greenwitch, Yup, 43rd and Locust. Used to go there every week or two. Mrs. Koch sent us a baby gift when S1 was born.
@prospect1, I hate that your pool is on this list. Don’t either you or your spouse use it for exercise or just to relax? I have a selfish reason for asking; dh just convinced me to put in a pool since we’re likely staying in our current home for the next decade or so. Both of us have various health problems that we hope will be helped by low impact exercise in the pool. Still, it’s so much more expensive than our last pool and that’s before we know what excavation will actually cost.
Add us to the air hockey table list. Dh doesn’t want to get rid of it, but I hate the noise. Our pool table wasn’t a smart purchase, either. Dh and I have played no more than a dozen times, but he’s happy to have it for the few times a year that a friend wants to play.
We have 3 pools among my extended family–my folks, my sister, and my brother’s homes. Of the three pools, only sister uses her pool AT ALL. My folks did have us in the pool for some years and mom swam laps in it for maybe two decades until she decided it was the cause of her hearing loss. She now gets hives from cold water (as do I). My brother’s pool was handy for about 5 years, between the time they just bought the house and for about 5 years after that. Since then everyone’s lost interest. My sister’s kids use the pool some, but they entertain more than the rest of our extended family put together. It really depends on the family/individuals involved as to how much pools are used vs neglected.
For me, once I started getting hives from cold water, I decided to give up swimming (in the ocean or pool) and haven’t renewed interest in the past decade.
This is really embarrassing. When I was a young mother of multiples and joined the local club, there was a mother of quads. This woman was like superwoman - we’d have an event and the rest of us would show up with Entenmann’s cake and 2 liter bottles of soft drinks and she would show up with a gingerbread house or hand-decorated cupcakes or something. Anyway … The quads were about 18 months or so, and she had a special leash of sorts that went around each child’s wrist. It was perfectly understandable when she had to take them through a parking lot or such. The manufacturer showed up at one of the meetings and sold the leashes to the rest of us triplet and twin moms and I bought one. Never used it - couldn’t bring myself to do so, and anyway, that’s why God invented strollers.
If I had to do it over again I would use one of those chid leashes for certain venues. Nothing like standing in a baggage line in a major international airport with two mobile toddlers … shifting your attention for just a moment and realizing one had…um…gone exploring.
I remember buying a “child harness” for D just before we left for Disneyland (after she ducked under Sear’s rounders and disappeared on me while I was shopping and she was 2 years old). I did bring it with us to Disney but fortunately never had to take it out of my purse and use it, as she stuck with me and H. Phew, was happy to donate that.
Lottery tickets - none of mine won:-(
@silpat, if you are planning to use your pool, then go for it. Around me, pools are very popular (almost every house has one), but I very strongly wish we had not splurged on such a large and expensive one. No, we really don’t use the pool ourselves (me: sometimes, spouse: never). We use the jacuzzi much more, so that was a good decision.
If I could go back, I would have put in a very simple and relatively inexpensive pool for the years the kids were around. The bells and whistles were cool and fun, but in retrospect the kids would have happily and creatively played in a simple rectangle. For adult swimming/health purposes, a much smaller and simpler pool would have been perfect.
One house we rented had a pool when the girls were 5 and 6. I learned quickly that if you have the house with the pool, you become the neighborhood lifeguard and you sit there all day watching the pool as your kids and allllllllll the neighborhood kids swim. You can’t even sit out there and read a book-you HAVE to keep an eye on them all the time.
It got old, fast. I could not wait to get out of that house. My husband couldn’t understand why I hated that pool so much-he’d come home from work and do laps and he loved it.
I agreed that the house we retire to someday can have a pool, but I made it clear he’s on any grandkid (if there are ever any) watch duty because I’m “retired” from doing that ever again :).
Those tourist ‘hop-on-hop-off’ open bus tours aren’t worth it after one day. The stops are along a loop, and once you’re done the loop, getting back to the stops you’ve passed means riding tbe entire route again.
Mds was a VERY busy two year old when we went to Busch Gardens. I felt it was very unfair to confine him to a stroller yet I rebelled against having to keep an eye on him every second as I wanted to enjoy the day as well. So, harness time it was. As it turned out, when we got there the crowds were very light and it was okay to forego the harness. Some people go ape over these for children to the point of being funny. My gosh, do you really want to chance losing your child all for the sake of looking like supermom? I wouldn’t use it to go for a walk in the park, give me some credit.
Regarding pools, can’t wait to sell our house and not deal with any more pool maintenance.
In all fairness, we used it frequently when our kids were younger. But that time has passed, and none of us swim for exercise. Now it’s our emergency water source in case of an apocalypse. 
I want a low maintenance condo or townhome where we don’t deal with much of a yard and can lock it and go.
As a sidebar on the child harness things, when our kids were little we used them quite a bit, and we used to joke that we’d get intense (and diametrically opposite) reactions from two kinds of people: Those who were all “OMG, that’s an amazing thing, where can I get one?”, and people without small kids at home.
@3scoutsmom I forgot all about Groovy Girls!!!
After my business started taking off, one my first splurges was a Lotus, but this wasn’t the splurge that went bad. For the first time in my life, I truly enjoyed driving… driving was no longer just a way to get from point A to point B. I’d take it everywhere, even places where it didn’t belong, like for weekly grocery shopping and when I need to go through dirt roads. I joined a Lotus club where we’d take rides together, started to really enjoy car shows like Top Gear, etc. In short it became a passion that changed my life for the better.
After such a positive experience, I decided to get another exotic, which had a similar design principle to Lotus (basic interior, min computer assisted driving, good power/weight ratio, well thought out design, etc.), but more HP and more expensive. It’s rare enough that I won’t list the specific make/model for privacy. Unfortunately, this splurge has become a big disappointment due to a combination of not being any more enjoyable to drive than my Lotus on area roads and more that its share of expensive mechanical problems, which need to be repaired at a specialist hundreds of miles away, as well as various other unexpected expenses. One of the mechanical problems led to the throttle being stuck at maximum acceleration, which could have easily caused a serious accident. It’s also become a magnet for area police, or at least for one specific officer in my town.
I use our pool all the time. I heat it to 87 and we’re in it all the time. But I also use our hot tub, and we have a ping pong, pool table and air hockey. I host large family parties with a very competitive family.
Now my curiosity is pinged. Since you like Top Gear (Captain Slow or the Hamster?), I’m going to guess you bought a Koenigsegg or a Gumpert. Pagani is too much of a jump…I don’t think it’s possible to get the Russian supercars like Marussia…Aston Martin had a recall over the accelerator, but since Ford bought them and stole all their designs they don’t really stick out that much for the po po to get you.
Lol if you say you bought a Viper I will ridicule you. 
Okay, I’m not a car hound but now my curiosity is really peaked!
My curiosity is piqued. 
Okay, I spelled it wrong… still want to know the car!
Spelling is overrated. Please don’t start a thread on this…