I am about recovered from MIL's visit last weekend (well, Saturday to Monday). She's pleasant, but hard, having no short term memory and failing long term memory, it's like watching a needy two year old with an adult's vocabulary. Alzhiemers/dementia is hard on everyone.

Anyhow, I missed my Saturday workout because Mrs. Ha got home late, so I had to work out Sunday (of course we didn't get our precious alone time Sunday either) and dang, with all my anger floating around, I had a nice workout. Grr, what focus.

For the 99% of you that have not been in my house, our study is one of the nicest rooms in the house, it has a small corner area that juts out from the house, covered in windows. Due to my Lego collection, it's nearly impossible to get back there.

Mrs. Ha saw a storage bench in the KMart flyer from Martha Stewart. I had always wanted to have a window bench there, or build one in, but this one is a perfect fit, so I agreed to get it, and move lots of my Lego. So now, the bench is there, more Lego is downstairs, and more will follow. The bench is nice, a darkly stained wood composite with a sageish colored cushion. I do feel bad about the panda bears who used to live in the composite woods and have since had the environment destroyed to make flat pack furniture.

This hasn't been without heartbreak, since I had to move my collection around, tthe Traveller inspired Scout ship I was working on became accessible, and four year old broke it. She was very upset, but it would have been no biggie, had upstreet_boy not proceeded to dis-assemble it. I need some closeable project boxes. I also need a village, upstreet_mom believes that since it takes a village to raise a kid, she feels free to let the 9 year old roam around unsupervised, the village can watch him.

In other sad Lego news, MIL put away Lego this weekend, but didn't realize that four year old wants all the Lego animals in one bin, and they've been mixed up. We still can't find her two Appaloosa horses. She is very sad.

Mrs. Ha and I watched Y Tu Mama Tambien last night, the R rated version. It was good, though I found most of the voiceovers to be annoying and redundant. In a well made movie, the backstory should be able to be figured out, or it shouldn't matter. I wish my Spanish was better, I wonder how much I missed. I do understand how judgemental folks might assume the movie is homo-erotic, but I thought all the scenes of fit young men swimming naked and jerking off together were quite relevant to the plot. What did I miss in the unrated version?

I did like all the glimpses of how the upper middle class live in Mexico.

There's going to be financial trouble a'coming. Our escrow shortfall is much less this year than last, so while our mortgage payment will be higher than it was for a few years, it will be about $50 lower than it was all last year, starting in May. In April my COLA goes through, for about an additional $100 month. While you might think we can conventionally balance our budget (coupled with lower heating bills), I think it really means we're going to socked with unexpected repair or medical bbills.

The nine year old wants to partake in Take Your Spawn to Work day. Last year it occurred when I was in Des Moines. This year it will happen when she's on her Philadelphia trip. Oh well, maybe next year, though she's bored by big beige plastic melting on paper boxes, and can see me type on a computer at home, so I don't know what she will get out of it.

Poll: Which is the greater evil?