Toddlers are suicidal. Not in an intentional woe sort of way, but in an extreme sports sort of way. They do grow out of it. Some and mostly.

My theory on this is that babies' & toddlers' complete lack of self-preservation instincts is an evolutionary pressure in favor of good parenting. If you can keep a human child from inadvertantly throwing themself headfirst off a cliff before their fifth birthday, you clearly have a set of first-rate genes that should be passed on.

I don't have a child (I wish I did), but I do have a dog. I find dogs and toddlers to be equal in the suicidal department. I spend a lot of time pulling things out of Mona's mouth that she picked up off the sidewalk. Most of the time, I win. Other times, we spend an hour at the vet.

My mind is elsewhere today (apt treatment tomorrow, still some work to do to prep), but I really need to get through a pile of new work.

ION, we have had a solid week of good days at our home. Much rejoycing on my part. I've been trying to really just give mac daily attention and praise, rather then praising him directly for the streak. Apparently if I say something like "wow, we've had a great week, no really hard days, no hurting" it builds up this expectation in his mind that seems unmaintainable and he short-circuits and sabotages things to release that pressure he feels to keep being "perfect". Of course perfection is not the expectaion, but his brain can't see the difference.

ION, we have had a solid week of good days at our home.

YAY.

Yeah, a '[Number] Hours Since Our Last Acting Out' sign would probably not be a mood brightener.

Allegedly, this is even better than pneumatic tubes!

Someday, A Tiny Subway Will Deliver Your Groceries

When we showed you the design study for the Urban Mole subterranean delivery system, we had no idea how much time and effort people have spent figuring out how to deliver small parcels through underground tubes.

In the days after we wrote about the Urban Mole last week, our inbox filled with emails from people saying, essentially, “Hey! You oughtta check out my idea…” Of the proposals, the Cargo Tunnel really caught our attention. The guys behind it — a former Intel employee and a UC-Berkeley professor among them — say they’ve developed a miniature tunnel boring machine (TBM) that can create the network of necessary tunnels without disrupting life above ground.

When the mini Big Dig is done, Cargo Tunnel would deliver 18″ x 18″ packages along a tiny electric subway with tunnels four feet wide in a system that dwarfs previous underground transit systems like Prague’s Pneumatic Post. Lateral tunnels will carry the packages to subscriber’s homes or businesses, where itty-bitty forklifts will lift them from the subway.

“We’ve been quietly working on this project for several years, working out the details of how to actually build the system for a reasonable cost,” project co-founder Russ Tilleman told Wired.com. “We know that Cargo Tunnel will be good for online shopping, mail delivery, garbage pickup and recycling, but there will likely be a lot more things that people figure out to do with it.”

Among those uses are restaurant delivery services where diners can send back their plates to be cleaned or a dedicated subway for briefcases so workers could bike to work without excess baggage. Tilleman envisions a world where entrepreneurs can set up a small business anywhere without having to rent a desirable storefront in a high-rent area.

That's great, msbelle.

I have to confess that it took me a while to figure out why Ryan is wearing a sweater.....

Yay, msbelle! A streak of good days is nice thing.

I just made ribboned hair clips out of this ribbon: [link] I made one for Grace and one for me. I'm a nerd.

Spent the last half hour with a marmalade kitten perched on my shoulder. His name was George. I think the foster-er probably has takers for 3 of the 4 kittens now.

I am not one. But they are cute.

Aww cutiepants hair ribbons!

Also, totally yay msbelle. Take 'em while you got 'em. I totally understand mac's feeling the pressure of good day streaks, though. I'm just glad you're getting some breaks.

Today I resolve to be crazy productive. My new printers are both bigger than my old printers and I had to do some massive reconfiguring of my office. Which is fine, because it was a total wreck after being the junk room for the summer while we were gone. So now I'm restoring it, slowly, to order. It's a big task and yesterday I got a little overwhelmed.

In fact, I got downright weepy, because I found some correspondence between us and our former landlord, who was all kinds of wonderful and is long since passed away. Which, yay for nice memories. But seriously, people, that was from our first house in Kansas. Like, a decade ago. I don't need that document in my filing cabinet.

Anyway, today will involve some going through the house files, so that should actually be fun, because house likes carrots!