My Dilemma

Do I:

a) Buy a cheap home now, and save a whole lot of money on gas (as well as wear and tear on both my truck and my legs)?

or

b) Stay where we are in Middleburg, living rent free, and try to save up for a home that I'll still want to live in a year from now?

We're seen a few (crummy) homes in our price range, but I really wanted our first home to be our home for a long, long time, possibly forever. That way, we wouldn't have to pay the government back for their assistance, and we could be without a mortgage in 30 years or so, which would certainly help us money-wise. I plan on retiring as soon as humanly possible, you see - I actually hate working. I also would like to have something to leave to my kids when I shuffle off this mortal coil. If I buy a home now, not only will we be not saving much money, but it won't be the ideal home that I'd want to live in for awhile, as our price range right now is about half of what a nice home costs. But if I wait to buy a home, I'll still be spending about 400 to 500 bucks a month on gas, which is obscene, as well as putting so much extra wear on our truck, and that's not to mention HOW MUCH I HATE SPENDING TWO HOURS IN A CAR EVERY DAY.

So ... what the hell should I do?

Pennsylvania Primary Voting Day

I can't vote in today's primary election. I am registered as an Independent, which means that I have the independence to choose to not partake in the preliminary stages of an election by deciding who I have the opportunity to decide on in the actual election. I think the two party system is dumb, so I'm just not gonna play. It's rather a case of cutting off my nose to spite my face, but I don't like the Democratic Party so I'm not gonna join.

That said, I encourage anyone out there who is a registered Democrat to vote for Obama.

Outdone by Infants

So I was playing with my eldest daughter, Evelyn, who is about 17 months old. She's still teething, and I had just given her a dose of Children's Tylenol (which is probably the greatest invention since the combustion engine if you ask me). The bottle is small and plastic, and has a little dropper that you use to give the correct dosage. She likes to chew on the dropper to ease tooth pain.

Anyway, I was holding the Tylenol bottle between my hands and closing them, then opening them again. She would try to grab the bottle. Then, I would close my hands again, but I'd let the dropper fall out of my hands into my lap. She couldn't see that, since my hands were the only thing in her field of vision. I'd open my hands again, and the Tylenol bottle would be gone. Mystified, she'd look around for it. I'd scoop it up again and open my hands to reveal that it had returned. She would be overjoyed. This went on for a bit, and I took no small amount of pride that my meager sleight-of-hand was impressing a toddler.

Finally, I let her take the bottle and chew on it. We haven't seen it since.

It seems that Evelyn has much to teach me about making things dissapear.