I'm the one to gloat. I have Perkins in February! A good time to visit.

Oh, no fair with the gloating! 2007 is east coast, right? I'd vote for Laura's house.

There's a great Brio train that actually runs on batteries and has a light and toots and hauls trains when you're ready to move up.

Hec, thanks for the rec. I was just wrapping presents (more than I recall, what with good friends and mail order) and I think we're going to wait for the train until his birthday in February. Depending on skill level/age recommendation, that might be a good birthday present for him.

Definitely F2F at Laura's house. It has a pool table. Very cool room, Laura. Your DH did good.

May is too late to have a S. Florida F2F. We'd have to push it up to Spring Break time. Which would work for the college people. We could put up tents in the yard.

Spring break would be the perfect time. It doesn't have to be in May.

X-post from my LJ, where i posted it a while ago, because i was so behind in Bitches...

From Popular Science:

You may think you've seen these before, but you haven't. Although traditional clear soap bubbles give you a rainbow effect in the right light, Zubbles are the first truly colored bubbles—nearly opaque, with a single vibrant hue. The problem, which took Minnesota toy inventor Tim Kehoe more than 10 years to solve, was to create a dye that could not only tint the thin wall of a soap bubble but that wouldn't leave a stain when the bubble broke. His solution: invent an entirely new dye that simply disappears. Agitation (rubbing your hands together) or exposure to the air transforms the dye's molecular structure from brightly colored to colorless in minutes or hours, depending on the surface the bubbles break on.

Zubbles will hit shelves early next year, but the temporary washable color may soon show up in other products, including a bathroom wipe that leaves a momentary trail of color to show you where you've cleaned, and a toothpaste that turns kids' mouths bright pink until they've brushed for 30 seconds.

Sounds cool, IMHO. I just wish they were on the market now.

I suggest one read the in-depth Popular Science article on the science involved here.

Want.

The toothpaste thing would work better with my boys if it turned the teeth black. They would like that better than pink.

Laura, if they would LIKE the black color on their teeth, maybe it would be better incentive for them to have to brush the pink off.

ETA: Maybe the best for them would be tooth paste that would turn their teeth black after they had brushed for a good long time.

Further ETA: Having learned the secret to hot toddy making, I am currently quite mellow. And not necessarily rational. Also, oddly, I am having fewer typos than I usually have in unaltered states. Of Consciousness. But don't worry, 'nother one will take care of that.

there is lots I feel like saying. but typeing is not the same thing. we drank a bottle of wine with dinner. yay! some of our regular kids at the library were trying to beg money from people heading into the library. boo! someone said I looked like a demented elf. ? three days off . Yay! scotch now . yay.

hot toddy . yay!