June 11, 2005

We now have mice--two of them, to be exact. My son Charlie has named them "Bob and Prometheus," I call them "Stinky and Stinker," but Maria (the rightful owner) is adamant their names are "Emmy and Gerard" after the principal actors in the Phantom of the Opera movie. Which I suppose is apropos considering they reside in a cage in the basement, and are most active at night.

I didn't want mice. I wasn't looking to have mice. It happened like this: Maria's eighth grade science class had a unit wherein each student was assigned one small beady-eyed rodent. She talked about "her" mouse often and I listened dispassionately. Most of the time I was thinking something along the lines of, thank God they're at school and not my house. 

At the end of the school year she said that her science teacher, Mr. Korsi, had offered to let them take their mice home. "Heh, heh," I said. "That Mr. Korsi, what a kidder."

But it was no joke. And here's the kicker, the bit that made me cave. If they didn't take home their mouse, according to Maria, the teacher was going to feed them to the snake.  Maria told her dad and I this and then gave us the puppy dog eyes, a strategy that almost always works.

The next day Maria and I went to the science room after school to pick up Emmy, but once we removed Emmy from the cage, Gerard went nuts looking for her, pacing and sniffing each corner with more emotion than I would have thought possible for a mouse. So, I thought, one mouse, two? what's the difference? and said, in a sudden fit of generosity, that we'd take Gerard too. 

As we were exiting the classroom I asked Maria to show me the snake cage. She cleared her throat in a suspicious way and told me that actually somebody had said that Mr. Korsi had a snake at home that ate mice. It was all hearsay apparently.

Sometimes I think Maria makes things up.

And here's the best part, the part where I look like a complete dunderhead. Once we got home, a sudden question came to mind. "What exactly," I asked, "where you studying the mice for?" And here's the answer: reproduction. 

Yes, several of the pairs in the science room did have babies, which the class then studied. Emmy and Gerard didn't, Maria hastened to add, as if I'd find that reassuring. Our take on this is completely opposite: she figures it won't happen, I figure they're due. 

I'll keep you posted.

May 10, 2005

Stupid Admission of the Week

Over the weekend my husband and I celebrated our anniversary by spending a night in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, otherwise known as the romance capitol of Winnebago County. We had a lovely time, thank you for asking, filled with laughter and activities we can't do when the kids are around, like talk uninterrupted.   

The only downside was when we arrived home and Greg realized he'd left his pager on the dresser in the hotel. This is very uncharacteristic I might add--between the two of us he's clearly the brains of the operation, but sometimes even really smart guys make mistakes. Distracted by my beauty, I guess.

I called the hotel and had a lengthy conversation with a nice, young woman named Jessica. She said she'd check with housekeeping to see if it was in the Lost and Found, and call back. As promised, Jessica called the next day and sure enough, they had it, it had been on the dresser, and where did we want them to send it?

This is where the stupid part comes in. I told Jessica I'd have to get back to her after I talked to Greg. I then hung up the phone and tried to PAGE him. And then, (it just gets worse) when he didn't answer, I tried to page him again an hour later. After that I did some big thinking, and decided he must be in a meeting.

Finally I left a message on his voice mail, which seemed to work better, for some reason. Ahem.

The story would be funnier if Jessica called me in response to the page, but she didn't. There's only one stupid person in this story and that would be me. 

May 1, 2005

So Michelle and I are driving towards downtown Milwaukee to see David Sedaris, possibly the funniest man in the world, when she turns to me and says, "So is this guy a comedian or what?"

And I say, "He's a writer. He writes humorous essays." 

"But he's really funny, right?" She sounded hopeful. We'd been talking the last few days and I knew she needed to laugh in a big way. See, this is my theory about children: having kids is two parts joy and one part grief. Applying that philosophy to my own life, it follows that at any given moment one of my three children is giving me grief. In Michelle's case, (being a mother of six) two of her kids cause her grief on a continual basis. The kids switch off, because that's only fair, but it's pretty constant. It wears on a person, even someone as patient as Michelle. So, between the call from the high school earlier that day, and having to fish toys out of the pipe leading to her home's water supply the day before, she was pretty tapped out. A night of laughter would put her to rights though, I was sure of that.

"Yes, he's funny," I said. 

Our seats in the Pabst Theater were not nearly as good as I hoped for. I'd ordered them in December for an April show and Damien, the guy who'd handled the transaction when I called Ticketmaster, assured me they were good seats. Damien lied. 

Every set of stairs led us to the next level, where white-gloved ushers pointed to yet another staircase. By the time we reached our section there were no steps left. 

"These seats suck," I said as we settled into our places just below the ceiling. I half expected the ushers to do the flight attendant routine, the one where they explain about the oxygen masks dropping in front of you if the air gets too thin.

"They're fine," said Michelle, who frankly was just glad not to be home. "How close do we have to be to see a guy at a podium?"

I grumbled a little more and then silently prayed to God that David Sedaris would be really, really funny, for Michelle's sake. I felt sure God heard the message, considering how logistically close we were.

David Sedaris arrived on stage and said, "Thanks for coming out tonight," and launched into something new he was working on, a fable he said, about a baboon and a cat.

I cringed. Even as a child I hated stories with talking animals. With the exception of the lion in the Narnia series, I just never really bought it. 

But my prayers must have worked, because the cat and baboon story was really funny--hysterically funny even. And every story he read after that outdid the one before. Imagine my relief.

So our evening was a success: Michelle and I got a full nights worth of laughs and even some extra to store up for the next time the school calls or  the pipes get clogged. We really need to go out more often.

But next time I'm going to book my tickets online.

April 20, 2005

Tonight my friend Michelle and I are going to see David Sedaris at the Pabst, a small but elegant theater in downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 

Yes, we name buildings after beer around these parts.

In December, when I first mentioned going, Michelle was totally up for it, even though she had NEVER HEARD OF DAVID SEDARIS. Let me repeat: the name David Sedaris meant nothing to her. Unbelievable. Still, she took my word that this would be a most enjoyable experience, so I hope Mr. Sedaris is feeling good and got plenty of sleep last night, because my credibility's at stake here.

April 17, 2005

A continuation from yesterday:

So a house in my old neighborhood was for sale and I was convinced no one would buy it, or at least no one with an ounce of brains and an intact olfactory system, because, as my older son likes to say, "it smelled like something died in there." And before whatever it was died, it did major structural damage to the foundation, and smoked as many cigarettes as the population of France. 

The house was for sale a long time and I thought that it would be one of those permanently empty houses, the kind with boarded up windows that the neighbor kids tell stories about.

But I was wrong, because the sign came down and pretty soon a crew of men was digging up the yard to fix the basement walls. The neighborhood was abuzz with talk of this new development. It soon came out that a young couple (with two small boys and a baby on the way) had bought the house. I immediately felt sad for this family; clearly they had no idea what they were in for, and would have to spend the rest of their days in the house of hell, or else declare bankruptcy. 

A neighbor girl told me that the wife's name was Michelle and she was very nice. My sister, who bartended evenings at a bowling alley as a second job, said she knew the husband, Ray, from league night. A great guy. She also knew Ray's brothers and sister-in-law. Ah, I thought snobbily, bowlers. 

So I had no plans to make their acquaintance, especially since I'd learned that making friends with the neighbors is a double-edged sword. On the good side, they always know when you're home and on the bad side, they always know when you're home. My little house felt pretty full what with a hyperactive preschooler and a clingy toddler. I wasn't looking to expand my circle, if you know what I mean.

But the weather got warmer, and my son, Charlie, and Michelle's two boys had other ideas. They saw each other across the yards and starting yelling back and forth, chubby fingers clutching the chain-link fences so popular in Butler. Eventually it looked downright anti-social not to go over there and say hello.

The morning we went to introduce ourselves, Michelle, the boys and her new baby daughter were on the front porch, looking at a mesh cage that held a cocoon. We arrived just in time to watch a butterfly wiggle its way out of a small opening and slowly unfold glistening wings. All the kids watched silently; the scene was magic.

Later, while the kids played in the back yard, I asked Michelle where a person gets a cocoon on a stick. She'd ordered it from a place that sells science kits, she told me nonchalantly. She showed me through the house, which had been miraculously transformed from the kind of place featured in horror movies, to one people would actually want to live in. She said they'd bought the house for a fraction of the asking price, gutted it and completely rehabbed it. The cabinets looked like new, but were actually secondhand, the tile and carpet installation they'd done themselves. Walls had been torn down to create an open floor plan and, miracle of miracles, the house was now stench-free. Michelle told me they planned on selling when they were completely finished and use the profit to buy a real house.

And eventually they did, because Michelle is nothing if not a woman of action. But first we became friends. She's been the perfect counterpoint for me; I'm someone who mulls everything over endlessly, worrying about expenses and probable outcomes. She's a doer, a risk taker. While I'm considering going on a vacation, she's already decided, booked the tickets, gone and returned. 

Since we first met, she's had three more children, lived in four different houses, and had three different kitchen tables. I've had one more son, one move and the same table. 

We've gone on vacations together, served as sounding boards for each other (turns out both our families are made up of really difficult people--not us, though), and generally cracked each other up.

As an interesting side note: at the same time I decided I didn't really need to meet the bowler's wife, her husband came home from the bowling alley and mentioned that the bartender's sister lived two doors down. With that recommendation, Michelle wasn't in any hurry to meet me either.  

Charlie takes credit for our eventual meeting. I'm willing to give it to him.

April 16, 2005

Before my family moved to Hartland, we lived in Butler, Wisconsin, a village fifteen miles east. Butler was notable for its size (two square miles) and its industrial park. That pretty much tells you all you need to know.

Our house was a tiny house in a row of tiny houses. They lined the block in a pattern: house, driveway; house, driveway; house, driveway. Lying in bed on summer nights, I heard my neighbors to the north through our open window. I could make out every word said in their kitchen, generally discussions about beer consumption or whether the lawn needed mowing. (The state of the lawn occupied most of this particular neighbor's waking thoughts. He and his wife had the most weed-free little yard on the block and it was a major point of pride. He tried to get us interested by sharing which brand of Weed and Feed he used, or telling us the advantages of raking leaves rather than just letting them blow around willy-nilly, but sadly, we just never got it.)

Occasionally something of interest did happen in the neighborhood, like the day the old lady three doors down had a heart attack. I never actually saw her when she was alive, but I definitely saw the ambulance in front of the house, and a few days later, after I'd heard of her death, I couldn't miss the enormous mountain of junk dumped at the curb by her relatives.  Later, when the property was for sale, I played nosy neighbor and went through it during an Open House.

I knew the house had been cleaned up because I'd seen an army of relatives converge on the house with buckets and brooms, and yet the house looked filthy. The linoleum flooring was worn all the way through, the woodwork was scratched, the bathroom fixtures black with mold.  I've never had much of a sense of smell, but this house nearly drove me out with its stench of mildew and cigarette smoke (worse than any bar I'd ever been in). I walked through the house thinking My God, how does a place get like this? and then it got worse because I went down the stairs to find a basement every bit as welcoming as the one in Silence of the Lambs.

None of the concrete block walls looked completely upright, but one of them was actually caving in. The relatives had positioned a sofa against this wall, so people wouldn't notice it was falling down, but if anything that just emphasized it. The lady realtor, who'd followed me down the stairs said brightly that, "the price of the house reflects the fact that it needs work."

I couldn't imagine anyone putting an offer on that house, low price or not. "It gave me the creeps just walking through it, I can't imagine living there," I told my husband, once I'd arrived home. He, not nearly as nosy as his wife, had been content to stay home and get the info secondhand. I continued, "You'd have to be insane to buy that house. No one in their right mind would buy that house."

And that is how I met my crazy friend Michelle. You'd hoped this was going somewhere, didn't you? Well, it sort of is. This is the story of Michelle. Everyone should have a friend like Michelle, but not everyone does, of course, because she's my friend and she doesn't have a lot of time for other friends. Her list is pretty much closed, as they say in the publishing business. But I got in just as the door was closing.

I'll continue this story tomorrow (if anyone cares and even if no one does)...

April 12, 2005

Over the weekend I had the pleasure of attending an author event at Books & Company in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin.

The book, NECTAR FROM A STONE, first came to my attention via a fellow blogger, editor extraordinaire, Ray Rhamey. The excerpt he'd posted some time ago led me to M.J. Rose's site to read author Jane Guill's Backstory, the fascinating story behind the story.

The joy of the smaller bookstore is in its personal attention and I certainly felt it that afternoon. The store owner gave each attendant a coupon good for a beverage from the coffee shop next door. There were cookies and comfy chairs and fascinating conversation. We sat in a circle and listened enthralled while the author and her husband told stories, and passed around replicas of artifacts from the Middle Ages. Most fascinating were metal pins known as "pilgrim badges." Ms. Guill left the R-rated and X-rated ones at home, but clever Internet sleuth that I am, I found some here. 

Jane Guill, as it turns out, is also an accomplished artist and (much to my delight) not only signed my books, but drew whimsical figures alongside her signature. By the time I left the bookstore I wanted to visit Wales, find out more about the Middle Ages and read her book. All in all, a great afternoon.

April 6, 2005

I found the best website in the known world (and if you like shoes, it's the greatest site in the entire universe). It's called zappos.com; my sister Kay turned me on to it after I complained about taking my daughter Maria shoe shopping.

Now I have to backtrack here and tell you that I am one of those rare women who hates shopping. HATES IT. The few times I've been corralled into going with a friend I find myself unenthusiastically nodding while the friend holds up clothing items saying, "Isn't this cute?" And later, I'm the one waiting outside the fitting room, sighing and looking at my watch. 

I tend to wear the same favorite clothes and when they wear out I reluctantly head out to find replacements. In short, when it comes to shopping, I'm like a stereotypical guy. 

My daughter Maria, on the other hand, got her share of female shopping DNA and then some. And here's her twist on things: not only does she like to look at the merchandise that's available, but she also wants things she saw in fashion magazines or her dreams. This has been a problem. 

So one evening, after driving from store to store and still not finding the right pair of Converse in the right style in the right size, just when I was willing to give Maria the keys to the car (even though she's only in eighth grade) so she can do her own damn shopping, I heard about zappos.com and it changed my life.

Turns out Zappos has dozens of styles of Converse, in all colors and all styles. And they have free shipping and I don't have to pay sales tax or drive anywhere. Before you could say "put it in my shopping cart" Maria had selected just what she wanted, and it arrived the NEXT DAY. I called my sister to tell her it arrived the NEXT DAY and she wasn't a bit surprised, said her shoes always arrived in a day or two.

If you're reluctant to order shoes sight unseen, fear not. Each shoe on zappos is reviewed by past customers who comment on fit, comfort and what their friends said about them. It's hard to believe I used to buy unreviewed shoes in the past.

We've ordered from zappos twice now, which has saved me thirty-seven hours of shopping time. I highly recommend it.

March 25, 2005

I normally don't post links to silly stuff, but here's one guaranteed to make you smile. It also answers the question -- what do young guys in the Air Force Academy do in their spare time?

You can see it here.

March 22, 2005

Things keep changing. Just when I get comfortable with how the world is run WHAM someone, somewhere decides to make an improvement and suddenly my life gets complicated.

Case in point: my children's school lunch tickets. It used to be that I wrote a check for a certain number of tickets and then the child would buy the tickets and, with any luck at all, bring them home where I could actually see them--a strip of red paper, each perforated tear-off good for a designated entree, vegetable and some sort of gelatinous dessert. Each day a ticket would be torn off and sent with a child. One ticket in exchange for one meal. It was a system. Not a good system, but one I understood. 

Oh sure, sometimes I'd find stray, mutilated tickets in the lint catcher of the dryer, but that wasn't too often and since no one actually took responsibility for it it didn't really count. 

But this year some high mucky-muck in the school district decided that instead of paper tickets, each family would have an ACCOUNT. We would deposit money into the account and our children would draw from the account. When our account got too low, an automated system would call us on our telephones and say that our account had dropped below six dollars.

I got these calls a lot. I mean a lot. I kept sending checks with Maria and the checks were cashed but they never lasted as long as I'd calculated. Soon much of our disposable income was going to feed the account and shut up the phone calls. 

"This is the stupidest system ever," I complained to my husband. "Where's the accountability?"

So I called the school to set them straight and soon found out I had never received the printout they sent home with the students EACH FRIDAY listing all the purchases on the account. 

This was a complete puzzlement to Maria who could not explain why every other student at North Shore Middle School got their printouts, and she didn't. 

I stopped by the school to pick up a two-month printout of all the activity on our account. The mystery could be explained by two words: unauthorized purchases. Oh, it started small, as these things often do--an additional bag of chips here, an extra dessert there. Then, once the perpetrator realized they were getting away with it, the pattern grew bolder. Extra entrees on pizza day, and actual days where the predetermined lunch was bypassed completely in favor of multiple junk food items. By the end of the printout all caution had been cast aside. It was a hot lunch free for all.

So now Maria takes cold lunch, which she says she likes much better, as do I. She's saving me about fifty dollars a month and when the automated calls come now it's just Walgreen's telling me to pick up my prescription.

March 17, 2005

I have an essay in today's Christian Science Monitor. You can see it here, if you're so inclined. Keep in mind that I didn't pick the headline, plus it was way funnier before the editor made some cuts for tone and space (maybe she didn't think the funny parts were funny?). 

At least they spelled my name right.

March 10, 2005

If you were a ten-year-old boy whose aunt gave you a subscription to Popular Science magazine for your birthday, the following things would happen:

February 24, 2005

My younger son Jack had just enough money saved to buy a DVD, when he found out his dad wanted the very same one: I Robot. 

"Pretty amazing that you and your dad have the same taste in movies," I said.

"Well yeah," Jack said, "Killer robots! Who wouldn't like that?"  

Who indeed?

So Jack bought the movie as a birthday gift for his dad, because nothing says "Happy Birthday" like killer robots. That night the whole family settled down to watch it because again, nothing says family togetherness like killer robots.

In one of the earlier scenes in the movie, a woman uses an inhaler for a breathing problem.

"You'd think they'd have another way to treat asthma thirty years from now," my daughter Maria said.

"Yeah, or at least the inhaler would look different," Jack said. He had a point--the inhaler in the movie looked like the props director had come up short and borrowed one from someone on the set. I could imagine the props woman saying, "Don't worry hon, you'll get it right back after we're done filming the scene." (In all my imaginary scenarios, props women are very maternal.)

Later the kids had more comments. "Great special effects," Maria said during a particularly exciting part.

"Yeah, but too many camera angles," Jack added. 

Their critique continued throughout the whole thing. It was like viewing a film with Roger Ebert. What ever happened to just watching a movie and enjoying it? Sigh. Everyone's a critic.

Just for the record, I really liked the movie. At least I think I did. I need to watch it again sometime when the kids aren't around.

February 18, 2005

It might just be that I come from a family who prefers slippers to hiking boots and reading to rock climbing, but I never really understood the whole "going camping" concept.

My parents, despite not being outdoorsy themselves, didn't want me to miss out on the chance to commune with nature, so they sent me to Camp Alice Chester when I was ten. I'm not sure who Alice Chester was, but her legacy lived on when I returned two weeks later, mosquito bitten, sunburned and knowing all the words to "I Stuck My Head in a Little Skunk's Hole." Since then I've decided that anyplace that requires you to bring insect netting for your bed, and put your name on each clothing item, isn't for me.

Recently, two different people told me they bought very large vehicles for the express purpose of sleeping in them when they go camping. What?! Please tell me why this qualifies as a vacation. To me if I'm not going somewhere equal or better to what I've got at home, there's just no point to it.

February 10, 2005

Eighth-grade girls are the moodiest things on the planet.  And if you think I have a story to back up this statement, you're right.

My daughter Maria's middle school hosts a "dress-up" dance for the seventh and eighth graders. Once a year, around Valentine's Day, the boys dig out dress pants, a shirt and a tie, and the girls get dressed up like they're going to the Academy Awards. 

Maria and I went to the mall over the weekend and (after two hours and four stores) found the perfect dress. On our way out to the parking lot we cut through a store that had shoes on sale. Maria spotted a pair of dress boots she thought would go with her dress--she tried them on and they fit perfectly. And were on clearance. That was a happy day.

The dance was scheduled for Thursday night from 6:00 to 8:30. I thought we were set.

The rest of the week went like this:

I never saw anyone go through the emotional spectrum so quickly. I'm quite exhausted.

January 27, 2005

Like overheard gossip or someone else's diary entry, a blog is only as interesting as the person behind it. With that in mind, my philosophy is that if there's not much to say, don't feel you have to post it on the Internet. At least not on my account.

So this entry is really just for my husband, Greg. Everyone else can stop reading now.

Happy Birthday, Greg!! You're the best (not that I'm comparing). And 48 is really not that old, honestly-- someone in their 70s might even say it's young! Well, maybe not young, but at least not old. Not strictly, though you are older than me and always will be, but have a Happy Birthday anyway!

For those of you who kept reading: Have you no shame? Apparently not. And it really wasn't all that interesting either, was it now? Okay then--lesson learned. I'll let it go this time.

January 18, 2005

We've had a lot of fluky environmental stuff happening here on Granary Circle in southeastern Wisconsin. My husband spotted a herd of deer (is six a herd?) in our very suburban backyard one night, and then there's been the weather--first no snow at all, then a snow dump in early January that closed the schools, and finally a heavy rainstorm accompanied by thunder and lightning. A lot of thunder and lightning. We were ready for the power to go out: every flashlight I could find (one) was on the coffee table and I had the lighter I'd confiscated from my older son in my pocket. The reason I took possession of said lighter is best left unspoken--we can cut right to the end of the story if you'd just shake your head sadly and repeat after me: "Teenage boys are morons." That pretty much covers it.

But to get back to the weather: it was evening and the lightning was pretty impressive. My younger two, Maria and Jack, were watching out the living room window and I was telling them I'd never seen this kind of winter storm in all the many, many years I'd lived. I didn't realize they were worried until Maria spoke.

"This is like that movie, 'The Day After Tomorrow'."

Me (clueless): "I didn't see that, what was that about?"

Jack: "There was a tsunami and storms like this and flooding. The Statue of Liberty had water up to here" (indicates armpit).

Maria: "It was the end of the world. Because of global warming." Her voice had a slight tremor, as if she'd just woken from a nightmare.

Me: "Well, it's not the end of the world."

Jack: "How can you be sure?" They both turned to me anxiously.

Me (thinking fast): "Because the president said there's no such thing as global warming!" 

Which seemed to satisfy them. Who'd have thought that particular statement would ever bring comfort to anyone?

 Certainly not me.

January 6, 2005

What's the best two-word phrase in the English language? Some might argue for "open bar" or "free money" but at my house it has to be--SNOW DAY!!  Yes, the flurries finally came to Wisconsin after a December of NO SNOW AT ALL. 

The joke of it all is that my older son literally pulled an all-nighter to finish a Power Point presentation. And today's his birthday. So he's seventeen and exhausted, but at least he's caught up on his homework. For now.

Our plans for today? Some TV watching, video game playing, reading and birthday celebrating. But first, where did we put those shovels?

January 4, 2005

I hate to brag, but my son Charlie, at age sixteen, has already done something most high school students only hear about: he's taken a Breathalyzer test. And passed it too, I'm happy to say.

It seems that while the rest of the family was home on New Year's Eve, clinking glasses of sparkling grape juice, Charlie was standing on a sidewalk, being questioned by the police.

He and two friends got off work late that evening, but they still had enough time to get to a party before midnight. If they hurried. They'd only gone nine blocks when they were stopped.

Hartland, Wisconsin might be a small town, but our police force is second to none, and when one of their fine officers noticed a 1984 Delta Cruiser driving erratically he didn't hesitate to pull it over. Charlie was one of two passengers; another friend was the driver.

The police officer said the guys blew through two stop signs and were going 45 in a 25 mile per hour zone. 

(Charlie later: "There's no way we were going 45, not to mention I don't think we even passed two stop signs.")

The cop said, "You were going pretty fast there, trying to avoid me. I was prepared to chase you down." 

(Charlie later: "Avoid him? We didn't even see him.")

At this point, a second squad car arrived, and the boys were asked to exit the vehicle. One of the police officers asked Charlie why he wasn't looking him in the eye.

(Charlie later: "I said I was nervous and he asked, 'And why would you be nervous? I told him, because I'm being questioned by the police!")

Part of Charlie's problem might have been the fact that he wore a black skull cap, making him look punk-like. He would have taken it off, he said, except that his hair would have stuck up funny. God forbid the hair not look good.

They were asked to empty their pockets and the officers examined Charlie's Altoids container. It passed inspection.

After all three got a low score on the Breathalyzer test (all zeros!), they were allowed to get back in the car to warm up while the citation was being issued. At this point I'm sure the police realized they were dealing with Dumb, Dumber and Dumberer. If it was possible, they'd have gotten written up for DWS--Driving While Stupid, but as it happened, the ticket was for a stop sign violation. 

The boys, still waiting in the car, used a cell phone to count down to midnight. After that they went straight home. It was a disappointing New Year's Eve, but it made for a great story at school on Monday morning.