I hope all my favorite East-Coasters made it home okay yesterday and aren't suffering dreadfully. I can only think of two things to say about the blackouts: 1) How weird! and 2) What the hell happened, exactly?

I know, sometimes I don't sound very smart.

There's this very nice woman whose daughter is in J's preschool class. Sometimes we take the bus together and get to chat for a while. Today we were talking, and she mentioned that she's from Iraq. Immediately I thought of a zillion questions I wanted to ask, and then I felt self-conscious, and then I was just happy to finally know someone in person from that particular part of the world, and I thought how lucky I am that I can sit and chat with her on the bus. Sometimes I love the world, all the more so when I consider that a Jewish woman who grew up Baptist in Kansas can (1) take her half-Israeli child to a preschool where he has a Pakistani teacher (2) be friends with an Iraqi woman, and (3) date a man from Galway.

I'm a bit embarrassed about the gee-whillikers tone of that last paragraph. On the other hand, the gee-whillikers moments are all too rare.

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