On thin ice

It's amazing how 45 degrees can feel like 85 after a month of 20 degrees with 50 mile an hour winds. Today was nearly 50 and sunny so I took the kids down to the park and we all relished being outside. Andy wanted to go look at the lake since it had a pretty layer of ice on it. The lake is in desperate need of being dredged right now. Fairfax County is pretty broke at the moment though so I don't think it will happen soon. In the meantime, Royal Lake is about two feet deep in most areas. That made it pretty easy for it to freeze seemingly solid.

Andy was fascinated and we walked around the edges and talked about it. At the edge, I ran into a lady from church and we were talking about six feet from the edge. Meg decided that would be a grand time to step on the ice. I ran over to her and reach out, but the sly little vixen just smiled and walked in her Stride Rite sneakers about 15 feet from the edge. I kept calling her name and she just looked at me and kept moving. I knew it wasn't deep, but I also knew there was no way the ice was thick enough, especially in the warmer weather, to hold me. In desperation, I called out, "Meggie, come back. Let's go home and get some candy." Yup, that did the trick. She calmly walked back to the edge and we went home.

My computer is mostly better now, after a new $85 hard drive, 10 days without it and all my pictures and documents gone from my hard drive. I am very disappointed with Best Buy and Acer. It's a scam that they say the warranty on the computer starts when Acer ships it to the store. So even though I bought it in February 2009, Acer shipped it to Best Buy in December so the warranty expired last month even though I actually only owned it a year. Bastards.