Our Human Vacuum

We find it hard to keep the floor clean enough for Patrick. Anything he finds on the floor, he eats. Ick!

It's very odd that he enjoys floor dirt so much because he won't touch jar baby food. Cheerios? Sort of ok, but he gags on them. Tiny dices of banana? Sometimes acceptable, if he's in the right mood. Miniature chunks of strawberries? Maybe, if it's Thursday. But lint, dead bugs, paper scraps, or dead leaves? Bring 'em on with a shovel!

New York

Yep, I'm still alive, although you wouldn't know it by seeing how little I post on here.

A few weeks ago a group of 15 people from Student Government went to New York for a Student Government conference. We were ready to brave the apparently record snowfalls for the weekend as we left early Friday morning.

15 minutes after taking off, we checked our emails to find out that the conference was canceled because of snow. Now, we live in Atlanta, and are used to 1" of snow shutting down the city for a day or two. One would imagine that New York could survive 24" of snow just fine - but apparently not.

As we approached New York, we found out that the airport was closed and ended up landing in Baltimore to sit on the plane for a while. They let people off but warned us not to go far because they would leave the moment they were able to. Unfortunately for the only passenger that did get off, he did not make it back in time to get on the plane. Oops!

We spent Friday and Saturday splitting up into groups to go see all the sights. I was able to check off most of the "big" ones, except for the Statue of Liberty which we only saw from a distance.

A few guys and I decided it was too expensive to sleep in New York, so we spent all night Saturday night walking across the city, going from Central Park to Lower Manhattan, to the U.N., back to Central Park, Times Square, and eventually the hotel to get an hour of sleep. 16 miles of walking from about 4pm to 6am!

Despite the conference being canceled, we all had a good time and hope to actually go to a conference next year!

Look at Me!

This little guy can really chatter now. We think we hear some real words but we're not certain. He also plays happily by himself and pulls up to stand.

Washers and Dryers

I really wonder what's happened to American workmanship. Our 11-year-old laundry appliances both died recently: the washer gave up in October, and the dryer quit suddenly last week.

Our new Frigidaire dryer has never worked properly since we bought it. I takes two hours! on maximum heat to dry one little load.

Our new Maytag washing machine started spraying water all over last night. On closer inspection, we realized it has been doing it for some time because the wood floor on the other side of the back wall is now "pickled" like waterlogged fingers get. We also saw suspicious black shavings on the floor under the washer. The washer repairman is scheduled to be here on Monday.

The dryer service hotline is having technical difficulties and can't schedule me right now.

Snow Day III

Our third snow day of the year! This is a record for us since we moved here 17 years ago. It's fun, though, to see our yard and neighborhood all covered in snow.