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My father was, as they say, quite the handyman. He knew tools, he knew construction, he knew how things go together. While I didn't exactly inherit all of his jack-of-all-trades genes, I got enough to be able to occasionally do something, well, handy. Case in point, I needed a clock for my bathroom.

Last winter, my employer sponsored a Biggest Loser-type competition. As fate would have it, I was on the second-place team. As further fate would have it, my team shrunk from four to two members (no, not from weight loss, silly) so it was up to me and my coworker how to best spend our winnings. We discussed a few options, like sushi or mani-pedis, but nothing materialized. Finally someone on the winning team (I guess, I never asked) decided our two teams would pool our winnings and have an outing. So we went to see the St. Louis Cardinals play in not-so-historic Busch Stadium.

If you've seen Pixar's Up, then you probably remember the running squirrel! gag. Somehow, this became a thing with our dogs. Any utterance of "squirrel" causes them to, well, freak out. (It also works with "girl" and "curl", by the way.)

We have a sort-of family ritual, whereby every Sunday morning I get up and make breakfast. Mind you, this is the only day of the week I make breakfast, so it's something that's actually planned and whatnot. The thing about Sunday morning, though, is I don't have coffee.

Having some lovely weather last week, the missus and I decided to take a trip to the zoo while the kids were in school. Yeah, that's right. Without the kids. Doesn't matter, because they don't like the zoo anyway.

I was walking back from lunch the other day, and this sign caught my attention. Enough so I didn't even see the trash blowing along my view while snapping the pic.

I have a bill to pay. At my old job, we had a postal meter, so I could "buy" stamps from the company; as such, we never keep stamps at home anymore. Now that I no longer have that option, I have to buy a stamp the old-fashioned way.

But I'm not one of them.

I'm not exactly sure why I'm writing this, since I'm not particularly keen to remember what was quite possibly one of the worst days, taken as a sum of its parts, I've had in quite some time. I mean, I've had some truly horrific days, to be sure. But yesterday was one where it just seemed to be one thing after another. You know what I mean; one of those days.

As a homeowner, is there anything worse than having mice? Well, yes: rats. Our house is over a hundred years old. With that comes the resignation of knowing some things are inevitable. Some dampness in the basement when it rains. Cracked paint from settling walls. And vermin.