Six down, two hundred and ten to go...

The Dude turned one-half yesterday. We celebrated by feeding him pears from a jar, letting him play with toys all day (when he wasn't napping), and updating his web pages.

It was good to see him again after the conclusion early Friday morning of my trip to Illinois. The trip back was eventful - Manchester was socked in with fog all day and we were stuck at the gate in Chicago for about an hour waiting for the fog to lift. Finally, we took off before the airport opened, as the weather forecast was for the fog to be dispersed by rain by the time we arrived. It was a crapshoot, but it worked out - though we had to circle for about 20 minutes after arrival they were able to get us in.

By the way, Southwest rocks. Everyone was nice, including the pilot (who was very entertaining before we left), and everyone kept us well-informed the whole time. All that for $165 round trip.

Anyhow, we landed around 1 AM, and I arrived home at 2:15 in the morning. Thankfully, my bag was one of the first off the plane. When I got in, Jane woke up to greet me, and I unpacked quickly and went into David's room to see him.

It smelled bad. So I picked him up out of bed, and changed his diaper. While I was changing him, he woke up, looked at me, and smiled.

I think that moment may have been the happiest I've felt in a long time. And I've had some pretty good moments.

On a tangent from that, I have a general policy when it comes to purchasing meats and poultry. I only buy either Kosher or organic (preferably both). That means we get Coleman's (organic) beef, and either Bell & Evans or Empire chicken. On the rare occasions that we buy hot dogs, we buy Hebrew National. Generally speaking, that policy works well for us and gets us nice, healthy food.

We make exceptions when we eat out, of course - but we try to go mainly to places that have a good reputation for making quality food.

Yesterday, though, I made a big exception to my policy out of weakness.

I bought a box of frozen White Castle burgers last night. Regardless of policies, I just can't resist a slider. Darn.