Tuesday morning quickies from the left coast

Good morning, everyone.
1. Saw a clip of William Shatner doing a poetic reading of Sarah Palin's verbatim farewell speech. He was, of course, more coherent than she was, but the clip was also linked to his "classic" reading of Rocket Man. Perhaps you have seen Stewie from Family Guy doing the same reading. This leads me to one of the contentious points of my relationship with Sparks: I CANNOT STAND THE FAMILY GUY. He loves it. I don't know why they can string together non sequiturs for an entire 22 minutes, and those nonsequiturs are frankly just STOLEN ideas from other sources. It kills me. I can't even be in the same room if he's watching an episode. He has the same problem with my proclivity towards bad reality television. Anyone catch More to Love last night?
More...2. I am a big fan of our local public library. Everyone likes the library, of course. A civic institution dedicated only to the betterment of each citizen's mind. It's been a long time since I've frequented a library. When Sparks and I were in graduate school, I used the university libraries a lot. But for my own reading pleasure, I must say that I have bought every single book I've read for the last 5 years or so. All this has changed since we have had the Cha. Did you know that a child's picture book is on average $16? And they have less than 30 pages each? And children consume books like cheerios? This was turning out to be a very expensive habit. So off to the library we trooped and I must say it's been lots of fun to randomly pick books off the shelf (lots of them are turkeys) but also to rediscover the books I used to like, or at least remember, from my youth. Do you have favorites? Harold the Purple Crayon, Little Bear, etc....I'm looking forward to the day when we can read Encyclopedia Brown together.

3. One of the family cars died last night. Battery dead because the Cha turned on one of the interior lights while he was playing in the car. Sparks likes to let the Cha drive the car into the garage from the end of the driveway. Do you find this an inappropriate action? Sparks grew up in a place where 8 year olds could drive to 7-11, but I am thinking maybe it's not so healthy for the Cha to think he can drive. As well, we realized we didn't have jumper cables. I then realized that I would not know how to jump a car if I had to. This qualifies as something everyone should know when they leave home. In the end, we borrowed one from the neighbors and all turned out fine.

4. An ongoing list of things one should know when they leave home: how to grill food. how to change a tire. how to jump a car. how to handle household finances. how to cook 3 meals. your suggestions welcome.