Equal opportunity slaughter....

.....yes, I said these words to the nice kid at the Walmart electronics register. You know the department, it's rarely busy, yet heaven help you find someone with the damn key to the video games. Anyway how a grown woman even broaches such a topic with a minor is just a sign of the times. It was the my son's usual M.O.. Get mom to drive him to the store for a video game, wait until in the store to mention , oh yea it's "mature", will you buy it for me? Rather than immediately leave and return after reading the specifics and some reviews I've limited myself to letting the staff fill me in on the deets. So there I was with the usual "have you played, why is it mature?" etc.. And the possible deal breaker "is it as bad as Grand Theft Auto?". "No m'am, just blow 'em up war games". And, de dum, out spilled "So no degradation or violence targeted at women or a specific group then? Just good 'ole equal opportunity slaughter?" I'm not proud of it. Call CPS, judge me, pat yourself on your back because your kids not only don't play video games but certainly not "those" games, whatever, but at least my kid views all his gamer friends as equally ripe to blow up regardless of age, sex, race or intellect. There's got to be some shred of social consciousness in that.

Not quite ready for springtime....

what a great weekend we just had here in New York. A nice respite from a very cold, snowy February. I have to say winter should've been much rougher this year than usual. We cancelled our plow service, but found shoveling not the problem we'd thought. Our snazzy new shovel helped. Highly recommend one.










We had more snow than we'd had in years but also had many more days with these visitors. I swear one more month of snow and the turkey and deer will be eating out of our hands.














and usually being cooped up with my little girl all winter is not the stuff of dreams, but this year she was quite the independent snow princess. Notice the open collar? She completely dressed herself ( gloves too!) and ventured out while I was shoveling.













Speaking of shoveling.















We're thinking by next year we can rent her shoveling services to the neighbors.