An ominous sign

S here. Every couple of years, I lose phone service at my house, because branches on the tree next to the telephone phone grow too close and disconnect the wires. The tree and pole are on the lot line of two of my neighbors, neither of whom seem inclined to cut the tree [...]

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Making it into *our* house, part 1

S here; as we discussed in a previous post, we’re doing some serious interior redecorating to make the house feel more like ours and less like mine. This past weekend, we started on the kitchen.
Before:

After the addition of Mango Tango:

We really like how it turned out, although it still startles us whenever we walk into [...]

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Happy times in California

Hello all, E here and how great is the news from California?!  It’s awesome to look at all the happy couples tying the knot.  S emailed me a bit ago and said “16+ hours of gay marriage in California, and the state still hasn’t fallen into the ocean.  Go figure.”  So true.
John Jonik is a [...]

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Old Furniture Never Dies

The scene: E and S are in E’s apartment, contemplating a nondescript floor lamp that’s listing about 15 degrees off vertical.

S: “When you move in, is that lamp coming, or are you planning to get rid of it?”
E: “I have to keep it. I don’t care if we use it or store it in [...]

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Random observations of 5th graders

How is it that when you take three 5th graders to a science museum, their maximum attention span for the same exhibit at the same time is about 30 seconds; but when you get home and turn on the computer so they can watch Clinton’s speech conceding to Obama, they sit there spellbound and silent [...]

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Sometimes it pays to be late to church

S here; we were running late for church this morning, so we wound up parking on a different street than we usually do. When we walked back out to the car after church, what should we see on the curb near our car but this:

Just yesterday E and I had had yet another discussion [...]

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M has entered the working world

Today was the first day of M’s first real job.
We have some neighbors who are a lesbian couple with two little kids; the 5-year-old boy has special needs. One of the moms contacted me recently to say that the therapists they’ve been working with have suggested that it would be very helpful for the boy [...]

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