To my 4yr old, Daddy being unemployed means Daddy is home to play with her more, especially when her older sister goes off to school in the morning. “You want to play the Shakespeare game?” she asks me.

“How do you play?” I ask.

“You find a doll to be the Prince, and then I find a doll to be Miranda, and we are on the island. Wait, I’ll get the book.” I’m not kidding. She runs into the family room and comes back holding my copy of Manga Shakespeare’s Tempest, which I did not even realize she knew I had.

So we begin acting out the story. I am using my Shakespeare action figure, although he is actually playing Ferdinand. Miranda is played by a blue Tinkerbell fairy. Ariel is a stuffed unicorn, and Caliban is the dog from the Simpsons that she got in a Burger King Happy Meal.

But soon I’m shaken from my private little world when the reality of playing with a 4yr old comes down around me.

“So Ferdinand is chained up by Prospero’s magic and forced to carry the firewood to prove his love for Miranda,” I read. I turn up little Shakespeare’s arms and make him carry a Lincoln Log.

“But then her mommy comes and breaks his chains and sets him free!” my daughter says, waving a stuffed ballerina doll.

“Wait, whose mommy?”

“Miranda’s mommy.”

“Miranda’s mommy is not in the story, sweetie.”

“She’s been in the garden out front. She breaks the chains and Ferdinand is free!”

Oh, of course that’s where she’s been. 🙂

(trying new posting software…)

Driving home after a party on a dark and stormy night, trying to take a left onto a main road:

Geek: “See anything coming on that side?”

Mrs Geek: “Just trees. “

Geek: “Yeah but has Birnam Wood come to Dunsinane?”

Mrs Geek: “huh?”

Geek: “Never mind. “

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Hi gang, those of you paying attention to that Twitter stream over on the left already know this, but as of earlier this week I’ve officially joined the ranks of the unemployed.  Hopefully it won’t be for long, but it was certainly a disruptive experience. Most notably it took away from me the computer I’ve been using for the last several years. So in theory I’m not going to have more time on my hands to catch up on those book reviews and giveaways I’ve been promising.  But to do that I need to breathe a little life into these old clunkers I’ve had lying around my office collecting dust. Oh, and if anybody’s hiring software architects in Massachusetts, particularly North Shore region, drop me a line :).  Rails, Java and other backend web stuff a specialty. 🙂

Not to be outdone by her artistic 6yr old older sister, my 4yr old is now in on the act.  While working at the craft table she shoves paper and crayons in my hand, saying “Daddy, can you draw us the As You Like It picture?”

I asked her which picture she meant.  She repeated, “The As You Like It picture.”

I still don’t know what that means.   I think I read them AYLI once, and they have not seen it.  They’ve heard about it, briefly, over the summer – Kerry and I went to see it in Boston.  I may have mentioned taking them.  But she surely has no idea of the plot.

Today during game time we got out “Don’t Break The Ice”, where you have to make a grid of like 64 white ice cubes and then take turns smashing it.  “We don’t have to play the original game,” she tells me.  “We can just build stuff with the ice.  We can make a castle, or a dinosaur..or Shakespeare!”  She always wants to make “Shakespeare things”.

Later that evening, during story time, the 6yr old is reading an Angelina Ballerina book.  That’s the one where the mice are all ballet dancers.  She brings the book over to me, pointing to a certain page.  “Does that say Macbeth?” she asks.  Odd, because she is not pointing to any words, she’s pointing to the picture itself.

I look closer.

Sure enough, the scene takes place back stage in a theatre or dressing room of some sort.  On the wall is indeed a poster for Macbeth, which she has spotted (even though the artist has only sketched the letters in partially).