Please use up my dryer lint

M went to the multi-troop Scout “Freezeout” this past Saturday. Each kid in his patrol was assigned certain items to bring that would be needed for the various activities that the patrols would be competing in. He was supposed to bring a blanket that nobody cared if it got wet. (Ha! [...]

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Microdonation site that assists local families

E here and as I was listening to NPR tonight on my way home tonight I heard an alarming statistic – 71,400 people lost their job today, that’s right, today. I find that pretty scary but am hopeful that Obama and his administration can lead us out of this bloody mess.  
Anyway as I was surfing [...]

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The Hamster Channel, now broadcasting in high-definition

The cat was used to watching The Hamster Channel through a metal cage-within-a-cage. All those metal bars made for a rather grainy picture. But now that we have moved one hamster into a glass tank, the cat can watch The Hamster Channel in high-def. As you can see, he’s loving it. [...]

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Quiet Sunday afternoon

M went over to a neighbor’s house to play in the 8″ of new snow we got Sunday. E and I pondered how to spend the afternoon.
“Want to have sex?”
“Well, I was going to have peanuts. But–”
And just then we saw M come trotting back home from the neighbor’s house. So peanuts [...]

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End of an era

S here. M and I were capering around the house at breakfast singing, “Ding dong the Bush is gone, sing it high, sing it low, make it known the wicked Bush is gone.” Then the cat upchucked his entire breakfast on the floor. I’m going to think of that as the cat’s [...]

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Peace through partition

No, this isn’t about Iraq, or Pakistan, or Vietnam, or Germany. It’s about the rodent members of our household.
Peachy and Snowy are dwarf hamsters, which means they should be happy living together as a pair. However, either they didn’t get the memo, or else the pet shop was wrong in labeling them as [...]

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This shouldn’t be intimidating

S here. I’ve held various birthday parties over the years where I’m the only adult present and the guests are a bunch of rambunctious boys under the age of eight. All of the parties have been successes: the guests have gone home happy, and no major injuries or major property damage have ever [...]

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How to get WFXT Fox with a digital converter DTV box

We don’t have cable; we still use rabbit-ears on our TV. Last spring, we got one of those DTV digital converter boxes and hooked it up. We were pleased to discover that we got 4 more public-television stations, and that all but one of the channels came in very clearly. However, we [...]

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Indiana Jones and the Sofa Cushions of Doom

We gave M the DVD of the new Indiana Jones movie for Christmas. We’d seen it in the theaters and figured we all liked it well enough that it was worth adding to our video collection. M has had various friends come over to play in the last few days, and each time [...]

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Wedding favors

S here. Now that it’s 2009, and we can say that our wedding is happening “next year,” it seemed time to attempt some wedding planning. Somehow we started with the topic of wedding favors. (Hey, it’s easier than picking a date or a reception site.)
My idea is that if we can convince [...]

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