What if...

Eliza (3 1/2) is a rather imaginative, verbal little girl. She is an incorrigible what if'er (not that I would corrige her if I could :). This morning I went in to wake her up.

Thomas: Did you sleep well?
Eliza: No *grunt*
Thomas: Did you have nightmares?
Eliza: No
Thomas: Were there squirrels in your bed?
Eliza: What if squirrels ate nuts out of my brain?
Thomas: You don't have squirrels in your brain.
Eliza: What if I did?
Thomas: Well, then it might be good to have squirrels eat them out.
Eliza: Or it might be bad. That would be silly.

"What if it did" is definitely a common phrase around here.

John Boyd

I found this article quite interesting. It describes a man driven to keep America great, who persevered against a rigid bureaucracy, and describes his successes from post-vietnam through the application of his ideas in Iraq I and II.

Speak to me

I mentioned Kevin Trevino to my mom the other day and realized I hadn't yet told her we had a new dog. Next, of course, was the shock that she didn't faithfully follow my blog :). Anyhoo, she mentioned she'd really like to have something to read the news to her. So I started doing a bit of searching.

First, I tried talkr.com and put those handy-dandy read-this-post tools at the top of each post. Works pretty nice, though machine reading really brings out the dull-ness of my prose.

Next, I downloaded a trial of NewsPiper Pro, but it won't show me old posts I guess. So, I'm writing this one to try and get it to work for me. I'll update this later w/ more info.

Update: Gave up on NewsPiper Pro. Couldn't get it to say anything. Just tried NewsAloud which recently added RSS support. Apparently that doesn't include ATOM support. As much as I love hearing a computer voice saying zero zero seven hyphen comma semicolon four two zero ..., that's not going to work for me.

Well, maybe I'll look at some other stuff later.

Kevin Trevino

Well, I was a bit premature in announcing Poppy the puppy's joining of our family. she only lasted a few days before Eliza realized that puppy teeth are terrifying. We found her a nice new home to be friends with a wiener dog. But the desire to have a new dog wasn't dashed by the experience.

Sara found a 3 year old beagle named Buddy on craiglist, and we went to meet him. Who could say no to such a cute little guy??? He's got pretty good manners, loves to chase cats, knows a few tricks, and has a wiggle-bum like his "cousin" Hercules. The name Buddy didn't work for us because we call Abe our Buddy often. So, after much discussion, we came up with a name we all could agree on - Kevin. Eliza calls him Keveeeeen, like the big guy on 3-2-1 Penguins. Abe likes to call him Kevin 11 as in Ben 10. Emma hangs onto his old name with Kevin Buddy, but Sara's nickname has become most prevalent - Kevin Trevino. She's not sure where it came from, but it just sounds right.

He's a good dog, but this is one of the rare pictures of him. For reasons unbeknownst to us, he is petrified of cameras. Run-and-hide-under-a-bed scared. He and Dexter get along fine, enjoying cat patrol together.