So children are great things. I mean, people. That is, Wifey accompanied me today to the country estate where I had to take care of a few things, such as the rent and forgetting to cut myself a new tenugui from the bolt of cloth for tomorrow's praqctice. And on the corner of Crescent and Ditmars I saw a Chinese father showing his daughter how to tang qin, for her future subway or Julliard career, massaging her feet as she slowly strummed, sitting under a tree on the sidewalk.

Meanwhile, as I was doing some tax planning for next year, just to possibly off-set the additional thus-far-untaxed stipendary income this year, I see that the IRS has prepared information all about how you can still claim an exemption for kidnapped children, as long as the kid is still presumed alive, and wasn't kidnapped by a relative, on whose tax form the kid is probably being claimed as an exemption for. Or something.