by Chuck Smith on November 10, 2009
Here’s an article I wrote for my local paper a few years ago (my daughter was much younger). Hope you enjoy it…
Disposable Pets
What a crappy weekend. Fuzzy, my daughter’s beloved pet hamster, croaked. Fuzzy was a Christmas gift from Santa, so he was only with us for a few short months, but in that time he managed to:
- Bite my son’s finger
- Stink up his $100 hamster habitat on a weekly basis
- Keep us up at night with his constant midnight runs on the squeaky hamster wheel
My daughter was, of course, devastated. To a seven-year old girl, losing a pet hamster is a very big deal. Despite the fact that hamsters are nocturnal, and she only saw Fuzzy curled up sleeping during the day, she was deeply in love with the little rodent. And even though she was afraid to pet Fuzzy (because of the finger-biting incident), she wailed like a banshee when she discovered Fuzzy’s tiny corpse.
After calming her down enough so she’d listen, I concocted the following plan:
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by Chuck Smith on November 10, 2009
I’ve decided to release all of the Christmas letters and certificates from my Christmas Super Bonus Package (don’t buy it from this link!) to subscribers of the My Parent Magic email list. These letters and certificates sell for $17, but if you’re signed up for the list, you’ll get them free over a 4 week period starting this week! Here’s a description of everything I’ll be giving away:
50+ Letters From Santa and 50+ More Letters From Santa
These two ebooks give you over 100 great letters you can customize in your favorite word processing software for that special visit from Santa. The letters are in these categories:
- You’ve Been Great This Year
- Treats for Santa
- Santa in a Bit of Trouble
- Letters from Mrs. Claus
- What Great Decorations!
- News from the North Pole
- Letters from the Reindeer
- Winter Fun
- The Busiest Time of Year
- Letters From the Elves
- I’m Sorry, But I Couldn’t Give You…
- Don’t Worry
- Looking Forward to My Visit
- Sitting on Santa’s Lap
- The Season of Giving
- What Santa Will Do After Christmas
Premium Christmas Certificates
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by Chuck Smith on November 5, 2009
When I was in high school physics, I learned that there were some immutable laws that governed the physical world. For some reason, I can remember Newton’s Laws as the following (and I’m definitely paraphrasing):
- Newton’s First Law: An object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion.
- Newton’s Second Law: The acceleration of an object is dependent upon two variables – the force acting upon it and its mass.
- Newton’s Third Law: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Every year, these laws of physics help thousands of high school physics students “discover” that when you roll a steel ball down a ramp, it moves unless you stop it. In addition, if I remember my high school physics correctly, there were other experiments that showed you what happened when things crashed into each other. And I vaguely recollect seeing a short educational film about pushing each other on a frozen pond.
While providing interesting experiments in the workings of the physical world, Newton’s Laws don’t really prepare us much for real life. Instinctively, we pretty much know that something is going to stay put unless you move it, and that something moves faster or slower depending on how much effort you put into it.
Well, have no fear. You’ve come to the right place for useful, real world info. I’ve been married for almost 20 years now, and I’ve learned a few of the Immutable Laws of Marriage. These laws have been proven time again, not only in my marriage but in the marriages of many of my friends. So, without further ado, here they are:
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by Chuck Smith on November 4, 2009
I just found out about a really cool application that allows you to send free postcards, with your own pictures. It’s called Hippopost, and I’ve used it to send postcards to my parents and my wife. The postcards are free, and the folks at Hippopost can do this because they put a small advertisement on the back of your postcard (see the image of my postcard below).
From what I can tell, you can send 1,000s of postcards (one at a time) with Hippopost, so if you have a really nice picture of the family and want to just say “Hi,” or want to save a little bit of money on some holiday cards, Hippopost is a great way to send a really nice postcard.
Here’s a postcard I sent my wife to test out Hippopost (by the way… the quality of the scan isn’t great, but the postcard quality is excellent!):
And here’s the back of the postcard (with the ad on it):
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by Chuck Smith on November 3, 2009
My parents are in Spain right now, and it reminded me of one of the great Internet freebies out there.
One of my favorite ways to keep in touch with the grandparents (or, as I call them, Mom and Dad) is to use a program called Skype. Skype is an Internet phone solution that lets you make phone calls, text chat, or video chat from your computer.
So, last Christmas when the grandparents couldn’t make it to our house from Florida, we decided to have a video chat Christmas morning so we could share some of the fun and my kids could talk to Grandma and Grandpa. And it was a lot of fun. Here’s what we did:
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