My kids are really damn smart
I have to brag up on my kids. They are both spoiled brats, but they are truly smart. The teenage one is nearly self sufficient and is completely self centered. She took off for a field trip and took the hair dryer, which she had begged me not to bring to White Plains b/c she needed it (we had overlapping hair dryer requiring field trips). I conceded and when got back, the hair dryer was gone and the house was thrashed. THRASHED. I left her shitty voice mails until I got it out of my system. Dude, there was a bucket of rotted KFC chicken on the counter! When she finally picked up her phone today, she answered with a quavering "hheelllowww" and I was like "Oh my god, what is wrong are you okay?" I'd forgotten I was mad the day before. The truth is, for whatever serotonin reason, my rage has a half life of 12 minutes. I wished her luck in her competition.
Then, my son wants to be an inventor when he grows up. He spends all day inventing shit. Now truth be told, he'll probably end up in a cubicle like the rest of us subject to the whims of marketing and upper management, but it's good to have dreams. He came out and informed Zule he wanted to make a catnip dispensor. Zule was like "okay, little buddy". The little dude took a piece of paper, rolled it into a funnel, with a hole at the bottom just large enough to let out catnip, taped the whole thing shut and taped it to my wall at exactly cat height. Its the best invention, I for one, have ever seen. (except flushing toilets and the "rabbit").
Further, my trip to white plains/ nyc was a success. Our team died in preliminaries, so Zule and I tooled around NYC, but spent a lot of time sleeping in White Plains. Never underestimate the beauty of uninterupted sleep. We were going to go to the Staten Island Ferry and go see the statue of liberty (I can't type that now without typing "statute" of. . .) but the information booth chick failed to tell us you needed a bus card to pay for the bus fare, not cash, which sucked. Also, our first greeting to NYC was some lady bitching behind us about our smoking. At first, I did not even realize she was talking to us, but eventually, four minutes into the tirade, I caught on. See, in Kentucky, shit is different than that. We don't say loud audible shit behind someone's back. We either whisper horrific rumours completely out of earshot, or go right around the front of them and challenge they ass to a duel. Overall, I got most excited by Grand Central Station. I spent a long time reading the plaques on the wall and pissing Zule off. Further, we played a game called starbucks, where if you saw a new starbucks, you got a point. Zule won, but I came back from 7 - 2 to 7 - 5 so that was good.
As I was on the plane I learned from a new Ken Follett book the origin of the word "to forestall". See in the Middle Ages, people had to pay to sell stuff in a stall, but if the lines to pay to get there were too long, then the merchants would barter illegally amongst themselves, and "fore-stall" the tax on the stall. I love learning shit like that.