I just got back (yesterday afternoon) from being away, so I thought I'd update y'all on what's been going on:

• Friday: Traded Wife's truck,
  
  a 1996 GMC Sonoma that looked sorta like this
  (Same colors, different paint scheme),

  for a 1994 Dodge Grand Caravan

  
  that looks sorta like this.
  (Ours is powder blue, and the pic shows a 1995, not a 1994.)

  We got her the truck mainly because she was convinced that trucks are the highest form of wheeled transport, and that anything else is inferior (and likely to get stuck in the snow). For my part, I was convinced that trying to disabuse her of this notion by arguing the point would cast me in the role of the villain who didn't want her to have the only vehicle that would properly suit her needs.

  In my infinite wisdom (I jest, but lightly), I realized the best way to convince her she needed something other than a truck was to give in to her demands.

  It didn't take long for her to figure out that even a "Super Cab" had very little room for passengers and luggage. The "trunk" is completely exposed to the elements and can't be locked. A lockable "tool box" costing nearly $100.00 does not hold as much as a "real" trunk, and consumes some of that useful space out back.

  Last week she was helping her daughter look for a vehicle (a family of 5 with 1 toddler & 3 infants needs LOADS of space for diaper bags, toys, etc, especially on family trips). Her daughter liked the Van, but not enough to be caught dead driving a "momcar". Wife, on the other hand, had been dealing with the compromises necessitated by driving a work vehicle for personal transport. If she had to haul 250 Kg of sand each day, she might have wanted to keep the truck more. As things stood, she had to haul 1 or more small children, groceries, other adults, etc., and a small truck is just not the ideal tool for the task.

  The van stays.

• Friday afternoon we left for Ruidoso (pronounced Roo-ey DO-so) to watch StepDaughter (SD is married with 3 children of her own) play in a 48-hour marathon of softball tournaments.

  Or we would have, if her team had won. Her first game was Midnight the day we arrived, and the second was 8:00 p.m. the next evening. No wins, they were eliminated.

  SD brought her 2 youngest (twins, perhaps 3 months old) and a teen-aged babysitter. Wife brought me and 22-month old Son. The time between games was quite the hen-fest.

  I had no fun because the only permissible things on TV were romance movies and the like. Not that I wanted to watch Rambo or anything (I prefer educational programming -- what my wife calls "wierd stuff"). I did manage to watch part of a program on "Animal Planet" about the Basenji breed of dog, but that was about it.

  Son had the worst of it. He's the baby in our home and could not comprehend, nor endorse all the fuss over his infant nephews. Neither Sister, Aunt Selma (the baby-sitter) nor Mommy were interested in their first duty of doting on Son, but instead lavished metric tons of attention on his rivals, the evil twins (his point-of-view, not mine).

  It rained most of the time we were there and there were no nearby parks to take Son so he could forget, for a moment, that his position at the center of the universe has been occupied by these relative newcomers.

• Sunday: Came home.

  Had the time to analyze the new vehicle's shortcomings, not that Wife will mind any but the most obvious. The "door unlatched" chimes (and ceiling lights) came on intermittently whenever we drove over a bump. The headlights were pointing in the wrong direction (corrected by me in the parking lot at the hotel once proper tools had been procured). The struts are worn, requiring the driver to have a particularly "smooth" driving style unless the objective is to render the occupants of the vehicle helpless with motion sickness.

  Other than that, the van is perfect.

And besides all the above, I did nothing at all this weekend.

--Baloo

------------------
Good advice is always ignored when accompanied by a bad example.
www.geocities.com/Area51/Shire/8641/

Y'know, I don't understand what people see in babies. They're squirmy, loud, smelly, and tend to excrete various unpleasant liquids from multiple bodily orifices. Can someone explain why that's so "cute"?

------------------
Cherish your visions; cherish your ideas; cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts, for if you remain true to them, your world will at last be built.

I guess you could say it's "Survival of the cutest".

By the time they reach the age of two, you're generally too attached to the little miscreant to do anything except try to reign him in. They don't call 'em "the terrible twos" fer nothing!

--Baloo

------------------
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
--Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
www.geocities.com/Area51/Shire/8641/