A few nights ago, Pär and I sat up playing a little late night Trivial Pursuit over root beer (me) and tonic water (him). Tonic water is Pär's new drink of choice. He took a liking to it which seemed to pick up interest once he discovered that the quinine it contains is an alkaloid with some vaguely edgy associations to strychnine and morphine. He'll deny that this adds to its appeal at all for him, but I say if you're going to pay to drink fizzy water, go ahead and squeeze all the danger value you can out of it.

He and I used to play Trivial Pursuit together all the time, but haven't done so in ages. It became clear during the course of this game that I'm not the only one whose intelligent thought processes have shifted focus in the past few months, when I pulled up this Geography question for Pär:

"Where is the bulk of the Pampas?" The back of the card read: Argentina.

Pär rolled his eyes. "Around the baby's butt," he snapped, and refused to acknowledge any other answer as more valid.

At that point I knew it was time for us to sleep.

"Good lord," I said, as I stood up and nearly fell over from the weight of my chock-full-o-milk breasts. "I hope Tot wakes up and wants to eat."

"I've been watching your left breast through the whole game," Pär said appreciatively. "I've watched it grow from being pleasantly saggy, to The Blob eating its way out from under your bra."

There was a second of strained silence in which he had a chance to listen to what he'd just said. He collapsed on the couch laughing.

"I guess that's not the most flattering way to describe it, huh."

"You really have a smooth way with the ladies there," I said dryly, as he lay on the couch giggling. "How's that quinine working out for you?"

"It's the shit!" he exclaimed.

If I'd wanted my compliments delivered with suave silkiness, I could have gone to Paris and found me a debonair French lover with a flair for pretty words. But no. I had to opt for straightforward honesty and bring home a Swede.