Other than the Vonage service ringing through to my cell phone without ringing in the house first, the ARD meeting by phone has been the easiest meeting ever. It helped that I had the binder of IEP/ARD records on hand so I could ask about last year's speech therapy objectives.

Several apartment complexes in North Dallas saw a spate of tire slashings last night. I wonder if our automotive karma (our tires were slashed a few years ago) protected us. I wouldn't be surprised if our upstairs neighbors' teenager was involved, since we already know that "he's only four-TEEN" and therefore cannot be held responsible for his actions. (Parents, please don't use this as an excuse for letting your children run wild. It is not sufficiently effective in culling them from the herd and annoys everyone else.)

The cleaned-out pumpkin we got in return from the kiddo's class (families were asked to donate pumpkins of various sizes for a class project to familiarize the students with science fair projects) went bad before I got around to it, so I bought two larger pumpkins that are awaiting this year's magic. Without spoiling too much, I'll tell you one is inked up for Dewey decimal classification. Photos tomorrow -- later today, whatever.