New Year's Day 2012

Continuing our long tradition of being old, my wife and I barely made it to 9.48pm last night before falling asleep. But we made up for it this morning, when we took the kids on a walk to find a graveyard. Okay, so there's one nearby, but it sounds exciting (especially when the kids don't realize that "graveyard" is the same as "cemetery", and thus the same boring thing you drive by all the time). But it got even better: the fog was thick as pea soup, and we found THE RAVINE. I mean, look at these pictures:

Clara kept telling the boys that the popotch would get them if they wandered off the trail. (Popotch == semi-made-up Italian for witch)

I was quite scared of the popotch.

So it turned out we were in the Glenbrook Ravine Park:

We've been in New West six years now and never once knew it was there. Not only that, but there's a 118 year-old bell:

And it's from an old prison...

which is just up the street:

After this we had to walk up an enormous hill, whipping the children the whole way. And it was then that we finally got to the graveyard, but they were too tired to do more than groan at how much further they had to walk to get home. I mean, not even the Lacrosse Hall of Fame could get them excited.

And finally, we done had a battery splosion:

This came from a toy the boys got for Xmas. The battery ran out (quite normally, I should add), and I had taken it out of the toy so we could replace it. I wrapped it in an old copy of my resume I'd been working on, tucked it into my pocket in preparation for a trip to the dollar store, then promptly forgot about it. 24 hours later I was sitting around minding my own business when POP! I had no idea what the hell'd just happened, but when I dug around in my pocket I found the paper and unwrapped it. The cap popped right off; the bit on the left was something like sponge or wool, and was quite hot.

I think the ink is conductive; my wife thinks maybe the battery got too hot just sitting around. At some point I'll conduct an experiment.