Hmmm, may I point out that we have heard much of the paid off SwampCave and JoeDawg but there seems to be a remarkable paucity of photographic evidence that such things exist and here we are on Thor’s Day and page four with no bearpix? Ah-HEM!
Taters, your friend sounds like a huge PITA and perhaps a bit of a twat. She has some serious nerve, just sayin’… Your fish tank looks awesome, but I do have word of caution about those oscars–my sister had a similar setup. Six months later she had ONE gigantic oscar and one inexplicably alive catfish the oscar apparently considered to be a pet. They’re very aggressive fish, they grow really, really huge and they tend to be suicidal–keep the lid on very tight because oscars have very good eyesight and if they see something outside the tank that looks like food they’ll flip themselves right outta the tank and expire on the floor, which is icky if you have carpet. I worked in a pet store once and the oscars were kinda known for it, we’d have to clean them off the floor before we opened. My sister had hers trained to the flyswatter–she’d swat flies then come drop them in the tank for the giant oscar, so anytime you’d wave the swatter near the tank he’d do his level best to break the glass. Weird fish, oscars.
Mahna[sup]2[/sup], your neighborhood sounds like my kinda place! I’m such a hippie pinko myself… 
Cute story, Bobbio! You’re such a flirt, good thing we’re a continent apart, heh heh… I like flirting too, it’s fun!
DoRe, Blaze is looking good–but did his fur not grow back over his surgery site or is it just a trick of the light? He seems curiously nekkid in that foot pets beggin’ picture.
Phil, ain’t grandkids kewl? Hippo birdy to your hubby as well…
LiLi, I think a night in a hotel would be da bomb–if nothing else you guys could get a night’s sleep!
Wally, your house looks nice–how’s the market moving in your area?
Finished the baking last night and got daughter home in time for her bedtime–she’s getting up at 0430 to make a start time of 0630. She and SIL have both changed to an early schedule since Grandboy has a carpool to school with the kid across the street and can get himself breakfast and off to school unsupervised. This means they get off work only 45 minutes after his school day ends so there’s plenty of time for them to be together in the afternoon/evening. He’ll be involved in afterschool clubs and activities pretty soon so they’ll be able to pick him up at leisure. I’m glad they made the change, they’re all thriving on the earlier schedule–less traffic to fight, my daughter stays more focused at work with fewer chatty coworkers around and the extra family time is nice for them all.
My DIL came over to pick up some of the coooookies we baked and we got her all set up with a new gmail account and an iGoogle page for the family. She’s been using my son’s Yahoo email account but they don’t check it that often and it’s like pulling teeth to get a reply so since she’s now officially married it’s time for her to find out that in our family the wimmens is the social directors and we expect her to do her part! Heh heh…
Daughter brought her dog over for a playdate last night so we not only had the strict regimen of chasing each other all over the back yard and playfighting, but we also insisted they chew on their beef knuckle bones. I get these in a bag from Winco and I bake them at about 300 degrees F for a couple hours. This makes all the leftover fat and gristle melt off and I put it in a bowl in the fridge for adding to Widget’s food. Sometimes I’m very mean and force them to lick shavings of beef fat off a spoon! 'Cuz I’m eeeeevil! I also insisted that Daughter take a bone home along with some of the fat because she’s a vegetarian and is highly unlikely to smell up the house to make puppy treats. Then we made them chase a ball for a half hour or so and they were wild! We were laughing so hard at their antics it was nearly impossible to catch and throw the ball any more. As you can see, we’ve taken up the Swampbear method of dog training and it works beautifully! It’s hard at first to get them into the regimen but it’s good for them…
Also, I third Soapy’s idea… or if you can’t manage to get away overnight just yet, maybe you can sweet-talk grandparents into babysitting so that the two of you can go out for a nice romantic dinner?
