Today is COLUMNISTS Day.

connect
One of the neat things about being a writer married to a writer is that mundane conversations can sometimes turn out to be quirkily amusing. This weekend, for instance, Dean was telling me about his trip to the barbershop with Sage.


"She sat in the chair next to me," he related, "and the barber-folk marveled at her growth."


"The 'barber-folk'?" I echoed.


"Yes," he replied.


"They 'marveled'?" I had to clarify.


"Yes," he frowned, puzzled. "Why are you repeating everything I said?"


"Next you're going to tell me they were 'lost in amaze'," I said, giving in to a fit of giggles over his so-literary conversational style. For the life of him, he couldn't see what was so funny.


commune
Rei has a very interesting anecdote about the Child-Goddesses of Kathmandu. Her synesthetique is a very well-written, fun, and fascinating blog; and you ought to check it out here.


comprehend
I found this neat script that provides a dictionary definition for nearly every word on your site. (Particularly useful for the entry just below this one!) Go ahead-- double-click a word on this page and find meaning.

TRIVIA QUIZ
What is acid rain and where does it come from?


answer to Wednesday's question
Boeing's 747 assembly plant in Everett, Washington is the largest building in the world. Although it is actually composed of three factory buildings, the first building alone measures about 5.5 million square feet, far outstripping the previous record-holder, the 1.3 million square-foot Pentagon. The total floor space of the three Boeing buildings tops 12 million square feet, and each hangar door is only slightly smaller than a professional football field.


Big brains: Alex, Pauline, Ariel, and Charles