A weekly roundup of news in parentville, including the good, the bad, and the utterly trivial.

You will be pleased to know that I can surf the Internet safely once again, having read Deathly Hallows thru to the end. I don't know about you, but I have to admit that the  HP-Ron-Voldemort love triangle really did catch me by surprise. And what was up with the sex-change business? Weird.

This week's theme: bad habits, of which I have many.

Bad Habit #1: Eating. We now know that fat is contagious -- you catch it from your friends. As if fat kids don't have enough problems, now parents will force their kids to stay away from them for fear they'll get fat too.

Bad Habit #2: Drinking expensive bottled water. That comes straight from a tap. At least now PepsiCo has agreed to come clean, labeling Aquafina as coming from a "Public Water Source." Coca-Cola's Dasani also comes from a tap. But they add magnesium sulfate, potassium chloride and sodium chloride to make it extra yummy.

Bad Habit #3: Chewing gum. And letting my daughter chew it too (I'm trying to teach her to blow bubbles.) We have crossed Ireland off of our trip possibilities until we can get our familial gum chewing habit under control. Because they are not a gum-friendly country.

Bad Habit #4: Lousy grammar. You should just see my posts before my self-editor gets a hold a them! Like entire paragraphs have that annoying green underline! Why? Because I read Junie B. Jones to my kid. And bad grammar, like fat, is contagious.

Bad Habit #5: Smoking. Which I have taken up solely for Truth in Blogging purposes. All I can say is, thank god I grew up when there still was onscreen smoking, so I could learn proper smoking technique. Disney announced this week that it's banned all smoking from its film fare, which is a pure public relations move for which they deserve no credit, since none of their films show smoking anymore anyway.

Bad Habit #6: Catching infectious diseases from my kid. Now I know that echinacea is the cure. Or maybe not.

Bad Habit #7: Throwing sanitary napkins into the toilet. For which crime 170 Malaysian schoolgirls were forced to do pond squats. No, no, not the dreaded pond squat!!!

Bad Habit #8: Wasting time online. Like you're doing right now. Give a kid a book, and they'll read it, maybe. Give a kid a laptop, as the good folks at One Laptop Per Child did for a group of Nigerian schoolkids, and guess what happens?

Efforts to promote learning with laptops in a primary school in Abuja have gone awry as the pupils freely browse adult sites with explicit sexual materials.

We're shocked, shocked...