And now, a word from our sponsor

Nokia phones rock!

No, Nokia has not sent me payment for advertising on my blog, but I do have to take a moment to speak of my Nokia phone’s remarkable ability to revive after being submerged in water for at least 2 minutes. On Monday morning, we were getting ready to check out of a motel at the end of a long and very arduous trip home from our Thanksgiving vacation.

Picture it. Mom, Dad, 4 young children all sharing one motel room. Chaos available in abundance. There wasn’t too much of a chance that we would really be paying attention to what 2-year-old Charis was doing. Then, I saw it. In the midst of the dull roar of activity, I reached for something from the bathroom vanity, and looking down, I noticed that Nokia phones do not float. They sink right to the bottom of motel ice buckets filled with water from the previous night’s ice. I fished it out, took it apart, and I dried it first with a towel. Then I gave it a full two minutes of direct attention from the in-room hair dryer. We went to breakfast, and I came back and gave the phone some more attention from the blow dryer.

After we arrived home, I took the phone apart and laid it out to dry all day yesterday. This morning, I plugged it in to recharge, and so far it seems as good as new.

Rootkit anyone?

At the risk of sounding unoriginal, I have to blog about this story that I heard on NPR today.

I hardly ever put anything but boring software cds in my computer, but the males in my house play music and games in the home computers with regularity. This technology sounds a little frightening. What do you think?

November already

October has passed, and it is November already. Our Nevin turned 8 last Thursday. It is sort of sad that we can no longer say, “Nevin is seven.” So along with the typical end of October children’s activities that most families have, we also had some birthday celebrating to do at the place “where a kid can be a kid.”

Tomorrow brings parent-teacher conferences. The children brought home report cards last week, and overall, we were pleased. While we have had some struggles with the kids being back in school, they all ended up with better than acceptable grades. Tomorrow we’ll get more of the commentary behind the grades.

Yesterday 2-year-old Charis started carrying around a back-pack on her back so she can be like her older siblings. She insisted on taking it along in the van no matter where we were heading. She seemed so serious about it. It was really cute.

Not much more to say about life here. We’re trudging along. Happy November everyone!