Family and Friends

Make a wish

Have I written about our Diaper Genie before? It’s too late and I’m too tired to care. It’s writin’ time. Don’t make me go Old Testament on yo’ ass! I’m happy to announce that we’ve graduated to the stage 2 Diaper Genie liners. We’re so proud. To recap, the Diaper Genie is a sophisticated device for making diaper sausage links. They sell…
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Family and Friends

Paralyzed with indecision

We’ve done the theme park thing twice now, in the last two weeks. On both occasions I eschewed my digital still camera in favor of my digital video camera. I felt I was duty bound to find some value in this new toy I’ve wanted for so long. The thing is; I couldn’t seem to shoot a scene without noting silently to myself that I was passing up a good shot with the still camera. I…
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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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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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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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Family and Friends

Ultimatums are a guy’s best friend

I laid out the law. I told my wife that if she loved me, she would watch the Battlestar Galactica mini-series. (Would you believe that “Battlestar Galactica” was not in the Microsoft Word spell-check dictionary?) It took me two weeks of relentless pressure, followed by my aforementioned last ditch ultimatum before Cheryl relented. I told her that if she would just watch the mini-series…
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Family and Friends

March Mundane-ness

What do pre-mixed tile grout, Windex, Lysol cleaning wipes, dryer sheets, and unleaded gasoline have in common? Nothing really. Unless that is, you consider what I did today. It was a day that will live in the annals of (Kauffman) history forever. It was a day when John tackled an outside chore and an inside chore in a single day. And, if that were not enough – he did more than one inside…
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Family and Friends

Don’t those spots bother you?

Cheryl, John, John, Cheryl. If not for the fact that chance meetings between strangers rarely occur in your master bathroom, you’d wonder if the two people in this story knew each other. On the eve of prime time, this fine March evening, Cheryl was slaving away in the bathroom. She left the bathroom running at full impulse power, carrying an armful of cleaning supplies. Upon her departure…
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Family and Friends

Rebel without a clue

“Cheryl, why don’t you take the knobs off before you paint the doors?” “If you want to paint, then take the knobs off.” Touche! Three hours later, I find myself finishing up the inside of our pantry door. I’m putting the finishing touches on my masterpiece, a flawless paint job around a doorknob – still installed. It must have taken me fifteen minutes…
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Family and Friends

News from the front

Having lived in a housework deficit for three, germ infested, weeks; Cheryl was as eager as an alcoholic in a liquor store. (I am convinced her need for clean is a symptom of an addictive personality, but don’t tell her I said that.) “John, would you like to do some mopping this morning?” Good thing I wasn’t eating at the time, I might have needed medical attention.
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