Christmas Card Update

It's been a while since I shared how awesome my wife is by letting us do goofy Christmas Cards, so I thought I'd collect all the ones since the last here for those who haven't been blessed to get one in your mailbox, Feed, or Timeline.

An instant classic, The Island of Misfit Boys. 2013

To celebrate our new house, we went old school and posted an 80s themed banger. 2015

This year we celebrated your Cleveland Cavaliers World Championship with a special (albeit not super creative) card. 2016

For the sake of completeness, here's our first (and plainest) family Christmas Card (2006).

Wishing you and yours some very Happy Holidays and the best of a New Year.

Showrooming online

I'm sure you've all heard of "showrooming", where people walk into a physical store, talk to an expert, try something on, or just hold it in their hands to see what they like, then turn around and order it from an online store for less. I think I may have just taken this phenomenon to the next level. I used an online store to figure out what I needed, then turned around and ordered it from another online store for WAY less.

I was originally online looking for parts for a couple of things. I needed two new top rack adjusters for my dishwasher, so I Googled my model number and searspartsdirect.com came up. They made it super easy to find the part I specifically needed for my model, so I added them to my cart and grabbed a new fridge water filter for good measure. I didn't want to wait (I have a lot of kids, so a dishwasher being down is not good) so I tried to "chat" someone there to see if it was available for pickup locally. 

Naturally that didn't work on my iPad, so I had to log on to a PC (strike 1). Then, while trying to connect back to my shopping cart, I had to switch to compatibility mode in Internet Explorer to log back in to my account -- Chrome wasn't having the login process (strike 2). The customer service rep couldn't see my cart (strike 3) so at the same time I was giving him my parts numbers (a full 30 minutes after I had identified the parts I needed), I was plugging them into Amazon. The parts weren't available locally, but I could do ground shipping for free since my total was over $100 ($107.32 to be exact), but it was already too late. On Amazon, which I hadn't even thought to go to originally, my total was $61.28 for the exact same parts, with free 2-day shipping as part of my Prime membership. 

So thanks, Sears, for being so technically incompetent that I was able to save $45. This is exactly why the old economy will never win.

I'm pooped.

Earlier this week shared an absolutely hilarious post on Facebook. She actually even tagged me and #realwife because the post was about a mishap that occurred involving a Roomba (we have one of those) and the solid waste of their puppy (we also have one of those).  It was a great post, widely shared, and in fact led to some fantastic opportunities to the poster. And this was all wildly hilarious. Right up until it wasn't.

Today wen I got home from work, I smelled poop. This isn't entirely uncommon - we have two dogs, 4 kids, and if we're being honest, they could probably all use a little work. I went to the usual haunts (formal dining room back, by the hutch, or in front of the recliner in the living room) and came up empty. I did notice the Roomba wasn't docked, but again, not all that uncommon - it'll typically get caught on a charging cord or eat a sock. When I turned the corner into the den, I just knew something was wrong. It was quite literally in the air.

And on the ground.

So, so much ground.

No one is getting out early for good behavior.

The Roomba had buried itself under the corner of the sectional, but not until after it had spread the dog's filth across half of the room. Normally this is a 2-person job - one of us would tear the Roomba apart and clean with an old toothbrush, while the other worked the floor. In this case, however, I was on my own, as Becca had spent two weeks on the road for work and come home with a broken hand. I didn't have time to tear into then, so I set up a safe zone in the den, and set about making dinner, packing lunches, and getting kids off to bed with a very poopy Sword of Damocles hanging over my head.

I'll spare you the details (and the pictures) but rest assured the cleanup was exactly as awful as you'd expect it to be. And if you'll excuse me, I'm off to shower forever.