I'm reading Treasure Island and I can't believe this is a children's book. It's very hard to read! Maybe if I spoke sailor I'd have more of a clue. First of all I've never seen so many apostrophes in one book. So far my favorite is "fo'c's'le" which is what the sailors call the forecastle (a part of the ship). But then there's the expressions I've never heard of and things they are talking about that I don't have a clue about. Long John Silver is the most educated and clear speaking of the pirates so I can understand most of what he says but some of the others are just out there. I was happy to figure out we're not supposed to understand what the marooned man is talking about. Apparently he's insane. Of course, since, to me, his speech is about as decipherable as the other sailors, I didn't realize this fact until Jim told him he had no idea what he was talking about ;-) And I don't understand why they abandoned the ship. It seemed like a pretty bad idea to me but maybe that's because I know nothing about ships and sailing and mutinies. I'm still enjoying the book though. I'm a little more than half way through.

Speaking of indecipherable, I watched Hudson Hawk the other day. It's a movie that my husband said he liked so I tracked it down through the library to watch together. We saw it yesterday when the kids were out (rated R). About half way through I started laughing and couldn't control the giggles. Robert had said it was a funny movie. I thought he meant funny as in ha ha, not funny as in "what kind of funny cigarettes were they smoking when they wrote this?". It's bizarre. Even surreal at times. Around half way through I found myself reminded of The Man Who Was Thursday, that part at the end where reality just steps out. I got my head handed to me once before for comparing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead to Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure so I hope no one gets pissy about me comparing this movie to (insert voice of awe) a work of literature - but still, it made me think of it. It was good for a laugh though, and that's always welcome. And I enjoy the two songs that came out of it. I like Bruce Willis and Danny Aiello singing.

So last night Bridget was bored and digging through the cabinet of science kits and stuff. She came up with the solar car kit she got for her birthday. I can't remember why we never did it at the time but there it was. She took it up to her room, read the instruction manual and put it together herself. This morning (when there was actually sun) she gave it a try and it wouldn't go. She and her dad worked on it together, experimenting with batteries and such and finally got it working. In the end, the simple problem was that the rubber band was too tight and needed stretching (that's even mentioned in the manual). Owen briefly suggested putting a balloon on the back and making it go that way so maybe we can try his idea later and make a balloon powered car.

But then problem number two was the weakness of the sun in February in NJ. The car only works if the sun is straight on it. That means when you hold the car to the sun, it goes, but when you put it on the ground at 10 in the morning the sun is at too much of an angle so it doesn't work. So they decided to wait til noon and give it another try. The three of them headed out to an indoor playground (at the mall) with the car in hand so they could try it at noon. I stayed home for some R&R :-D

And, in other news, I'm still working on a Christmas present for Bridget. I ordered her two Nodwick comic collections from two different sellers. One sent the wrong book. I emailed them and after making clear it was their mistake, they told me to send the book back media mail and put the receipt for sending it in the envelope and they'd refund me the price of shipping back in addition to sending me the correct book. You can see this coming can't you? Yes, I was stupid enough to do it. Now they claim not to have received my return and since I don't have the receipt they won't refund me my money and won't give me the right book. You know . . . the one I PAID for. I know I won't get my money back (at least it was only about $13) but I'm still going to make an attempt to contest the charge with my credit card company. Meanwhile, I'm off to leave a bad review for superbookdeals.com. And find someone else to buy Nodwick from!