August Peanuts

• The family joined me for my trip to NYC. We spent the week at my parents in Westfield. The kids had a good time, and I borrowed my sister's old work desk, complete with 3.5" floppy disks.
  
• The night before I arrived, Rachel called me. (I traveled to NJ via DC and MN, in that order.) Mom developed a persistent, tender pain in her right side. Rachel told her she probably had appendicitis, and she should go to the hospital. She didn't. I told her she probably had appendicitis, and she should go to the hospital. Like she would listen to me. That was a Friday; on Monday she finally saw a doctor, who told her she probably had appendicitis, and she should go to the hospital. This time she did. They confirmed it was appendicitis, operated, and she made a full recovery.
  
• Matthew has been raised in a world of laptops and all-in-one machines. I tried to explain the concept of a "monitor" to him but I'm not sure if it made sense. My poor son.
  
• Starburst is the perfect Isaac candy. He can unwrap the rappers by himself, but it takes him long enough that he's not just stuffing his face full of sugar.
  You know you're getting old when you buy more from shirt.woot for your kids, than for yourself.
  
• An older gentleman was attempting to replace the empty paper towel roll in the womens' bathroom at church. After 10 minutes, Rachel stepped in: "What if we try it like this?" and clicked it together. "I hope I didn't embarrass him."
  
• Melissa's going to start school a week from tomorrow. Rachel panicked when she realized that she had the options of getting up or letting me do her hair. "Jonathan, I'm going to teach you how to do a pony tail. That is the only hairdo you have to learn." [So far, she has gone with the "getting up" option.]
  
• Matthew, protesting that 7:40 was too early for bed: "It's the hour of seven!"
  
• Matthew asked for his own email account. I'm pretty sure 7 is not old enough, but I'm not sure how old is.
  
• Matthew wanted me to install Chrome on Rachel's computer because Safari didn't work. I didn't believe him, so he showed me: he was typing searches into the url bar. Guess Google was on to something there.
  
• "You have 122 movies that you have not yet rated." Wow, the kids watch a lot of netflix.
  
• Melissa likes to toy with her computer opponent in Galcon. Which highlights a weakness in the implementation: a mere few thousand ships onscreen brings the engine to its knees. Back in my day we handled that kind of load on a 16MHz 386...
  
• Me: "There's no bidet in my bathroom. I thought that was mandatory in Europe." Gary: "There's probably a water fountain in the lobby."
  
• Melissa: "Your leg is furry. But you're not a cat."