Look, up in the eighth grade!

I guess it's been a while since I last made an entry here.

We were reading the Tiny Titans comic that she likes so much and there was an ad for Supergirl: Cosmic adventures in the 8th grade. Lily said "Who's that?" in a voice of hushed reverence.

I said "That's Supergirl," and Lily repeated in the same hushed voice, "I didn't know she wore a skirt!" I  ordered up a copy to read to Lily.  ($1.61 plus s&h from a Goodwill shop that sells on Amazon.)

If I'd known that Lily would be so impressed by a skirt, I would have started wearing one.

It's a really cute little book, though rather above Lily's comprehension at this point. It's nice to see something squarely aimed at girls that A.) Isn't full of goddamn rainbows and ponies and B.) doesn't talk down to them.

A teenaged Supergirl sneaks aboard a rocket to earth, where she has to keep a secret identity as an 8th grader until Superman can figure out how to get her home. She finds out that superpowers really don't help you weather the vicissitudes of middle school.

The character designs were really cute. I liked the gawky, gangly Supergirl, and her best friend Lena Luthor. Lily had trouble with some of the concepts, like why Supergirl's two best friends didn't get along. I like it. It's got some nice understated humor along with some silliness that Lily can appreciate. ("Daddy, go to the page where she gets the power to elongate her toes!") Also, any comic with Streaky the Supercat in it is okay in my book.

Jen has expressed some concern that Lily is really interested in comics as bedtime stories now though, so I think Supergirl will be our last purchase for a while. I imagine her annoyance came to a head when she had to break up a fight about who was the best superhero.

While we're talking about dorky stuff, I've been playing Akinator at the computer whenever I have a few minutes. It's a program that plays twenty questions with you and tries to guess which fictional or real person you might be thinking of.  It got Marc Dacascos (the chairman for Iron Chef America) after 16 questions. I was rather amazed. The thing has a huge database on which to draw, and sometimes I think it's on the wrong track (like when we had established that my character was a real person and then it asked if his skin was green) and then it makes the correct guess. It really is an amazingly awesome waste of time.

Also, I had this dream the other night and Jen wanted me to post it here at my blog:

I was showering at a crowded state park down near Philly.) After I got out, I realized that I didn't have any clothes, but Jen suggested going to the Lost & Found and grabbing something there. When we got there, they had the lost & found clothes hanging on the tree, and they had every article of clothing that I had ever torn or misplaced. I said to the guy, "Hey those are mine!" and he was like, "I'll sell 'em to ya."

Also, today marks the two year anniversary of my departure from my last job, where I worked in Competitive Intelligence. I really enjoyed it there for a long time, and then I got a new supervisor who wanted a new team of her own people, and bit by bit, she got that. And it's strange how a job can go from your dream job to a place where the only thing worse than working there is not working there. (Unemployment sucks, no matter how bad your job is)