Day 2.210: On the web...

At a birthday party this afternoon, Exile #3 spent a good deal of the time stomping on spiders. Not that the place was infested you understand - these were serious suspension-of-disbelief electronic spiders. Here's a clip of a round:


As you can see, the game finishes with a prize of a few tickets rewarding the contestant. These tickets can later be exchanged for various items of 'treasure'.

On one occasion however this happened:


Her reaction was somewhat similar to mine when I won the £10 jackpot on a 10p slot machine on a cross-channel ferry when I was just a couple of years older than she is now. We weren't normally allowed to play any of the games - never mind those ones, but I had had a fairly nasty accident and had just woken up from sleeping off a possible concussion so it was deemed to be a special occasion. The jackpot was paid out in 100 10p pieces (old-style - about the size of a quarter I suppose). I thought I had broken the machine. In the end, someone handed me a pint glass from the nearby bar and I carried my winnings across the ship in that.

The tickets (as with the 10p coins) eventually stopped - there were 50 of them. Her concern turned to joy - just as mine had all those years ago.


My memory suggests that my £10 went quite a bit further than these 50 tickets when it came to spending them.

Day 2.205: We did it!

I got home from work a bit earlier than usual today and managed to get the grass cut since it had been the first all-dry day for some time.

Later, I showed the girls how to make a strong square from the Magneatos and suggested they build a tower. Their first attempt collapsed when adding the fourth layer, so I pointed out that the squares they were forming on the sides needed diagonal strengtheners too and they were able to build this - only stopping because they ran out of pieces.

My main achievement for the evening has been finishing off collating the information for my UK tax return. I'm sure not even the girls' smiles can match my relief and joy at clicking 'submit' at the end of that process.

Day 2.081: April Fooling

The girls woke me this morning with this pipe-cleaner 'spider' on the end of a toy fishing-line. "April Fool Daddy!".

The rest of the day was uncomfortably busy. I moved offices at work (across town), dealt with tidying up as many loose-ends as I could and came down with the tummy-bug that has been threatening us all for days. I think I will be over the worst of it before we start our serious travelling tomorrow, but if I can get it today...someone else could come down with it tomorrow. No please!

The day ended with seeing early favourite-of-ours-but-her-time-had-come Megan leave American Idol while signing and enveloping four tax returns just in time to send them off on our last day in the US before the deadline.

Day 1.357: Playdog

I went back to work today - a one day week is quite a reasonable way back after a couple of weeks off.

Meanwhile the kids got down to some playdough modelling - Exile #3 got into using colour and produced a happy lizard and a rather tasty looking hot-dog - she doesn't like the real thing but this stuff tastes great as E5N1 can tell you*

Exile #2 took some pictures for us.



*Actually I think 'interesting' might be his description rather than 'great' and yes we do stop him actually eating it. Most of the time.

Day 1.121: American Mom?

We started the day with a slightly haphazard marking of Mothers Day. The girls brought cards and pictures and flowers and a sun-hat and E5N1 brought his dripping milk-cup up to find her in bed and wish her a happy day.

We had a stay-at-home day, but mostly a happy one. Exile #2 managed to plant some seeds and I spent a fair amount of the afternoon using some of her words to put together a short film for our gathering this evening.

After we got back, the girls felt in need of a bedtime snack - what else would a Mom give her kids but milk and cookies?

Day 1.001: Happy New Year!

January 11th 2007 = Day 1
so
January 11th 2008 = ???

This equation has been troubling me on and off for some time. So for all those who think today should be Day 366 or Year 2 Day 1 or whatever - sorry. I decided on "years.days" with "Day" for old-times' sake.

A group of us from work went out for lunch today. At the end of the meal there was the usual scramble for the correct cash for each person to pay their (equal) share of the bill. Today 5 people managed to have the right money(or get change). I borrowed $10 and then could pay. Two others managed to pay together with a couple of dollars to be sorted out at a later date. Finally, one of my colleagues recently arrived back from the UK managed to sell 10 Euros to a US colleague about to go on a business trip to the Euro-zone. It's usually a bit complicated, but this is getting silly.

Talking of silly, we found out the answer to the question I asked about how Exile #3's classmates would respond if she told them about In the Night Garden. Today, she managed to talk three of them into doing a play based on said show for the rest of the class. As far as I can work out the play was even less fathomable than the TV programme - partly due to only two of the four of them having seen the source material, but predominantly due to the absence of Derek Jacobi (or a stand-in) to talk about The Ninky Nonk, Igglepiggle and the Tombliboos as if they are perfectly normal.

As you can see Exile #2 prepared a little anniversary celebration. You can see how it went here.

Day 273: Oh dear

It was going so well, I won a bit, then I got excited, the adrenaline was flowing...

I lost it all.

Let me be a lesson to you all - just say no to online poker.

I was only playing with facebook points, before anyone puts a hold on my credit card. It's easy to see how people could get hooked though (on this or the real thing) - there's quite a buzz in winning. Maybe I should get back to Halo 3.

Anyway, today has been a slow day, the hours between getting to bed and getting up having been too few again last night.

Here's a deer in our garden the other day - she looked quite at home don't you think?

Time for an earlier night.