Holy Smokes!

Part of why you guys saw a series of posts about Magic Rocks was because the Raleigh area was under smoke from the "Evans Road" wildfire. The fires are originating near the east coast of NC and today's easterly winds brought the smoke plume RIGHT OVER Raleigh.

It was definitely hazy, with visibility down to 1/2 mile at the Raleigh Airport this afternoon. You could also distinctly smell the smoke today. I made sure to keep the boys inside today, where our A/C did a good job of keeping the air clean.

The fires are nowhere near contained as of this writing, and best of luck to those who are working hard to keep it under control.

Is Your House Made of Ticky-Tacky?

I have started watching "Weeds" on Showtime.

I seem to be attracted to these twisted shows that have a hint of black humor. Since "Six Feet Under" finished on HBO a couple years ago, there's been some close ones (Nip/Tuck on FX), but nothing close till I caught my first full episode of Weeds a couple weeks ago.

But it wasn't till tonight, while I was watching 3 episodes in a row, that I realized a different artist sings a cover the theme song, Malvina Reynolds' "Little Boxes". As some have attested, it's definitely a way to keep someone in today's Tivo/DVR world from fast forwarding through the opening credits.

Dave was sitting on the couch across the living room from me working on his defense presentation slide show, when tonight's last episode started and he asked from behind his laptop screen, "Is that Laurie Berkner singing the theme song?"

Laurie Berkner? Timmy's favorite singer?

After all, "I'm Gonna Catch You" is his anthem...

NAAAAH! She sings CHILDREN'S SONGS!

Right?

After some Google-sleuthing, it turned out Dave is right! He's very gifted at figuring out voices...you should see him work our kids' animated movies!

The song is actually very cute, remove it from the show and it would sit perfectly on one of her CDs...really!

Don't You Hate it When...

...You have a good-sized length of wrapping paper left and it's NOT QUITE enough to cover the gift???

PS: Can you see what I'm wrapping??? Good, then Dave won't know either :-)

My Messy Marvins

I just have to refer you here -- Maryann captured some million-dollar smiles of my boys on Sunday. It was horribly hot all weekend, so she and I were looking for indoor activities for our boys.

We turned them loose with some crafts, and the painting went from "let's paint with sponges" to "let's paint with hands, arms, lips and BELLIES!"

I'll need to upload a picture of Timmy's art work -- a belly print, complete with belly-button hole!