How to Get a Reputation

A reputation you might not want, that is.

#2 Son has come up with a new ambition. Last year, he got kicked out of co-op. Next year, he want to be the first person kicked off of the swim team at the aquatic club.

He says he want to join next year, go to practices, fake sick for all of the swim meets, not participate in city meet, and go to their awesome parties. That's what he really wants, is to get to go to the parties.

Then, at the last party, he wants to do something so bad he gets kicked out. He's not sure what it is, but I have already been the mean mom and told him no.

Especially since the same person who is the disciplinarian at co-op is also the parent coordinator for the swim team. She is a friend, and I can't do that to her.

It's bad enough the kid keeps me up at night, I don't want to do that to anyone else.


Today is

Cheese Sacrifice Purchase Day (Buy your cheese that will be sacrificed on Cheese Sacrifice Day, and all I can find is that supposedly, to get rid of mice, you sacrifice cheese -- perhaps by baiting a trap with it? -- and that any cheese to be so used is to be purchased today.)*

Emancipation Day -- Bermuda

Festival of the Polymorphously Perverse

National Anthem Day -- Romania

National Chili Dog Day

National Lasagna Day

National Thai Language Day -- Thailand

Norway Day -- Norwegian-Americans

Olavsoka -- Faroe Islands (opening of Logting, or Parliament)

Oslok Eve -- Norway

Prague Folklore Days -- through Aug. 1

Rain Day Festival -- Waynesburg, Pennsylvania (yes, it has rained at 111 out of the 135 observances of this festival; this year's Rain Day bet is with the Mayor of Houston, Texas)

St. Olaf's Day (patron carvers, difficult marriage, kings, Norway) -- sometimes associated with Thor's Day

*It gives me an excuse to use this quote, though: "A cheese may disappoint. It may be dull, it may be naive, it may be oversophisticated. Yet it remains cheese, milk's leap toward
immortality." Clifton Fadiman


Anniversaries Today

Mary, Queen of Scots, marries Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, 1565
Charles, Prince of Wales, marries Lady Diana Spencer, 1981


Birthdays Today

Wanya Morris, 1973
Julian McMahon, 1968
Martina McBride, 1966
Marilyn Quayle, 1949
Peter Jennings, 1938
Elizabeth Dole, 1936
Paul Taylor, 1930
Melvin Belli, 1907
Clara Bow, 1905
Dag Hammarskjold, 1905
Stanley Kunitz, 1905
Benito Mussolini, 1883
Alexis de Tocqueville, 1805


Today in History

King Olaf II fights and dies trying to regain his Norwegian throne from the Danes, 1030
James VI is crowned King of Scotland at Stirling, 1567
English naval forces under command of Lord Charles Howard and Sir Francis Drake defeat the Spanish Armada off the coast of Gravelines, France, 1588
John Graves Simcoe decides to build a fort and settlement at Toronto, having sailed into the bay there, 1793
Inauguration of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, 1836
In Tipperary, an unsuccessful nationalist revolt against British rule is put down by police, 1848
The First Hague Convention is signed, 1899
Sir Robert Baden Powell sets up the Brownsea Island Scout camp in Poole Harbour on the south coast of England; this is regarded as the foundation of the Scouting movement, 1907
The International Atomic Energy Agency is established, 1957
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President of France François Mitterrand sign the agreement to build a tunnel under the English Channel, 1987
The film Cry Freedom is seized by South African authorities, 1988
Astronomers announce the discovery of Eris, the largest dwarf planet in the solar system, 2005