Go away, little freaks!

Our new locale has a lot of these:


Apparently, they come from Canada, were brought to the States to be exhibited in zoos, and then escaped and started mating and migrating all over the place.

I don't like them. They look like little black skunks running across our front yard.

Not to become the Family Circus.

Being at home with A-Vo for 2 months is going to be awesome (anyone wanna come visit??? Please do!!!), but I think my blog fodder will become severely at-risk for becoming the Family Circus.
Just so you know.

So to combat this, I feel that I must expound upon the disaster that we all know as...Britney Spears. What to say that hasn't been said since this past Sunday? Well, clearly she was under the mistaken impression that bribing a man to marry you and shooting out his babies will make all your problems and unhappiness and bipolar disorder which I swear she has go away. And also that you have to practice your talents to keep them. And you can't drink 10 Red Bulls a day at 110 calories a pop and not see an ounce.

Better modelling behavior is needed, perhaps...

Yesterday, A-Vo burped. Hugely. I said, "Whoaaaa!"

She replied, "Juicy one!!!"

So today we are learning "excuse me."

Tales from the crib

It is not unusual (and rather, it's the norm) for A-Vo to talk herself to sleep. Usually, the content of her babble contains random snippets of her favorite songs, parts of the ABC's, various shout-outs (Hi Mama....Hi Dada....where Grandma?), and other words she's recently learned (Stinky feet!). We often will mute the TV and listen to her in its place.

But last night's was pretty much awesome...after about 15 or 20 minutes of pure silence, leading us to think she was asleep, we hear this bellowing emanate from the baby monitor:

"I CHECK E-MAIL REAL QUICK!!!!"

And then more silence.

She must have had a lot of messages to read.

We're here!

We have moved and are here. Yay! We all survived, as did all of our worldly possessions (so far. I still have 8 boxes left to unpack).

To summarize our moving experience:
1) Comcast sucks.
2) College students nowadays watch way too much TV. Don't whine about your student loans when you're spending over $100/month on cable. Back in my day, I watched Melrose Place once a week and liked it.
3) Movers rule.
4) Movers rule even more when they pack all your stuff for you and somebody else pays for it.
5) Honesty is the best policy, even though it's sometimes a huge pain in the ass.
6) The McFlurryTM is nowhere near as good as the BlizzardTM.
7) No work for me until 11/6!!!

Garage sale, day 2.

Unfortunately, the massive momentum that we built up yesterday came to a crashing halt today. We only cleared $9.80 by 11:15, despite the addition of a CD section and a Health and Beauty section. Therefore, we cleaned up early and called it a day. The remains of our sale are now all boxed up and ready for the Salvation Army.

Anybody want a free couch? It's sitting on the curb right now.

So this is the Vo List of Garage Sale Do's and Don'ts:
1) Sell for 1 day and 1 day only.
2) Price your items to move, except for the books. The books will go quickly anyway, so why not make some cash.
3) Be ready with EVERYTHING out and priced 30 minutes before your sale is scheduled to start, so the hardcore G salers can pick you clean.
4) Don't bargain with women who make comments on how clearly the clothes you're selling were from before you had your baby. You call me fat, you don't get any discounts.

Caveat emptor...

Dude, so today, in preparation for our move, we had a garage sale.

Holy crap. You have experienced nothing until you've thrown a good old American garage sale.

First, we made the the cardinal mistake of not having everything out and ready well before the publicized time of the sale. By 10 after 9, the hordes of vultures had descended upon our humble offerings and begun cleaning us out. T-Vo had to make a mad dash inside to find more stuff to sell, as we began to fall victim to the "drive-bys"....or the hard-core G salers who drive by the sale, gauge the goods from the road, and keep on going if the spread you've put out is not deemed adequate.


So Tim became the "stager," or the one who made our layout more aesthetically pleasing. I was the salesperson. Together, we were a lethal combination of garage sale bad-assitude who not only 1) broke even, 2) cleared $150, but 3) cut loose several large and ugly pieces of furniture, a 25 y/o TV, a VCR, a microwave, an air conditioner, and a FRICKIN' MANUAL PUSH MOWER.