Yesterday's post got cut off midway through because I had to run off to make a quick lunch for the crew. Then we headed up to a nearby landmark called the Saleve with a few friends who had proposed us a fun walk in the country. This is it:

I had told our pals that our kids weren't used to really long walks (and don't like them much) and maybe we should take it easy the first time out. We used to go walking sometimes back in Ouaga, but haven't done much since we got back to France. They had said this was no problem- we'd take the cable car to the top and hike down.

But it was only about an hour into the walk that I began to realise that we had radically different definitions of "fun". My idea of a fun afternoon is a gently sloping path through a wooded glade. Perhaps you observe some forest wildlife and occasionally stop to admire the view.

But their idea of fun seems to involve extreme danger and discomfort. Don't get me wrong: I CAN scramble down narrow, steep, rock-strewn paths that will throw you to a rocky death 100 meters below if you make one false move. In fact, I would willingly do it all day, if I were, for example, fleeing for my life before advancing Nazi troops.

It just wasn't any FUN. In fact, it was three solid hours of not fun.

I would SO rather have gone to a Renaissance Faire...or a museum...or the supermarket...or the dentist for a nice root canal.

But, as you can see, I lived to complain about it and that's what counts, right?

Here, for your edification, is the original Muse video of their song that's on the Twilight soundtrack (as mentioned in my previous post). This is NOT excerpts for Twilight. In fact, even though Twilight is a movie about blood sucking vampires, it is far less scary than this disturbing video.

After we listened to "Supermassive Black Hole" in the car on Saturday night, I turned to the kids and said "You know what? Actually, the original title of this song was "Stellar-mass Black Hole", but they didn't think it sounded cool enough. So they upgraded it to "Intermediate-mass", but that sounded even more underwhelming. So they ended up going with "Supermassive". True story."

They didn't believe me and even threatened to take away all my copies of "New Scientist"'.
I know it's hard on teens, having a Nerd Mom. That's why I didn't go on to tell them my thoughts on the lyrics of the song. For example: "Glaciers melting in the dead of night"?
Oooh! Scary! WAY scarier than "Glaciers melting in the daytime due to solar radiation, as glaciers tend to do".