It's been a tough time for our lawn, the unseasonable warmness meant the trees kept their leaves longer than normal, meaning there were fewer days to rake them up to the street before the leaf suckers came. When you consider the cold rainy days and the decreasing daylight hours, it does seem the only time I could rake them up was before work in the morning.

So, one morning I did that. Rake, rake rake to the curb, and most of them were maple leafs. Amazing what I found, a dead possum, and a lot of dog poop, some frozen, some fresh. Of course, my $3 garage sale boots now have dog poop all over them. The kids were curious about a possum looks like, so I had to drag out the encyclopedia to show them one. Maybe six year old will start reading them, she's about done with the dictionary.

Later in the week I spread some grass seed too, maybe we'll have a good yard next spring. Right now, there's patches of heart attack snow all over the yard (and leaf piles), so I made it just in time, especially since lots of snow is in the forecast.

The forecast is particularly worrying since Mrs. Ha is going to Buffalo for a wake today. I hope she gets back before the weather gets terrible.

It was a rough weekend for eleven year old, she had an entrance exam Saturday morning for the smaller Catholic middle school. She had to get up at 6:30, and spend four hours taking tests. It wiped her out for Saturday. The driving was crappy Saturday morning, too, it was cold and icy and I was sliding around a bit. She's not sure how she did, I hope she did well enough for a scholarship, with a scholarship and financial aid that school becomes much more doable.

Neither girl ended up going to swimming class, but I did get my workout in, and even did a few extra reps since I figure I won't get back before Tuesday. Who knows, 2008 may be the year I stack a cybex (the back machine only goes up to 200, and I'm at 175).

Saturday night movies were a little tricky, Mrs. Ha was not enthralled with my choices. She thinks she is an easy person to get stuff for, but she's really very picky. She likes horror/suspense movies, with little gore, and dysfunctional families. I tried to pick stuff we'll both enjoy, but it's not always easy. She did enjoy my pick of Yes, though she was dubious at first. You would think a European film of a sensous love affair would mean lots of boobies and asses and gratuitous nudity, but you'd be wrong. Instead, it's very artistic, the actors speak in iambic pentameter, the cinematography is gorgeous, though the director uses far too many tricky camera shots. In one egregious scene in a restaurant the camera kept panning between the two leads with a water glass between them and the camera. Face, water glass distorting face, other face, back and forth endlessly distracting. It didn't do much for me, but Mrs. Ha liked it.

In work news, there's nothing good about carrying the cell. We found out last week that we were volunteered to provide 24-7 support to one particular customer in their holiday rush. We didn't know this until they called at 3 in the morning and got no answer. I'm also scheduled to be carrying the phone Christmas week, bleah.

On the Christmas beat, it's looking to be an ebay Christmas. Thanks to selling a few choice items and buying a choice item, a large percentage of Christmas presents cost us very little out of our pocket. We'll see if I get my 20% back from Paypal.

Also, I put the Christmas lights on the porch last night while the girls played in the snow. Again, it's blue LEDs, but this time in snowflake icicle motif. I've noticed they do funny stuff to my eyes.

Yesterday six year old had a birthday party, and I ended up taking eleven year old too. It was a kid oriented fun park place, with tubes, ball pits, an indoor astroturf court and an ice rink. I did a little socializing with the parents, and also watched most of the Bills game where they eked out a win over the Redskins.