Headlines

I never thought I would see the day that Chesterfield County was in the national news. And I really never thought it would be because of this.

Things I Learned Last Weekend

• Purple frosting is harder to make than you might think.

• You can't expect a bunch of kids to sit still for more than thirty seconds. Just leave the movie playing and accept the chaos.

• When putting sprinkles on five dozen cupcakes, put the cupcakes in the sink first. Sprinkles have amazing and mysterious aerodynamic properties that cause them to end up everywhere if not carefully contained. (See picture above for the results of sprinkles properly contained.)
  

• The color pink has a sneaking fascination for every girl everywhere.

• There is absolutely nothing that should not be in a librarian's job description. Give "pony rides" to shrieking little girls? Check. Simultaneously keep an eye on ten preteens with bottles of colored sand and ponder the question of what on earth makes Patrick Dempsey so popular? Check. Bake and frost five dozen cupcakes? Check.

• There is a princess for everyone. (We had a Mulan, a Belle, a Cinderella, a Sleeping Beauty, two Jasmines, a Tinkerbell (we'll leave aside the question of whether she is actually a princess), and three generic princesses in attendance on Saturday.)

• Everyone should have a tiara. (Mine is purple - thanks G!)

• If you're going to bake and frost five dozen cupcakes, you really ought to do it more than twelve hours before Passover begins. And not schedule a Princess Party between the baking and sunset.
  

On being a historian

Well, the footnotes are done.

Now, if I can just get the historiography added to the introduction.

And do something about my tendency towards passive dating style in my citations. (Passive dating style. No kidding. I didn't even know there was such a thing, but if David Carr says my dating is passive, then it must be passive.)

And if The Historian actually accepts this for publication this time around, it might even be worth it.