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Anyone up for going to Boston this summer? Sun County has now added that city to their destinations, which is most awesomeness for those of us that despise Northwest Airlines.

Jim was asking the other day what the term "The Villagers", commonly used by liberal bloggers (and yours truly) means. Ask the liberal blogs and yee shall receive.

Caught this a while back and meant to do a post about it but never got around to it. The New York Times has a fascinating piece on the impact children have on marital satisfaction - Till Children Do Us Part. A lot of what is in this piece was a no-brainer for me (unplanned children can be stressors, one partner just giving into their significant other's desire for children can cause resentment, as can a switch to more traditional gender roles when it comes to child-care, etc), but conventional wisdom has always suggested that children are good for marriages. It's actually something that has made me think twice about breeding, as I value my relationship and have a concern about getting into a situation where the bulk of it is placed on me because I'm female. I felt this way when I was planning my wedding, and grew a bit resentful of my husband to be because I needed somewhere to place my stress. I doubt my relationship could last through 18 years of that same feeling. On the bright side, it looks like if both partners have the same amount of enthusiasm for a child and don't fall into the gender role trap, marital satisfaction can actually increase.

Why is there no love for Paul Douglas? Leave Paul alone!

The Only Thing I Can Smell is Spackle

I've been a bit lax at the blogging lately. Jim and I (well, okay, just "I") have been redoing the home office this week. Pictures to come soon. I started on Sunday, and have tried to do a little bit each day since. As it is with my house, some of the walls are in bad shape (the lack of care the former home owners had for this house will be a rant for another time), and it's taken a lot of patching and re-patching (which my wonderful mother helped me with a bit on Sunday). I think I'm at a point where I can start priming for painting tomorrow. I've been covered with spackling paste powder every single night from all the sanding and probably have a tumor growing somewhere.

It will be nice to have this done, the office was a very ugly room, the wallpaper almost gave one a headache. But other activities have to suffer for this, not only have I not been blogging or writing on Newsvine, but I haven't been to the gym *once* this week. Going back is going to be hell.

In other news, I took the puppy to the vet today for her yearly. She did very well, comparing her behavior last year in the vet's office to her behavior this year, it's like she was a different dog. She was still very distracted and nervous, but I could get her to respond to me, which was nice. I decided to be a bad dog owner on the way back and let her sit in the front seat of the car. Which was fun, until she tried to cuddle with me while I was driving!

It was strange driving through Downtown St Paul (where the vet is), I haven't been there since the RNC. Brought back a lot of memories, more on that later.