashes less hard at the end (it's a long day, and he never remembers to eat...). And he was great - he had a speaking part, and he was calm and clear on stage. I fear he might be a natural.

He certainly won't be a proof-reader... He came home from school on thursday and asked me:

"what's a long-bottomy?"

a what?????

so, he showed me in the book he was reading: oh, a lobotomy... well... I've certainly had to explain more difficult things. I just played some Ramones for him, that pretty much cleared it up.

nothing doing

hmmm...

not much going on here, really. Just had the most glorious weekend of cherry blossoms of my 3 years here. Beautiful, sunny, and the trees just loaded down with blooms. We had a picnic in the Aoyama cemetery yesterday, and there were literally flurries of cherry blossom petals blowing through the air. Lovely.

work is work, play is play - Sam is generally being himself these days (he's good at that), and working up the old charm with his Grandma here. I'm giving him a couple of "mental health" days off school this week, as grams is leaving on Sunday - so they can spend some quality AND quantity time together before the weekend.

I guess the big debate in our house right now is how Steve will mark his 40th birthday this summer. He's suggesting skydiving and I'm suggesting... not. Not with a young kid, anyway. What would Sam do without his dad? What would I do without him? I recognize his need to do something momentous, but aren't there any non-life-threatening options?