By now you've probably figured out that there's no Friday Quiz this week. We're all in Missouri, on a last-minute family visit after the recent death of Theresa's stepfather. We're doing fine, thanks for asking.

A few ill-sorted thoughts formed over the last couple of days:

1. Airlines are, more or less, completely evil, credit-card "miles" are worse than useless in the case of emergency need, and "compassion" fares are anything but compassionate.

2. A child soundly sleeping in an airplane seat is perhaps the most beautiful thing in the world, the sight of which makes the screaming of someone else's toddler seven or eight rows away the cause for a deliciously guilty wave of schadenfreude.

3. The playground-design community is obviously filled with disciples of James Watt, the former Reagan cabinet official who insisted that trees cause pollution. The more innovative and interesting the playground, the more likely that it and its immediate environs will have been denuded of all tree life, exposed maximally to the prairie sun. These people will only rest when the entire American continent is covered with hi-tech jungle gyms and beautifully landscaped sandboxes, superheated to a flesh-frying crisp by a perpetual sun.

4. It is not entirely reassuring to read the sign at the playground which explains that concealed weapons are not, in that particular place, permitted.

5. It is entirely happy-making to show your daughter a mother deer and her sweetly dappled baby trotting through Grandma's backyard.

Back in the home office on Sunday. A double quiz will be posted next week to make up.