Yes, Hannah has lost her first tooth. We weren't able to recover the actual tooth--I suspect it went the way of the pizza she had been eating, no harm done. Being the cautious, investigative sort, she knew that her father had also had to resort to a note to the Tooth Fairy attesting to the existence of a missing tooth, and asked to see that note so that she could build upon the family precedent. We assured her that the Tooth Fairy would accept a note of her own, and sure enough, she was greeted by a pound under her pillow the next day, which she used to buy a super slinky.

Another milestone this last week was our first pantomime, a British Christmas tradition with roots that go way, way back. The pantomime is a play, often a musical, with lavish costumes, a man dressed up as a woman, really silly jokes--often about the audience's home town--and audience participation. When the villain appears, the audience is supposed to boo, when the baddies chase the heroes, the audience is supposed to warn the heroes--"he's behind you!!" It was great fun, and we'll have to find one of the few theater companies that perform them in the States next year.

In other news, apparently Heathrow airport isn't as accommodating as the FAA in relaxing restrictions on carry-on luggage. While American air carriers will now allow small knives, scissors and knitting needles on board, Heathrow still prohibits passengers from carrying the following in their hand luggage:

Scissors
Razor blades
Knives with blades of any length
Household cutlery
Tweezers
Hypodermic needles (unless required for medical reasons)
Tools Toy/replica guns (metal or plastic)
Catapults
Knitting needles
Sporting bats
Billiard, snooker or pool cues
Darts

Now we're all on board, as it were, with prohibiting toy guns, but we'd like to see the carry-on bag that can hold a catapult.

Last year we bought Adobe Illustrator CS and installed it on my computer at home. It was for a future project, and while I opened it a few times, I didn't have much time--what with the hospital stay, the pre-Wales chaos, etc.--to use it much. It was pretty much automatically included in the migration of all the stuff from my old computer to my new computer, which we brought with us.

Recently Cliff tried opening Illustrator and found that it was impossible. The Illustrator icon would appear on my computer, bounce up and down a few dozen times, and then disappear in a discouraged poof. I started scouring Mac and Adobe discussion boards for people who had had similar problems. I learned that many had experienced the same type of problem, no one had managed to solve it. I tried repairing permissions, clearing preferences, using different user accounts, nothing worked. Then, on some random discussion board, I happened upon someone with similar problem, who mentioned that their computer had been accidentally set to "Cardiff" time on its Time Zone identifier. When they switched to London time, suddenly all the Adobe products were happy again. My machine is set to "Cardiff" intentionally, as Cardiff is indeed the closest major city, and we share its time zone. I switched to "London", and Illustrator launched and happily asked me what I wanted to do.

So while I am thrilled at the fact that my software now works, I want to know why Adobe cares which time zone I'm in, and what have they got against Cardiff?????

Hope everyone is well and had a safe and happy holiday. We celebrated by attending the New Year's Day concert at Brangwyn Hall, where the Chamber Orchestra of Wales played a selection of waltzes, light opera fare, and some fun polkas, including the Cuckoo Polka and the Anvil Polka, made all the more interesting when the percussionist's mallet self-destructed towards the end. At one point the master of ceremonies asked a few children onstage, and of course Hannah was asked to come up as well. When she told everyone she was from New York, she blew the wind out of the sails of the next little boy, who was visiting all the way from Plymouth. As a thank-you gift, the girls were given sticker books connected with the new Narnia movie, sparking a fascination with the Narnia story. She has been writing/illustrating stories about witches and princesses in Narnia, using the stickers.

On Jan. 2nd (my birthday), Cliff pulled off an amazing feat and threw me a surprise birthday party, inviting friends from Hannah's school, the neighborhood and my knitting group. We enjoyed pizza and champagne and birthday cake, and fun was had by all. They sang Happy Birthday in Welsh!

For those of you who are curious about differences in culture, I have two items. The first is the local custom of greeting people by asking "Are you all right?", which always makes me wonder if I look particularly ill, but it seems it's just a way of inquiring "How are you?" The second is the interesting British custom of offering tea to workmen. Apparently you're supposed to offer tea (and, I guess, biscuits) to workmen who come to your door. This can get extreme--our neighbor Sarah had her bathroom remodeled just before Christmas, and the crew seemed to be out on the patio or front garden having tea breaks more often than they were indoors actually working. I'm just not used to this; when GDC Plumbing sent out Kevin, the plumber, to work on our boiler in November, I realized with a shock once he had left that I had quite forgotten to offer him tea--I called the office to apologize. They got a good laugh out of that.

We remain impressed with the law enforcement community post-break-in. About a week after the Crime Scene Investigator dusted for fingerprints we were visited by a pair of officers who were just checking in to see whether we had "heard anything" and to generally follow up. All very polite and professional. And just this week we received a five-page customer satisfaction questionnaire in English and Welsh on our general experience with the police. If anyone has reported a break-in in the US, I'd love to compare notes.