Travel

Playing the broken record

On Sunday we went to Sea World for a little family fun time. If you like it when circumstances tempt all of your shortcomings as a parent and a husband, then you would have had a great time. Adam’s nose started to run. Then Adam’s temper started to run. Then Beth’s mouth started to run. Then my patience started to run. Then everyone should have run. I can’t put my finger on…
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Family and Friends

News from the borrowed PC hardware collective

Using software that came with my trusty PowerBook, I have created my first home movie on DVD. If you are ever shopping for a computer and you are told that you don’t really need a DVD-R drive, pay them no mind. Forget about storage capacity, you can burn your own home movie DVDs for cripe’s sake. Now I can mail out disks to uninterested recipients just like AOL, only mine will work in…
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Kitchen Sink

A long time coming

Which of the following items do not belong: 1. Lap top computer. 2. Wireless network. 3. All indoor posts to the web site. If you picked number three, you’re a winner! (Unless, of course, you’re a Yankee’s fan… then you’re still a loser. Sorry.) Well kids, we’re here to fix you up. I’ve got a covered front porch, a bench, and a folding table (courtesy of…
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AppleBeth

To buy, or NOT to buy, THAT is the question

Flush with accomplishment from recently achieving her savings goal of $187, plus tax, Beth is contemplating higher plateaus. Suddenly, the kiddy slide isn’t high enough any more. Now, she wants to play with the big boys. That’s right, she wants the 20GB iPod now. “But Beth, you don’t have enough music for the 20GB iPod.” “So. Someday I might. See right there…
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Wellbeing

Office life on a random spring morning

Spending most of my morning hours cooped up indoors, despite my office with a view, I find mornings to be more abstract construction than reality. Most of the time, life in an office is rather homogenous. Time of day, week, month, or year, it’s all the same. The scene outside my window slowly shifts, but I rarely associate the view with the barrage of senses being “in it&#8221…
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Beth

H2O

If you have a child, chances are you are familiar with the fresh water phenomenon. As it happens, we have a child, two of them in fact. Since our oldest child has had the ability to communicate – whether it be by speech or wild gestures with her extremities – she has wanted fresh water at her bedside at night. Yes, I fondly remember the day Beth learned to use “dehydrated&#8221…
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Wellbeing

Trying times

Addiction. Hunger. Desperation. I had looked all over, in all the usual places: my desk drawer, my briefcase, the nooks and crannies around my office, nothing. I was damn near close to loosing that which distinguishes us from animals: my ability to reason. Yet it was at this most desperate hour that a single hope shown through the mist of dire circumstance: “my car, maybe I’ll find it…
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Kitchen SinkSports

I am the very model of a modern major league punch-line

The owner of our beleaguered little baseball team has more than his fair share of bad press. Whether or not it is deserved is for others to decide. I’m interested in the press release the team recently made available, after Vince was accused of throwing a tantrum in front of a group of fans. A team spokesman reported that the Rays had conducted their own internal investigation, and…
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CoffeeWellbeing

When cleaner isn’t better

There are some circles where this is generally not true (there’s a circle around my house, for example). However, there are a few narrowly defined areas where cleaning – especially with commercially available solvents – is taboo. I’ve heard that there are families where the unwashed spaghetti sauce pot is an heirloom, passed from generation to unwashed generation. What I…
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