Silliness

Earlier this week at a Covenant Group meeting, there was a small kitten in attendance. Besides being comforting and soft, her presence also reminded me not to take things too seriously - especially myself.

My kids also constantly remind me of the importance of play and silliness. Last week as I was driving my daughter home we had the most fun - "Daddy, you're a silly goose!" "No, Katy, YOU are a silly goose!" "No, Daddy, YOU are the silly goose." My son is very silly too, but because he's older, sometimes his silliness is a bit more calculated and weird. Just mention the word "underwear" in his presence (or in the presence of ANY 8-year-old, I'm told) and listen to the gales of laughter. Silly.

I also get to be silly at work. Yesterday during a lull in the frantic activity, my fellow geeks and I produced a bogus technical paper using what's known as context-free grammar. We had great fun with the silly titles and nonsensical phrases. Try it - it's free and funny, and honestly these meaningless papers read about the same as many serious ones!

The really silly part is how we e-mailed this ridiculous paper to one of our former professors at the Naval Postgraduate School, with a vague reference to a nonexistent journal. Hopefully he'll have a sense of humor about it and not take us too seriously.

I sure don't.