The Hampton Times

Used my portable Garmin Nuvi 265W last Wednesday to get from my house to an address in Rockville, MD (for work).  It was fine the whole way there (about 3 hours), and I even used the bluetooth feature to take a phone call from work while driving.  After we were finished, I got in my car and tried to switch the Nuvi on, but it wouldn't power up (despite having been plugged in for the entire journey).  Since I've only had it since Christmas, it was still under warranty and Garmin offered to replace it for free (I had to pay return shipping - $5).  They were unable to explain why it failed to start up.  All I know is that this was the ONLY time I'd ever left the Nuvi mounted on the windshield after leaving the vehicle.  I'm wondering if the direct sunlight caused it to fail.  It wasn't melted or anything, but I just can't figure out what happened. Lesson: always stash your GPS in your glove box or center console when leaving your car.

Dillon on the carousel at Please Touch Museum in Philly.

Here's a couple of Dillon's marble Easter Eggs. In the background are the horrible "egg tattoos."

Angie bought the boys some Easter Egg decorating kits, so we decided to use the dyes last night.  Each pack also came with "extra" decorations: Jason picked the "monster pack" which came with pipe cleaners (for arms), "hair", and stickers for eyes, noses and mouths; Dillon picked the Star Wars pack, which came with Star Wars "tattoos" for the eggs; and Adrian picked a regular dye pack with no "extras."  Angie started the process before I joined in.  Each of the kids had one container in front of them, so Angie let them each pick a dye color.  They all chose blue.  So instead of starting off with three different color options, we had blue across the board. Angie had placed large pieces of tissue paper on the table (three layers), but that turned out to be insufficient.  The table ended up getting dyed more than the eggs.  At one point, I knocked one of the blue containers over!  So in order to start getting more color options out for ...

Took care of a lot of the requested home repairs on the Maple Shade house yesterday.  The hole in the dormer soffit was repaired by a contractor that recently did work on my parents' house.  He was nice enough to do it for free, but this may present a problem since I need some kind of work order to present to the buyers.  We'll see how that goes over.  While I was there I also changed out the whole-house water filter, which was pretty much overdue by a few months at least. The list of small electrical issues was also addressed.  A licensed-electrician friend of mine came over and spent the better part of the afternoon swapping out old outlets for GFCI-protected outlets in the kitchen, back yard, and basement.  I duct-taped the loose duct work to the vent in the bathroom myself, which the buyers agreed to.  I need to pick up an outlet & switch cover plate for one kitchen outlet and we need to get a second opinion on the termite thing, and then tha...

We went to a baptism service today for little Emma Bachowski (congrats, Emma!). Our kids wanted to draw with the pencils and little tablets that were placed in the pews. Since it kept them (mostly) occupied we were happy to let them do it.  At one point, though, I looked down at Adrian's tablet and saw that someone before us must have drawn in it and placed it back in the rack. I looked closer and saw an upside down cross with the words "Hail Satan" written across the page.  I nudged A ngie & said, "Look."  She looked over, frowned and said "Did you do that?!"  "No," I said. "He did!"

Jason and Dillon's basketball pictures came in the other day: Today is "Skills Day", which is the last event of the season.  After that, the coach is taking all the kids to Dunkin' Donuts and giving out their trophies.

Has anyone tried Taco Bell's new Slayer Burrito??? Must be hot as Hell!

I was driving behind this on the Ben Franklin Bridge this morning.