You Won't Care About This

You really won't care about this post. I know you won't because I talked to some of the other parents here about this and, while they were polite and listened, I could tell that they could give a shit. This is just for me.

This is the scene outside our house this morning:
It's gorgeous. It's like Frosty's Winter Wonderland or something.

Now, I drove 2 km (1.24 miles) away from the house (basically straight down the mountain we live on) and this is what it looked like:

I'm just amazed at the difference the...altitude I guess...makes.

It was snowing when I left house to pick the kids up from school yesterday. I drove down the hill and it turned to rain. As I got closer to their schools (which basically is on the next hill over) it changed back to snow. I don't know, it was just interesting and stuff.

Anyway that's all I have to say. See, I told you that you wouldn't care but TS, start your own blog and you can talk about your own random synapse firings.

Katie & Anya go Bowling

Katie had an early release day yesterday so we took her friend Anya bowling to celebrate her birthday (Anya's party is this Sunday and we will miss it since we will be in sunny Troy, NY for Thanksgiving).

The girls had a great time. Anya started off really well, so much so that I could tell Katie was a little annoyed. Even though I'm not very competitive myself (she must get this from Anna) I thought she did a good job keeping it in and being a good sport. Plus it helped that she did better than Anya in the 2^nd game.

The only problem we had was that after a couple of frames into the 1^st game I noticed a really bad smell in the bowling alley. I couldn't figure out what the hell that smell was until a couple frames later I looked at the scoreboard and realized it was me, stinking up the place with my EXTREMELY poor play. Seriously, Anya bowled an 8 in the 1^st frame and I bowled a 7. I DID NOT CATCH UP TO HER UNTIL THE FREAKING 7^th FRAME! I was so bad that the bowling alley guy made a point to mention that he noticed Anya kicking my ass when I went to pay. It was one of the few times where I actually wished the clerk did not speak English.

Bowler	Game 1	Game 2
Katie	82	68
Anya	86	50
Vito	108	114

We wrapped up the afternoon with some milkshakes from McDonald's.
More pictures on our Kodak Gallery Homepage.

First Snow

So we had our first significant snowfall for the year. It started snowing at Noon and by 2:30pm it looked like this:
I am so not ready for winter to be here. After looking at this scene out the window I had to go and turn up the thermostat and make myself a cup of tea.

The kids had a great time. We had a snowball fight, made a snowman and some snow angels.

More pictures on our Kodak Gallery Homepage.

Car Bad Luck Streak Continues

Salvaggio's do not have good luck with cars. It's just a fact of our lives that we've come to accept. We're not 100% sure why this is but family legend says that my Great-Grandfather, Frank Salvaggio, newly off the boat from Italy somehow managed to offend Henry Ford. The details of what exactly happened aren't clear but it is believed that Mr. Ford's ghost now haunts the family, causing all of our car troubles in revenge. The accuracy of this family legend is in some dispute, due mostly to the fact that I just made it up. But something sure is out to get us...or at least our cars.

You all have read about Anna's exhaust system problems and my flat tire woes. Here are the two latest:

I had a little fender bender at the same mall where I got the flat tire. Actually, even "fender bender" overstates what happened. I was trying to find a spot in the parking garage (you should know that the parking garages in Budapest are well known for their "tight fit"ness). The person in front of me was doing something jackassery so I went to back up, not seeing that someone had pulled in behind me. BAM. Luckily he spoke English and was honest and admitted that the scratch/crack in his fender was already there. When I got back in the car Anna offered these words of support:
Anna: "I'm just glad that it was you driving and not me."
With support like that, what can't I handle?

At the time I thought that no damage had been done to my car. Naturally Henry Ford made sure that that didn't hold up. My "reverse radar/sonar beeping thingy" has stopped working. And let me tell you that with some of the tight spots I have to park in over here, I really miss it.

I'm thinking that I should just avoid this mall in the future and since TGI Friday's has removed the Jack Daniel's Pork Chops from their menu, there really isn't a compelling reason to get me to go there anymore (Damn you TGI Fridays!).

And that brings us to this mornings mishap:

While driving the kids to school I had to drive past a car (going in the opposite direction) on a small, winding road. There was just enough room for two cars to get by each other so there shouldn't have been any problem. I saw the garbage can coming up on my right hand side, but I was going slow so no worries. I even remember thinking "Wouldn't it be funny if I knocked the can over."

Hello McFly. It's garbage day. The can is full of garbage and is not going to budge. And apparently I wasn't going as slow as I thought. Some days it doesn't pay to get out of bed.

That's it for now since I have to go find the duct tape before I go back to Katie's school (early since I also forgot to pack her Ballet stuff for after school. She tried to blame me for forgetting her library books too, but that's her responsibility).

This Can Not Be Allowed

My Mother-in-Law sent me this email today:

Hi Vito,

Is Wii worth checking into? I keep seeing the commercials and thinking that maybe I might want to check into something like some of the games I see them playing? Do you know anything about Wii?

Love,

Mom Price

Clearly she can not be allowed to buy a Wii.

My most "current" gaming system is the N64. My Mother-in-Law can not have a cooler video game system than me. That's right up there with "Cats and Dogs Living Together." Nature will not allow this.

Happy Halloween

And how was your Halloween? Lots of Halloween fun over here.

We carved a pumpkin over the weekend.

I baked some cupcakes for Katie's class to decorate. And yes I did it and not Anna. They didn't turn out too bad (which is another way of saying that they didn't turn out too good). Actually they were OK tasting but a bit...dense...I'd guess you'd say. And they were on the smallish size as they didn't rise as much as one would expect them too. It wasn't until Halloween morning, as we were preparing to bring them to school, that we figured out why.
Anna: "How did you finally figure out how to measure the butter?"
Me: silence for 5 seconds "Ya...uh...apparently I forgot to put in the butter."

You see, butter doesn't come in nice easy to measure "sticks" over here and plus you have to convert from metric to English measurement and it's a semi-solid which makes measuring it even more difficult. So I had set the butter aside with the intention of calling Anna to ask her advice on how to measure/convert/etc. and never got back to it.

After school Katie summed things up nicely:
Me: "So did you guys decorate the cupcakes this morning?"
Katie: "Yes. Someone else brought in cupcakes that were bigger so I picked one of them."

See how smart she is.

VJ is off from school this week so he and I went to Katie's school for the Halloween Parade and Assembly.

Katie's Class

Katie and her good friend Shiraz.
Katie and Maté

Then that evening we all went Trunk or Treating! That's right I said Trunk or Treating. The event was held at the big campus of Katie's school. We parked our car in the parking lot and everyone opened their trunks (which eveyrone had decorated). The kids went from car to car Trunk or Treating. It was pretty cool and the kids had a lot of fun. You could tell which kids weren't American by their really small Halloween bags. Afterwards we had dinner in the school cafeteria.

You can see all the pictures on our Kodak Gallery homepage.