Crap. Working to setup the twins college education funds, and only now did we learn that we could have previously had an Oregon 529 account for KE's grad school expenses, with the associated state tax write-off. Doesn't do us any good tax-wise going forward, since the write-off cap is set per-family, and not per-beneficiary.

Nothing spells NFL commentator gold more than pairing up Randy Moss and mahaloluinoa.

There seems to be something broken with our dog. For the last several days she's been doing some aggressive headshaking, especially whenever she gets excited and barks. Usually we get her all worked up pre-walk (or "W.....A.....L.....K...." as it's normally referred to around here when she's not actively going on one), and over the weekend after ( Read more... )

Seems that dad has gone through some stunning improvements since we flew back last Wednesday. When we left, he was still on a walker, doing 10min spurts on the exercise bike. Saturday, I thought he was joking when he said that mom was no longer letting him us a cane(!) when walking. Today, they reported that they'd taken his truck down to ( Read more... )

They moved dad out of the military hospital ICU and into a civilian acute care clinic that's inside of a hospital at the end of last week. He's able to take phone calls now, watch TV, off the feeding tube and onto hospital food, and going through some simple flexibility studies. And, after Scott told mom "get the man a hamburger for Christ’s-sake ( Read more... )

Preseason football at it's finest, courtesy of CNNSI.com:

The Packers originally wanted to play Friday's game on Thursday night, but the league wouldn't allow them to play two games within three days. They opted to play Friday afternoon to not distract from local high school football games.

DODDS - Europe is dropping "American" from official school names, along with simplifying any schools named after a person down to a location.

KE and I caught the last premium zoo concert of the year. This years closing act was a spry, slimmed down Etta James, backed up by her brother and two sons. I'm sure they loved some of the things she was doing on stage with the microphone and edge of the chair. It was a great show. We've got going down to a science - rolling soft-side cooler, ( Read more... )

W tells me that the cats don't like helium balloons for some reason, which might explain why I haven't seen most of them for the last 24 hours as there are two big "happy birthday!" balloons floating around in the living room ( Read more... )

W's idea of a vacation: heading off to Virginia beach with her mom, sister, and all the female friends from Altoona.

RJR's? Wife leaves, stick The Big Lebowski in the DVD player, pop open a beer, and order up a pizza.