There are some here and some more right here.

All the books are for about age 10 and under. We’ve donated one tonight while Jay and I looked through a book on dinosaurs.

Thanks, Amy! I wouldn’t have known about this if it weren’t for Facebook.

*That’s when authors make their royalty on the book.

solar system puzzle

Ada’s last dance lesson was today for this particular class. Next Saturday is her recital. They keep parents out to remove distractions for kids. I’m fine with that. She practices at home. We get to see the entire class perform next Saturday. It will be fun to watch them all.

After class, we went out to grab some yogurt, fruit and juice. We got attacked by a cranky old woman while we were eating. Apparently, we cut in front of her in line. She came over and teared into me and then huffed off. I didn’t even get a chance to apologize. And if she did perceive that we cut in front of her, she should have said so in line. We were in it for quite awhile. I would have happily let her in front of us. They wouldn’t have ran out of food, and it really isn’t that important to be that level of cranky.

We went to The Toy Store after we were done eating. There we found two books: Knuckleheads and I Love Monkey. I have my eyes on Rodney Matthews’ illustrated Alice in Wonderland. We also picked up this solar system puzzle. We put together the Hello Kitty puzzle again last week. We can do that one without any photo aid, so it was time to move onto something more complicated. This is about as complicated as I can get with Ada. She did pretty well putting together the planets. Jay and Mac joined us a bit later to finish it up. This is a Ravensburger puzzle. It is a pretty good quality construction. They had a 18,000 piece puzzle in the store. It was similar to this globe one if I remember right. It isn’t on the website.

We went home so I could get the battery to my wireless flash transmitter so I can get a replacement and headed back out with Jay. Our 8 bay batter charger also needed replacing since somehow a non-rechargeable battery was placed in it. The outcome wasn’t good for either the battery or the charger. This was the only one I had that charged my C & D batteries. I really wanted to replace it. Both of those items were replaced, along with picking up some cheap two way radios. That provided the rest of the entertainment for today.

The game today, however, was not so entertaining.

Now we are waiting for Mac and Jay to get ready so we can go back out to eat lunch. Noodles? I’m going to try to convince the family. Then I’m coming home for some baking.

Today has meet all of my requirements for the first chili of the season. It will be what I call Cafeteria Chili: ground beef, tomatoes, peppers, beans, onion and chili powder.

We could have had leftovers, but Jay got into the taco shells this morning. He ate two, and was probably planning on eating the third one we found on the floor. He also gave Ada one.We are short on shells now. It is my fault. I left food within stool climbing reach.

After picking up Ada, we made a trip to the bookstore. Not what we need more books, but it is cold and raining and that is a perfect place to spend some time. We went to Half Price Books this time, and I found The Rise of Endymion in hardcover in fantastic condition, also for less than the quick-to-fall-apart mass market paperback. I saw it at a glance as I was passing through the SciFi section. I cannot even believe it. I just need Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion to grace a used bookshop shelf. After spotting this one, I looked. No dice. This was the only Dan Simmons book on the shelf. I picked up a few other books for a great price, and Ada picked up a wad of Hello Kitty activity books.

Also, this:

Since he completely lost me from Cryptonomicon and on, should I bother?

BTW–I yearn for my laptop with more energy than a thousand suns. It’s like someone cut off my arm. Or ate my baby.