Video game brags and a disaster

I've posted the tales of several good classic video game finds I originally posted to the rec.games.video.classic Usenet group. Back then we called them "brags". I also dug up the tale of my phone call with Billy Mitchell shortly after his perfect Pac-Man game. Finally, I posted the story of the first time our house flooded from a burst washing machine hose. (The second time was two days later, believe it or not.)

• 14 May 1996: Flood
• 29 July 1997: Finally, a brag!
• 12 Feb 1998: $50 Brag
• 10 August 1998: Re: Stop me before I buy again!!!!
• 10 March 1999: Brag, anti-brag, and book
• 5 April 1999: Small brag & Wico info
• 16 April 1999: First good 2600 brag in a while
• 19 April 1999: Hardly a brag
• 4 May 1999: Today's finds
• 30 July 1999: Brag: Hardware for $0.10 each
• 14 July 1999: Re: Someone got Perfect Pacman Score????
• 3 May 2000: Brag: Instant Astrocade collection & more
• 30 May 2000: Brag: NES Arkanoid controller
• 17 July 2000: Brag: 2600, 7800 games and more
• 26 May 2006: Brag: INTV games
• 28 May 2006: Re: Just a small brag
• 14 April 2007: Brag: Turbo board game

Belated Hannah update: 18 months

I've been meaning to write this entry for months now. I was going to give physical stats and such, but I don't have them. In the interest of getting this out, she's still 5% in height and head circumference and still below the chart on weight. However, she's on a steady curve and finally hit 20 pounds so we could turn her seat forward! Oh, and she has 12 teeth: eight incisors (four top & four on bottom) and four molars (at the four corners, after a gap next to each end of the incisors where her canines will grow).

I'm teaching her to turn out the lights around the house, as I obviously went wrong somewhere with my sons. They couldn't turn a light out as they leave a room to save their life. Typically the first thing I do when I get home from work is go around and turn out the lights in the back, because everyone's in the living room or kitchen. Naturally, I have to hold her up so she can reach the switches, but maybe she'll keep it up on her own once she's tall enough. She's got enough fine motor skill to do it, but sometimes gets confused as to which way the switch should go to turn the light off or on.

Developmentally, the doctor said she should speak 7-27 words, if I recall correctly what my wife recalls the doctor saying correctly. That's the main thing I want to document now: her vocabulary. Unfortunately, that's rather hard as it has rapidly increased since she turned 18 months, so there may be words I've left out. Note that she's not speaking these absolutely clearly, but her family can understand them when she says them. And she there may be a few that she used in the past that she's not using as often now.

Andrew

Apparently her favorite brother, because she's refusing to say "Walter", even these months since she hit 18. We wonder if she's doing it on purpose to taunt him.

baby

One of her earliest words. It applies to just about anything people shaped. She first started using it for baby dolls at the store, but she's since used it for action figures and young kids bigger than her.

ball

bubble

For her, this actually means apple.

bye-bye

Daddy

dog

This means almost any animal with four legs. (In the months since, she can disinguish between dog and kitty.)

duck

Mainly for rubber ducks, but sometimes real ones too.

ear

eye

juice

Any drink to her is juice.

Mama

meemees

Means she wants to nurse.

no

You might notice that "yes" isn't on the list. At 18 months, as best I remember, she wasn't yet saying "yeah" or "yes", just "no", which made it hard to ask her a simple question.

shoes

This was possibly her first word; it was certainly one of the earliest. The girl loves her shoes (and sometimes other people's).

thank you

tissue

This is sometimes hard to distinguish from "juice", just from the sound. Luckily, she has other ways of letting us know what she wants.

toes

uh-oh

Used most often when she or someone else drops something.