More comics for girls

Back in January, I posted a grumble about how there weren't enough good graphic novel adventure stories oriented towards girls (e.g. with female main characters). Since then, I've found some more books that I think meet the necessary criteria.  First, "Smile" by Raina Tegelmeier:

Raina Telgemeier's stories are a little on the melodramatic side for my tastes, but I like them nonetheless, and but Lydia likes them a lot. The plots tend to revolve almost entirely around the social life of the main character: school, friends, parents, etc.  Ethan tried a couple but didn't seem interested. A second book is "Rapunzel's Revenge" by Shannon and Dean Hale:

I really enjoyed this one, as did both my kids. This is a retelling of the Rapunzel folk tale, with Rapunzel recast as a sort of strong, independent, female action hero. The plot is very good -- it's a real adventure story, and the artwork is fantastic.  There is a sequel called "Calamity Jack", but I didn't have quite as much fun with it. The last book is "Mercury", by Hope Larson:

This is cool little graphic novel featuring a female teenage character, set in Canada. The point of view of the novel jumps back and forth between the present day and the "gold rush" era in the 1860's. The artwork is not as spectacular as the Rapunzel book (it is drawn in black & white), but given the nature of the story, I think it actually works better with a more graphically minimalist approach.

Sox!

Ethan and I made a trip to Fenway park this past Monday night (tickets given to Ethan from Lucy and Scott). The Sox were up against "The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim" (team motto: "We're Not Quite Sure Where We're From"). It was a total blowout; Sox racked up 17 runs, which was lots of fun to watch. There was so much hitting going on we had to leave after the 7th inning (it was already quite late, and it was a school night). Pictures:

The game featured huge home runs by Kevin Youkilis and Dustin Pedroia, plus lots of other singles and doubles. David Ortiz was nowhere to be seen, which is still sort of hard for me to get a grip on; he was such a dominant hitter before that it's hard to imagine him hitting .146 (or whatever the number is these days).

Thank you S & L -- it was a very enjoyable outing.

Reverse 911

Lexington has joined the ranks of towns that use a "reverse 911" calling system; we seem to be getting these calls on a regular basis now.  For a while only Amy's work phone would ring, but now what happens is that both the home phone and Amy's work phone ring at exactly the same time, and we get a recorded message from the town administration.

This last week we had a big kerfuffle as a result of a broken water main out in Weston; many towns in the Boston area (including Lexington) had to switch to backup water supplies, meaning that we had to boil all our drinking water for a while. Each day this week has included a new "reverse 911" call with a message telling us to "keep boiling your water".  All of the recordings feature a tired-sounding male voice and end with a rather surly directive: "Do not return this call". I detest machine-generated phone calls, but I suppose we will just have to put up with the R911 stuff (as a consolation, I suppose the surly guy is less annoying than the artifically perky/happy voices you hear when you dial a large corporation help line these days).

More volcano stuff

Yesterday's New York Times had the most amazing photo of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano on the front page-- it makes the thing almost look alive (and especially malevolent);

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/photographing-icelands-fiery-volcano/

An astonishing shot. I'm not sure what sorts of prizes there are for photography, but whatever they are, this guy should be awarded all of them.

The kids and I cut it out and put it on the fridge (whereupon Lydia applied a post-it note saying "Public Enemy Number 1", or something to this effect). Still not sure when Amy is going to be returning, although the news coverage is maybe a teeny bit more encouraging; some of the airlines are starting to schedule transatlantic flights again (there is a Virgin Atlantic flight to Newark from London that is supposed to go today, and KLM has done a couple of flights from Schiphol to New York as I understand it).

Update (Apr 23): Amy is finally back-- exactly a week late. Big sighs of relief all around in our household...

Pancake Man the Olympian

Ok, everyone is probably getting pretty tired of Pancake Man, but I might as well post this one, since it's been out in paper form for a while. Drew this while we were skiing up in Quebec.

I am thinking about a new cartoon involving pop music, but at this point it is still in the concept stage.

Stranded!

I had hoped very much to see my wife yesterday (she has been on a week-long business trip in the UK), but our reunion has been postponed as a result of a volcano eruption in Iceland of all things.

Unpronounceable though it may be, Eyjafjallajokull (ay-yah-FYAH-lah-yer-kuhl) is wreaking havoc on air travel in northern Europe. When I told my kids that their mom was stuck in England because of an Icelandic volcano, at first they didn't believe me. Who would have guessed?

Web site: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/iceland/eyjafjallajokull/index.html

About all I can say is: let's hope the wind starts blowing the cloud north for a change.

New Yawk

We made a family trip to new York a couple weeks ago to see Carey and Joanie and take in the sights. Here is a picture of the kids fooling around on the mosaic sculpture outside Grant's Tomb:

The highlight of the weekend was probably the performance of "The 39 Steps" that we saw on Saturday. It was hilarious-- very spare set and minimal cast, but wonderfully funny. While driving in the car the other day, the kids had fun trying to re-enact one of the scenes in which a particular cast member is trying to play three roles all at once (with switches every 2-3 seconds, accompanied by a hat change).