Kjel.org traveled to Bellevue this weekend to celebrate the 4th birthday of a young man named Chuckles, who just so happens to be my sister’s boy. The party was at the Little Gym, and was just about perfect for some rambunctious 3 and 4 year olds. The Little Gym staff was great, and plus, they handled all the cleanup and activities, leaving the parents free to enjoy themselves too. It’s the Chuck-E-Cheese business model: there’s a lot of money to be made if you have a product that removes stress from a parent.

Jr. didn’t have as much fun at the party as I thought he would. The party was at a bad time for him (he really needed a nap), but I still thought he would quite possibly turn into Captain Insane-O and scream with joy while running around in circles with the other kids. Maybe he knew that’s what daddy was expecting, and was trying to throw me off, because once the other kids started playing Stinkboy turned all quiet and anti-social. He actually walked out of the gym into the other room and closed the door behind him, grabbed a book off of a table, sat down and read to himself for a bit, all while ten other kids were yelling and playing in the main room. Weird.

Throughout the weekend he was a very good boy for Grandma, which he knows earns him points with the CEO. Excellent work young man. Your “bye-bye” call when she was leaving was a particularly nice touch.

On another note, Kjel.org gained first-hand knowledge of the infernal dots this weekend:

Anti-tailgating strategy backfires on Interstate 5
An anti-tailgating strategy on Interstate 5 backfired in the form of unexpected traffic jams, state transportation officials have discovered. Officials from the state Transportation Department and Washington State Patrol planned to meet today to reassess the $35,000 Two Dots To Safety pilot program on a two-mile stretch of the freeway north of this Thurston County town. . . Road crews painted dots 80 feet apart and posted signs telling drivers to stay at least two dots — 160 feet — from the vehicle ahead, based on the traffic safety principle of being at least two seconds behind another vehicle when going 60 mph. Long backups developed Saturday, the day after the program began, when drivers slowed down because of heavy traffic and continued to maintain the two-dot separation, although that much distance was not necessary at slower speeds, said Lisa Mordock, a Transportation Department spokeswoman

The slowdown didn’t have anything to do with anyone actually “maintaining a two-dot separation” as Ms. Mordock suggests. The back-up was because everyone on the road was looking at the dots and thinking WTF is this?, and we all know Northwest drivers are incapable of driving past something even mildly interesting without slowing down to look. Oh wow, there is a guy with a flat tire. I’ve never seen that before; maybe I’ll slow down to 45 so I can to get a better view.