Sunday, February 11, 2007

Frozen River

The river that runs through Wichita is frozen over in some places, including the area right near our place. I was out this Saturday morning exploring and took a few pictures from the adventure. The ice seemed quite thick in some places (maybe as much as two inches) but it was obvious that there were other spots were it was considerably thinner. I was tempted to try to crawl across the river but, given the fact that my intended route took me close to areas where liquid water still existed, I decided against it. The neatest thing I saw, by far, was a school of small fish swimming under the ice. Sadly, none of the pictures I took capture how cool this looked so you'll just have to use your imagination.

Anyway, enjoy the pictures.

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

To the Parents of Hardy Child

This afternoon our non-existant child received a box of eight books from Scholastic. We have no idea how or why we were blessed with this delivery and haven't quite figured out what to do with it, yet. (My guess is that a certain brother and sister-in-law of mine signed us up but I have not proof of this.)

We carefully read through the invoice and it was very clear that we owe money for this unrequested "introductory package" and had obligations for future book purchases. We haven't opened the package just yet and are trying to decide what do from here. Some of the options:

Do nothing. We haven't ordered anything and to the best of our knowledge they don't have our credit card information (though this may or may not actually be the case). Despite what they would like us to believe, we have not obligated ourselves in any way. Though I feel very confident that we are legally on safe ground that doesn't mean our lives can't be made unpleasant by people trying to extract money from us.

Return the books. Our little invoice lets us know that if we don't want to be members of this club we can simply return the books (they pay for shipping). This would be the polite thing to do and cause the least amount of hassle. For them, at least.

Call Scholastic and pretend to be offended at the implication that we have a child. I could pretend to be frustrated not-yet father who really desires to have a child but haven't been blessed in this way. I could pretend to be gay and make a big deal about how Kansas won't allow for the adoption of children by homosexual couples. I could pretend to be single (this despite what their database probably already knows.) We could pretend to be elderly and only have grown kids. There are all kinds of fun things you could do with this.

At this point, we're probably going to do nothing and just see what happens.