Playtime, Pee, and Scraped up noses

Today, knock on wood, was a good day. With two days left until the change of ownership at work I spent much of the morning sitting in on depositions for a civil matter. Later I had my own turn in the hot seat. It all went well and I was proud of my staff, who stuck to the truth and refused to get knocked off track by the opposing counsel.

When I got home I was a little overwhelmed by the sounds and chaos of my four kids, all of whom were outside playing with Lisa.

To prevent taking my own life, it is best have at least 5 minutes of transition between Grown-up World and Land of the Demon Spawn.

Yeah, didn't get that today, and that makes a grumpy Dad. But within a few minutes I was chilling with the kids. It was a gorgeous day I wasted inside, so I appreciated being able to read outside and soak in the sun.

Here's some pics I took of the fun:

[BTW, Smiley peed in the toilet today, or rather on and around it. He stood up, As a Man Should, and let loose under his Mom's direction. We'll have to work on his aim, but first reports are it's better than mine]

This next one isn't of the kids, but of the damage done over the winter to the area once occupied by the tarp and miscellaneous shed materials. Mourn for my lawn. I do.

Ok, back the kids. Remember that beautiful little baby girl I posted pics of yesterday?

While she was outside her Grandma started to put her in her car seat, but Little Miss decided to flop out of it quick-like, smacking her face on the concrete (from a distance of an inch at best). Way to ruin the modeling career kid.

Note the fancy cupcake holders/transporters on the table, the things that look like a wire tree. That's what the Mrs. chooses to spend money on, instead of important things like DVD rentals and baseball pitching machines. Egh. Chicks.

The difference between a Mommy Blog and a Daddy Blog?  A Mommy blog would never have pictures of the kids doing kid things - you know, all the stuff now frowned on by the Nanny culture- like climbing railings and playhouses.

Or hanging from a clothes pole

Where's YaYa in all this, you ask? Taking a bath. Here's a pic of her return:

Oh, and we mustn't forget the star of the show

My I look serious and contemplative don't I? Odd, seeing as it was mere seconds after taking this shot:

[redacted]

Sorry folks. I took a photo of the inside of my mouth (since the up-the-nose to see my nose-hair pic didn't turn out) but upon review it is a little too ick for public viewing.

After all this I violated one of my cardinal rules and let the kids go to my Mom's house and play with their cousins on a school night.

Wouldn't you know it, after climbing over this-and-that and jumping here-and-there-and-everywhere at home, LuLu stumbled when walking down the hill on my Mom's front lawn and scraped up her nose and hand on the cement.

"Now [Baby] and I are twins," she told me. I guess so.

Some pics, as promised, of the Baby

I promised you some pictures, (largely) free of tedious text, and here goes. These are the remaining 6 month pics of the Baby. The first part was published here back in February.

Quick notes: the baby now crawls (slowly), but prefers to spider-walk on her hands and toes, as if her she finds being on hands and knees too demeaning. She has 7 teeth and counting. In the middle of the night Saturday she woke up and  I went to her, grabbed the bottle and left to replenish it. Clear as day she yelled 'Dada! Dada!". Of course it has yet to happen again, or on cue, but so what? I still get dibs on being her first word. And finally, I think it's safe to say she is our first blue-eyed baby, and I'm pleased for Lisa that I didn't completely kill off her Sinatra genes.

I think this next one is adorable.

Look at that smile!

LOVE this next pic!

And this one is just simply gorgeous.

Tags: Baby

Cinco De Mayo

 

                    

Today is Cinco De Mayo and for the second year in a row, boy am I ever happy I moved out of the old neighborhood.

Cinco De Mayo in our old Polish-turned-Mexican neighborhood meant a driving hassle, with guys rolling around with a pair of 3' x 5' Mexican flags attached to their car and their buddy's hanging out the windows with flags of their own. It meant illegal fireworks at night,  music blasting all day, and usually some act of stupidity somewhere when the alcohol started flowing.

Ah, on looking that over it sound much worse in print than it was in reality. No one ever bothered me or my family, and there are worse things than listening to songs that  reminded me of the Polka's of my own heritage. Keep in mind, for 90% of the day and 99% of the participants it was always nothing more than a celebratory holiday.

But that rowdy 1% sure screwed it for everyone else, and the city cracked down hard in recent years. Good luck to you if you try that flag setup now, and the celebration has turned more commercial and Americanized, with restaurants scraping together Mexican dishes and Corona for Cinco De Mayo specials.

{You know, one thing I never understood about Cinco De Mayo was the fact that its a celebration, not of independence, but of a victory in battle. Fine and dandy, but it was a single victory in a war they went on to lose to the French.

Okay, sure, just like most holidays the origin is obscured by the celebration itself. After all, who celebrates Halloween and stops to ponder the religious significance, or questions the formation of the calendar on New Years Eve?

But to me it seems like an odd way to kick off a party. It's like Poland celebrating a hypothetical day they stopped the German advance in August of '39. Grand - but rather overshadowed by the defeat and occupation later in the month, no? }

Anywho, there are some things I miss about the old neighborhood. I miss our old landlord and our neighbors on either side. I miss the way the neighborhood seemed more like a family, albeit a mildly dysfunctional one, than the friendly but rather socially isolated area we live in now. I miss the El Rey grocery store with the kick ass Pico De Gallo and skirt steak, and I miss being able to latch onto the wireless signals from the nearby middle school. :)

I sure don't miss the street parking, the punks, the morons who stole my barbeque grill, or the occasional 'shots fired'.   

But I'm still glad we had the chance to live and grow our family there for many years.

Happy Cinco De Mayo!

Tags: Cinco De Mayo

When the ideal just doesn't *quite* cover all the bases . . .

Happy 30th anniversary you spammers you!

I'm sure most of you have read or heard by now about the 30th anniversary of the first spam email.

It occurred on May 3rd of 1978, when Gary Thuerk delivered an email advertisement for a new computer system to 300 addresses along ARAPNET, a government precursor to the Internet as we know it.

Because everything about the net was new, the sender failed in his attempt to reach many of the addresses. In time it became a sore point; those who were missed felt 'excluded' from the controversy that followed. In addition the  message shut down the email systems at a Utah University. They just couldn't handle the 'massive' 56KB links!

Here's the text of the message, in caps just as in the original. The italics are mine. 300 addresses, many mistakenly falling into the message's body, and then:

DIGITAL WILL BE GIVING A PRODUCT PRESENTATION OF THE NEWEST MEMBERS OF THE
DECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY; THE DECSYSTEM-2020, 2020T, 2060, AND 2060T.  THE
DECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY OF COMPUTERS HAS EVOLVED FROM THE TENEX OPERATING SYSTEM
AND THE DECSYSTEM-10 <PDP-10> COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE.  BOTH THE DECSYSTEM-2060T
AND 2020T OFFER FULL ARPANET SUPPORT UNDER THE TOPS-20 OPERATING SYSTEM.
THE DECSYSTEM-2060 IS AN UPWARD EXTENSION OF THE CURRENT DECSYSTEM 2040
AND 2050 FAMILY. THE DECSYSTEM-2020 IS A NEW LOW END MEMBER OF THE
DECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY AND FULLY SOFTWARE COMPATIBLE WITH ALL OF THE OTHER
DECSYSTEM-20 MODELS.

WE INVITE YOU TO COME SEE THE 2020 AND HEAR ABOUT THE DECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY
AT THE TWO PRODUCT PRESENTATIONS WE WILL BE GIVING IN CALIFORNIA THIS
MONTH.  THE LOCATIONS WILL BE:

               TUESDAY, MAY 9, 1978 - 2 PM
                   HYATT HOUSE (NEAR THE L.A. AIRPORT)
                   LOS ANGELES, CA

               THURSDAY, MAY 11, 1978 - 2 PM
                   DUNFEY'S ROYAL COACH
                   SAN MATEO, CA
                   (4 MILES SOUTH OF S.F. AIRPORT AT BAYSHORE, RT 101 AND RT 92)

A 2020 WILL BE THERE FOR YOU TO VIEW. ALSO TERMINALS ON-LINE TO OTHER
DECSYSTEM-20 SYSTEMS THROUGH THE ARPANET. IF YOU ARE UNABLE TO ATTEND,
PLEASE FEEL FREE TO CONTACT THE NEAREST DEC OFFICE
FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE EXCITING DECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY.

Reaction was swift and harsh. Don't forget, at this point the net was a government project, restricted to universites, the military, and the like.

ON 2 MAY 78 DIGITAL EQUIPMENT CORPORATION (DEC) SENT OUT AN ARPANET MESSAGE ADVERTISING THEIR NEW COMPUTER SYSTEMS. THIS WAS A FLAGRANT VIOLATION OF THE USE OF ARPANET AS THE NETWORK IS TO BE USED FOR OFFICIAL U.S. GOVERNMENT BUSINESS ONLY. APPROPRIATE ACTION IS BEING TAKEN TO PRECLUDE ITS OCCURRENCE AGAIN.

IN ENFORCEMENT OF THIS POLICY DCA IS DEPENDENT ON THE ARPANET SPONSORS, AND HOST AND TIP LIAISONS. IT IS IMPERATIVE YOU INFORM YOUR USERS AND CONTRACTORS WHO ARE PROVIDED ARPANET ACCESS THE MEANING OF THIS POLICY.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION.

MAJOR RAYMOND CZAHOR

CHIEF, ARPANET MANAGEMENT BRANCH, DCA

Or how about this exerpt from another email response:

There are many companies in the U.S. and abroad that would like to have access to the Arpanet. Naturally all of them cannot have this access. Consequently if the ones that do have access can advertise their products to a very select market and the others cannot, this is really an unfair advantage. Likewise, if job applicants can be selected amongst some of the best trained around, or if the applicants themselves can advertise to a very select group of prospective employers, this is an unfair advantage to other prospective employees or employers who are not on the net.

So, basically: keep the net within our current old boy's network and discourage the public from benefiting.

Here's the final message I'll quote. I agree with it, and find the tone, humour, and reaction worthy of praise. The author is Richard Stallman, later to  earn infamy as a world class hacker and advocate for online freedom. The part I put in bold speaks to me, and may just wind up as part of my own personal code of conduct.

1) I didn't receive the DEC message, but I can't imagine I would have been bothered if Ihave. I get tons of uninteresting mail, and system announcements about babies born, etc. At least a demo MIGHT have been interesting.

2) The amount of harm done by any of the cited "unfair" things the net has been used for is clearly very small. And if they have found any people any jobs, clearly they have done good. If I had a job to offer, I would offer it to my friends first. Is this "evil"? Must I advertise in a paper in every city in the US with population over 50,000 and then go to all of them to interview, all in the name of fairness? Some people, I am afraid, would think so. Such a great insistence on fairness would destort everyone's lives and do much more harm than good. So I state unashamedly that I am in favor of seeing jobs offered via whatever.

3) It has just been suggested that we impose someone's standards on us because otherwise he MIGHT do so. Well, if you feel that those standards are right and necessary, go right ahead and support them. But if you disagree with them, as I do, why hand your opponents the victory on a silver platter? By the suggested reasoning, we should always follow the political views that we don't believe in, and especially those of terrorists, in anticipation of their attempts to impose them on us. If those who think that the job offers are bad are going to try to prevent them, then those of us who think they are unrepugnant should uphold our views. Besides, I doubt that anyone can successfully force a site from outside to impose censorship, if the people there don't fundamentally agree with the desirability of it.

4) Would a dating service for people on the net be "frowned upon" by DCA? I hope not. But even if it is, don't let that stop you from notifying me via net mail if you start one.

* * *

Because of the strong reaction to this ($ making, successful) Spam, the practice was stopped for a decade. Of course, it later returned, and the world was changed for the worse.

But even Spam has an upside. Think of how many jobs are created by writing and sending the email, and in all the efforts to stop its distribution.

(AOL btw, for all it does wrong, is wicked in its efforts to stop Spam. Rare indeed is the stray sales pitch that gets through, unlike my swamped Yahoo account).

Tags: spam, email, blogplugs

On glasses, the decline of the VCR, the Civil War, and Indiana truck stops

Hot dog! After losing her glasses well over a month ago, YaYa called me at work to tell me she found them today! Allegedly they were in her purse all along, which I wonder about, seeing as I searched it pretty thoroughly. But no matter - still a grand announcement!

[upon reviewing the above: my Lord I'm a dorky boring putz. I'd have ended it all twenty years ago if I'd seen this coming]

I can't be too mad at the kid about the glasses. Lis and I are missing two important items of our own. I'm missing a Nirvana bootleg of the 1992 Reading Festival (published as D.U.M.B.) that Lis bought me for my birthday in 1995, less then a month after we met.

Lisa is missing a cheap silver and turquoise 'promise' ring I bought her in Andersonville, Georgia in October of that year. There's a heck of a story behind the ring, from the hillbilly store owner I bought it from (oh, to find the picture I have of him!), to my presentation of it a mere day after Lisa threatened to strand me at a Indiana truck stop unless I committed to her right then and there.

I had been. . . doo dee doo . .not 'the best boyfriend ever' for some of that year. By then that part of our relationship was over and we were again a couple. But while we were back together I publicly refused to acknowledge the fact, instead telling people we were just 'friends'. She'd had just about enough of that,thank you, and rightfully so. Anyhow, long story.

But Indiana?  I had done nothing, have done nothing in my life to warrant such a dire fate.

[cue irate emails from Nutwood Junction ;)]

The ring is AWOL, victim of the kids destructive raids on our jewelry boxes over the last year. The destruction of their contents, or more aptly their redistribution throughout the house, is a vile and un amusing action on behalf of the Spawn, and one they have learned to regret. [I ask that no one show mercy in the comments section. They knew better and did it anyway.]

So the ring is missing.

It was cheap, maybe $25, and would probably have cost me $10 less if I hadn't been a blatant Yankee in the heart of the Confederacy [hometown of a statue honoring the only convicted and executed war criminal of the Civil War]. 

Lisa had long ago stopped wearing it because it was tight on her finger, clashed with the wedding set, and (although she'd never tell me) I think it turned her finger green.

So it  was no financial or cosmetic loss, and it was a 'promise' I delivered on, so it holds no grand emotional baggage except memories.

Still, I hope to find it, and the CD, someday.

** ** **

On to less solemn tales.

You know that animated 'story' that YaYa sent me to post a few days ago? Someone wrote and asked me how I incorporated the .wav file into it, as I guess it must be hard to do. My response: all I did was cut and paste YaYa's work. I called and asked my 6 year old the how of the process and she said she'd have to walk me through it when she returns from her Brownie campout this weekend.

Next thing you know she'll be programming my VCR.

But come to think of it, I don't owna VCR anymore. The kids have a pair, and I guess I still have one (relagated to our bedroom), but we're now a DVD family, what with a 400 disc changer sitting atop the TV.

BUT  - oh, how I like this segue! - I have finally mastered the art of dubbing our VHS tapes to DVD.

Many moons ago I bought this very same computer with the promise to my wife that all the extra doodads were essential to dub our tapes. As the fates foresaw, I never got around to it.

So two years ago or so I bought a DVD recorder/VCR with the same idea. I never got past the 'play' 'fast forward' 'subtitle' functions.

But tonight, with the local library clamboring for me to return a VHS movie I'd borrowed, I figured it all out and burned the movie to DVD.

What does this mean? It means 27 New Kids on the Block tapes soon to be available digitally baby!

The 'test' movie is Dark of the Sun, starring Rod Taylor and Jim Brown. My maternal grandpa and I watched the movie twenty-six/twenty-seven years ago and I've spent years trying to remember the name based on what a 7 year old remembered of the plot.

I'll try to watch it again and write a review (from an adult perspective) soon.

Lost: Something Nice Back Home Season 4/Episode 10

Love or hate him (and I'm definitely one of the former) Jack is the center of this complex and mystifying world of Lost, and Thursday the show finally returned to focusing on his character.

On the island he is stricken with an appendicitis, an unusual occurrence for a place known for its healing properties. Is the island lashing out against the man most responsible for trying to orchestrate the exodus from the isle?

Juliet is able to perform the operation, but Jack is once again leery of surrendering control and demands to talk her through the operation by watching it in a mirror, sans general amnesia.

He starts to feel the pain and react, Juliet sensibly puts him out, Kate fails in living up to Jack's request to keep him awake, and the dang organ comes out.

This scenario, I must say, was stupid. I have a feeling the writers were trying to work in a way to establish trust/love/control issues between Jack/Juliet/Kate at the expense of putting a realistic scene together. 

Elsewhere on the island Sawyer resumes his almost parental supervision of the injured Claire as they try to return to the beach with Miles and Aaron. Along the way they come across the bodies of Rousseau and Karl (thereby verifying Danielle's death) and hide from the fleeing mercenaries.

There seems to be an awful lot of the bad guys left, considering the smoke monster went ga-ga on them last week. Perhaps there were more of them than previously thought, or maybe the monster is not the pure killer we presumed it to be.

In the night Christian Shepard appears to his daughter in the jungle. He was - seeing as he's dead - father to both Jack and Claire, although neither sibling is aware of the connection. In the morning she is gone, and Miles rather flippantly tells Sawyer that she left with her father. Aaron is found abandoned in the trees some distance away.

Let me pause here and survey the field: it is general knowledge that Claire and Jack are half-siblings, right? There were clues galore in the first few seasons, and to top it off the writers themselves outed the 'secret' some time ago.

Anyhow, back to . .well, back to the future.

It is post-trial, and Jack and Kate are now a couple, and a hot one at that. Jack seems to have taken to Aaron despite earlier misgivings and all is well. Later in the show Jack even proposes to Kate, who gladly accepts.

But . . and in Lost there is always a but: Jack goes to see Hurley, who is now refusing to take his medicine in the mental hospital. He is very much a downer this time around, telling Jack they (the Oceanic Six) are all dead and never left the island. He says that Charlie told him Jack is not meant to raise Aaron, and that he will be getting a visitor soon.

This begins to unhinge Jack, who sees what we presume is his fathers ghost in the hospital where he works. Shaken, he requests and receives a prescription to Clonazapam and begins to drink heavily over the next few days.

A short time later Jack comes home early to find Kate mysteriously out and Aaron under the care of a sitter. When she returns he confronts her and she admits to doing a favor on behalf of Sawyer. (let it be noted Jack states Sawyer chose to stay on the island, confirming his future and in all likelihood his survival to that point).

An argument breaks out, with both sides overreacting and nothing happening worth the breakup that seems to follow the fight. The only thing of value I picked up was Jack's admonition that Kate isn't even related to Aaron, which could mean he knows he is, or it could mean nothing more than she isn't his biological mother.

In the Lost chronology, I place the fight prior to last season's finale. I think the prescription and drinking foreshadow Jack's decline to come, and his sighting of the ghost explains his drunken request to see his father in that same finale.

One theory floating around that might have some weight to it. Item One: Miles can legitimately 'hear' the dead. That's a fact, at least in the Lost universe. Ok, fine. He is also an ass, but not one that's overly evil or willing to harm others, at least to this point. Yet when a stranger shows up at the campfire in the middle of the jungle and walks away with a injured woman and her infant son, he does nothing to stop them or raise an alarm.

So . . what are the chances that Claire perished in the bombing of her home last week? The island has been known to grant the dead a brief physical form when it deems it amusing. Is it possible she's been dead since then but unaware of it, as in The Sixth Sense, and that Miles recognized this and therefore wasn't upset when her father came to guide her to 'another place'?

Again, just a theory I heard. I'm not sold on it, but it does have merit.

Take it a step further and I suppose Hurley could be right, and the Six are simply manifestations of their departed spirits. Except I believe that Hurley's just plain sick at that point in the show, and wrong about their status.

Or maybe as the episode's title 'Something Nice Back Home' indicates, maybe the Oceanic Six and Jack and Kate's love affair is nothing more than a nice idea that Jack thought about to take his mind away from the pain, just as Barnard suggested.

Hmm.  A lot to think about, as usual. Wait and see.

Tags: Lost, blogplugs

Walk Hard

                                 

"Walk haarrrd"

"What's wrong with him? Why does he keep saying that?" Chris said.

"It's the name of a movie he rented. He hasn't even watched it yet  but he keeps saying it over and over. Ignore him, he's just a dork." Lisa said.

"Walk haarrd"

"Stop that, you're getting on my nerves."

A minute of petulant silence. Then:

"Walk haaard"

* * * *

We finally got around to watching Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story today.

 I was put off for the first few minutes by how closely it mirrored Walk the Line. Granted, the Johnny Cash bio-pic was an obvious inspiration for the film, but the Scary Movie treatment has bored me for years now. Please Hollywood, let the genre die, and leave Airplane and Naked Gun as it's sole memorial.

And then it had the following exchange between Dewey Cox and his first wife.

"What about my dreams?"

""Edith, I told you, I can't build you a candy house, it will fall down! The sun will melt the candy! It won't work!"

"It will if it never rains!"

And from that moment on, as I sat on the couch desperately trying not to pee my pants from laughter, I was hooked.

The movie mirrors Cash's life for a bit, from the death of his brother and his father's over-the-top lifelong reaction to it,  to his drug addiction and extramarital love forhis duet partner.

It's a hoot. Yeah, I know. It doesn't sound like it should be, but believe you me, from this day on whenever someone says "The wrong boy died!" I'm fit to crack up.

Pay attention to this next clip. It's a fitting summary of our nation's foolish war on pot, and really funny to boot.  FAIR WARNING: one cuss word, drug references.

 

 

Someone please transcribe that for me!

John C. Reilly was outstanding in the title role, keeping the comedy going with a straight face and genuine acting skills that were worth his Golden Globe nomination. (did he win?)

 Jenna Fischer (better known as Pam from The Office) was nearly as good playing Cox's  second wife. Quite aside from her acting skills, 'if' she sang as portrayed in the movie (I know Reilly did) then she's got a very  impressive voice. (btw - this is a useless aside - she is far more attractive than you would think from TV. There she's 'cute', but here, in the scene where Dewey's wife discovers them . . yowsas.)

One of the things that impressed me about the movie was the quality of the songs. Oh, most were tongue in cheek, but they all gave the impression of actual, heart-felt if ridiculous tunes you'd catch on someone's CD. Let's Duet is just plain funny, but Walk Hard is a halfway decent tune quite aside from being part of a movie. Small wonder, since Marshall Crenshaw penned the track.

So 3.5 stars out of 5 if you are looking for an intelligent but over the top, somewhat vulgar comedy. It just might crack my personal top five comedies list.

Because she asked to me to post it, that's why

cats,dogs,bats and bugs too!by [YaYa]  to dad      bats are not birds  bats eat bugs.cats like mouses .    Click to play sound: Cat Meow 1

Don't worry - I'll give you an easy 'awww!' post of kids pics soon enough. 'til then, read this. :)

These kids, are kicking my a**.

As usual on Thursday's, Lisa went to dance class and I put the kids to bed alone. No biggie - I've done it a hundred times this year. (and before that statement starts a fire, let it be acknowledged that yes, Lisa has probably done it a thousand times in our marriage).

So all is quiet and well and I chose to go down to the basement, to read a little Stephen King on the throne and then take a long hot shower in my Fortress of Solitude.

Only the laundry sinks were again backed up, and water was about to overflow. Well bleep and bleep.  I went through all the normal steps, conceded something was again blocking the trap, vacuumed out the water, and tried to dump it down the sewer drain.

I say try, because I tipped it and dumped it over the basement floor.

I mopped up what I could, took the trap apart - yet another sock, and God knows (Smiley) how they wind up there - and put it back together. I took my shower, trod across my bacteria water ridden floor, and journeyed upstairs. Maybe an hour and a half had passed.

All - the - kids - were- up and watching TV in our bedroom. 

LuLu was resting comfortably on a child's patio recliner she apparently dragged inside at some point in the day. Smiley had taken a Pokemon-ish mask and glove set and put them on, realized the gloves squirted water, and filled them with Diet Pepsi. The baby was standing and screaming in her crib down the hall, and YaYa was just lying there watching TV and eating an apple, calm as calm can be.

For the next scene, picture King Kong as he escapes his bonds at the theater. I was the star of the show.

I can handle Smiley finally hitting a delayed 'terrible two's' at three, and LuLu is four, which in my experience is one of the most miserable years to deal with as a parent, and YaYa is just downright Evil by nature, a regular Junie B Jones, but c'mon!

A few years ago I wrote about a behavior chart we had for the oldest girls,one that worked well but was destroyed in the move. I think it's about time it was resurrected.

* * * *

Some positive news of the kids: Smiley can now say a slurred 'one more' on demand, YaYa has been invited by Lisa's childhood dance instructor to do a dance at her studio's recital, LuLu exhibited incredible politeness and self-assuredness while on a trip to the library with me today, and the baby possesses 7 teeth, digs cheerios and has started to crawl.

* * * *

Big day at work tomorrow, with the new owner coming in for a meeting and a big farewell party for the current, long-standing owners. No matter what,  a decade long chapter of my life is coming to a rapid close.

Hmm. I wish I could pop into my grandkid's history books and see what happens next, because the options, conceivably, suck.

* * * *

The appraisal came back on the house, and it was good news, a solid 10% increase in the value of our home in a just over a years time.

* * * *

I tenatively accepted that offer to write a weekly or bi-weekly column for that communtiy newspaper, with details to be worked out on Saturday.

* * * *

To all you commie pinkos out there, Happy May Day!