As I was saying the other day, Bo and I found some tickets for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart for Greta's 18th birthday. On the day of the taping, after we got into the studio, the woman who had ushered everyone in said that Jon Stewart likes to warm up by coming out and taking questions from the audience. She encouraged us to start thinking about what we wanted to ask ahead of time, and she cautioned us that if a question sounded stupid in our heads now, it would be even worse when asked in front of 200 people. When she finished talking, we put our heads together: 

Were we going to attempt to ask a question? 
Absolutely and let's not limit ourselves to non-stupid questions.

Who would be the one to ask it? Bo, Margot, Greta, or me? 
Margot, obviously. Like everyone, Margot has lots of fears. For instance, at art galleries, she is afraid she's going to lick the paintings. But she will stand up in front of large groups of people say stuff. 

What question should we ask? 
We went around and around on this. "What's your favorite....?" No, too boring. How about asking something about the show? We drew a blank, even though we watch every day. Wait, let's tell him that we bumped into Stephen Colbert at the American Museum of Natural History (this was true). We threw out a few more ideas. Ultimately, it was Greta who came up with the perfect question.

When Jon Stewart came out, he was adorable and natural and really funny with the audience. He answered a few questions before he saw Margot's hand go up, pointed to her and said, "How about you?"

"Well," she said, "we went to the American Museum of Natural History the other day."

"Really?" he answered, "Did you go after midnight? Because I hear that place really comes alive." People laughed. "Yeah, Teddy Roosevelt and Sackagawea really go at it. But what did you want to ask me?" he said to Margot.

"Okay. While we were there," she said, "we bumped into Stephen Colbert, and we were wondering -- did he say anything about that to you?"

Museum exhibits, like dental technicians, become very tiresome for me if they overdo the plaque thing. I have low interest in reading a plaque or listening about plaque (one exception -- I do enjoy reading about plagues on plaques). The Power of Poison exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in New York has a high entertainment-to-plaque ratio, for which my family and I were grateful.

Our first come-upon was a small, live, caged Golden Poison Frog, indigenous to the rain forests of Central and South America. Those of us who weren't pretending to read the plaque about this deadly creature learned that local hunters rub handmade blowdarts along its back to poison-up their weapons -- up to 50 darts per frog back. I'm glad you can't find these creatures in the U.S., though I highly doubt that American frogs would sit still for that kind of thing.

The Golden Poison Frog

A patient, yet deadly amphibian

As we moved along the pathway, which was designed to have the dark, lush look and semi-creepy sounds of a rain forest, we saw that the next part of the Power of Poison exhibit included one of those continuous loop movies. I love those things! Set in a jungle, a poisonous newt had just crawled into a camper's water bottle. I wanted to watch the film, but I was caught up looking at all the people who were sitting on benches resting their feet, while we stood scattered around in the back of the room. Greta came up beside me.

"I'd like to get some of these lucky sitting people out of here so we can take a load off," I said to her under my breath. "What's if you snuck up behind one of them and did a fake blowdart noise to the back of his neck? Are you any good at making that sound?"

Greta lifted the small, rolled up poster that she'd purchased for Margot in the Whales: Giants of the Deep gift shop a few minutes before. "Lift up your hair," she said. "Let me practice on you."

"Pffffffhhhht!"

"Nailed it!" I said, impressed, still whispering. "But we can't go through with it. You're too good. Cardiac arrest is a real possibility. Someone could die."

"I know," she agreed, "but we don't have to give up on the idea. Look," she pointed across the room with the tip of the poster. "Margot's standing over there, totally engrossed." 

I nodded my head in Margot's direction and Greta set off. A few seconds later, Margot took a poison dart to the neck that might have killed a South American monkey, just out of fear. She jumped, then laughed -- all very quietly. As we exited through the gift shop I asked Margot why she didn't scream. "Watching that movie, I knew someone was gonna get poisoned. And of course it came as no surprise that it was me." 

For Greta's 18th birthday, we got tickets to see the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. While we were in New York, Bo, Margot, Greta and I went to the American Museum of Natural History (Thanks Sutter!), which has truly amazing collections and exhibitions, even if you have it in your mind that science is a bit off-putting. 

At the top of our list of things to see was Whales: Giants of the Deep. This is because, as a family, we've always dreamed of being transported to the vibrant underwater world of the mightiest animals on earth. Actually that was Margot's dream, but we all went along with it. But it turned out just great because Stephen Colbert and his family were ahead of us in line to get into Whales: Giants of the Deep. And though I'd never approach a celebrity to speak with him directly, I did attempt to communicate my undying love to Stephen through echolocation. 

Once we plunged into Whales: Giants of the Deep, I tried to act busy. And luckily for me, the first part of the exhibit was about how whales have changed over time. I like a good evolution story as much as the next guy, and whales do not disappoint. Just look at this pre-whale, who lived 50 million years ago:

Pakicetus Attocki, which loosely means,

Guy Whose Nostrils Will Someday be Blowholes

After I learned about whale evolution, I pretended to enjoy a blur of skeletons, skulls, skulls, slides, scale models, skulls, skeletons, specimens, objects, and artifacts, until I found the Mating and Reproduction area, where I stayed put for a good while. Then, skeletons, skulls, skulls, until wait, what? Jewelry Made Out of Whales? -- linger, linger, where is my family?, feign like I'm reading stuff, there they are, hi!, yes I think I'm almost ready to leave, yes, it was amazing, shall we exit through the gift shop?

As we waited in line for our next exhibit, The Power of Poison, I struck up a conversation about Whales: Giants of the Deep -- "Guys, I'm still of a mind that whales are fish, not mammals. Any questions, comments, concerns?"

Next: Darting into the Power of Poison Exhibit!

While they were home for Christmas, my kids came up to me and asked, "Mom, what is a phone book?" So I made some tea and the three of us sat down to talk about it.  I explained to them that it's a book which lists, in alphabetical order, the names, addresses and telephone numbers of the residents in your area, so you can find out how to call or write to them. I explained, "These books used to be crucial if you wanted to stay connected and get things done. But that was a long time ago, back when people used to knock on other people's doors. Speaking of that, girls, let's use this time together to practice our 'If Someone Knocks On Our Door' drill."

After regrouping, I told them a story, a true story, of the time when Mommy was having her special drink with some friends and I got the idea to look up our last name backwards (Namretsliw) in the phone book. As my finger moved down the page, I came across the name Namelgof, Trebor. "Wow," I said, "Trebor Namelgof sounds like a backwards name." And then the panic set in, "Oh my god. That's Robert Fogleman spelled backwards."

When you are looking for your name spelled backwards in the phone book and you find someone else's name spelled backwards in the phone book, you start to feel a little crazy, kind of like how you feel when you overthink the concept of infinity. I don't know why Robert Fogleman put his name in the phone book backwards. He didn't return my calls. Maybe he had his special drink and got the idea that it would be cool for his name to be backwards in the phone book. Infinity! Why won't you ever stop? 

I mentioned God several times in a blog post I was writing the other day. Pretty soon that thing happened to me when a word starts to sound weird when you say it over and over.  God, God, God. When you over think it, the name sounds way too casual for who God is. For starters, it rhymes with Todd and Rod, which aren't exactly power handles. Also, it sounds a little bit too much like "Bob." I bet if you asked a few hundred people how many syllables should be in God's name, most of them would say, "at least three, out of respect."

I looked up the origin of the name God online and found this entry from the Oxford English Dictionary which really cleared things up for me:

"god (gρd). Also 3-4 godd. [Com. Teut.: OE. god (masc. in sing.; pl. godu, godo neut., godas masc.) corresponds to OFris., OS., Du. god masc., OHG. got, cot (MHG. got, mod.Ger. gott) masc., ON. goð, guð neut. and masc., pl.goð, guð neut. (later Icel. pl. guðir masc.; Sw., Da. gud), Goth. guÞ (masc. in sing.; pl. guÞa, guda neut.). The Goth. and ON. words always follow the neuter declension, though when used in the Christian sense they are syntactically masc. The OTeut. type is therefore *guđo^m neut., the adoption of the masculine concord being presumably due to the Christian use of the word. The neuter sb., in its original heathen use, would answer rather to L. numen than to L. deus. Another approximate equivalent of deus in OTeut. was *ansu-z (Goth. in latinized pl. form anses, ON. ρss, OE. Ós- in personal names, ésa genit. pl.); but this seems to have been applied only to the higher deities of the native pantheon, never to foreign gods; and it never came into Christian use.

 The ulterior etymology is disputed. Apart from the unlikely hypothesis of adoption from some foreign tongue, the OTeut. *gubo^m implies as its pre-Teut. type either *ghudho-m or *ghutó-m. The former does not appear to admit of explanation; but the latter would represent the neut. of the passive pple. of a root *gheu-.  There are two Aryan roots of the required form (both *g_lheu, with palatal aspirate): one meaning ‘to invoke’ (Skr. hū), the other ‘to pour, to offer sacrifice’ (Skr. hu, Gr. χέειν, OE. yéotan YETE v.). Hence *g_lhutó-m has been variously interpreted as ‘what is invoked’ (cf. Skr. puru-hūta ‘much-invoked’, an epithet of Indra) and as ‘what is worshipped by sacrifice’ (cf. Skr. hutá, which occurs in the sense ‘sacrificed to’ as well as in that of ‘offered in sacrifice’). Either of these conjectures is fairly plausible, as they both yield a sense practically coincident with the most obvious definition deducible from the actual use of the word, ‘an object of worship’.

Some scholars, accepting the derivation from the root *g_lheu- to pour, have supposed the etymological sense to be ‘molten image’ (= Gr. χυγόν), but the assumed development of meaning seems very unlikely. 

I woke up this morning feeling sorry for sunrises. People are super busy when the sun comes up, so they mostly put watching the process on the back burner. Sunrises are completely eclipsed by sunsets, who arrive shimmering at cocktail parties, looking fabulous and diverting everyone's attention, like Ginger on Gilligan's Island. Sunrises are definitely the Mary Anns of light's daily routine. 

But hold it, wouldn't people rather see Mary Ann than Ginger when they open their eyes every morning? Isn't Mary Ann the one who lights up a room with her natural beauty? Isn't she the useful one who bakes coconut pies, rides the bicycle-powered wash machine invented by The Professor (RIP!), catches fish and fends off cannibals before anyone else is awake? Isn't Mary Ann the one we really like better?  Okay, now I feel sorry for sunsets.

Sunrise, Sunset