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* Tomorrow is Columbus Day, so everybody in the house has the day off (except for the fact that I kind of slacked off on schoolwork last Friday, knowing we would have the day free on Monday. But still not a full day of work). Everyone gets the day off together! I may swoon from the novelty.

* After swooning, I should go through the childrens' cold weather clothes and find any of K's stuff from last year that might still fit and dig up the 3t clothes and see how much I can get away with putting on Alec, given that that was the age when K discovered she was a girl and stopped being willing to wear so many dinosaur shirts, or really anything except dresses. I am willing to put him in some remarkably girly stuff, including jeans embroidered with flowers, but I'm not quite willing to send him out in public in a dress, unless he asked to wear it, of course.

* Alec is starting preschool this week at the local Jewish Community Center (thanks to the generosity of B's parents, for which I am very very very very very grateful). He wil spend two days a week playing in a well-equipped classroom and on a lovely playground, singing songs, fingerpainting and getting socialized with children his own age, while I will have two days a week with him out of my hair. Win-win. It comes with a family membership at the JCC, which gives us access to the gym and pool and gives us discounts on classes. It looks like K may finally get the ballet lessons she's been pining over and we can get her some very overdue swimming lessons. Yay!

* I have to hand it to Doctor Who: after a season that barely captured my attention aside from a few good moments, the finale completely grabbed me and brought me around from a general "meh" feeling about the next season to feeling a bit sorry it's not coming for another year. The thing I liked the most is that the Doctor solved his problems by being clever like he was in the past, not like the more recent incarnations where he uses his supreme coolness to bring about a magical Doctor ex machina solution. There are a lot of things I love about Russell T. Davies' reboot of Doctor Who, but his worship of the character to the point of actually deifying him at times isn't one of them.