Owen and I both have Edward Cullen complexions and burn in minutes. DH and Liv have a bit of olive tone and can stay out a bit longer.

Just had an incredibly frustrating half hour wherein mac and babysitter were not where I always meet them, mac's afterschool says he had not been picked up yet and the babysitter was unreachable and her family did not know for sure if she had gone to get mac, only that she had gone somewhere.

Turns out he HAD been picked up and they were on the train en route, just running a bit late.

Because I had gone above ground to make phone calls and await phone calls, it was way later than normal when I went back down to check again. By that time mac was getting worried because he had expected me to be there waiting.

Gah - worried noodles all around.

Oh and I called back the afterschool to let them know their computer system of seeing if kids are there or not is unreliable and when a parent calls they should also have someone check with the room teacher. The desk attendent failed to understand my frustration, so I guess I'll be calling the Director tomorrow.

Yeah, misplacing kids is something they should not be doing.

One of my friends took her kids down to launch and met Megan McArthur's mother. Said she was a very proud mommy.

They also died young and wrinkled.

At least a couple of times a summer, I'd get stuck somewhere with no shade and have to spend a day or so lying in a dark room wearing a soft t-shirt.

Of course they died young and wrinkled. But if you were a farm hand in northern Europe and you burned through your clothes you couldn't really lie in the dark for a while.

Humans were light-skinned, outside all day, and didn't have spf clothing for a long long time. Either the sun is worse or people somehow functioned without modern textiles. Maybe the "not bathing so much" somehow helped -- a lifetime's worth of sweat and the like provided nature's sunscreen?

The Norwegians were at lat 62 00 N, though. The Greeks, not so light skinned, were at 39 00 N. St. Paul is at 44 00 N.

ETA: Georgia (US)? 32 00 N. Same as Tel Aviv.

ETA2: Am now totally obsessed with cities by latitude. Send help. [link]

Stephen King used both "bathing suit" and "suntan lotion" in this week's EW column.

Athens is further north than San Francisco? Surprising.

Ooh. Interesting, flea! My ancestors were up in 55 and 53ish--Ireland and Denmark. I'm now just finally moved up to 47 (Seattle), which is suiting me much better than DC (38)

Interesting. My ancestors, at least as far back as I can trace, were pretty much all with a few degrees of 50. I've lived most of my life around 40.

My Irish ancestors are around the 50 degree mark, but my paternal grandfather came from way up north at 65 degrees (Sweden, at the top of the bay between Sweden and Finland).