Saturday, and my husband is about to head off for 5 hours at work. It's almost
enough to make me appreciate unemployment. Actually, though, he hasn't had to go
in on a weekend for awhile; today's stint is part of getting ready for the
presentation he has to do in Korea, which is apparently a fairly big deal. He'll
be explaining a very complex concept to people who know the field but whose
English may be questionable -- I think 'challenging' is a fair description. And
no, I am not being the sort of horrible person who goes to another country and
expects everyone there to speak my language; as it happens, English is the
official language for this conference.
Meanwhile, I need to spend my
day preparing for the visit in other ways. I should start cleaning the house,
before the friends who are cat-sitting see its normal state, and I need to look up
both the local currency exchange rate and current conversion, so we can buy a
converter for Rudder's laptop.
I also need to figure out what
presents to take for the kids of the cousins we'll be seeing. The 1.5 year-old
should be easy enough, but buying for the two girls, 6 and 4, will be a little
more challenging. I don't want to buy toy makeup kits. I don't want to buy
Barbies, even though I don't have particularly strong feelings against them
(except when they say, "Math is hard!"). Last time I bought the older one a
href="http://www.getrealgirl.com/">Get Real Girl and the younger one a
href="http://www.groovygirls.com/mt.htm">Groovy Girl, so I think I'll avoid
dolls for the moment. I hear the older one is into American Girls now, but those
are a bit out of my price range. Maybe I'll buy some of the cool beading or other
art kits one local toy store has, but I should avoid anything the youngest can
choke on. Or there's always books, which have the advantage of not taking much
room in a suitcase.