This has been the weirdest Valentine's Day yet. I bought a dozen roses at cost yesterday to close out the balance for the individual roses our pack sold at the school choir performance last night (they're singing at the Texas Music Educators Association convention tomorrow in San Antonio) and found when I got home that Vogon had bought a dozen ( Read more... )

It's been awhile since I posted about the residents of our freshwater tank, so I'll start with a quick census:
( Read more... )

Today marks two years since Laurel and I arrived in Dallas.

It also marked the first time she read her entire bedtime story aloud. She picked one of the more challenging picture books from her little library, Eric Carle's A House For Hermit Crab. She did a lot of sounding out and asked for help with unfamiliar words like 'anemone' and 'lanternfish ( Read more... )

The high pollen count lately has me feeling crummy and my psoriasis decided to get in on the act too, but this upcoming week is Laurel's spring break so I hope she'll enjoy sleeping in.

I'm looking for indoor activities we can do within walking distance this week. So far I've come up with drop-in playtime at our local Pump It Up and going to ( Read more... )

When Vogon fed the fish tonight, I thought I saw one of our small golden apple snails (Pomacea bridgesi) moving at abnormally high speed, even for their fast-moving species. It turned out that one of the red-clawed crabs (Sesarma bidens) had picked it up, carried it several inches across the tank and was trying to extract the snail ( Read more... )

I've been really tired this week, so after returning from dropping the kiddo off at school in the morning, I take a nap. I have really bizarre dreams when I nap on the couch -- one sent such physical signals to my head I fell off the couch and when I mentioned the dream I had Thursday morning to Vogon at lunch, he joked that the couch was doing it ( Read more... )

Hashing out my travel journal from my notes and photos is taking longer than I expected; comment if you'd like to see something specific sooner. I've got the directory of photos that will eventually be a Gallery album down to 72 photos. I think that's a bit much, so I'm not looking at them for a few days, then I'll go back and hopefully pare them ( Read more... )

In a comment I made comment early in the weekend, I said that our tentative plans were grocery shopping, a little fabric shopping ($1 Simplicity patterns at Hancock Fabrics this weekend), haircuts, possibly seeing Madagascar and going shopping for some basic summer clothes for Laurel. We did that, although not quite in that order.

( Lots of movies, a little shopping and it's a cat tree, not a cathouse! )

The 120 Gb hard drive that I mentioned on Friday is in but not yet formatted because Vogon surprised me with a desk and a DVD/CD-RW drive on Saturday! (I'd previously had separate DVD and CD-RW drives.) Assembly and setup entailed a lot more decluttering than I expected, but I'll post photos after I get everything nicely arranged ( Read more... )

Laurel has refrained from asking for a little sister again since my last post, but I had a Frappucino anyway. It was quite satisfying, although I couldn't taste much. We're all on the mend from the cold now, although how long it will take for everyone to reach their usual values of normal again remains to be seen ( Read more... )