So Little E brought home a note from his day care a couple of weeks ago, announcing the annual Christmas party. All boys were supposed to bring a boys’ gift, girls were to bring girls’ gifts, and everything was supposed to stay under $10 – the usual drill, really.
What’s amazing is how much I agonized over what to get. Pardon me while I be a big hippie for a few minutes here. … Read more
It’s that most wonderful time of the year!… if you want to ogle my Christmas tree’s worth of Starfleet, that is. The tree went up on Saturday night, much to the boy’s delight, and thanks to Portia knocking the artificial tree off of its high storage shelf in the utility room (she’s a little climber) and chewing through some of its wiring (she’s a little menace to society), we had to get a new tree this year. The Mrs. insisted on getting a real one. It’s pretty, and it’s nice, but it was a huge pain in the butt to set up, and it’s shedding twigs and needles everywhere. Furthermore, the cats love it… with a little bit of seasoning. They’re biting small branches off the bottom of it. Obviously our cats have an anti-Christmas-tree jihad going on here.
The new lights that were purchased along with the tree are incompatible with the connectors for my box full of Hallmark Star Trek ornaments, so sadly, unless they’ve got stuff that works under its own power, they’re all “dark” this year, making the traditional picture-taking a challenge. The Christmas Starfleet is on silent running. … Read more
From the book o’ the face:
Ah, bitter irony. Are they soliciting comments to regurgitate during a newscast, or doing market research about why they still have a dozen open positions that they can’t seem to fill a few months after yanking everything up to Rogers?
I know. Let it go, let it go…… Read more
So see if you can follow me on this one.
My wife grabbed a bag of sugar out of the pantry, something about needing to mix it with some kind of exfoliant stuff she’s been using. Rather than put the sugar back in the pantry, she’s been storing it… in Maria’s old cat carrier. Which is plenty clean, but it’s just an awfully strange place to park a sack of sugar, y’know?
After walking by this strange sight numerous times, I finally asked her “What’s up with the caged sugar?” And she told me.
So help me, I still think it’s a weird thing to do. So I’ve taken to walking past it and saying “CAGED SUGAR!” in a deep, Blaxploitation-movie-trailer voice, followed by bow-chicka-wow music, because it sounds for all the world like a freakin’ women’s prison-break flick from the ’70s.
We’re weird.… Read more
To my wife’s considerable delight this morning*, Gabby went outside and bit the head off of a squirrel. (No squirrel-sized quickening was observed, so we can assume that this was a clerical error and the squirrel was not an immortal.) Alas, Gabby has been banished to the outer reaches** for the day for this.
I’ve gotta give her some squirrel-killing style points, though. … Read more
As the first round of eBay stuff is boxed up to head out the door, I’m also hawking my wares on Craigslist, in the following “for sale” areas:
Musical Instruments (I figured this was the best place for studio gear)
Baby & Kid Stuff
Photo & Video
Farm & Garden
The eBay auctions – the buyers of which I’m very grateful to – gave us a little bit of breathing room; these listings are very much in the decluttering category, with just a hint of “I’d rather you came and picked it up than have me ship it.”
The Kick arcade machine will probably be going on Craigslist fairly soon unless anyone else wishes to claim it. I’d like that stand-up refrigerator worth of space back. There’ll also be another round of eBay pretty soon, and so help me, I got word that someone actually bought a “Sizz” T-shirt, an oddity I designed back in my game-collecting days. A surreal coda to my day.… Read more
Since we’re getting our first snow since… well… this snow, all Arkansas drivers should read and comply immediately.
You can click on it to enlarge it; read carefully to avoid confusion.
Oklahoma drivers should substitute a random number between 0 and 79 wherever the number “5” appears on the flowchart.… Read more
Handwritten sign in front of a house in Mulberry:
…and these people haven’t put them up on Youtube yet??!?… Read more
There’s an electric heating pad under the covers. You can determine its position in this photograph by the placement and orientation of catgirls.… Read more
…of the emergency guard dog system. If I had been an actual uninvited guest, I’m assuming Gabby would be chewing through my shirt rather than just chewing on my shirt.
P.S. Thanks for doing an outstanding job of supervising there, Xena. 😆… Read more