I just read about the nominee for the bad decision of the year by a father. Man, that kills me. Molly, Swab , Griffin, my heart goes out to you guys.

And now something frivolous is called for.


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Our crossword puzzle recently had "Mark on the skin" and so far we had NE_US. Looking at my word list, we saw NEXUS (obviously not it) and NEGUS and NEVUS ( Read more... )

The snow scare turned out to be nothing at our place. I scraped Visionsister's front window of ice, but there was nothing on my own car.

We're prepared though.

We had three groups of kids. The first and third were too old, but at least in good costumes and nice, so I'll give candy to anybody who makes the effort and is nice. The middle one was a single knee-high who said, after prompting, "tick or teat" and "tank you" (again more prompting ( Read more... )

Never before have I had either the top-of-the-line or the best-warranty-available. Ok, technically, there was one model up that was the leather seats, but I honestly don't care about that, so there you have it ( Read more... )

You know how they came, and we all went "yay! let's be friends," and let go the birds, and the Martians went all simian-poo and killed the bejesus outta us? Then, we went "oops. No birds" and the Martians said "relax -- it was a misunderstanding" and went all simian-poo and killed the bejesus outta us? And the French said "ooh lah lah, tres boo boo ( Read more... )

After looking at the book for the van, I see two bleeder valves to let air out of the water system. Hoo hoo HOO! I ran it warm, bled a lot of air out, and (again) it seems to be behaving itself.

We're taking it Friday to Toyota to see about maybe a Scion or Prius. Or maybe the salesperson there will convince us something else is mo-better.

Visionsister and I got new phones, and when I found I could set up a voice tag to switch it into Silent or Normal mode, I recorded "be quiet" for the Silent one, and as I started to record "Normal mode" for the other, I cracked up and it took three times before I could record it well.

Any hope I had that the van would stay fixed is gone now. Not that it's broken, per se, but it overheats occasionally. We're looking in earnest for another one.

I went to Cingular last night to get a headset and ended up buying two headsets and two phones. The reception on the phone actually works perfectly at our house, even inside the garage! If ( Read more... )

After all the van troubles, my brother's mechanic came to my place and worked on the van all day. He determined almost right away that the head gasket ain't just blown, so we ended up returning the $200 gasket and got a water pump, thermostat, and radiator cap for about $100. So far, so good.

We tested. It overheated. He loosened the radiator cap ( Read more... )