• The kid car.

    It was necessary to drive my newish car to work this morning. I haven’t driven it for the better part of two weeks, so it was quite the event. My enthusiasm was tempered by the good natured ribbing I got from my coworkers.

    “John, your daughter’s too young to drive. Why did you buy her a car already?”

    “John, you’ve got a car just like my neighbor’s sixteen year old.”

    I was driving to my allergists office and I began to think how I could turn my car into a teen dream. Remove the suspension and pick-up some lumber from Home Depot. Tint the windows and get some stencils for Japanese lettering. Illuminate the undercarriage. And most importantly, install some party favors in the tail pipe. Go speed racer!

  • Drying off.

    One of my last entries has prompted a small discussion about inherited genes. Maybe discussion is the wrong word… that is, if you can call two email messages a discussion (one for each participant). This led to my own musing. (When was the last time you used “muse” as a verb?) I feel that I provide an important service to my readers: pointing out the obvious. In that light, here’s my latest nugget of wisdom for the anonymous masses: we are all a genetic chain letter. Some elect not to pass it on, breaking the chain. Others send it to all of their descendants. What’s cool about this chain letter is that we get to add a paragraph before we pass it on.

    Poor Beth.

  • What costs more than a stick of gum and less than five boxes of laminate tile?

    Post plumbing woe life in the Kauffman household (version 2.2) continues. The fan is still blowing on a wall. What, don’t you have a fan blowing on your walls? A single sample of tile is resting in a large space where there used to be wet carpet. Four boxes of laminate, self adhesive tile are waiting patiently in our family room.

    I have garnered just about as much respect from my previous exploits as I deserve.

    “John, where are you going?”
    “I thought I would stop at Home Depot to look at tile.”
    “I just assumed you would drive home. I’m really hungry. I figured you would be ready to look at tile in a month or so.”
    “Am I really that bad?”
    “Did you ever quite finish everything you wanted to with the Pergo?”
    “Point well taken.”