avablog

I love to walk around like a total tourist when I’m visiting a place. And particularly cities with lots of cool architecture. I think it would be sad if you lived or worked every day somewhere like downtown Chicago and became inured to the beautiful buildings all around you. I suppose it’s inevitable to some [...]

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But not for long. Chicago, in retrospect, was a bit exhausting.  It’s not the kind of place you go for a little R&R.  Fortunately, we’re following Chicago with an honest-to-goodness relaxing trip to N. Minnesota this week, starting Thursday.  We’ll be gone until the 13th. In other news, BABIES EVERYWHERE!  In the past week, one [...]

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What a day.  We headed down to Navy Pier this morning to take Ava to the Chicago Children’s Museum.  What a zoo.  Congestion aside, it’s a nice museum.  The mark of excellence for these kinds of places is the quality of the arts stuff they have on site, and this one had really nice arts [...]

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Shot from our hotel room: It’s nice enough, I suppose. Small. We’re right over the river, so Ava’s enjoying the seagulls. Today were my pre-conference workshops; tomorrow things start in earnest. We’re off to dinner with an old friend here in a few minutes, though I’m not sure where. I’ll let you know. UPDATE: I [...]

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There have been a lot of flies in our house lately. Ava derives great pleasure from following them from room to room, screaming at me to “Get them!” But she turns tail and runs as soon as one heads her way. Until last evening.

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On Saturday I smoked five pork shoulder roasts for a picnic we had yesterday at City Park. Before I started, I tried to remind myself: “Take before and after pics of the roasts.” Well, I got neither. A before shot would’ve been cool, because I had those roasts packed as tightly as could be on [...]

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We have little two-step footstools that Ava uses to reach the sink and get into bed.  Just now, I asked her to get onto her bed so I could put some sunscreen on her, and as she climbed, she said, pointing at her stool, “I call these ‘upstairs,’ because I get up with them.”

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I took a stroll downtown at noon to see the sights and grab some lunch.  Along the way, I ran across a raised flower bed positively teeming with large, angry-looking wasps.  Leah and I had seen one of these bugs flying around the front stoop at home the other day, and it sure looked menacing.  [...]

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I was driving home from Decorah last Saturday morning and had just come through Cedar Rapids when I saw a small billboard that read, “God is Pro-life. Are you?”

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A friend of ours recently described Ava as gregarious.  It’s accurate.  She gets it from her mother, who has a well-documented habit of never being the one to end a conversation. I tend to be more reserved, so Leah and I make good bookends in that way.  Leah constantly makes apologies for my brusque behavior [...]

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Now that the dust has settled from the move, it’s time to sit down and get our finances in order. You should see the look on Leah’s face when I say the word “budget.”  It’s like she’s just found out she has 45 seconds to buy everything she ever wanted.  I contend there’s nothing wrong [...]

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Ava doesn’t like rain or thunder. When we picked her up from daycare yesterday, she was huddled on the floor next to her friends with a blanket draped over her shoulders.  She wore the blanket all the way home. But she loves jumping in puddles after the rain. So, it’s a great opportunity for a [...]

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Leah was generous enough to let me come back early from Decorah this past weekend to participate in the annual Tour de Brew, which is put on by Millstream Brewing Company. The weather was gorgeous this year. A bit breezy, but it beats the 97 degrees we had last year. I think a good time [...]

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We’re driving up to Decorah this afternoon for a little getaway at Leah’s parents’ house.  Rachel and Kevin will also be in town, as Rachel is throwing a big birthday bash for a good friend.  Ava’s already looking forward to swimming, the coffee shop, making cookies with G.G., and looking at all the animals down [...]

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(Over)heard this morning, as I was getting the bike out of the garage and Ava was waiting for me on the stairs leading down from the kitchen: “Darn it!  I got another bug bite.  Those little smageetos* really got me.” *We’ve tried a couple times to correct her pronunciation of mosquito, but she’ll have none [...]

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Our dear Ava has another ear infection. In the middle of summer! Blasted kid. Leah’s patting herself on the back for recognizing the signs at an even earlier stage than she did last time Ava came down sick.

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I don’t ever really talk with other parents about how they resolve issues like whether their kids will grow up eating juicy hamburgers or dry hamburgers. I made turkey burgers last week (and again last night, because all I can think to do on a 95-degree day is stand over a hot grill), and Leah [...]

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I’m going to carry the following text with me on a note card from now on to hand to people who ask what it is I do during the day: Mean, median, 5% trimmed mean, standard error, variance, standard deviation, minimum, maximum, range, interquartile range, skewness and kurtosis and their standard errors, confidence interval for [...]

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I was sitting on our front porch yesterday morning before going to work, and there were two police cars at the curb down the street from our house.  It didn’t appear there was any action going on, and when I got to work, I e-mailed a neighbor to see if he knew anything.  He didn’t, [...]

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We had a nice day with friends. Spent a couple hours at the local pool with Ava as she hopped around in the shallow end, then went over to a neighbor’s place to lounge by their (inflatable) pool. Then off to another neighbor’s for dinner and sparklers. They had a nice chalk mural waiting for [...]

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