All the News that's Fit to Print...

OK, it's been a long time since I've updated, so here's a compendium of news.

It's certainly election season. Living in good old democratic Cleveland Heights, the yards around us are filled with Obama signs. But while walking Wacko a few weeks ago, I suddenly saw a McCain/Palin sign on a neighbor's yard. As we walked past it, Wacko looked at it, looked up at me, looked back at the sign, and then squatted right in front of it and took a big old dump. Good Boy!

Meanwhile, last week our ballots came in the mail. I filled mine out (getting a little liquored up first made it more interesting) and sent it back in, so I'm done with the election. Next week for all I care, Obama can be caught in bed with David Bowie, a baggie full of cocaine, and naked pictures of Jack Abramoff and Osama bin Laden, and he's still got my vote. Woo, early voting rocks!

But it has been a rough few weeks. Two weeks ago, I managed to nearly break my toe when it impacted a wall rather violently (this was about 16 seconds after the Redskins gave up a punt return touchdown to the Eagles, but I deny any evidence of a cause-and-effect relationship between the two). After a week of hobbling around on it, and wondering if it actually was broken, it was starting to get better. But then I managed to drop a large freestanding freezer on the very same toe (well, in truth, Richard helped me drop the freezer!), and was sent back to square one of the healing process. I'm 90% sure it isn't broken, although I'm still kind of hobbling around on it.

Thalia's had a good week, though. She graduated to a new carseat -- she's outgrown the toddler carseat she's had for a while and is now in a brand new kid's booster seat. I drew the line at the pink seat with hearts on it, so we got her a gray carseat -- two in fact, one for each car. She was so excited by the new seat, and babbled away about it the whole time we drove to ballet the other night. Then she realized that she couldn't easily pull out the built-in cupholder and asked me if we could get her a new one. The disappointment of my "no" answer was tempered by...

...her reading her very first book! Yes, I got the book "Nell Gets a Pet" from the library last week (at the same time I got the "Grindhouse" DVD -- the librarian gave me a weird look about the juxtaposition of materials when I checked out), and last night Thalia climbed up into my lap and read the book to me. She needed help with a few words, but she sounded out many of the words she didn't know, and she read it from beginning to end (all 12 pages, heh). I was very proud of her. She later asked if she could go to work with me and read it to my students, and I told her that they would probably like that better than the usual class...

What else? Oh yeah, we are keeping our fingers crossed that we may have finally sold Brenna's house. We accepted an offer, it's passed inspection, and the buyers have had the final loan paperwork approved (I didn't think ANY loans were being approved). We're on schedule to close by the end of the month, and I'm just holding my breath waiting for those papers to finally be signed. Keep your fingers crossed. And if you are wondering, yes, we're taking a loss. *sigh*

We (well, Brenna) took care of Luca, the 3 month old neighbor baby, for an hour or so the other evening. The girls were very excited to have a little baby to play with... at first. Then Luca went on a crying fit, which totally freaked Thalia out. She didn't like that at all and wanted to take him back to his parents. Abra weathered it with a bit more patience. But later that night, over dinner, Abra commented about how loudly Luca cried, and asked me if that was why I waited until she and Thalia had gotten a little more grown up before I asked Brenna to marry me. I chose not to answer.

And finally, the HDTV went on the fritz last week -- wouldn't turn on. This happening during football season is a highest-threat-level alert in our house. The problem turned out to be the lamp, which needed replacing ($170! grumble, grumble). Now, those lamps are rated to last 6-8,000 hours, but a very generous estimate says this one only lasted about 3,000 hours. Gee, thanks Toshiba, you bums. So while we waited for the new lamp to be shipped, we used the TV that Mark and I bought 20 years ago when we were grad students, and it is still going strong. New technology is fancy and nice, but clearly the staying power needs improvement...

OK, that's all the news that's fit to print. For now, anyway.