Persistence and ingenuity: Habits of Highly Effective Pirates

So, I just put all three little girls to bed on them and turned the light out.  Then went back a few minutes later, broke up the brawl behind the bedroom door, turned the light back off again, and shut the door again.

A couple of minutes later, we hear little-girl noises from the bedroom.  I walk back to the bedroom in time to see two little Pirate hands come out from under the still-closed bedroom door with a copy of Dr. Seuss' I Can Read With My Eyes Shut, which she then proceeds to open in the dining room where the lights are still on and starts flipping through the pages.  She can't see the pages from where she is, but hey.....   :-)

Irony

Earlier this evening, we got notice that there's a 24-hour hurricane warning active all up the NC coast.  So far, all we've seen from it is a band of heavy rain.

Ten minutes ago, I got email from my parents in Spokane, Washington, almost as far from here as it's possible to be in the contiguous US, saying that a tree fell on their house in a sudden windstorm.

(They're both OK, but it was a close thing.  We're awaiting a more detailed damage report.  They just had to cancel the trip to England they were scheduled to leave on tomorrow and call insurance, roofers etc instead.)

Auntie Jilara's Hot Summer Package

A UPS truck just rolled up unexpectedly at our door and dropped off a medium-sized box.  Inside said box, resided a "Hot Summer Package" note from jilara, a bottle of Stevenot Winery muscat wine (mmm, Stevenot is good!), and assorted hot sauces.  We were considerably amused and completely taken by surprise.

Thank you.  :)

No FUD, thank you, we're British. (And Israeli, and German...)

Britain and Israel say that the US system of color-coded "terror alerts" does little or nothing to improve public safety, and actually serves to feed the fear terrorists seek to inspire.  Funny ... this is exactly what many of us have been saying all along.

"The government will never hesitate to issue a warning if it is the best way to protect any community or venue facing a specific and credible threat.  Advice would be issued immediately if the public needed to take specific action which could make them safer," a Home Office spokeswoman said.

Kevin Rosser of Control Risks Group consultancy in London said Britain's approach "is not to make color-coded warnings, not to publish every possible threat, but work closely with institutions that may be affected to help them tighten security and address threats in the least disruptive way possible.

"The problem (with the American approach) is that it creates public anxiety.  If the goal of terrorists is to spread fear and unease then to some extent they've done that job for them without anybody carrying out an attack."

But then again, under the current administration, that's the idea, isn't it......?