When I picked up the girls at Porsche-mom's, I told ten year old we might go the credit union, so hurry up. She realized we were going to get money for her DS lite, and she and Porsche-girl started hugging and dancing around jumping up and down gleefully. Not my idea of hurry, but I was never a tween girl . Porsche-girl wanted to come with us and we'd meet later at the Y for a kids night out thing. We barely managed to make it to the credit union before they closed (it's around the corner from our old house which I did not know), get to Target, pick out a DS Lite (pink) and game (Animal Crossing) and Hershey bars, get home, feed the kids Spaghettios and get them to the Y before they stopped accepting kids. We had a minute to spare.

Mrs. Ha was shopping, but eventually came home and we decided to go for a fish fry. It took a while to get there and get served, so I ended up leaving my quarter eaten fish fry and quarter drunken beer (Kreos IIRC) to get the girls from the Y, get back to the fish place which had closed, and get let in to finish my dinner. Not very relaxing.

Saturday's weather was great, so I started on replacing storms with screens. In some sort of spring cleaning inspired mood, I even sprayed and scrubbed down the screens before I put them in. I had just finished the bottom floor when it was time to take ten year old to the museum for a demonstration on water pollution her class was doing, they had a little plastic model of town, and would use soy sauce and spices to make point sources of pollution, then spray the model with water to mimic motor oil running off into a river. On the way there, miss all morning on the couch playing Nintendo was complaining that she had to be inside the museum for the afternoon instead of outside.

I loved going to science museums as a kid. Growing in a small farming town 23 miles south of Buffalo, it was pretty much a once a year event, if we were lucky. I still like to vist the Rochester museum, but since the kids go to school in a building a few hundreds yards from the museum, and visit the museum tens of times a year, they're blase. Five year old was content to watch the demonstration a few times, and then grudgingly saw a few exhibits before wanting a lollipop from the gift shop.

Now ten year old is terrified of bugs. So terrified, it renders incapable of counting, that morning she screamed that there was a spider on the steps, but it only had six legs, it was a bug. Ants freak her out, too, and we're getting a few carpenter ants a day in our kitchen (need more traps). Now, some green folks were doing a demonstration of swamp life next to the school's demonstration, they had big plastic bins full of swamp weeds and bugs. Ten year old had no trouble fishing for bugs with spoon and pulling them out to look at them. I guess it doesn't count if it's on a spoon.

After the demo was over, Porsche-mom offered to take the girls for a while, so I went home to Mrs. Ha. We had some free time together, and she decided on a safe form of a midlife crisis, she got her nose pierced. We then had a nice time doing Monroe, having coffee, and enjoying out time together. Sadly, the gifty boutique was out of little plastic carpenter ants.

Finally, we had a cookout (hot italian sausages, pepper, onions and zuchinni) and later a small fire in the Chimenea, where everyone stuffed themselves with marshmallows and made s'mores, while we burned a few branches from our Christmas tree, yeah, I forgot to dump it off at the mulching station in January. I put a lot of carbon in the air that day.

Sunday was more of the same, though Mrs. Ha and I found out Rochester is not a good place to buy a stethoscope on a Sunday. We did find a very cheap one at Walgreens (first time I ever went into a Walgreens) but no good ones with purple or pink tubes suitable for pulse and blood pressure practice.

By this time my left foot was a mess. I've had a blister on my big toe, so I though Birkies would help, but the foot bed is all torn up and I blisted the sole of my left foot. On to flipflops.

Before the kids returned home, Mrs. Ha started cleaning the inside of the house while I finished the screens, and then moved on to our bicycle pool. Eleven tires later, some squirts of oil, and some brake adjustments later, we had five working bikes, though some not-totally functional gears.

In the evening we decided to take our first family ride, save for Mrs. Ha, but with upstreet boy. I was just going to go around the nieghborhood, but ten year old convinced me to cross the big street, she wanted to drive by newspaper-girl's house to see if she was home. She wasn't, but we decided to then ride by five year old's friends how, and they were home, enjoying the superlative weather on the porch. Not only that, they also has a tagalong combo, and her dad and the friend went with us for a ride for a few blocks. I was unable to keep up with them at one point, and ended up dropping my chain shifting from my front derailluer (I still have grease on my fingerS). yes, I was still wearing flip flops, but at least I had my helmet on.

In stinky bike news, bikebandit has the oil seal I need in stock, so I can use the real OEM part instead of cheap Chinese O Rings.

I also upgraded to FireFox 2.0, and now I can youtube! Bring on the vids, cam.