What's in a Name?

Amanda and I Skyped with my mom tonight and we spent some time discussing the names of our future children. One name that we discussed for a while was Mac.

I like it. I've never known a Mac, the name is short, and there aren't many possibilities for misspellings. The few characters I've read about (or played in video games) have been decent guys for the most part. Finally, the word play with the name would be incredible!

Our son would be named Mac Fehr (pronounced "fair"). Because of my small percentage of Scottish ancestry he could even be known as MacFehr! Furthermore, even better stuff would happen if he became a father someday. As Amanda noted, if he had a male child, the child would be a MacFehrson! :-D

I also noted one other thing about a future son of ours. If he had children at some point, he would become a Mac Daddy.

Thank you, I'll be here all week.

But seriously -- Mac is an awesome name. We'll have to consider it if we have a son in the future.

Age and Library Programs

Over the past few days I've had to deal with quite a few library patrons who have been, or will be, mad at me. My offence? Not allowing their underage children into programs.

When our program staff members come up with ideas for programs, they set the age range of the program themselves. They have an extremely good idea of the attention span and general knowledge required for the program, and their experience gives them a good idea of what an average child of a given age is capable of. The people I work with are talented and experienced, and I know they extend the lower limit of the age range down to an age that likely will require a fair bit of assistance.

Nonetheless, we have been overwhelmed with attempted registrations and requests for special treatment made for younger children over the past few days. I cannot (and would not anyway) go into specific details, but each of the parents involved read the program description, and felt that the age range, for whatever reason, should not apply to their child. I found myself wondering today if these same parents will argue with the government to let their children start driving a year early, or if they would expect a teacher to allow an underage student into a class simply because an older sibling is already there.

Maybe I'm being over-sensitive, but it seems like a real lack of respect for the library and its staff -- almost as if these parents feel we're stupid and randomly pick the age range for our programs. *sigh*

Again though, if this is my biggest complaint of the day, my life is going pretty darned well.

Oh, Amanda and I met with our wedding photographer tonight. She impressed me, and I think we'll be very happy with her!