One whole week!

And still I am spamming the intertubes.

But a week.

Where's my cookie?

I do get a cookie, don't I?

Some sour candy then, that's what I really love and I'm in pain so I should get sour skittles, but I know tomorrow my dad will leave chocolate and peeps on the front porch. The peeps always go to school - Becky has yet another weird friend who loves them. (I mean yet another as in yet another weird friend - she's the only one I know who likes Peeps.)

I think 80% of the population is celebrating Easter today, I'm an agnostic who could care less and I'm still benefiting in the form of candy.

But today's strip makes no mention of Easter. What's going on? Is this 80% of the population in a non-Christian nation? I know, I know, America's been taken over by ruthless atheists and you must hide your bible in copies of Darwin and Douglas Adams, but still.

With this strip, we hit everything. Anti-technology? Yup. Cheap? Oui. A plugged up take on a common phrase? All right Mike Ault, you hit the trifecta for my weekly anniversary! (Bricknell is such a cool name for a town... I wonder how the locals pronounce it.)

And, sadly, we see plugger kids. Or Plugger Mini-Mes. Or maybe, Pluggers are midgets! I figured it out.

Hello Rhino! Nice to see you as a kid, I thought you'd burned all those old photos?

Does that toaster only have one slot?

Who has a toaster? We have a toaster oven. It works better than the microwave and the stove/oven - two burners don't work and the microwave... bah... but the toaster oven does just fine.

As for pictures on the fridge instead of a book tracing your genealogy... eh...

Let me check the photos on our fridge - 4! Only four pictures. And only one contains relatives!

My sister sitting on the couch at my married cousin's house in Kansas with our other cousin, who is a year younger than her. Above that is an old, faded picture of my mom's childhood dog - her mom sends packages of pictures every few months, and I guess this dog touched Mom enough to put on the fridge (none of the dogs we've had since then aren't on there - though Mom and I both have dogs as our computer wallpaper). The other two are of friends. One is my friend's senior picture and the other is a random snapshot of a friend's baby.

Not quite a family tree.

Our fridge is filled more with coupons, youth things for Becky, and notes about phone numbers and why we should switch to LED bulbs.

The family pictures are in albums on the same shelf as a relative's journal from the '30s - it had a prayer to Hitler pasted in the front cover (Mom's mom's family is Czech) as well as mom's yearbooks from high school.

The official family tree people are my great aunt Mary in California and my Aunt Jenny in Nebraska. Why Aunt Mary? She's rich, old, and a teacher. She has the time and money to look it up. It will be passed onto Mom and Aunt Jenny fully when she dies, and then I want it.

Why Aunt Jenny? Mom's dad's family has been in Nebraska since forever and some never left - when we went there, we heard of heroic acts of grandparents with a few greats in front of their name.

As for my dad's family, ech. For the most part, they don't get along. Plus my dad is the only son of his father to keep his stepfather's name. (He has a half-brother who is legally that name.) So if my sister and I looked up our family with my dad's name, we'd reach a dead end or someone else's family. Thankfully, we know the truth.

Anyways, cheap pluggers - can't bother to archive the photos in an album so they can be dragged out to embarass you in front of your date or eat up the time spent at an old relative's. No, all on the fridge. Plus, it does cost money to research your family tree more than a few generations. Don't even mention family reunions. That is something I envy about some of the families where no one ever really leaves, while at the same time hating it for the kids - they can't get away with anything - they're related to someone in town. Of course, that came in handy for a classmate of mine - he had a job waiting for him after graduation.

Anti-technology - digital pictures are awesome, and online photo albums are free and easy. And they last longer. It was nice to be in Washington, log in to my photobucket account and see familiar pictures. It's also easy to use technology to research your family tree, or at least organize it. (My cousin Jessica is about a year younger than our second cousin Logan. Logan's mother is our first cousin. Jessica and Sabrina come from the same generation when it comes to the family, but not when it comes to age. It really amazes me, is all.)

Common phrases - that ain't no tree - it's a bush.

"You know you're a plugger if your family tree doesn't fork." (Apologies to Jeff Foxworthy.)

So... eh.