In honor of President’s Day (OK, since the banks were closed and I had the day off) we took our son, who will be three years old this spring, to the Pittsburgh Zoo. He enjoys his zoo trips and is gaining a lot of knowledge about animals. Like most zoos, Pittsburgh has a petting zoo area with most farm animals. With this being February and the weather being overcast with threats of rain, there were no attendants and thus no petting zoo. However, the goats and sheep were running around. Our son saw them and said “Goats!” Then he noticed the, uh, abundance of pellets and said “Poopy!” My wife and I enjoyed a chuckle at that.

On the ride home we were asking him questions about the zoo, partly to test his knowledge and partly to keep him awake before bed time. We asked him if he saw goats, and he said “Yes.” We then asked him what else he saw with the goats. We expected him to say “Sheep.” Instead he says “Poop!”

My nerd score might need to be lowered. Since I replaced my router this fall my PCs stopped talking to each other. I fiddled with it for about five seconds and said the hell with it, since it wasn’t a critical operation at the time. Earlier this week I was doing some stuff for our home sale and realized how nice it would be to get to another printer from my office. So I revisit the missing network, and this time it takes all of about five minutes to ungoober everything and bring the family together. Fark. Now I have my old work PC plugged in and those 800mb e-mail archives just hum along my ethernet, so the old machine can go back to the company on my next trip down. Hints to not feel like a moron next time – check your network IPs in your firewall.

Bring back the avatars!

Going snow-tubing this evening. For those who have never done this before, it is a rush! I love snow but dislike skiing. Tubing really fits the bill. I highly recommend it.

Speaking of snow, we haven’t gotten enough today. Little spits of flurries and showers aren’t right – it’s just teasing.

Guys,

Since we get in trouble if we don’t give the perfect answer when our gals ask “Am I fat?”, then why are we forced to give heart shaped boxes of fattening chocolate as gifts and go to dinner at expensive restaurants? I would think giving these kind of Valentines would be an insult to our women.

Who’s with me? Anyone?

Well, today is one of the more interesting days of a home purchase. We get to go through the house with a qualified “expert” of our choosing (or of our Realtor’s recommendation) and let him tell us all the things wrong with the house we want to buy.

This man would have enjoyed some of the other homes we went through, like the split level with a foundation about to bust at the waistline into the basement. Then there’s the wonderful “Ruby Ridge” house we looked at with a massive Franklin stove in the center and teeny tiny stairs everywhere. Bad roofs, peeling lead paint, moist basements – such is the fun of home buying.

Hopefully we are getting a good one. Plenty of room inside for family expansion and growth. There’s enough corner for everyone to spread out, enough storage space, and room for my office to have two coworkers move in (our dogs, currently on holiday in MD). The lot is small, although what little land we’ll have is fenced well enough to keep little kids and dogs out of traffic. We already know a couple things are being fixed, so I’m hoping today is a bunch of little ticky-tack things.

The inspector who looked at the house we sold didn’t find too many things wrong, and the things we did fix didn’t cost much. I know our sellers are hoping for the same thing.