Isn't Every Day Labor Day?

If you've ever wondered what it was we have to thank Grover Cleveland for, it's Labor Day. If it wasn't for him, we'd be celebrating May Day, which is what the communists celebrate, and I imagine we might still be in the Cold War as a result.

Millions of brutal deaths aside, anything cold sounds nice right about now. The family wisely spent the Labor Day afternoon at someone else's house today. Someone sober and thoughtful. Someone smart. Someone who has an air conditioner. And a pool. Someone like Great Aunt Barbara, who enjoys a good champagne pomegranate cocktail.

One is not supposed to wear white after Labor Day. Makes sense to me. In Canada, one is not supposed to wear Green after Remembrance Day, and that's just plain outrageous. Also, one is supposed to wear a straw cowboy hat up until Labor Day, and a felt hat after that and until Memorial Day. This is just plain bogus as all of my felt hats are white.

I love any holiday where you're actually supposed to do the opposite of what the day is named after. Labor Day, you take the day off. Terrific! I know there's some joke in here about not facing east on Easter, but I'm just not feeling it right now.

My brother, Dain, has enrolled in a college course! It's some business class. I asked him what he's learned so far (it's only been one class) and he explained to me the difference between a "job" and a "career", which is good to know. Unfortunately, his definition of a career required me to go back to college, administrate responsibility to a bunch of other people, (these are called "employees") and then demand I make a lot more money. So tomorrow I go back to my job.

Speaking of higher education, the Little Ditchman has a new word. (You heard it here first, folks! -as I compete with the Mrs. for the blogspace on our daughter's most recent cuteness.) The word is awesome!

No, that's the word! "AWESOME!" except it sounds more like "Aiysumm", which is a much better word. We're not really sure how she picked it up -it must have been something we were saying. The other day we were showing her a new toy and we said "Look! Isn't that fun!" and she said, "Fun!" and then one of us said, "Awesome!" and then she said, "Aiysumm!" So it's a crack up. Whenever you say "fun", she say's "aiysumm". I wish there was some way to do those little sound bite things on the blog like Lileks does, then I'd record her and play it for you on a loop. But I can't, so you'll just have to come over.

A couple other words tossed around the table (by the adults) today were "inertia" and "abstract". "Inertia" is one of those, you-know-it-when-you-see-it sort of things, so it was hard to grasp, and then "abstract" just couldn't be explained concretely. We all think we're such smart adults until we have to describe a word with other words, which seems to come so naturally to our kid. Oh, give me the good old days of being a kid. Something was either "fun" or it wasn't, and if it was "fun" it was "awesome". Interestingly, "fun" is generally an abstract concept and "inertia" usually has something to do with the "fun" taking place, but when you were a kid if you were at all aware of it, you weren't having fun at all.

So the inertia of another work week has us within its grasp, and guess what? Tomorrow is already hump day! Aiysumm!