Abby’s in second grade this year. On the refrigerator we have her school lunch schedule posted, in a December-festive black toner on red paper.
The lunch menu is in the form of a calendar, with each day’s lunch options listed in the date blocks. There is always a choice of different food options that would satisfy any 2nd-grader.
On the counter in my office I keep a small pile of twist ties, the kind you tie around wires to keep them from becoming unruly during shipping. I have since replaced most of these ties with Velcro wraps where I’ve needed them, so I suppose that I should be rid of them, but every so often Berta has the need for one, or their unique nature leads to a specific useful result like ejecting a stuck CD drive.
In any case, I keep this pile of twist ties on the counter between my synthesizer keyboard and my scanner.
Enough people were commenting on a gift guide from a previous year that I thought I might write up a new one this year. The items on this list are practically all on my own personal wish list. The prices listed are approximate – you can probably find deals on all of this stuff if you look even a little bit.
If you read here regularly, you will know that I like astronomy. There’s something about space that has piqued my interest since I was a kid. Berta got me a really great telescope for Christmas one year, one of the Meade models with the computerized star finders, but the aperture of the telescope is such that you can’t really see the full depth of the sky.
Last year, the kids got a ton of gifts. Many of them came in cardboard boxes. Yes, if you’re a parent (and perhaps if you’re not) then you know exactly where I’m headed – the dreaded wire tie.
See, they make this really nice display packaging for the store so that you can see the toy before you buy it, but because they fear that you’re going to walk off with the toy by just yanking it out of the display, they tie it to the box with these crazy tight strips of wire. The box is often reinforced with a small piece of holed plastic that the wire passes through and is tied behind. The actual tie is often so tight, and the wire so wound around the toy that by the time you’ve removed the first wire you just want to die. And then there are three more to remove. But now, there is hope…