bloviation extrordinaire
…in hopes that St. Nicholas overpacked (it’s only fair)…
Yes, that’s one stocking per member of the household living under our roof, not counting the hermit crabs that currently have a room for rent upstairs… how many can you name?
| I’m obviously blog-happy lately, blogging everything including the kitchen sink. Which broke today. $4 at Home Depot and 45 minutes later, it was better than new (find the shiny part, that’s what I did). I guess I now have a fall-back career after the next dotbomb crash… |  |
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We are in the full throes of the Christmas season. I’ve taken vacation through the end of the year – there’s no better way to get in the mood! I love having time to get everything done. Including… baking! |
Here’s the Russian teacake recipe in detail…
We have a family tenet that we’ll try to give a helping hand to any dog that “crosses our path”. And so when mom Grammy and the girls saw a three-legged dog and a small puppy running around on the way back from horseback riding, on a speedy road with no house in sight, they pulled over to see what they could do. Believe it or not, the three-legged dog was too fast for them. :> But they think he was wearing a collar, so hopefully he’ll find his way home. The puppy, on the other hand, was playing in the road. They scooped her up and we arranged for her to get to the shelter. We’ll be checking in on her… so if you’re in the market for a beautiful little chocolate lab puppy… ;>
UPDATE: She’s been adopted, you’re too late. :>
We had fun tonight playing with speech synthesis in linux – I typed out commands and they were dutifully shouted by the computer, trying to get the dogs to obey, yelling random punishments at the kids, and performing other various stand-up schtick. Yes we’re easily amused. :> Brought back wonderful memories of my brother and me in the early 80’s filling the speech synthesizer at Epcot with [ fa q fa q ], hitting “go”, and sneaking away. Such delinquents. Continue reading “Speech goes from Epcot to the living room…”
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From the “Chapter 19 and holding” department… Inspired by the Gillespie family experiment, the Behrns-Millers have all decided to belatedly crank through all that is Harry Potter. We’re knee-deep in the books, audio books, and movies. Maybe they’re to blame for my recent lack of posts… :> |
Reiley and I had a fun day yesterday. Wrenny headed over to Grammy’s for a sleepover, and mom painted most of the day. So Reiley and I had some adventures! We started off playing a big game of Age Of Empires ]I[ with the Warchiefs expansion, she and I facing off against a couple computer players. She swept the game, topping every stat by the end. I guess I don’t need to fear roughing her up one-on-one any more – the inverse being MUCH more likely.
After that, we went for coffee – she’s been sneaking sips of my soy lattes, I’m horribly addicted ever since Seattle where Starbucks had me surrounded on every street corner – and she talked me into getting her own (SMALL) soy latte. We read for over an hour, really nice. She finished up her book just in time for me to take her to the book club for which she was reading. Then she continued her adventures with her drama group.
After Wrenny got home from dinner with Grammy at Crazy Fire, I went out to round up grub for everyone else – a fajita for Andrea and chinese for Reiley, and we all chilled out. It was just the right kind of busy, relaxing day.
We headed out for a couple beach days, it was all perfect: the drive (a short hop straight east to the shore), the hotel (a cute little Holiday Inn that allowed pets – we had Roxie with us), the beach (it was savage, knocking Wren’s boogie board into her gut, landing Reiley on her tailbone, and rolling foolish bodyboarding me head-first straight into the hard-packed ground – I heard a dozen vertebrae crack)… the girls wore their life vests since the riptide was so strong, so we threw ourselves into the waves with abandon. I’ll try to post some pics, I have some great ones of Andrea and Wrenny playing surfer girls…