6 Kids, 3 cats, 1 dog, Mom, and Dad

The Litter Maid arrived or My scooping days are over.

I got a Litter Maid via eBay for $147 which included shipping. It arrived yesterday and I set it up when I got home from work last night. So far, it is operating great and the cats have readily accepted it. We got the Mega model which has higher sides and a ramp that is supposed to clean their feet on the way out. The plus side is that the higher sides keeps the kitty litter contained in the box rather than scattering around the area.

When did it become so exciting to watch a machine scoop up cat waste and dump it into a plastic container?

Wine Dinner or I am so looking forward to this night!

We haven't all gotten together since before Christmas and I miss everyone in our wine tasting dinner circle of friends.

Only a few more days to go!

Is friction a good thing or there are times when you just don't know what to say.

I'm all for articles that relate to wine and factoids about aspects of wine drinking. When I read this tidbit over at Everyday News I found that I wasn't really thinking about wine all that much...Come on...oral friction? Is anyone else having a hard time deciding if this is a "good or bad thing"?

Fizban is the name or I got a kitty for my birthday!

I'm not sure if Fizban is a he or she yet. The kitten is about six weeks old and I've had it for almost a week. Fizban is very playful and loves to lay on my chest at night. He/she moved to the keyboard after taking a nap for 20 minutes on my lap.

Black, blue, and purple or colors that your toes should not be.

The previously mentioned wine rack is very heavy and I know that now because I dropped it on my toes and they are shades of all those lovely colors. Since everyone was smiling at me and gazing my way adoringly I couldn't very well cuss or cry so I acted like nothing happened. The things us daddy's do...

85 Bottles of wine on the wall or do you have a case of bottle envy?

Beautiful Wife and children gave me this great wine rack for my birthday.

This rack holds seventy four bottles and it is about half full at this point. I also have a rack that holds ten bottles and another that holds nine. The ten bottle rack holds the wines that should be consumed soon. The nine bottle rack holds dessert wines and ports. The new rack holds ones that can be consumed now or cellared for a few years. I also have a refrigerated stand alone cellar that holds the wines that need to be cellared for many years.

I 85 bottles of wine in my collection but at least now they all have a home and aren't in cardboard boxes in my closet.

New Stove or The things you find behind cabinets.

The stove that was in this house when we bought it was absolutly disgusting. It got to the point this last week that I really started worrying about our health and safety and decided to buy a new one.

In preparation for the project I took out the old one, remembering to turn off the circuit break first, and then also took out the cabinet next to where it used to be. This had to happen because the old stove was 27 inches wide and all new stoves are a standard 30 inches wide.

When I removed the cabinet I found two Christmas postcards with a little girl's picuture on them from 1992. The people who lived in the house before us moved into the house in 1993. A family rented the house just before them and I happen to know them from karate and had just seen them that night. It was their little girl on the picture! How coincidental is that?

The new range hood is installed and the oven was used to make a batch of crescent rolls and works great. It is a flat top stove because we don't want to have to deal with coils and drip pans ever again.

One final note of interest....color is more important than feautures to my wife.

We went to the Expo or Good Friend was feeling pain!

Beautiful Wife and I traveled to Boston with our Good Friends to attend the Boston Wine Expo. One thing I think we all learned was how to take smaller sips, pour out the extra, and stop "tasting" when everything started to taste the same. We even left about an hour before the show ended because we simply didn't want to be on our feet or drink any more.

Toward the end of that and during the break between the end of that and our dinner reservations Good Friend developed a killer headache. He sucked it up and went to dinner but we could tell that he wasn't enjoying himself. He and his wife headed back to the hotel after dinner and I didn't blame them at all.

Beautiful Wife and I went by ourselves to Finale for dessert and we weren't disappointed. We ordered the suggested pairings with our dessert which is always a good idea.

Dinner was at PF Changs and it was great. This was only our second time there but we enjoyed it immensely.

The standout for us at the Expo were the Hungarian dessert wines. We tasted other wines which were good but nothing that really excited us like those wines. I learned after last year that the trick was not only finding something you like, but finding something you can buy in NH. The best part of it is that we get to go into Boston with our friends, try a bunch of wines, eat out at cool places that don't serve happy meals, and then spend the night in a hotel and pretend we're newlyweds.