You know how I said I didn't have a fever yesterday? I was wrong. For some reason, I can only think of normal body temperature in Farenheit, and when I converted the Celsius reading on our thermometer in my head, I came up with a reading that was a bit low. Since I had chills, that seemed to make sense to me.

Then again, I also knew that I wasn't able to think very clearly, which probably explains why I converted it mentally instead of using the stupid calculator. Duh.

I skipped class again, but I ended up not staying home all day lounging on the sofa like I so richly deserved. For one thing, we still needed milk and the catfood situation was approaching critical, among other things. For another, we have a visitor.

Flat Stanley has come to town, courtesy of our niece and Federal Express.

Flat Stanley, in case you've never heard of the little fellow, is a fictional character from the book of the same name. In it, Stanley's bulletin board falls on him while he sleeps. It doesn't hurt him (hey, this is a children's book), but it does make him mighty flat. Since Stanley has a friend who lives in California, he is duly folded up, stuffed in an envelope and sent to visit. As you do. Have you SEEN the price of airline tickets these days?

All over Canada and the United States, at least, Second Grader students read about Flat Stanley, then make their own. He hangs out with their own families for a while, and then is shoved in an envelope and sent off to explore the world. Ever topical, here is a picture of Flat Stanley with Colin Powell, plus some others I thought were pretty creative. (In other words, the type of things I had in mind for Stan.)

This is not our first brush with Flat Stanley. Some friends had him to visit in Italy, and we took him to Florence. Another friend took him to Rome where he was photographed, among other things, being impaled by a gladiator outside the coliseum.

He arrived here yesterday afternoon, and so far Stan is a pretty good guest. He's quiet and neat, and doesn't eat much-- which explains how he stays so flat. On the other hand, you've gotta keep the little feller busy. And our particular Flat Stanley is very time sensitive, since he had to go visit California first, despite the fact that he was already there in the book.

In short, our niece has to have her FS project signed, sealed and delivered to the teacher on Friday, and that doesn't leave us a whole lot of time. We can email the pictures, but she and Daddy still need time to print them out and so forth. This is a bummer, because I had all sorts of plans for Stan, and now I won't be able to do a lot of them.

We made a pretty good start today. We took Stan to Belém, and photographed him with the Monument of the Discoveries and the sarcophogas of Vasco de Gama, and so forth. Unfortunately, my camera was loaded with SLIDE film, which we won't get back until after her project is due, so half of the pictures taken were a complete waste. This includes Stan on the Beach, Stan Being All Picturesque, and the undoubted masterpiece Stan and the Apostles.

I almost cried when the film developing guy told me about the film. I never take slides. NEVER. I have no idea how this film came into my possession, much less how it made its way into my camera. None.

But I won't dwell on it, in part because I can't type through tears of frustration. What I do know is that I can't afford to be sick tomorrow, since Stanley and I have some work to be doing. I'll need to pull out my mini-tripod, now that I think of it, since I'm going to be on my own for this one, and you can never count on a tourist when you really need one. Unless I can bully Miss Kitty into helping. She was up for it, but that was when we thought we'd have a weekend to play around with it and I don't know what her work schedule will be like tomorrow.

Tomorrow is it, though. The pictures need to be developed and scanned, plus I need to write about just what Flat Stanley has been getting up to and where. I figure if I get it done by tomorrow night, and once you factor in the time difference, my niece will be able to work on it Wednesday and Thursday evenings. I hope that's good enough, but then again, it will have to be.

Oh, and the Shift key? Still sticks.