...because holy shit the Detroit Lions finally won a freaking game.

This tells me that:

1. It only takes 42 million dollars for a rookie quarterback to end a 19 game losing streak.

2. The Lions will finally be forgiven for redesigning their logo to look like reject Thundercats concept art.



3. The apocalypse is nigh.

I feel bad for the Washington Redskins though. How much must you suck to lose to the Lions?

First of all, I just want to thank everyone for their kind words on my last post. You're all pretty fabulous people.

So anyway, my crazy brother-in-law has this hobby which involves buying old surplus duce and a half army trucks from the government and fixing them up. He's recently discovered that other people are interested in buying them as well, and so he's set up a business where he buys the trucks from the government, fixes them up a bit and resells them to interested buyers. Last Friday, he needed people to help him drive these trucks about a hundred and fifty miles to the place where he's storing them. And since I couldn't pass up the opportunity to drive an Army truck (because seriously, when do civilians ever get a chance to do this?) I volunteered to drive.

( Read more... )

I have to put one of my dogs down today. She can't eat anything due to the enormous tumor in her stomach, and she's dwindled to the point where her quality of life is horrible. I think I'm taking this so hard because she's only eight years old. I thought we'd have at least a few more years with her. But she's the sweetest tempered, nicest, most well behaved dog I've ever had, so naturally she has to die young.

I have to say, this really blows.

Okay. I will freely admit that I can be a completely insensitive bitch, but I really, really think that the hypersensitivity over peanut allergies is completely overblown hysteria and it's really starting to piss me off.

( Watch Pris lose her temper and totally overreact under the cut. )

Yes, I went to a Tea Party today. It was pretty kickass. However, I realize that since most of my f-list doesn't share my fiscal conservative leanings, so this might not be the post for you, although you are all certainly welcome to post and disagree with me.

( Cut for inflammatory protest signage. )

I just had to explain to my five year old son the difference between Americans and Decepticons.

Sometimes being a parent is both hilarious and awesome.

Given the fact that it's highly probable that two of the three US automakers may be filing for bankruptcy in the next year, Tom and I figured that we should go to the North American Auto Show while it's still in Detroit.

( Cut for large photodump of very shiny cars. +40 photos behind the cut. )

Why are you so sexy? How can you make growing heirloom onions from seeds sound like a good idea, when I know damn well that it's a complete pain in the ass? How can you make it seem like I'll be missing out on something completely awesome if I don't grow my own bush beans this year, or try to grow at least four different kinds of salad greens? When did growing my own leeks become necessary?

If my spring crop of garlic and shallots grows even half of what I planted in the fall, I'm not going to have to worry about vampires for the rest of my life. Yet, here I am again, with the intention of doing a small garden this summer, but I just know that that's not going to happen. By the time I get done reading all of my seed catalogs and planning out my vegetable beds, I know I'm going to order too much stuff, just like I did last time. And now, instead of planning my garden to fit into the small amount of space that I have, I'm trying to figure out where I can build a couple of new raised beds in the spring so I can fit sugar snap peas and spinach in amongst all of the tomato plants.

It's probably a good thing that we just rent this house, otherwise I'd be trying to find spaces to cram in asparagus beds, rhubarb and more apple trees.

*cries*

I knew that the bad weather drifting across the plains states was going to hit us last night. Still, it was a surprising view out my front window this morning. Keep in mind that it was 70 degrees outside just a few days ago.



( Cut for First Snow and Halloween Picture Photodump. )

Our television died last night. I'm guessing that it got tired of showing political coverage and committed seppuku. I can't say that I blame it.

Normally my husband and I would be happy since this would give us an excuse to buy a flat screen. But since it's quite likely that Tom's going to get laid off next month (again...gah), dropping a bunch of money on a brand new toy would probably be unwise. So we've decided to wait a few weeks and see if we like living without television.

This should be an entertaining experiment, since I haven't lived without a television since college.

... I've decided to totally ignore it for awhile and post some pictures of the Michigan Renaissance Festival that my family and I went to this weekend.

( Cut for large photo dump of nerds in costumes. )

...but now after being home for a couple of days, I finally have enough energy to whine about it.

So my mom has all these convoluted health problems, and she's been going to the Mayo Clinic for about three years now since no one else seems able to untangle what's specifically wrong with her at any given time.

( What I've been doing for over two weeks and how old people can even bigger babies than a four month old children. )

I think this picture of my daughter sums up my feelings on the current presidential candidates and the press that insists on covering them 24/7. ( Read more... )

So I figure that since my new spawn has been around for almost two weeks now, I should get off my ass and post some pictures.

( Cut for baby photo dump. But first, some random observations about the last few weeks. )

I'd always heard horror stories about people naming their children idiotic things, and I'd just recently reread Baby's Named a Bad Bad Thing thanks to midnight_hawk but I'd never quite witnessed this idiocy myself. However today I was tooling around over on a local mom message board when I ran across this post. I swear, I didn't make this shit up. I suspect you all will find this as sadly hilarious as I did. ( Read more... )

We have six more weeks before this kid is due, and still my husband and I have had zero progress on the baby name front. You can tell that this is our second kid because instead of stressing out and desperately searching for an appropriate name for this girl, our conversations over the last few months tend to go like:

"Oh hey, we should probably come up with a name for this kid."

"Yeah, we probably should."

*Tom and I fall asleep*

Other than general apathy or a belief that the right name will magically fall out of the sky without us having to do any work, I think part of the slowness are the four goofy rules that we have about picking a name which were created when I was pregnant with our son.

Our rules are this weird mixture of the... er... less than normal upbringings that Tom and I had:

( Yes my husband and I have issues... )

For my son, trains are like kiddie crack, so yesterday we took him to this model train expo convention.

( Cut for a ginormous photodump - dial up beware. )

We stumbled on entire city and train scape made from Legos.

( Click here to pass the boring family shots and go directly to the Lego awesome. )

So despite a really rough start, November is turning out to be a kickass month. ( Cut for a bunch of personal stuff so it won't clog up the friends page... )

So today is the day that my son finally got to attend the preschool that is sucking our bank account dry. $6350.00 this year for three hours a day that's 11 installments of $635.00 a month. Next year when he goes until 2:45 I'll have the pleasure of paying $9090.00 for kindergarten (that's 909.00 a month folks.)

It occurs to me that I could buy a really kickass car for all this money. Luckly this is only for the next two years. I don't think I can face eating mac and cheese for the next 14 years of his life until he goes to college.

It's probably time for me to I find a job. Of course if I do go back to work, that's another $490.00 a month for him to have daycare until 6 at night.

Actually, I was really rather excited for him. Since kids tend to become asshats in gradeschool later, I figured preschool and kindergarden would be a pretty fun experience.

Other kids were freaking out as their parents left. Me? I had to tap him on the head to pull his attention away from the hamster cage to say goodbye. And when I came to pick him up, which kid had the freak out then because he wanted to stay longer? That's right. My kid.

Because that is the kind of awesome mother I am. :P

At least he liked it. I really hope it's worth it.