I dropped Ellie off at school. She seemed to really enjoy introducing everyone to her new brother. She also took a little scrapbook with pictures from her trip and her teacher showed it to the class. She seemed to like that too. None of the other kids knew what the snow was which was funny.

That's awesome and cute.

I think the trend with sex offenders is moving towards GPS tracking. As a parent I understand and appreciate all attempts to keep sex offenders away from schools and daycare centers.

But I wonder about individual cases. The incidents where sex offenders kidnap, rape or murder children are the cases that stick in our memories and frighten us the most but aren't most of the victims found in much more opportunistic circumstances? (i.e. kids of girlfriends, family members, churches, etc.)

Not that I want to take a chance with my own kids, and I admit I don't know the statistics, but I tend to think that most pedophiles aren't necesarrily violent and usually try to take jobs or get close to their intended victims through other means. The most horrible cases I saw back in Ohio were the boyfriends of the mothers.

Stephanie it's great to hear that you and the kids are doing well!

Yesterday the director of the first year research and writing program seemed to propose that we librarians take over the research portion of the class when the program added another two credits (for which the current profs would get extra $). I waited to hear how she proposed we be compensated, but as far as I could tell the proposal only included more pay for her people. We are supposed to do it out of the goodness of our hearts. Our hearts are wee and black, and so I suggested they use their TAs in better ways than they are currently.

Stephanie, I'm glad everything is going so well.

Happy Birthday, Beverly!!!

The incidents where sex offenders kidnap, rape or murder children are the cases that stick in our memories and frighten us the most but aren't most of the victims found in much more opportunistic circumstances? (i.e. kids of girlfriends, family members, churches, etc.)

Yes, and not surprisingly so, given that the same is true of ALL rape cases. Strangers lurking in dark alleys waiting to pounce are pretty rare.

On the one hand, I see the benefits (at least to the system) of clustering. On the other, it seems like it sort of encourages recidivism! Maybe if there were designated "no-child" neighborhood. Then it'd be all noisy college students, grumpy singles, and sex offenders. There's a fun idea.

I seem to remember from writing my paper that there are certain categories of sex offenders who are essentially guaranteed to offend again, but that they are the minority of all registered sex offenders. Also, that they registries generally include a much broader range of offenders that those with high recidivism rates.

Still, in this case, clustering sex offenders seems like a really bad idea, especially if it's in the same apartment building.

One problem is that many people are classed as sex offenders because they had consensual sex with someone under 14 when they were teenagers themselves. The law doesn't differentiate between them and a 40-year-old who had sex with a 10-year-old. That's why a number of states are passing "Romeo and Juliet" laws that decriminalize sex between, say, a 17-year-old and a 14-year-old. Georgia passed a law a couple of years ago that banned sex offenders from living within X feet of any place children might congregate, including proposed bus stops. This often mean that elderly sex offenders had to move out of homes their families had owned for years. There was almost no place in the state a convicted sex offender could live.

Susan's kid breaks tech, my kids break antiques. Grrrrr. Owen has broken the wood desk piece on my great-grandmother's side-by-side bookcase secretary that dates from the 1890s. It's fixable--they piece just needs to be glued but he's chipped the finish on it and I don't know if it will require refinishing the entire piece or if they can just do the pull-down desk.

I'm going to have to get a professional in here to take a look at it.

With all the toys in this house he wants to climb into the bookcase and "play astronaut" because it has a glass door (an irreplacable curved glass door, I might add) because he can stand up in it and pretend it's a spaceship.

Someone shoot me.

Better to spot refinish if they can, Cash. If you could magically transport me there, I could fix it for you. MM, where the hell's that transporter?

Does the piece have a lock? The keys from that era are pretty standard.

Someone shoot me.

With a ray gun?

Ducks and runs.