AJ and I just got home from Party City. Funny. The name makes it sound as if it should be a good-time kind of place, but in fact it is the antithesis thereof. I feel kind of sullied by the whole experience. So much square footage devoted to someone else�s idea of fun. It was kind of depressing. We did, however, manage to find some decorations AJ liked for his birthday party next week. I was also sorely tempted to bring home a Spongebob pi�ata. It was just so big and yellow, definitely the happiest item in the store. But encouraging my child to beat the crap out of something in order to obtain a reward seems like the wrong message to send, so we passed on Spongebob and came home with some of those ping-pong paddles with the balls attached by an elastic cord. These were a surprisingly big hit. Not only was AJ beside himself with glee, but the cats have also been thoroughly entertained. The sound of a ping-pong ball hitting a paddle is surpassed only by the opening of a can of tuna in its ability to lure kitties at high speed.

I�m off to spend an afternoon trying to get a grip on the moral codes of vaudeville theaters, a small but important tangent in my dissertation. I�m now up to my elbows in research of the subjects least directly related to my topic, the subjects that are necessary to understand the context of the discussion, but require far more reading than the ultimate dissertation space allotted to them would suggest [Oy! After a sentence like that, it�s a good thing I�m reading and not writing today.] I love these fringe areas of my research, because they are things I never thought I�d find myself studying. Vaudeville. Labor history. Women�s political organizations. The W.P.A. The depiction of women in American literature. The variety keeps me going on those days when I just can�t face looking at the same damn pages again. I�m hoping the vaudeville research will help me regain my sense of humor.

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