The day from hell
Wow. What a freakin' day. Where do I begin? Let's see.. maybe I should just list the things that went wrong today:

1. Amy's van -- The ignition key won't turn in Amy's van. Of course, she had the kids all lodaed in the car on the way to various appointments when she figured it out. This meant that I had to race home from the office to pick her up. We then loaded all of the kids into my tiny Jetta and they dropped me back off at work. As for the van, it could either be that the steering wheel lock is engaged (even though I have wrestled the damn thing 5 or 6 times and can't get it to unlock) or a bad ignition cylinder (which costs around $250). Not sure how we're going to resolve it. We tried calling a locksmith to see if they could remove the cylinder, but the first guy we called said he doesn't do that. So, tomorrow, Amy is going to try and track down someone who can fix it (preferably without having to get it towed somewhere).

2. My Sirius radio is dead -- I mentioned this yesterday; however, a call to Sirius confirmed it. Now, I have to uninstall the car and home kit (including the antenna cable that I have neatly snaking through my trunk and car) and ship it back to Sirius to get a replacement. Unfortunately, the unit I have is on backorder, so I will have to wait 2-4 weeks to get it back!

3. Our mortgage company didn't pay our tax bill -- As I mentioned earlier today, our name and address were in the paper because our mortgage company failed to pay $161 in taxes. After a couple of lengthy calls to both our local sheriff's office (they handle the tax) and the mortgage company, it looks like we have it worked out. The mortgage company claims they sent payment on 4/11. Now we just have to keep following up with the sheriff to make sure the payment arrives before they auction off the house.

4. The dog went to the vet -- Faith got an ear infection and had to go to the vet today. She now has medication and we now have $100 less in our checking account.

5. Science fair stuff due tomorrow -- At around 6:30p, after dealing with items 1-4, we realized that Mahlon has part of his science fair project due tomorrow. So I jumped online to download some of the forms that needed to be filled out, but I kept getting 404s when downloading the PDFs. I had to Google around to find the format of the abstract and we faked it from there.

Now it is 9:30p -- exactly 12 hours from when all of this began. Let's hope rest of the night goes more smoothly. I am hoping to catch tonight's episode of 24 before I collapse.