We always baked things like fries to get them hot and crispy again.

Or any fast-food place, I'd bet.

You've never been prevented from ordering off the kiddy menu when you're eating in? I've had my hand smacked more than once.

Just say your kid is in the car or something.

And then hope to make it out before Child Services comes to see why I left them locked in the car while I ate their food in the restaurant?

I'm not sure if this implies I do more ordering for myself off the kiddie menu than most, or less. I did stop, however, after being denied a handful of times. Eat in, of course. Just like the first kids menu search result in Google specifies.

You can order off the kids' menu at McDonald's! Or any fast-food place, I'd bet.

I always get the toy from Chatty's Happy Meal. My desk looks hilarious at this point.

My taxes are not simple, and I typically only pay $500, this year there was some extra stuff in there that pushed it up to $650. I'm self employed and have a bunch of equipment on depreciation schedules, multiple vehicle leases, employee leasing, etc. etc.

We've paid in the neighborhood of $450 the last two years to have our taxes prepared.

I am kind of stuck going to the guy my sister uses, and he's about $500.

From earlier--thanks for the bird bath rec, -t. I am thinking more along the lines of a pedestal, since I don't have a good way to hang it, and there are too many cats around for ground level to make sense. I did find out that Redwood City thinks birdbaths are okay, as long as you clean them a lot. I will get a mister or agitator though, to help with the mosquitoes.

The system we use for spam filtering had a glitch, so no outside mail at all was going through for most of the afternoon. That was kind of nice.

Lifehacker invites in a chiropractor to talk about their "medicine": [link] And by "medicine" I don't mean the leading cause of death in the US.

I have got to wonder how much of these low-hanging skeptic fruit articles the editors of each Gawker site are published with sincerity--IO9 has a guy whose entire responsibility seems to be devoted to incorrectly paraphrasing abstracts and pushing fad science and diets.

In general, the people who rail at Nick Denton but still hang around cite IO9 and LH as the best of the bunch, but I've found LH obstinate in the face of wrong advice they've given in ways that have really simple impacts on their readers--if WD40 is really not supposed to be used that way, how many readers did they send away to apply it to everything for every reason?

ita, I figure you might find this graphic relevant: [link]

It's a Venn diagram of irrational nonsense (via Boing Boing).

It's 22.5 miles from our place in SF to Emmett's school in Albany. Except then I drive home. And then drive back to get him. And drive back home. So on those days that I have him both morning and night (every Thursday and alternate Fridays) I am commuting about 90 miles.

This is why I try to find ways to spend Thursday in the East Bay and will often camp out at a cafe to write, then do some shopping before I pick up Emmett, though I can't really get perishables.

But if he's got an away game and he's coming home with me then I could be way out past Fremont or Orinda, which would add another forty plus minutes of driving.

My morning commute usually takes about 90 minutes, but that's because I'm double dipping on one of the most congested commute routes in America - the Bay Bridge.

You've never been prevented from ordering off the kiddy menu when you're eating in? I've had my hand smacked more than once.

No fast food place has ever dared to question me when I order a kiddie meal. If I am in McDonalds, I want a damn Happy Meal.