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Nick Jr.: key to tranquility
Thursday, August 26 2010
Today was day two of having a million baby human beings (a variety of baby primate) in the house. Technically, "a million" would be an exaggeration, since there were only two. But at times it felt like a million. The key to a tranquil household proved to be Nick Jr., the cable channel geared to very young children. The programming consists of shows like Dora the Explorer and Spongebob Squarepants, and I was amazed to see the incredible calming effect these had on the two point something year old. She plunked down on a chair and just watched, utterly mesermized. I have no idea what it is that makes programming compelling for a kid that age, but whatever it is these shows have, their value to parents is what has made them the household names that they are.
At some point everybody except the dogs set off for Woodstock and Willow. They toured the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary and ate lunch at the Garden Café. Eventually Gilaud came back without the others because he had some work he needed to do remotely (in Isræl) on his laptop (he's an architect). This meant that he had to return to Woodstock to pick everybody up some hours later.
This evening after the babies were put to bed and tranquility resumed, Gretchen served another elaborate meal, this one featuing potato-vegetable patties and one of her classic noodle bakes (this one featuring snail shell pasta and delicious blobs of tempeh).
Later in the evening Gilaud told me about the various problems of the aging Bauhaus-style building where he lives in Tel Aviv. It's a co-op, so he shares some of the responsibility for its upkeep. Being an architect, he tends to dwell on the details (such as how the flat concrete roof looks in profile or whether or not columns are actually where they are stated to be in the blueprints). While we were on the subject of structural integrity, I took Gilaud into the laboratory to show him the posts that bear the load for the solar deck. While there, he spied my elaborate computer setup with its four LCD screens attached via two KVM switches to seven different computers (only one of which is normally in use). This somehow led to me showing him my TableForm database visualization tool. I've shown it to a few people, but most aren't familiar enough with databases to grasp what it does. But Gilaud understood it instantly. He mentioned that he had someone create a MySQL database for him who could really benefit from such an interactive graphic tool.
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