Hi Ho, Hi Ho.

Gosh. I'm busy doing all those things I put off until tomorrow. Now it is the evening before we go back to school. I've got work to do! I would have thought about doing it over the break, but it seems like every day somebody had to go to the doctor or optometrist or wanted food three times a day, or demanded clean clothing.

The #1 son wanted to wear an Abercrombie shirt my sister-the-mayor's-wife gave him for Christmas. Too bad. It has long sleeves. It's a winter shirt. And the temperature was 72 degrees here today. He would fry.

I have not heard from Mabel in OH SO LONG. She does not even know she was a PowerBall winner last week. Yep. Our Miss Mabel hit the PowerBall and one number. She's a fourdollarionaire, she is! I will be renting an armored car to take her winnings to school. I'm holding off on the press conference for now.

The new laptop my #1 son was getting with my $1000 scratcher win? He was going to customize and order it online. Then he got to thinking that what he had come up with was the same model that the church techies use. They had bought it around the beginning of December. He called one of the guys and got the specs on it. We determined that we could drive to Office Max and get the same thing. No need to wait on shipping and worry that the shepherdy doggie Ann would eat it before we got home. According to our calculations, what with having to pay in-state tax, and without the free shipping, the grand difference would be $50. Of course this was a miscalculation on the boy's part. It was actually about $100 difference. He forgot that the church guy was tax-exempt. Anyhoo, we picked it up. He got the 2-year service agreement instead of 1-year. We charged it. They gave him the pamphlet to call in and activate his service agreement by registering his new Lappy.

He tried all day Saturday to activate it. No such luck. The website was not there any more. The website he had looked up that model on to begin with. Today, his grandma took him back to Office Max after church. #1 said the sales clerk got kind of snotty with him, telling him that the store could NOT register it for him--he HAD to do it online. So he got snippy with her, asking her HOW he was supposed to do that with no website to register it on. She called around, and found out the website had changed. It must be a well-kept secret. While he was waiting, he called the church guy, who said he'd had to do the exact same thing. Except that he had mailed it in like they told him, and never got a response, so he went back to the store and they told him about the new website. It sounds like they have been taking Devil's Playground lessons.

So...that clerk finally gave him the new website, and while waiting outside The Devil's Playground, where I was on my daily shopping mission, he stole Papa John's internet signal to register. I asked him if the clerks had been that snotty to the churchy guy. "No. He said they were nice to HIM." I looked at him and said slowly, "Well, you know, HE was doing God's work." #1 laughed. "Yeah. Unlike ME, who was buying a computer with money won by gambling!" That boy might have a point.

Our new mattress slept like a charm. My back pain was reduced by 50% upon arising. HH whined, "At least YOU like it." I don't know what he's getting at. He slept a good 5 hours more than I did in it. It did not seem to keep him awake. In fact, he liked it so much that he stretched out way onto MY side, and I had to whack his arm to keep from being shoved out of the bed. And I wouldn't want THAT to happen, because this mattress is TALL. It must be one like Mabel got her mom. You know, that time she had to saw the legs off the bed. So I don't want to be shoved out. It's enough that HH has that one restless leg that goes all the way to my edge of the bed. Now it has a partner in crime. I swear, I'm going to have to tie a kink in his breather-hosen.

I've really got to go. I've got lessons to plan before I sleep.