When we lived in Abilene, Texas many years ago, I worked as a teacher at a private school. Several days while I drove to and from work, I smelled something dead in the car. I assumed something had crawled up under the hood somewhere and gotten creamed in the engine. However, when I went to put laundry in the back hatch on Saturday, I realized what the smell was. We had helped move friends the weekend before, and they had cleaned out their freezer and blessed us with a ferrel pig. With all of the emotion of leaving friends, I had forgotten about the pig. So this past week when I smelled a dead mouse in the shed, perhaps I should have remembered that story. We keep our storage things in the shed next to our house. It was time for me to sort through seasonal clothes, and while I was doing that I was sure that I would come across that terrible dead rat that was stinking up the whole shed. About halfway through the sorting I realized the smell was soup bones that I had evidently set out and forgotten about. Our deep freezer is in the shed too. I guess some time last week I must have had my hands full, and must have put the bones on top of the freezer for a second. I forgot, and Whew! what a stink!! Next time we have a dead smell for several days I will look for freezer food. ----------- Last night was the history expo that our home school group does every year. In years past the boys have done projects on Ancient Egypt, Ancient Rome, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. This year #1 did the history of Cartography, and #2 did The Gilded Age (1875-1900). An interesting fact from each: The oldest clay maps we have are from the Babylonians, 2300BC. The paper lunch bag- a folding paper bag- was invented during the Gilded Age. A lot of other cool things were invented, but space and time cut me off there. ------------ We closed on the refinancing of our house this morning. I know it sounds like an odd time to be doing such a thing, but we got it started before all of the bombs exploded in the economy. We cashed out some money so we can do some remodeling upstairs. We want to add two bedrooms in the attic and rewire the house. It also allowed us to get rid of a home equity loan that was irritating me. So for $5,000 more than the original price we are able to do quite a bit of work to improve the house. At least that is the way I want to look at it. I'm not feeling up to looking at the whole cost of the investment.