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Calvin: "Papa, what are people made of?"

Me (momentarily forgetting that the correct answer is "star stuff"): "Oh, you know, flesh and bone..."

Calvin: "Flesh and bone and blood and Dreamland. Right?"

Me: "...that's absolutely right."

Calvin: "Sometimes the blood comes out, but Dreamland never comes out, right?"

Me: "Very, very rarely."

also

Calvin calls the thing in the back of his throat his HOOvula. This comes up rather more often than you would at first assume.

aging is boring, toys are awesome

Thanks all for the birthday wishes. I'm older! Wheeeeeee...

Birthday night we went over to see the Sun Brother's Annual Valentine's Day (barf) show, where Kevin and crew were displaying this year's electronic harvest. Mmmmm, purty.

and and AND! showing off their new toy, a CNC plasma cutter. You heard me right. It's a device the size of a queen bed with a robot arm and ubiquitous attached laptop. You lay down a sheet of 1/4" sheet steel. You draw on the laptop screen. You press go, and FIRE shoots out of the robot arm and cuts a shape into the steel, with absurd precision and a shower of sparks. They were cutting coasters, square frames with two stars (like their logo) cut in relief. Kevin uses this machine to cut the initial shapes of all of the leaves for the roses now, instead of cutting each by hand with an acetylene torch. This just in: progress smells like charred metal.

But the best part of the plasma cutter was the sticker on the robot arm: Trogdor!