Quoth the Raven

This morning we slept in, and when I say "slept in," I'm not kidding. Part of the reason is because we've been so much under the weather of late - in fact, Daddy has had the sorest throat he's ever had in his entire life. The word "strep" is floating around - there was a message from the school that a child had it. Tomorrow, one of us will probably be heading to the doctor's office to do a quick check and make sure everything's okay.

In the News: Today the Poe Toast tradition was declared over with, as no Poe Toaster showed up for a third year in a row. Some may think a Poe Toaster is a device that makes toast in the shape of Edgar Allan Poe. No, not quite. It is in fact a mysterious stranger who remains unidentified, creeping into a cemetery in the wee hours of darkness on Edgar Allan Poe's birthday (today), in order to lay out some flowers and a bottle of wine at his grave. Sometimes notes were left, and other times not. For sixty years, this mysterious stranger did his quiet annual work, and then three years ago... it stopped. Quoth the Raven: Nevermore.

Perhaps the publicity got to him. Perhaps he's actually now going over to Dr. Seuss' grave in the middle of the night, in order to leave some green eggs and ham, and a piece of a Truffala tree.

Back to our toaster: this is one of those quirky traditions that ended the year Madison came home to be with us. The two are unrelated. Or are they? Is it that I'm just simply too busy being a Daddy to make that trip up to Baltimore anymore?

As you have probably guessed by this point, today was a largely uneventful day. I did not, I must point out, read ANY Edgar Allan Poe stories to Madison. At present, I couldn't think of a single one that wouldn't have potential to induce nightmares. Daddy was a big fan in college, but I grew out of that phase somewhat - I remember having to memorize "Annabelle Lee," and having books with the stories like "The Masque of the Red Death" inside. But I moved on. Still, I have the first few lines of "Annabelle Lee" permanently etched in my brain. Seriously: can't

ever forget it!

And, once a year in October Mommy and Daddy watch Tim Burton's story about Vincent Malloy - he's the boy that wants to be like Vincent Price, reciting the stories and poetry of Edgar Allan Poe. I believe it was Tim Burton's first stop motion animation, a pretty short movie that shows even way back then that this guy was pretty different. Speaking of "different" and "Poe," the Baltimore Ravens are in the AFC Championships this weekend. I'm only talking about football here because it relates to our theme of the day: Poe. Did you know that the Ravens have three mascots? They are, of course, ravens. And do you know what their names are? Answer: "Edgar," "Allan," and "Poe." I have no idea how to tell one from another. Hopefully they're wearing name tags or something.

I happen to like Terry Pratchett's name for a raven, a more creative tribute to Poe: the bird's name is Quoth. Quoth the Raven.

More Poe related stuff: Here's a Poe stamp we have in our stamp collection. Some day, Madison will see this one and others. Not that we're "collect 'em all" sorts of people, but occasionally we see stamps we like and pick up a sheet of them to hold on to. This practice is continued from my grandfather, who passed along some stamp collections from the 70's and 80's - and now we have them all, pretty much, sealed up and protected in a nice tub downstairs. It's nothing of epic proportions, but there are probably some of value down there, and some day it'll be nice to look through them with Madison when she's old enough to appreciate them.

Enough about Poe. And stamps. What did we do today? Well, Madison did a bit of music practice today, and some speech work too. We did not go to ballet tonight though: we decided to give everyone a rest. We need it very much. Daddy has a doctor's appointment tomorrow morning to confirm or deny whatever nasty bug it is that we've got going through the house.

This afternoon, Daddy started writing his devotional for Sherlock Holmes, and Madison spent some time doing math problems on her Explorer. That is a very useful device, and we're thrilled that Madison is having fun and learning with it. With characters like Tinkerbell, and the Penguins from Madagascar, she's learning simple addition, and giving answers fairly quickly. Given her heritage, I suppose one of us should have gotten Madison an abacus. Maybe that's somewhere down the road.

Mommy did a lot of cleaning today - she was the healthiest of us all. She's trying to get the house ready because we're having some special visitors in just two days. Madison is very excited: she's counting down the sleeps, just like you'd count sleeps until Christmas. It'll be very good to see Mommy's parents again: Baba and Nana are coming up for only one week, but we'll try to squeeze in as much fun and together time as we can. Hopefully everyone will be all better so we don't spread any germs around.

"I wish they'd pack their tiny little bags and move away."

- "Germs," by Weird Al Yankovic