Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

Paper Games
June 01, 2007

We’re going on a trip to Disney World this month where we’re likely to be standing in a lot of lines waiting to get on rides. Because the kids have such great potential to be annoyed at this, and at the suggestion of a travel book, I have considered what it would take to keep them occupied while waiting. The book specifically suggests notepads and paper for particular kinds of lines, and I got to wondering what kinds of games we could play to stay occupied.

There are a few other games we could play that don’t involve paper at all, and those are fine. I worry that Riley will be inconsolable standing in wait for everything, and that we’ll constantly need to attend to him to keep him appeased. In that case, having some activities to keep Abby entertained would probably be a good idea. So what pen and paper games can we play? What sort of games can you play with just pen and paper?

Invasion of the Snails!
May 30, 2007

snailsI had previously written about the new aquarium that we had set up at our house. We’ve had some recent events that have had all of the fish scared out of their little minds.

Sometime shortly after we put the creatures into the tank, our two snails died. Such is the nature of home aquariums - sometimes things just don’t make it. The first one went early, the second one some time later, both to be found just bobbing in the water, shell-down. We were sad. At first.

Pool Openings
May 25, 2007

Are shops still closing early on Sunday in your area? Most do here. This is due to a set of colonial laws, the Blue Laws, that were meant to restrict certain forms of commercial business on the holy day. But that was back in the days with the Quakers and Puritans, when each colony was essentially the same religion, seeking freedom from persecution in their home country.

With so many people observing so many religions in this country these days, and everyone intermingled, there isn’t a good reason to employ these Blue Laws to cause businesses to close early or entirely on Sunday. Not that a retail worker wants to give up that early closing time on the weekend, but it’s fairly easy to believe that a business that is open normally on Sunday is going to do more business than one that’s not.

WP-Hacks
May 25, 2007

The content of the WordPress hacks page that you’re looking for has been moved entirely to RedAlt.

If you’re looking for blogging software with an evolving community, I suggest you try Habari, which is what runs this site, not WordPress.

Bad Dad
May 22, 2007

A couple of weeks ago, I headed out of the house for a lunch meeting. It was 12:30 on a Friday, and both kids were at school. Being that it was a just a lunch, I didn’t think much of how it would affect the rest of my day.

The lunch ran a bit long. I didn’t leave until somewhere around 3:45, and I figured I would pick up a couple of things on the way home, including the weekend fish feeders that we needed for during our upcoming trip. Being that it was just lunch, it never even occurred to me that it was so late in the afternoon that Abby would be done school and waiting for me at home.

While driving home, I got a call from a number I didn’t recognize. Our neighbor across the street and a few doors down had heard Abby sobbing on our front porch. She took her up the street to stay with another of our neighbors, and that is who called me. How thoroughly mortifying.

It took me until 4:20 to get home, cursing traffic the whole way. I drove straight to my neighbor’s house, where I found Abby playing cheerfully. I was very glad that we have great neighbors that would help out like this, but thoroughly shamed that this escaped me.