Wii got a Wii!!

You would be surprised that D did not actually buy this product, considering he enjoys buying large-ticket items while I'm out of town. D's gracious parents gave us this gift for stealing my husband away for a week year after year to take care of their old and somewhat vile cats while they're on vacation. Seriously, I love animals, and I actually quite enjoy their cats despite being a dog person in general. But these cats are disgusting. One of them actually puked in the door jamb. This made me hysterically laugh, and then curl up my lips in anguish.

Soooo, I played it for the first time last night, accompanied by green Harp beer (the key is 2 drops of coloring, btw, after many experiments) and buffalo wings. It was like I was in college again....

It won't be long before I'm kicking butt at the sports game that it came with. So what other games should I get???

off to Mexico!!

itinerary:
Pez Maya and Sian Ka'an
the mature and important forests and ruins called Calakmul
one add'l day and a half in Playa del Carmen--can one say Cerveza?

see you on St. Paddy's Day!

worth the trip

So Daniel and i drove 50 miles roundtrip to see this beauty--no, I did not take this picture. We tried but couldn't get it focused enough in the short time he was there. You don't really want to waste time taking pictures when you can just look at him. We were worried that we'd get there and he'd never show himself, so we were very lucky to only have to wait about 20 minutes. Laika sat on my feet while we watched from afar.

Considering that I've only seen sparrows for the last 3 months and cardinals, he was beautiful. And they aren't very common in Maryland, and he's been hanging out for about a month now at the person's feeder in Arnold right along a busy bike path. Go figure.

Painted Bunting has two distinct breeding populations: one found along the Atlantic Coast from North Carolina south to central Florida; and another that stretches across much of Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, southward into northern Mexico. The Audubon Important Bird Area (IBA) Program has identified a number of sites that provide breeding habitat for Painted Bunting, including North Carolina's Bald Head/Smith Island IBA, which supports 35-40 breeding pairs, and Florida's Fort George and Talbot Islands IBA, where 78 singing males were detected and over 100 birds were banded in 2000. The eastern population of Painted Bunting winters in southern Florida and probably in the northwestern Caribbean

Retirees need $225,000 for health care says Balt. Biz Journal???

A 65-year-old couple retiring in 2008 will need about $225,000 to pay for medical expenses during retirement, according to Fidelity Investments' annual health care cost estimate.
Boston-based Fidelity Investments' latest estimate is close to a five percent increase over the 2007 estimate of $215,000.
Fidelity has released its health care study every year since 2002. The number has risen 41 percent since its first study, with an average yearly increase of about six percent.
"With health care costs continuing to outpace wage increases and companies trimming retiree health benefits, financing health care has to be central to retirement planning," said Brad Kimler, executive vice president at Fidelity Investments, in a statement. "Given current economic conditions, this is especially true for those planning to retire in the next few years or before they qualify for full social security or Medicare benefits."

Wonderful. My calculations tell me that an increase of 6% each year has me retiring with a needed budget of $1.45 million. Huzzah! Stupid baby-boomers sucking all the Medicare money. If government's stance on health care wasjn't important to you before, you might want to look at the candidates now!

the Story of Stuff!

If you haven't yet heard about this online video, please take 20 minutes at lunch or while the baby is sleeping to watch it. It's a boiled-down explanation of where all that "stuff" comes from, and where it all goes. Stuff doesn't just go away, and it affects us in more ways than you think. It might be cheap, but cheap comes with a pricetag.