avablog

Hold onto your hat. This one is going to blow the top off the cuteness meter: Ava holding Lila at our office trick-or-treat function last evening.

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This has got to be one of the coolest, drool-worthy pieces of technology I’ve seen in a long time. iPhone? What iPhone? Sure, it won’t work in my XTi, but it will work in my A620. Sheesh. This is just sweet.

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Right here: Dr. Carol A. Livoti, a Manhattan obstetrician and gynecologist and an author of “Vaginas: An Owner’s Manual” (Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2004), said vajayjay and other euphemisms and slang offend her and can render women incapable of explaining their symptoms to health professionals. “I think it’s terrible,” Dr. Livoti said. “It’s time to start [...]

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A quick summary: The funeral sucked. It sucked for all the usual reasons it sucks to attend the funeral of a beloved 36-year-old woman cut down smack dab in her prime, and in addition, the north side of Chicago is a mess. We timed our departure to coincide perfectly with the end of the Bears [...]

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My pal and BIL Kevin used to work the help desk at “a large Midwestern teaching hospital” until he tested out and joined the networking team. He still has friends on the help desk, of course, and every once in a while they’ll send along a plum like this cry for help: “MY NAME IS [...]

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This stuff always cheers me up. Ava was dying to sit on the tractor that was pulling the hay rack at the apple orchard we visited with Rachel and Kevin last weekend. Thankfully, there aren’t many buttons or dials for Ava to screw up on an old International Harvester. Those pumpkins in the background represented [...]

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These last couple days have been mentally busy and tiring. We’ll get the results today of our latest semen analysis, which I’m not optimistic about (don’t ask me why). But it is what it is. Last evening, I drove down to Mount Pleasant with three colleagues to watch another of our coworkers in a play [...]

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And maybe even more enjoyable.

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My dear friend and college roommate died this morning. Her name was Melinda, and she was 36. She had inflammatory breast cancer, and she fought so hard. Ironically, she was an oncologist in Chicago. She also was a brilliant woman and a loving friend. I would like people to know about her. I would like [...]

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Since we’ve been over this topic already in the not-so-distant past, I’ll simply reproduce these Spinal Tap lyrics below to illustrate my frame of mind this morning: Working on a sex farm Trying to raise some hard love Getting out my pitch fork Poking your hay Scratching in your henhouse Sniffing at your feedbag Slipping [...]

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…[T]he curator of the Rotterdam Natural History Museum asked the public to donate pubic crabs, claiming that their population was dwindling as a result of Brazilian waxes. “When the bamboo forests that the Giant Panda lives in were cut down, the bear became threatened with extinction. Pubic lice,” he explained, “can’t live without pubic hair.” [...]

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I’m not sure if this information will discourage my wife or make her feel vindicated. Or both. An increasing number of brands manufacture in China. Those luxury handbags women crave? Mostly now invariably made in China, though manufacturers sign strict confidentiality agreements with the brands never to reveal this fact. Several Guangdong factories make bags [...]

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There are thousands of Apple blogs out there, and God knows I’d be only another tiny drop in the fanboy bucket were I to go on too long and too strenuously here about my appreciation for (almost) all things Apple. But Apple Computer announced the results for its most recent quarter today, and I’m struck [...]

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I don’t know anyone who’s taken a driver’s exam recently, so I’m not positive they’re still teaching the same things they were when I last took the exam. The part I’m most curious about is the section on road markings. Do they still cover the differences between solid, broken, yellow, and white lines? Because I’m [...]

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Why does my child eat better when she’s watching TV? It’s like she’s on autopilot, munching away while she watches Ms. Honey lead her class through alphabet exercises. It’s weird.

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It was an absolutely gorgeous day in Madison today. We walked to a little patisserie near Kevin and Rachel’s house for breakfast. There were some really cool bike racks outside the place: After a nice snack, we hoofed it the two miles or so over to the farmer’s market at Hilldale Mall. We stopped for [...]

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We just got back from dinner at India Cafe (excellent stuff), and Ava’s on her way off to dreamland, with Aunt Rachel’s patient assistance. It was a windy trip, but the forecast calls for beautiful weather tomorrow, so we’re looking forward to that. On our stop through Dubuque to visit the museum late morning, we [...]

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I present this here only as a reminder to my dear, dear wife. It’s the same advice you hear over and over again, but it bears repeating, because it’s good advice. Our company happens to have a very generous matching plan, which I take advantage of as vigorously as I can. Would lowering my participation [...]

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This one was just too good to pass up. At one point during our time at home yesterday, Ava wanted to go outside and look at the rain. That happened to coincide with the students getting out of the nearby high school for the day, so we sat for a bit and watched the kids [...]

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If you dig science, you know who James Watson is. You may also know him if you dig nooses and burning crosses. See, James is straight-up racist. And to cover his bases, he’s sexist, too. What’s interesting (to me, at least) about James is that he’s one of the world’s most celebrated scientists. To understand [...]

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