Blog is here to stay.

March First! We are always well-shed of February here in Chicago. The Romans, who knew what end was up most of the time, wisely kept the month short. I believe King Numa was responsible for it originally, to give credit where credit is due.

I’m fairly certain that Nature doesn’t care about our calendar conventions, but it’s still psychologically healthy to emerge from February. Only 60 more days till sustained warmth! (Give or take 30 days.)

More thoughts on the BITE ME man (see yesterday’s blog). It would be childish fun to send this man an anonymous little card.

“Dear Loyal American,

Thank you for your support of jihad, by way of the many fine petroleum products you buy.

Yours truly,
The House of Saud

PS: Other Americans will not BITE YOU. We will be glad to.”

As I said, childish fun, so I won’t actually do it.

As I was walking home from the train station on Wednesday, the cell phone in my coat rang. It was the phone I acquired when the baby was imminent, and since I have a year’s contract, I still carry the damn thing around, when I remember to. Good to have an emergency phone, I suppose, though I’d lived to be 41 without carrying one. Anyway, only Yuriko has the number, so it was either her (not good, some kind of problem at home), or a wrong number.

“Hello?”

“Daddy! Where are you?”

“Hello? Lilly? Is that you?”

“Daddy! Where are you?”

“Lilly, is that you?”

“Daddy! It’s Lilly, bucko!”

Where she picked up bucko, I don’t know, but at certain times over the last few months that’s what I’ve been called. It turns out that this was Lilly’s first phone call. She had wanted to talk to me, and asked her mother to call me. Yuriko said that I was probably already gone, so that I won’t answer my office phone. Lilly wanted to call anyway, “with the phone number.” Eventually Yuriko realized that she meant the cell phone number, which she (Yuriko) carries in her purse.

She gave Lilly the number and Lilly dialed it. Not as hard as it sounds, since every time I’ve made a call from home recently, Lilly has wanted to dial it. I tell her the number and she pushes the buttons.

Some insanely large number of people in the world have never actually used a telephone — two billion, three billion? Great swaths of Chinese, Indians and Africans, I reckon. Now Lilly has joined the telephone-users of the world.