TaylorandDana.com

We hope that you all have wonderful holidays! As you can see, Josie is already tired of Christmas…

This weekend, the Buffalo Bills are playing Sunday night football against the New England Patriots. This game got moved from 1PM as part of the new NFL flex scheduling thing – to try to air more interesting games at prime times (just to be clear, what’s interesting about this game is the unstoppable Pats and their seemingly inevitable run for the Super Bowl…)

The Pats are undefeated and the Bills just crossed over to have a winning record for the first time in way too long. Obviously, the Pats are the favorite to win this game (with a 15.5 spread!) but we’re going to go ahead and jump on board the bandwagon with Tim Russert who, on the Today Show this morning, prognosticated “the shock of the football season” when the Bills beat the Pats “in God’s country” on Sunday night.

Let’s go Buffalo!!!

Along route 8 on the way from Tolland, MA to Avon, CT there’s a 12 degree hill that winds down one of the Berkshire Mountains. At the end of the steep hill, there’s a real life run-away truck ramp- for trucks that loose control going down the hill and need a plan B, so to speak. According to Wikipedia, “choosing to utilize the ramp once in such a contingency situation is far more acceptable than having a major wreck.”
Taylor thinks that everyone needs a run-away truck ramp in life sometimes.

PS: Note the small yellow sign that says “pavement ends” – as if that was not self-explanatory.

Despite the fact that we do not believe in dressing our animals up, Josie insisted on dressing up like a fly fisherman for Halloween. She looked pretty cute, so we let her go with it.

DSCF1463.

So one day, my officemates and I decided that we wanted to get a plant for next to our doorway. Then we decided that while plants are neat, fish are awesome, so we decided to get a bowl and a goldfish. With wide-eyes we ambitiously purchased a bowl (that hangs on the wall) and two goldfish – one orange, one black – appropriately named Lucy and Desi (RIP). We also bought all kinds of goldfish stuff, like water conditioner, gravel, fish food. Within a few days, the fish were sick – and we went on to purchase fish medicine (which did not work). Lucy and Desi both succumbed to their respective diseases (Lucy’s was drop-to-the-bottom-and-never-get-up disease, and Desi had a fish-stroke).

We then came to the slow but sure realization that if we really wanted fish, we were going to have to invest more fully. We decided to acquire a baby Biorb, associated water treatment mechanisms, and some plants. We set up the aquarium and let it stabilize before getting a school of six white cloud minnows (who we’ve now named GroupThink). Later purchases went on to include a siphon (which does not work), aquatic plant fertilizer, and several replacement filters for the tank. The lesson learned from this story – which started with a simple goal of getting a bowl and a fish – is that goldfish can lead to the subsequent acquisition of “harder,” more dangerous fish.