Today is the first day of fourth grade for my little one, so today Mom and I both made time to walk her to her new classroom and get situated. Watching my daughter interact with friends she hadn't seen since last spring reminded me how much she has grown and changed. She is becoming a "big person" instead of a "little person". With each day she is more independent and forming more mature ideas about her world. And all that is a good thing, but...   more »

Please join me in wishing my sister Donna a happy birthday today.  Donna and I had some great moments as kids, despite the great age difference between us (7 years), and I'm very pleased at the wonderful woman she has become.  I'm even more pleased that no matter how old I get, she's still 7 years older!  I got to see Donna this past weekend at our folks' house and that was very pleasant, but today is her actual birthday.  So Happy Day, Sis!  Thanks for being the best sibling I could have ever asked for.

While we're on the subject of birthdays, last week was my Brother-in-law Artie's birthday.  Best wishes to you too, Artie!  Artie is aptly named as he is something of an artist and produces beautiful custom carpets that can have just about anything you want on them.  Very cool stuff.  I'll post some pictures of a gorgeous rug he did for my folks later on.  His company, Ashley Taylor Custom Wool Carpets & Rugs, is soon going to have a website but it isn't available yet, but I'll include some contact info when I post the pictures. 

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Here's a curious parallel. This weekend, I went shoe shopping and picked up some new sneakers. Nothing so odd about that. But what is funny is that independently, my good friend Maggie, who authors Pandora's Tea Room, wrote an article about shoe shopping and strangely we both mused about similar ideas. When I got home and was thinking about writing up my shoe shopping ideas I was quite suprised! Coincidence is a funny thing sometimes...   more »

So here's a little something I've wanted to do for a while. What follows is 9 audio clips from 9 different movies. They vary in length from 8 to 30 seconds, and each includes a piece of music from a movie. The music might be incidental, part of the theme for the film, or something else...   more »

Well the votes are in, and Pluto has gotten the axe as have the other new planets that originally were going to be included. Our solar system has eight planets. Pluto is reclassified as a "dwarf planet" along with Ceres and 2003 UB313...   more »

Add a bunch of new pictures this morning, cats and kid, family stuff:

• Sprinkles reminds me of a clerk [1].
• I help Cherokee catch a bug [1, 2, 3, 4].
• Cherokee snoozes in a precarious spot [1, 2].
• Lynnea has fun on her new water slide [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6].

Enjoy!

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Just sitting here at my computer... minding my own business.  Ho hum.

CRASH! SCAMPITY SCAMPITY SCAMPITY SCAMPITY SCAMPITY...

Today it was a dry washbin and some plastic containers balanced precariously on the downstairs bathtub.  You know sometimes it's easy to see where the expression 'curiousity killed the cat' came from.