Daynotes on a budget

However, my frustration level with Tripod has, finally, cracked. I've bloody had it. No FP Access again today, and for several hours, no way to even get in and edit the damned page. I even removed the cookie management software from my PC (though I'd been very consistent about accepting any and all cookies from anything from tripod), and I've just not been able to get in at all, until recently.

So, next order of business is to move this stuff to a place called "spaceports.com" where I've got 10 megs to start with, and will have access to basically an unlimited amount. Should be enough for me to ramble for ever and ever a-men.

All I've got to do is restart the web server on my personal machine so I can create the web locally and then FTP. This, in turn, will likely cause additional heartache for me as I'm going to have to publish, ever so slowly, which, I guess, means I'm going to get more intimate with FrontPage. Don't worry, I'll keep the CD in a baggie, just in case. So watch this space, and we'll see what we can do.

I find myself, despite the fact that I'm listening to happy-happy music, tempted to pie Mr. Gates should the opportunity arise.  Of course, rather than using the simple cream-filled variety, I'd like to put something with a little more bite into it.  Habanera Peppers, for example.  Or just some small explosive device.  In truth, my anger isn't directed at Gates himself, but the countless human resource managers scattered throughout the company that can hire complete nitwits to do the jobs they're asked to do.  Today, I was going to investigate the date and timestamp features of FrontPage.  I noticed that in some of my old pages, the dates were a wee bit funky.  I looked into it.  I saw the option to change the date and time when the page is automatically updated or when the page is edited.  Hmmmm, I says to myself I says, what will this do to help me?  I guess we'll ask "HELP".  Screw that, gang.  Help says "select the type of date you wish to insert" - that's pretty well useless.  Select your permutation.  Date Stamp.  Time Stamp.  Timestamp.  Date and Time Stamp.  Date and Timestamp.  Useless.  I tell you, Microsoft will not be defeated by a better product.  Not at all.  They'll be defeated by companies that THINK!  Microsoft's products are pretty good, but their mental capacity seems to be well-nigh non-existent.  

Here's a thought.  In that vast room in the basement of the Redmond headquarters, create a small room next to the infinite monkey pen (wherein they write their various products), and put a few human testers.  Just normal folks.  Let them DO THINGS with the software.  Maybe you'll learn.  Maybe you won't.  But your products couldn't get any worse.

My daughter has requested the Carousel for her fancy Birthday dinner - we're an indulgent family, and we like food.  The standard rule for Birthdays goes like this - you get a friends party - to this point it's been out somewhere, primarily because we have lacked the ability to hold it in our home.  So we hold this party in some place like McDonalds, Burger King, or similar.  

NOT the Chuck E. Cheeses of the world - two reasons for that, which I'll enumerate.  FIRST, we were made aware of a suit where a mentally handicapped individual, hired by CEC, was abused mentally, and possibly even physically.  I don't remember the specifics - I do know that I don't like that kind of outfit.  That's the general reason.  The SPECIFIC reason we avoid the CEC joints locally is pretty simple.  Several months back, my son was a bit under the weather or something, and my wife picked him up from Daycare.  On the way home, they stopped at the mall for an errand, and Jack wanted a snack.  As CEC in the Burnsville Center was new, open just a few months, my wife decided to give it a try.

For those of you who do not know my wife, let me say she is a wonderful woman; if she wasn't, I wouldn't have married her nearly 10 years ago, and I wouldn't still be spending plenty of enjoyable time with her now.  She is my best friend, which is more important than the million other things she does.  I just hope I give back at least half of what I get.  Anyway, my wife is, among her many lovable traits, a very self-assured person.  This gives her the ability to be both assertive and diplomatic.  I, on the other hand, prefer to rely not on my inconsequential intellect (OK, stop laughing, you), but rather on sheer force of personality.  Which, on occasion, translates to more volume and closer to the individual I'm attempting to communicate with.

Anyway, my wife took my three-year-old son into CEC in Burnsville Center to get a piece of pizza.  Middle of the afternoon, the place was open, noises were coming from the kitchen.  My wife and son stood, waiting, attempting to flag down anyone in that Crap-E-Cheese place willing to do business with us - and in the end, my wife ran out of time, and got my son a snack elsewhere.  Though he had his heart set on pizza.  

Now, it is Jack, rather than anyone else, who drives the Dominik's boycott of Crap-E-Cheese.  Whenever it's mentioned, he says "yeah, and they didn't serve me pizza when mommy and me went there."  Now, at three and a half, nearly four, this is a huge concept for him to have his mind around.

Speaking of pride in my children (said Mr. Long-winded, this morning), my daughter took her first Tae Kwon Do class at the inappropriately-named USA Karate here in Burnsville last night.  We'd done a free-trial class last Saturday, and she enjoyed it greatly.  So we signed up for the $14.95 first month, which included her outfit (the other place with the less elaborate training space wanted $75 the first month, and $30 each month thereafter).  After the class, we were presented with our options, which included her getting her "Red Belt"  which was a program expected to last something in the neighborhood of 18 months, and we would pay something like $1185 for that privilege.  When we were in on Saturday, they failed to make clear their pricing plans - we were "given the impression" that this would cost roughly the same as the other place - $30 a month.  Now, for $65 a month (which is what the $1185 works out to), we're only $5 off joining the local YMCA, as a family.  And the Y includes a pool.  I can honestly say that I'm incredibly disappointed in the folks at USA Karate.  The whole thing stinks to high heaven - 

• Your fees are capped apparently at the 18 month limit
• If your child advances faster, and reaches the red belt earlier, you've reached your goal, and must sign up for a new program.
• Testing fees are not included.
• This nearly $1200 investment includes a discount for paying up front.  I'm not sure if there's a bill-me option.
• The most serious part to me is who is doing the evaluating?  If it's anyone with even the slightest financial link to USA Karate, then I'm incredibly uncomfortable with all of that - if you're running short, take a few individuals you know wish to continue on, and advance them more quickly - that way you boost your income.

I just don't like the whole arrangement.  It stinks to high heaven.  Now, however, to see if Spaceports is going to work for me...  Here goes.

Later: Let this be a lesson to you.  Read all the freaking directions before you try anything.  I was having absolute fits trying to get things to cooperate on Spaceports, here.  I fought it like the devil, and finally reached a point where I though "I know more HTML than this - I'm no idiot.  Let's go back and review the instructions."  And sure enough, if you put all of your pages where they belong, damned if it doesn't work just as advertised!  VERY nice.

Tripod's got far better tools for on-line editing, etc., but let's face it, if you've got the latest Craftsmen tools, and you're still trying to win the race with a car that's over 40 years old, let's just get real, shall we?  Funniest part about the whole tripod experience - about a week and a half ago I sent an e-mail whining about my inability to even log into my site to do an update (just over a week ago, now).  TODAY I get a response that boils down to "damnit, we're busy, we've got problems, please pick a number that your problem fits into from this list and let us know."  Some people.  If you've got any stock in the company that owns Tripod, get out now.

And just for fun, let's make sure I include the snow leopard picture in here for fun.  We like fun, don't we?

Much Later: Well, if you had looked me in the eye a year ago and told me to start planning and packing, I'd be moving into a house, I would have probably popped a bolt laughing.  Then again, I wouldn't have believed it if you'd told me that I'd be considered and rejected for a director-level position at work, then let go without any good reasoning, and then find a job in a whole different line of work, I probably would have said you're absolutely off your nut.  But after meeting with my friend and new Real Estate Agent Andy Berglund, I'm beyond thinking this is possible.  I'm pretty damned sure.  And if I'm sure, we're sitting better than pretty here.

Andy was even kind enough to give me a whole book of places to check out.  I'll tell you - there's more houses out there now than there were when my sister and her hubby were looking, and they're nice, AND reasonable.  I think we're going to be able to move from an apartment into a house without a whole lot of trouble at all.  This could be VERY nice indeed.  Now, just to see what we can do...  We need to get the financial records, and then see what's coming down the pike.  I'm going to have to stop giggling and start working...

This morning, got moving early (for me), ran down, and sure enough, it was a wee bit low.  Not bad for a ten-year-old four cylinder vehicle, though.  So, I went into the trunk, and discovered that I had two bottles of brake fluid.  None of Power Steering Fluid, but plenty for the brakes.  When I used to work for the fine folks at Shopko, I was told that on some model cars (this was nearly 20 years ago, mind you), you could use PSF and Tranny fluid interchangeably.  I ain't gonna try it.  

So, ran the kids to daycare, picked up PSF, added half a bottle (whoops), took the wife to work, wandered over to Plymouth to visit a friend of mine and pick up some disks she needed to borrow (they had the computer, the software, and everything else - one of the dangers of purchasing your computer without getting the original CDs, however, is how to fix what goeth wrong?).  Then, off to Kinko's to scan a couple of pictures, and then back home to do paper finding, and also to re-arrange the disaster area that is my computer work space.

I acquired a new member of the computer family yesterday - seems this big boy used to be a server or something, because he's got a tape drive in him, too.  Since my existing naming convention around here is pretty pathetic (dad's being the machine I'm on now, and dad_old being the old computer, this just isn't going to work.  I was trying to wrack my brain for a good computer convention name, and discarded Star Trek character names (too loopy), science fiction authors I like (names are too long), characters from The Lord Of The Rings (tough to look a computer in the eye and call it Bilbo, ya know), and many others.  Finally, I decided to go with one of my favorites - Arthurian legend.  My main workstation is going to be called Merlyn, the old machine is either going to be Arthur or Bors, and the new one was GOING to be called Gwen, which would be short for Guiniverre, if that's spelled nearly right, but my wife instead insisted on Gawain.  I think I'll reserve Lancelot for the Linux box I hope to build some day, and if I ever acquire a Macintosh, you can be assured it will be named Morganna for the simple fact that I just love the irony of it.

On the political front, last night was debate night for the two major-party candidates here in the US.  I can honestly say, with great pride, that I caught at best the last five minutes of that fracas.  Why am I proud at being an uninterested voter?  Well, I'm not, really.  As noted previously in these pages, I'm a big fan of sanity.  That is, let's get serious about guns and such.  For example (and I freely admit that I've not verified this story, though I have a certain faith in the source), this morning I heard that there were two thirteen-year-olds who had managed to put holes in one another using a firearm.  The story goes something like this - the kids had stolen a cigarette or three, and one was lighting up for the first puff (yuck - been there, done that, and skipped dinner afterwards).  Child (for that is what they are) A wanted first puff (trust me, they all suck), and Child B proceeded to take it.  Child A somewhere along the line came into possession of loaded firearm, ventilated Child B, who I am certain was already regretting the experience of the puff, and then police and others got involved.  I somehow expect Mr. Heston, the old idiotic fossil that he is, to blame cigarettes for this one.  Come On, people, let's get serious - if you've got a gun, get a damned trigger lock.  If you can't afford a trigger lock, then let's just think for a minute about the other priorities in your life, shall we?  If you've got a trigger lock, then your weapons can't be used against you without some lunatic cutting the lock off.

Anywho, my disgust with that situation is why I cannot in good conscience vote for Dubyah.  Of course, there's the whole "Frat Boy Running For President" thing that kinda disgusts me, as well.  While I've only spent about five days in Texas, I do admit I have a great deal of respect for the people and the state.  I have very little respect for the man running it, but hey, that's OK.  If there were a viable alternative, I wouldn't be going into the voting booth with raw onions to cover the smell.  I used to like Al Gore, because when he was running for President the first time around (I think he was running back in either 1984 or 1988), he seemed to have a pretty good grip on technology.  

I'm not stupid, but I can tell when I'm going to a party what the party's for.  As the Vice President of the United States, I can assure you that I'd be asking more than a few questions about a visit to a Buddhist temple, or anywhere else, really.  You can't get to be where you are by ignoring reality.  And Al Gore has done quite a bit of that - if we assume that his story is true.  If, on the other hand, we assume that there was someone working for him who said "sorry, Al, but you just don't want to know" well, then, that person should be launched out of a cannon - preferably one off the old USS Iowa, one of those 17" guns would do nicely.  After they flew some 20 miles and impacted the ground at a high rate of speed, we'd discuss the issue again, calmly and clearly.  Or, we'd just sponge their butts off the ground and baggie them up for the next of kin.

I'm also at a complete loss to understand what in the hell is going on in Israel.  I don't even pretend to understand the mindset of either side over there, and I have tried.  I've got certain sympathy for the Jewish folks in the region - It's got to be hard to be surrounded on all sides by countries that would prefer you not exist, and most of them are trying, in some fashion, to make sure that doesn't continue.  On the other hand, as a Palestinian, I would certainly get pissed to high heaven if I was told to get hell out of way, someone's moving in.  I understand the religious issues going back and forth over the same land, the same ground, and the same holy sites.  The sad thing is that I'd like to see some of them.  But this isn't going to happen in my lifetime.  I'm not going to risk my death just to peek in a window that's been around for 2000 years on the off chance that someone in Jesus' time did the same thing.  Back in Jesus' time, you didn't have the automatic rifle in the hands of someone who wanted to control that little hunk of land.

I'm wondering if this isn't why we attempted to found the United Nations in the first place.  While I know there'd be plenty of people who'd howl about it, here's a thought - we (as in a United Nations Joint Command) militarily invade the disputed areas.  Those areas are then evacuated, and declared open, as per UN Resolution blah-de-blah-blah-blah.  The areas are then ringed with metal detectors, troops, and mean ones, at that.  Anyone can enter the area - if you lived there, you can even come back (after they search your home).  Anything more lethal than a kitchen knife is confiscated.  If you attempt to bring firearms into the area, you get two chances.  The first time, they tie a knot in your hair and dip you into a vat of dye - you are dyed a shocking bright green, from head to toe.  This green will NEVER completely disappear.  Second time you're caught with a weapon or anything like that, they shoot to kill.  End of story.

If you're caught rioting or attempting to harm someone else in the open area, you're dead.  Dead as a doornail as soon as you're caught.  Yes, it's an incredibly brutal proposal, but it's about the only thing I can think of.  As a civilization, we've tried mediation, we've tried locking them in their rooms and letting them fight it out (and frankly, it's kinda tough to have a fair fight when one side's got tanks and helicopter gunships, and the other considers "heavy artillery" to be Molotov cocktails), and we've tried ignoring it.  It's not gonna go away.  But damnit, when you've got a father sitting in a street, trying to shield his 12-year-old wounded son, who is killed in the crossfire, this has got to stop.  As I tell my kids, I don't give a rip who started it, and I don't care who got more hits in than you, just stop it.  

The alternative is to drop a nuke on the whole area and turn it into a nice glassy bay for the Mediterranean.  That would piss a whole lot more people off, and kill a few, as well.  I'm at a loss, otherwise.  Twelve is too young to die.  Especially from gunfire.  And to have your father trying to shield you is just something that's incredibly sad.

Enough of the damned politics, already.  I've got to go do something before I go nuts.

Off to hunt records and so forth required for the house-financing fellow, then to tear apart and rebuild my work area.  Gulp.  This could get to be one of those really scare "now what the hell does this cord do?" days.  Gulp, double gulp, and oy vey.  Wish me luck.

Much Later: Okay, I'm going to throw out two tangents here.  First of all, I just finished watching MOST of The West Wing tonight, and I'm both pleased, and sad.  Pleased, because this show is so very well written.  They manage to tie the package up in a nice neat box - but there are loose ends you can go back to later and nod and say "Oh, I see."  This is what's good about having an idiot box that works on occasion.  

Other loose end is my whole mood.  Today, I willingly discussed with a mortgage broker the "opportunity" to place myself so far under debt that I'm not going to see the top of it for thirty years.  When I do the math on that, I'm looking at being 67 years old when it's done.  Good grief.  I've got to be insane.  Then again, I look around.  I clearly remember the first house my parents built.  I don't remember the first house they lived in after I was born - it was an apartment in St. Cloud, somewhere; I wasn't quite one when we moved into a three-bedroom rambler-style house.  My parents paid less for that house than I did for my first NEW car (I paid a little over $10,000 for my Tempo - my folks paid about $9,500 for the house and lot combined).  Now, I'm looking at lots of a quarter-acre (yeah, I guess I'm still a rural/farmland kid at heart), and looking at fifteen times what I paid for that damned car.  

Yeah, I know - right now I'm pissing money down the drain via my monthly rent check.  It's just lost cash, as far as it goes - I give the rental office my check, they thank me, ignore me, and move on.  This way I will build equity in the home, but good grief, that's a very very very long time to make payments.

Then I thought some more about it.  I'm not adding to my payments a whole lot - I'm merely getting more for my money.  Once I ran that one through my head, I started to feel better.  Of course, not two minutes after I figured that part out for myself, I heard Let It Be on the radio.  I'm a firm believer that there is no coincidence in life - everything happens for a reason.  Or, as some say, "God answers all prayers - sometimes the answer is 'no'".  And that helped me.  I'll get over this - it's just bloody frightening, right now.

I've seen people experimenting with new e-mail clients, etc., and here's a thought - why doesn't someone produce an e-mail client with an importable spammer address/domain address filter?  Here's how it would work - you get spam, you simply forward it to "screwthem@nospam.url" (figures - FrontPage thinks it's a legit URL).  The server accepts the e-mail, strips out the originating address.  It also grabs all of the header information and tracks it back.  It reports automatically to the "abuse@thatbadserverplace.com" account for each domain that they've been used to relay.  THEN, it adds the originating address, and domain, to another list.  

When you go to retrieve e-mail, once a day (or week, or whenever - it's user-configurable), your client hits the server and downloads the updates to those lists.  Then it applies them to the filters on your client - there are three automatically included - The "Obvious Junk" filter that allows you to filter stuff that is obviously spam based on the domains/addresses from the list generated above; the "Not to me" filter that moves everything that doesn't have your e-mail address in the TO or CC fields to the trash can or temp trash, your choice, and a third filter to say "this might be junk" and move it to another folder for your review - it's a filter that can learn from how you treat the stuff in the temporary holding tank.

Sounds like a whole hell of a lot of work, but it might be useful.  And it would allow us to kill spammers.  

And now, from our "Necessity is the mother of strange bedfellows" department, Microsoft has invested in Corel.  Does anyone else see the irony in this?  Corel - the company that now owns WordPerfect, that now distributes a Linux version, that makes and sells some pretty good drawing/illustrating packages.  I just don't get it.  Unless, of course, it is Microsoft's goal for total world domination...  

Today is supposed to be pretty cold here - I'm going to do laundry, and then attempt to take a nap.  I hope.

After a string of stupidity combined with poor timing and general misfortune yesterday afternoon (don't ask), I spent today with my wife, running a number of errands.  After her work-day ended, we headed home to get the kids.  While I can sit here now and say "If only we'd..." to about a dozen different points, I know that somehow, he'd still do it.  Jack managed to fall off a toy, onto a carpeted floor, at daycare.  Perfectly normal, up to a point.  Beyond that, however, we have the essential portion of what makes Jack, well, Jack.  In the process of doing this, he managed to plant at least part of his face on a non-skid surface.  And unfortunately, the other part of his face was NOT on the non-skid surface.  Funny thing about human skin - the face, especially around the eyes, has some delicate skin.  Jack discovered this when he split his cheek open on a horizontal line about a half-inch long, a quarter inch wide, and about an eighth of an inch deep.  The skin pretty much split like a grape.

We arrived at Daycare about 20 minutes after the incident in question.  Jack was pretty calm, all things considered.  We took one look, and discussed in a bit of a dither the prospect of him healing a divot in his face the size of one of Tiger Wood's worse tee shots.  Didn't look likely, so we then decided to have him checked out by a professional.  After an hour of sheer hell, Jack came out with four stitches in his cheek. As you can somewhat see, he's got a band-aid on his cheek about the size of a quarter, through which you can sort-of see what he's got on his cheek there.  Ouch.  And I do mean OUCH.

Of course, after all of that, we get home, and my new soon-to-be-full-time employer has a class scheduled for next week that they'd like me to sit in on - no pay, of course, but we're getting closer.  Should be good.  And, it's my father's Birthday.  Oh, yeah, and today was mine.  Presents?  I think Jack being OK after all of this is the only one I really wanted, today.  Poor kid.  But it could have been so much worse.

I know - there's all sorts of studies showing both sides of the issues.  Frankly, I really do not want to deal with the issue either way.  If it were just myself and my wife, I'd certainly consider it.  But with two small children, there is quite literally no way in hell I'd look at that house.

There.  Nuff said.  Now I've got to get ready for our dinner out at the Carousel Restaurant.  Where in the hell did my kids get expensive tastes?  Then again, at least I don't have to worry about dealing with all the convention problems - which, by now, are either completely resolved or so completely hosed up that there's no hope in heck of them salvaging it.  I'm sure that it's one of those that's just fine on the surface, and underneath, it's held together with a lot of string and prayer.  Oh well, as long as the marks pays their fees.

More later, if I'm not too drunk.  But before that, check out this link.  Does anyone else think that our current Junior Senator is either a horribly bad judge of people, a complete jackass, or just deserving of a long rest, NOT at the taxpayer expense?  I just do not understand how some people can manage to dress themselves in the morning with such a low brain-cell count.  Of course, not having a deficiency in the brain cell department, I can quite honestly say I'm pretty sure I'll never experience it.  Sure, from time to time I do stupid things.  That's called being human.  However, I know, and freely ADMIT, that they're stupid things.  This idiot thinks it's S.O.P.  

As to getting slightly polluted at my daughter's party, oh, I know, it's a seven-year-old's party, but can't I?  Even a little?  Mine was yesterday.  And I did behave.  Lots.  

Much Later: I cannot believe that the restaurant we sat in tonight is the same one we ate in three weeks ago.  Tonight, with a reservation, we were seated immediately on the carousel.  We started out on the east side of the loop, and our table was immediately set, with four places, and things were looking good.

We shoulda stopped there.  We got the menus, and frankly, I'm never going back to the Radisson Carousel in the evenings.  That food isn't fit to fling, much less eat.  Let me be perfectly clear, here.  The food REALLY SUCKED.  Can I back that up?  Damn straight - here we go.  

When we ordered, my wife asked to get the corn chowder soup.  And we started out with an appetizer of scallops.  Mrs. D's soup arrived first, along with the children's appetites.  The three of them demolished the soup in less than three minutes.  I didn't much care for it - it was less than good. Then, the Scallops arrived.  My wife likes them, and my daughter's prone to seafood.  Jack hasn't clearly defined his tastes yet, and I, frankly, prefer hoofed food to finned.  But we tried it.  Sadly, they put the damned scallops in some sort of "beet vinegerette" which had me ready to launch.  They put a mound of some sort of bastardized rice in the middle of the plate, and that was probably even more foul then the Scallops.  Jack didn't much care for it either.  Rhiannon was OK with it.  Mrs. D, of course, liked it.

Then Rhiannon ordered a Ham and Cheese sandwich from the children's menu, while Jack went with the gourmet Peanut Butter And Jelly.  Mrs. D got the Crabcakes and something, while I went with the Boneless Breast of Pheasant in Pistachio crumbs with lemon-pepper mashed potatoes.   Now, not having had too much pheasant in my life, I figured the typical Robert Klein line - "tastes like chicken."  Though I hadn't counted on "cuts like shoe leather".  Or the bone sticking out of the boneless breast.  The potatoes were OK, but not spectacular. 

Now, I didn't mention that the Carousel revolves at about 1.25 RPH (Revolutions Per Hour).  We'd been around about two-thirds of a revolution before the soup arrived.  It took another two-thirds before the Appetizer arrived.  THEN, dinner was another two-thirds away.  By the time we contemplated dessert, we were looking at 8:20 pm.  Did I mention we sat down at 6:40 pm, and I've got a now-officially-seven year old and one fellow five weeks short of four years old?

Yeah, pleasant.  Our waiter apologized all over himself three different times, and once even admitted he'd forgotten all about us.  If the food was half as good as his excuses, we'd have enjoyed ourselves.  As it was, they screwed up the bill (we got charged full-price for the soup that was supposed to be included with our meal), we ordered a ham and cheese sandwich which became, somehow, a grilled cheese sandwich, and our nice dinner turned into nearly three hours of absolute hell.  

Frankly, I do hope the young fellow who was trying his chops as a waiter can take some constructive criticism - find a new career.  Or get into a less-expensive restaurant.  You haven't got the skills, or the talent, to handle that restaurant - and you certainly need more help.  My final verdict is avoid that restaurant during the evenings, unless you can order off the menu - what they had was, frankly, pretty poor in terms of food.  I've never been so disappointed with a meal before in my life.

Today started on a weird note, and has roller-coastered up and down for pretty much most of the day.  After waking up pissed off from last night's dinner (see above, and avoid the Radisson Carousel Restaurant during the evenings), I noticed that we had a light on in our bedroom - oddly enough, the light switch is two and a half feet off the surface of the bed, and we haven't used that light in about five months.  

So, I asked the other two inmates in this asylum, and they both denied, upon pain of loss of TV, that they had anything to do with it.  So, I said they could play in their room until we were ready to get going for church.  At the time, it seemed a good idea.  At the time.

Did I mention that Thursday night we spent some time shopping for my eldest child's birthday, in addition to getting her some needed school clothes - including a second blue cardigan sweater (they can only wear "blue cardigans".  Please note that blue covers sky to navy, and a wide number of shades in-between.  This is what happens when school uniform policies are interpreted by parents rather than lawyers).  Unbeknownst to me, my son had borrowed his sister's homework scissors from her school supply bucket, and proceeded to cut a fist-sized hole in the new sweater.

Being prone to popping a bolt when things like this occur, I quietly sent my son into his room.  I bit my lip, dug my fingernail into my palms, and tried, very hard, not to turn the child into some form of Jell-O.  I allowed Mrs. D to mete out punishment.  Which she did in fine style.  The young man was relegated to his room for the entire day when we were not out running errands.

Which, oddly enough, captured the entire day.  We found far more than the five houses we were seeking - but of the five, we found some good ones.  I'm very glad we looked at the one we thought was the perfect house - it was pretty well cramped, yard-wise.  

After that, grocery shopping, and home.  So far, the line of the day belongs to NBC's new "Ed" show - when asked what should be done to increase business for the bowling alley, one of the characters (who really needs a personality transplant) says "whores - they're fun for the whole family."  Granted, I shortened the whole speech, but he had me chuckling with the whole thing until he got to that last bit - I was laughing out loud there - thank goodness I'd finished dinner, or I'd have had to pass baked beans through my nose - talk about severe pain and suffering.

Well, nuff said.  I've got a class next week at the new employer - no pay yet, but it's getting closer.  And so is the apocalypse, apparently.  Some idiot in Tennessee sued McDonalds because she was burned by a pickle on her chin.  Frankly, I'm thinking that she probably shouldn't be out in the sun, or really in the real world, if she gets burned by a burger pickle.  Good Grief. 

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