Blogrilla

Very little really.

1. On Sunday we went to the Whole Foods Market and picked up a couple of things.
2. Did a little shopping at the Burlington Mall - got some new drink glasses from Crate and Barrel.  Liz took Chloe to Sephora (a makeup place).  Unbelievably it took an hour to purchase one tiny bag of products.  Which is fine, because I took everyone else to the Lego store and Sharper Image.  They’re going out of business and have some GREAT deals.  I got a $100 lamp for only $35.  I don’t want to debate the merits of the $100 price tag, but I thought it was a fine item for only $35.
3. Me and Chloe and Grace took the dogs to Sheepfold in the Middlesex Fells for an hour on Sunday.  Its a large dog-park, really.  Actually its just a massive pasture where dogs go romping around.  My dogs zoomed in large circles and sniffed a lot of doggy-bottoms.  It was a fun time.  I’m hoping that the extra “socialization” will decrease the howling and barking they do at other dogs while we’re out walking.
4. Chloe and I watched a little baseball, which was kind of nice.
5. Tomorrow evening is Grace’s first t-ball practice.  Although I am doubtful that she will really take to it, I’m willing to throw myself in to it with her and volunteer to be an assistant coach and will practice with her.  Maybe she’ll be the one who takes to sports.
6. I had a parent-teacher conference with Grace’s Kindergarten teacher this morning.  We all agreed that Grace is terrific and we wouldn’t change a thing.
7. I am thinking about finding a used projector somewhere for use in a backyard theater.  It would be fun to have people over to watch a movie or a game or something.  I would need

1. a digital projector of at least 1000 lumens to make sure its bright enough. 
2. a couple of speakers with some significant “oomph” to them.
3. amplifier (cheap and used is ok in my book)
4. Screen - home made probably

We hit on the idea while we were disucssing what to do for Chloe’s birthday.  Its towards the end of May and she would like to have a bunch of people over for a showing of a Bon Jovi concert.  While I am not crazy about the music it might be a good way to get some fun stuff in the backyard. 

Any ideas about this would be appreciated.

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I thought that since the horrific rodenticide incident last week things would quiet down some.  They did, for the most part.  But over the weekend I heard Grace in the backyard scolding Buckaroo and telling him NO!

She explained that he had eaten a mouse.

Great.

I often don’t believe kids the first time they tell me something.  In this case, I suspected that he might have eaten something else and she was just mistaking it for a mouse.  We talked about the color of it and what its tail was like.  We talked about how big it was - she couldn’t say really because she only saw the back half sticking out of Bucky’s mouth.

The whole time Bucky is prancing around the house with a big ol’ mouse-eating grin on his face licking his chops!

I tried to trip her up on a couple of details, but her story was very consistent and I think Bucky really ate a mouse in the backyard!

I hope the others learn from mouse-murder and stay the hell away from my house.

Incidentally, the other squirrels in the area have not learned their lesson from the loss of one of their own.  On Saturday I saw one had returned and was taunting the dogs again.

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The week is racing to a close.  Its a good thing.  I’ve had a busy week of work and am looking forward to some quiet time.

As late as lunchtime today Liz and I were trying to figure out what we should do this weekend.  I think we have torrential rain and 40-degree weather predicted for the entire weekend.  Nasty stuff.

Have any bright ideas?  Post ‘em in the comments.  I could use some ideas for what we should do this weekend.  All I have on my list is

1. take kids to swimming lessons
2. clean up garage

That’s it.  Don’t make me clean up the garage.  I suppose I should get some more propane.  So its nothing but errands.

Do me a solid and give me an idea for something to do this weekend.

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For years we’ve had problems with squirrels to greater and lesser degrees. For example, when Liz used to grow tomatoes in the backyard the squirrels would take one bite out of each fruit and then leave the rest of it to rot. They did the same thing with every vegetable we have tried to grow. That was a time when our frustration with the furry varmints was highest.

After we got the dogs the squirrels tended to steer clear of the yard.

For a while.

Then they began to taunt the dogs. I don’t think we have such an attractive yard to squirrels that they just couldn’t resist it. We have no nut-bearing trees and the yard is full of kids and dogs. What could be appealing about that? I get the distinct impression that the squirrels have a bad attitude and like to tease the dogs. Like Chip-and-Dale.

Nonetheless, every time we let the dogs out they go tearing across the yard hoping to catch a rodent and do unspeakable things to it. They’ve managed to get some fur stuck in their teeth a couple of times, but the squirrels are always just a little too fast for Peterman and Buckaroo.

Until yesterday afternoon.

The kids were out playing with some of the neighbor children. They were yelling and laughing and running. They were making a general ruckus. The dogs were patrolling the yard and playing with the kids. All very normal stuff. And frankly, all this activity should have encouraged the squirrels to stay away.

But I guess not all squirrels are geniuses.

The kids said that they turned around and noticed that Peterman had the squirrel in his mouth and was running around the yard with Buckaroo in hot pursuit. Ben said they were playing “keep-away” with the still living and VERY unhappy squirrel flipping his little squirrely gourd.

As I understand it, the kids were yelling and screaming at the dogs to drop the squirrel. Eventually Ben got them away from the squirrel and told their mother. I was five minutes away, returning home from work. By the time I arrived, the critter had already shuffled off his mortal coil.

Its gone now.

I thought the kids would be VERY upset about it, but they seemed to handle it pretty well. We told the kids that it was in the dogs’ nature to kill things like that and that we had to remember that no matter how sweet and lovable our particular dogs are, they’re still animals and we have to take the bad with the good.

They accepted it and moved on. We started watching Superman Returns and the kids really liked the first half of it. We’ll watch the second half tonight.

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On Sunday was the big American Girl Tea and Fashion Show down at Plimoth Plantation.  They seemed to have a lot of fun.  They got all dressed up in the most adorable outfits.  I saw the other girls who attended and they all looked great.  You so rarely see little girls dressed in their best anymore.  Even at church.

When I asked the boys if they wanted to see what kind of beach we could find OR we could go geocaching they emphatically agreed to the beach.  I was a little disappointed because we haven’t been in a long time and I thought it might be fun.

We wound up at White Horse Beach.  Its not a big beach, but it was deserted and FREEZING!  Actually on the lee-side of the dunes it was fine, but once we crossed the dunes to the beach the wind picked up and so did the mist.  Sure, I’ll grant you that it smelled great, but the wind and rain made it so cold that it was VERY unpleasant.  Nonetheless we stayed about 15 minutes so the boys could build some kind of wall out of scrap wood they found.

We drove back to Plimoth Plantation and looked at the gift store for a while and visited the craft building where artisans carve and weave and make pottery.

That was about it for Sunday.  I did some more work in the evening and watched Gremlins with the kids.  It was a hit with them.  It had been edited to be family-friendly - they had shown it on the ABCFamily channel, so they cut out some of the bloody or particularly scary scenes. 

I am starting to think more seriously about getting a motorcycle.  The warm weather is looming and I think it would be a lot of fun to learn to ride a motorcycle.  I’ve always wanted to but I’ve been too busy with other things to do that.  It occurred to me that if I don’t do it soon I may never do it - and I think I would regret that.  So I am looking around for some place to take some lessons and somewhere to get a used bike of modest proportions.  I think I’m interested in a “cruiser” style of motorcycle.

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1. Slept in - it was lovely
2. Did some work
3. Went to Salem because Chloe’s class was recently talking about the witch trials.  Went to the Salem Witch Museum.  It was better than your average wax museum.  The presentation was well done, if a little over the top in the “creepy” department.
4. Had lunch at my favorite brewery (Salem Beerworks)
5. Saw a movie called Nim’s Island.  It was ok - it was fine.  But the theater we were in was cute.  It was small - only three screens and they try to compete with the big boys by offering “charm” like real butter, or naked popcorn and doing birthday parties.  It was a nice place, I have to admit.
6. Resting … ahh… actually I’m doing some more work.  Liz mentioned that she’s craving waffles, so I think we may go out again.  I’m still kind of full from lunch so maybe I’ll just have a salad or something fishy.

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So the new season of Battlestar Galactica is underway. I have faithfully stuck with this show through thick and thin - and let me tell you there were some damn thin times. Its on now - we’re ten minutes in to the new season and I think its off to a good start!

Grace Park is still hot.

Battlestar Galactica has a  photo on their  frontpage of the Last Supper a la BSG

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There’s very little going on at home this weekend.  No swim lessons.  No T-Ball for Grace - the weather has been all rain today with more forecast for tomorrow.  I have mixed feelings about this news.

There’s a cub scout pack meeting tonight.  Fortunately, they have been mercifully short this year - sometimes less than an hour.  Gabriel will probably get a couple of pins or badges and then will help clean up and we should be able to scoot home right after that.

Bon Jovi is having some kind of contest where, in connection with one of their songs, they want people to send in videos showing why their town is the best.  I think.  Chloe wants to enter so I agreed to drive her around if she would take the video.  Afterwards we will use Adobe Photoshop Elements Premier to do the video editing and we’ll see if we can send something worthwhile in.

In school they started talking about the Salem Witch trials and she asked if we could go there.  There is a brewery there to which I am partial so we may go there for a few hours.

I think that’s it.  It should be quiet.

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There’s an article in the Crossville Chronicle about how a local artist put a sculpture of The Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Its a terribly written article but an interesting development in Backwater, USA.

From Wikipedia:

The Flying Spaghetti Monster (also known as the Spaghedeity) is the deity of a parody religion^[1] called The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and its system of beliefs, “Pastafarianism”.^[2] The religion was founded in 2005 by Bobby Henderson to protest the decision by the Kansas State Board of Education to require the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to biological evolution. Because intelligent design implies the existence of an intelligent, but not necessarily omnipotent or omniscient designer, some, like Henderson, argued that this designer could, in fact, be anything imaginable.

In an open letter sent to the education board, Henderson makes a mockery of the concept of an intelligent designer by professing belief in a supernatural creator called the Flying Spaghetti Monster which resembles spaghetti and meatballs.^[3] He furthermore calls for the “Pastafarian” theory of creation to be taught in science classrooms.^[4]

Due to its recent popularity and media exposure, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is often used by atheists, agnostics (known by Pastafarians as “spagnostics”), and others as a modern version of Russell’s teapot^[5] and the Invisible Pink Unicorn.

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This conversation sounds VERY Familiar to me.

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