In which Neatnik meets Ralph

You know you are truly a parent when a living creature has peed on your shoe and barfed all over you in the middle of the night. A related indicator of parenthood occurred yesterday. Allow me to use this indicator to regale you with a Tuesday Afternoon Bullet Post...

• Yesterday morning, I had a phone call from the school nurse.



• It was not unexpected: Neatnik had complained of a bit of a tummy ache before school and didn't want much breakfast.



• No fever, no barfing, so we sent her to school.



• This summer term, she has been staying after school on Mondays. Thought she just didn't want to go to after care.



• Got a call from the school just as I was writing the homework assignments on the board for my students: Neatnik barfed during recess.



• She had asked the playground monitor to go inside to the bathroom and was rebuffed with the statement, "Recess is almost over. Wait."



• So, my kid barfed all over the door mat.



• Poetic justice.



• I quickly called Number Guy and he picked her up.



• My students were very sympathetic and understanding.



• Probably helped that I let them go an hour early.



• No, we didn't scrimp on the lessons.



• Matter of fact, we finished yesterday's work and made in-roads on tomorrow's excessive workload.



• Why, no, I didn't set the syllabus - the course coordinator did.



• You can't send the child back to school until they are 24 hours fever- and barf-free.



• The DVD playerand the Kindle are getting workouts.



• She's feeling quite a lot better, the soupis staying down, and she even asked if she can go outside to practice bike riding.



• Back to school tomorrow! As of 6pm tonight, the fever has returned - no school tomorrow.



• I, on the other hand, have opted for a liquid diet today.



• Use your imagination. I'm sure you'll put it together quickly enough.



• Decided to sync my Kindle this morning. I've got over a dozen lends out on Lendle and I've borrowed a few ebooks, too.



• I've earned a whopping 19 achievements and have 159 request "vouchers" available to me at the moment.



• Kid with a new Christmas toy here.



• At first, I thought that I would have to reassign my returned books to their proper collections but I did not: when the books are lent, the Kindle remembers the collections to which they belong and returns them to their appointed spots.



• Just like in a library.



• Sweet!



• People complained vociferously on the discussion boards about Kindle books not having page numbers.



• The reason behind the decision to use locations instead of page numbers was fueled by the need to sync content between devices and the fact that readers can change the font size on their display. An Androidor a CrackBerryBlackBerryphone displays far fewer characters than a Kindle for PC clientdoes on a 17-inch desktop monitor.



• Still, Amazon noted the complaints and has now implemented pages for Kindle.



• Both page and location are now displayed when you press the Menu button.



• I sent in 100 BoxTops for Education into school last week. Thank you to the two bloggers who sent me envelopes of BoxTops.



• Maybe we'll reach our school goal this year!

Neatnik is now clamoring for me to pull out the board games and entertain her, so I guess this is as good a place to stop as any. Hope Ralph avoids your house this week.