I’ve been reading the book The American Presidency this year. It’s been taking me a long time to get through because, honestly, non-fiction kind of bores me. Still, I have been learning all sorts of fun facts about our nation’s leaders, so I thought I would share some. Eleven months after I started, I'm up to James Madison. I figure if I force myself to write about the presidents, I’ll eventually finish the book. So, here we go:

George Washington – Stuff I learned:

Vampires. They fascinate us. Whether it's Bram Stoker, Ann Rice, Josh Whedon or Elisabeth Kostova, writers keep finding ways to make the same old stories compelling, and we flock to bookstores and movie theaters or set our Tivos so we don't miss one gruesome detail.

There are still pirates? I mean, I figured there must still be a few if them around because every so often there would be a really stupid movie about modern-day psychos terrorizing some perfectly nice couple on their private yacht. But the news this month has brought attention to the fact that there’s a whole culture of piracy alive and well, centered in Somalia.

I didn't grow up in a family that talked about politics. I knew that my step-dad's parents were yellow-dog democrats and that my dad and his mom were die-hard republicans. My mom voted for Reagan in 1980, so I figured she and my step-dad were republicans, too (turns out they SO aren't, thank goodness). Beyond that, I didn't think about it much. Dinner table conversation revolved around my parents' work lives and what happened in school that day. After dinner, we played board games or watched television.

I first learned about the concept of micro-lending in 1996, when I had the opportunity to meet Muhammad Yunus of the Grameen Bank. Professor Yunus founded the bank in 1983, to provide small loans to poor Bangladeshi women who wanted to start small businesses. To date, the bank has served over seven million women and, in 2006, Professor Yunus and the Grameen bank were the recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize.

I've always been a bit puzzled by our rush to declare something over. I suppose it shouldn't be so surprising since, as a nation, we suffer from a mad case of ADD, always enthusiastically moving on to the next new craze, be it hula hoops, cabbage patch dolls, energy drinks, or those cute boy bands made up of brothers with floppy hair.