My daughter managed to get herself a concussion. She was walking on a bench in the pool changing room, and apparently got bashed off backwards by a baby changing table opening up. Slammo.

She hit hard, too.

Hers Truly wound up at the hospital for observation. Her short term memory was all messed up. She was hysterical. Eventually she did calm down. They didn't let us out of observation until 10pm.

We had to wake her up and check on her every two hours. Ugh. We invited Hers Truly and her kung-fu sleeping technique into the bed and woke her up every two hours.

Nothing truly bad so far. She's mostly doing OK. She's having a quieter day watching videos until her eyeballs fall out.

Hers Truly had been eating breakfast with me for quite a while. More specifically, she had been eating MY breakfast with me. Lately, she has admitted that she is tired of english muffins for breakfast. That's OK. I was only giving her them because she wanted them.

She might continue eating on my lap when she feels like it, but she hasn't in a few months now. I let her do so as this time of life would not continue forever, and having a girl in my lap for breakfast was fun.

Since Hers Truly is five, I thought that I would compare her with other 5 year friends. Most of my high-school friends, I went to school with them for 5 years. That's it. As for my college friends, I hung out with them for four years. That seemed like a long time.

Oh, it's been so long since Hers Truly mixed up her "I's" and "You's." 

Mamma, warn your children. Disco kills.

At this rate, the entire 70s Top 40 will be gone in just a few years.

Went down to Chinkoteague over the weekend. 

Getting down was hell, but as I would later learn, merely an annoyance in comparison.

We had a fine time down there. We spent Saturday mostly on the beach. Nice weather, but also a stiff wind and lots of blowing sand. For food, I broke discipline, took lots of Lactaid, and ate ice cream and beach pizza.

On the way back, we hit the backup hell on 50. Three hours to go from Easton to 50/404. Icky-sicky. No fun.

On Friday, Jen and I did make the Avengers in the morning. It was a fun flick. We could only find one showing before noon so we went up to the Rio. We thought that we would see the 3D version, but we got lucky and it was the 2D version.

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is, perhaps, the most perfect implementation of Teenagers From Outer Space that I've ever seen.

For example, we can easily summarize the "race" types as:

• Pony
• Nearly a Pony (pegasi, unicorns)
• Not Very Nearly a Pony (griffon)
• Real Weirdie (baby dragon)

Each show begin with a short first act that sets up the game, then the characters proceed to train wreck the plot.

In fact, all you need to add to the game is the special power called "magic."

Now, let's go over characters.

Big Macintosh - Superstrong
Twilight Sparkle - Magic, Teleport
Rainbow Dash - Fly, Superspeed
Spike - Breath Fire
Applejack - Toughness
Fluttershy - Fly

I don't have the full list in front of my, so I can't do an exact match of powers. Still, I can get a huge percentage of the characters with stock powers. That's not bad. 

For my birthday, I ask for a cake made by my wife and daughter. This year, I asked for a My Little Pony cake. I had every expectation that Hers Truly would pick Twilight Sparkle or Pinkie Pie, because one is purple and the other is pink. Nope. She said that I should get a Big Macintosh cake, because he's big and strong like I am.

Yeah.

So, I'm turning 46 and I'm getting a Big Macintosh cake. How cool is that?

If you are a male, what do your peers think about you for watching My Little Pony?

At 4-6, Normal.
At 7-10, Gay, but you don't know what gay means.
At 11-13, Gay, mostly to be cruel, but you don't know what gay really means.
At 14+, Gay, because you think it really is gay.
At 18+, weird and gay.
At 30+, just play weird and icky.
At 30+, with child, watching it is PERFECTLY NORMAL, and then you compare favorite episodes and you also thank God that your child stopped watching Dora the Explorer.

Hers Truly planned and made dinner last night, with Jenny helping. We ate raisin bran with almonds, fruit salad, and hard boiled eggs. FYI, the raisin bran and almonds turned out very tasty.

Smacked my gaming computer around a bit more. I think that the CD drive itself is going bad, and that's the cause of the weird slowdowns, so I unplugged it. So far, so good. Strange pauses have completely stopped.

I'm back to playing LotRO. It might be a game where Hers Truly can sit with me and play. She wants to help me stomp monsters. It also looks like they "fixed" the Weathertop plot quest. I stopped playing because of this quest. It was group only, and even being 10 levels over the quest, I got my kiester kicked. If I read between a line on the update notes, so were lots and lots of other people. They likely looked at the numbers for the primary quest line, and saw participation hit a brick wall at that quest. That, and with most of the game being at a high level, folks leveling up just couldn't find help to do Weathertop as a Fellowship style quest. Personally, I'm wondering how many casual players simply threw in the towel at that point, just like me.

The weekend went fine.

I made strudel over the weekend. Well, pseuo-strudel. It turned out a bit messy, but tasted good. The accident that worked out well as tasting the jam that leak onto the pan. Believe me when I say that caramelized apricot jam is to die for.

On Saturday night, we headed to a game night in Viginia with Marti and Alberto. Hers Truly had a fun time staying up with their junior cutie, as they are good friends at church. Coming home was a pain. Something had the beltway shut down over the American Legion Bridge. Once across, we were at least able to crawl over the local roads.

I just bumped into this term: New Sincerity. It describes, essentially, art that is itself. There is no cynicism behind it. It is what it is.

It occurs to me that I produced my Jura City books exactly in this genre. That's cool. I'm part of a art movement and I didn't even know it. Coolness.

Let's talk My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. More specifically, let's talk about how much I like it.

Yes, I like it. It's a well written and well produced ensemble sitcom.

A funny thing happened on the way to the 2K's: network TV abandoned the sitcom. What that meant was a boon for children's and teen's TV, as channels like Nick and Disney hired those people for their own sitcoms which still did pretty well. Heck, there was one Power Ranger season that I adored because it was a sitcom designed as a Power Rangers show. From there, it's a small leap to putting those same writers and producers into writing for their animation shows. Once word go out that children's TV paid the bills, comedic job seekers delved further afield, doing even more children's TV. Thus, children's cartoons changed from the awful dreck of our youth to well polished sitcoms.

Yeah, go figure. Whoda thunk?

Oh, and the comedy really is smashing.

* Disclaimer: I assumed that I would hate the show, but as my daughter watched it, it kept getting my attention. It really broke through my inattention.