Friday, March 30, 2012

At Last! Harry Potter eBooks!

I have been waiting YEARS for this:

http://shop.pottermore.com/en_US/harry-potter-ebooks?c=USD

That's a pretty great price for the full set too, if you ask me!

Monday, March 19, 2012

Amazingly Lifelike Parakeet!

Sometimes I wonder at what point an ad moves from talking up a product to telling a flat-out lie.

(click to make it larger)

Monday, March 12, 2012

Box Appeal

I found a little pill box at Target that I knew Princess Tuffett would like: it was pink and plastic, had a black swirly design, and came in a set of two for one dollar. Target also carried similar boxes in blue (which was actually more of a teal) and black. You can see the black box online (which is more expensive than in-store).

Princess Tuffett loves little boxes, and loves putting things into and taking things out of boxes. I thought that for one dollar, the boxes were totally worth it. The only problem is that once you give one kid something, you have to give the other kid something too. I thought, “What could I give to Prince Tuffett?” He doesn’t like little pill boxes, and his favorite color is green, not blue or black. Eventually, however, I decided to just get him the blue boxes, and oh well whether he liked them or not.

I gave Princess her present first, in order to give Prince time to become jealous, and then I gave Prince his boxes. He didn’t want them. He looked at them disdainfully and said, “I don’t like blue.”

“Ok,” I said, putting them back in my bag. “You don’t have to have them.”

Princess Tuffett had me help her open her package, and then we opened each box so she could see how they worked. She placed the opened boxes carefully on the table. Then she reached into my bag and pulled out the blue boxes that Prince had rejected. We opened those too, and she lined them up with the pink boxes.

Prince Tuffett, who had been playing with his Lego ship, looked up and noticed what Princess Tuffett was doing.

“Hey, those are mine!” he said, snatching the blue boxes away.

“I thought you didn’t want them,” I said.

Prince Tuffett made no reply, only placed his boxes in the hold of his Lego ship.

Amazing how the value of a thing can change so quickly when a younger sibling is involved. :o)

Sunday, March 11, 2012

A Tale of Two Quarters

Yesterday I visited Tuffett manor (always a fun event). While playing in the backyard castle, I gave Prince and Princess Tuffett one quarter each. Princess Tuffett took to placing her coin on various ledges in turn, then picking it up again. Prince Tuffett ran off towards the garden with his treasure.

Queen Tuffett dropped by to see how we were doing, and we taught Princess Tuffett how to put her quarter in her pocket. Prince Tuffett then came galloping back into the castle and tried to take Princess’s quarter. He was, of course, thwarted by the adults.

“Where’s your own quarter?” I asked.

“It’s gone,” Prince Tuffett said.

“Where did it go?”

“I threw it. I don’t know where it landed.”

“Wow,” I said, laughing. I wasn’t surprised, knowing Prince Tuffett, but I thought that was a remarkably short time in which to lose something, even for him. “You didn’t even have that three minutes!”

Queen Tuffett rolled her eyes.

“Oh well,” I said. “Too bad.”

Prince Tuffett ran off again to fight some dragon or other, and life moved on.

Later that night, after the wee ones had been royally scrubbed and tucked in bed, I spied a quarter on the counter in the loo. Queen Tuffett confirmed that it was Princess Tuffett’s coin, and that the young princess held onto it while getting ready for her bath because she didn’t want to lose it.

I’m guessing that by now, Princess Tuffett’s quarter is in her personal treasury pig.

Prince Tuffett’s quarter is somewhere in the grass.

The end.

Monday, March 5, 2012

Odd Fact

Depending upon where you live, the following four words could all be pronounced the same:

fir
fur
fer
for

Weird stuff.

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Cleaning My Room: Before and After

If you are one of those people who believes in The Color Code, I am a blue-white (or sometimes a white-blue). What this means in terms of keeping a clean house is that I like things neat and tidy, but cleaning is not my highest priority until the disorder has built up to the point of driving me nuts, at which point a craziness comes over me and I can't do anything else until my house is clean. I suppose I'd call that passive-aggressive cleaning. :o)

Yesterday I finally got around to cleaning my room, including going through the stack of papers that had been growing on my desk for the past 16 months. Ok, it started as a stack--as of yesterday, it was about 4 stacks. At any rate, I cleaned all of that.

Here is a picture of my room mid-way through the cleaning spree:


That little empty spot in the middle is where I sat.

Here is a picture of my room once it was all done:


Ahhhh. So much better.

I've found that my very best cleaning always involves making a huge old mess first. Does anyone else do that?

Saturday, March 3, 2012

What's In My Purse

Once upon a time, Mother Edit went to a grocery store opening, and one of the fun activities they had was a heavy purse contest. Mother Edit had her coupon book with her, so she stuck that in her already-substantial purse, and she won the contest. The prize was multiple grocery sacks filled with a variety of the store's offerings.

Lately, I've been feeling like my own purse is really heavy. In the past, I've gone through my bag and gotten rid of things I'd been lugging around and not using, so I decided it was about time to take a new inventory. This time around, I also weighed each item on my kitchen scale, and determined how frequently I use the item. My kitchen scale measures in increments of eighths of an ounce, and my usage choices were never, rarely, sometimes, often, or frequently. Here's what I found (the first 2 items I had to combine because they were too light to register any reading separately):





Item Weight (oz.) Total Use
earplugs & hairclips 0.125 0.125 sometimes
red pen 0.25 0.375 frequently
black pen 0.25 0.625 frequently
gum 0.25 0.875 often
Sharpie pen 0.375 1.25 rarely
Parker pen 0.5 1.75 often
mirror 0.5 2.25 often
mints 0.625 2.875 often
concealer 0.625 3.5 sometimes
headphones 0.75 4.25 often
painkiller 0.75 5 often
brush 0.875 5.875 often
car key 1.125 7 frequently
work keys 1.25 8.25 frequently
liquid Tylenol 1.625 9.875 as needed
Leatherman Micra 1.75 11.625 often
sunglasses 3 14.625 frequently
keys 3.625 18.25 frequently
notebook 4.125 22.375 frequently
wallet 4.875 27.25 frequently
iPod 5.625 32.875 frequently
phone 6.125 39 frequently
the purse itself 8.875 47.875 duh
Total: 2lb 15.875oz

Interesting.

I got rid of the Sharpie pen, since I don't use it much. I also went through my wallet and got rid of as many things as I could, which made it maybe half an ounce lighter. It's a start, right?

My purse is only 3 pounds. I never knew 3 pounds could feel so heavy.