BilikFamily.com

Sunday - Today was a usual kind of Sunday. The weather wasn't quite as sunny as yesterday, but it did still allow the kids to play outside. We started it off with 7am Mass followed by donuts at the local bakery. When we got home Claire and I practiced some piano together. Soon the girls were gone playing with friends until mid-afternoon when they all came back here. Just in time for dinner... surprising how that keeps happening...

Mailbox - I did some more hunting for mailbox solutions, both online and at the local hardware store. In the end we punted and went the cheap route. Nearly all of the online mailbox stores (and oddly enough, there are several!) want to sell mailboxes that range from $100-300 with most (including our previous model) selling around $175. This is just a mailbox! We're not trying to make a fashion statement.

Meanwhile the local hardware store sold models between $8 and $15. A heavy duty model brought the price up to $60. So we punted and bought a simple $8 model. It took about 2 minutes to put our address stickers on, 2 minutes to drill a mounting hole, and 2 minutes to bolt it to the post. Done! Even if it needs to be replaced every year, it'd take twenty years to equal the cost of replacing the previous mailbox with the same yuppie model the previous owners installed!

Tree - Meanwhile, on the "catapult tree" front, the tree was knocked down today and rolled into the conservation area. It took a few minutes and the guy didn't even charge us. Not that we didn't offer. It's just nice to know it isn't going to fall on the children.

Movie - We wrapped up the evening with take out dinner (pizza, calzones, and sandwiches) watching Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark. A classic! I had hoped to watch it with my dad while he was visiting. So many great lines. “Snakes! It had to be snakes!” But our favorite in tech support was Major Eaton near the end of the movie: “We have top men working on it now.” (as the Ark is wheeled off anonymously into a giant warehouse...) At work some squeaky wheel of a customer might go off on a phone call tirade, my boss would re-assure the customer, hang up the phone, and quote Major Eaton. At that point I'd get right on the issue, lest the customer get further ballistic.

When we pitched this movie to Claire, we explained that this was the movie that Minnesota Cuke was loosely based on. It's a statement of the young generation that we related it in those terms, eh? We warned her that it had more intense action and less silly humor. Indiana Jones had a lot more experience under his belt than Minnesota Cuke. Minnesota Cuke is still a little green. (ba-dum-bum!)