avablog

Hate to let this month end without a nod to the late, great David Foster Wallace. Harper’s has put up PDFs of the pieces he wrote for them. It’s awesome stuff.

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I’ve been shooting RAW lately in my XTi and playing with the results in Adobe Camera Raw. I’m still undecided about whether I want to spend a lot of time fussing with my shots after they’re out of the camera, but I have to say, a couple small tweaks can make a noticeable difference in [...]

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Those of you lucky enough to be one of my family or friends on Flickr may have already seen this. For the rest of you, behold Ava’s 2008 Halloween costume:

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I love this site. It’s so sweet. It transports me back to a more innocent time, when teenagers were married in matching striped polo shirts. In case you don’t recognize that strapping lad in the photo, that’s Josh Duggar, one of the soon-to-be 18 Duggar children.

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Rest in peace, Paul. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Hustler, Cool Hand Luke…Slap Shot. Sheesh. What a body of work. Sometimes nothin’ is a real cool hand.

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We had Ava’s four-year checkup today at the doctor’s office. It included four different injections, a finger prick for a blood test, and an anti-flu nasal spray. Many tears were shed, but she actually did a pretty good job. Leah hit her with a sucker as soon as the last shot was done, and the [...]

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Because once your kid is that old, she wakes up at 4 o’clock every morning. Why didn’t anyone ever tell me?

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We ran into our friend Sarah Palin Dawn last evening outside The Airliner, and I couldn’t resist getting a picture of her in all her cuteness. I try to reserve the moment of cuteness posts for my beloved little girl, but when Dawn made a special request to have her very own moment of cuteness, [...]

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Back in high school, my chums and I spent a fair amount of time listening to music favored by the skater set (we had a 16′ wide half pipe in our back yard — 8′ transitions — that drew all sorts of skaters and bikers from all over the place; the neighbors were thrilled). Broadly [...]

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you really should. I just turned 38 two days ago, and this link to a relatively obscure Martin Luther King, Jr. speech is incredibly timely and amazing. Here’s a link to the MP3. And here’s an excerpt: “I say to you, this morning, that if you have never found something so dear and precious to [...]

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Ava with Poom Poom and Joyce, scrubbing apples in Decorah this past weekend.

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Chicago’s rising unemployment rate, expensive gas, high population density and relatively poor air quality create a perfect storm of stress, according to measures we used to calculate the country’s anxiety hot spots.

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I <3 U @}-’–,–

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So yesterday, after dropping Ava off at preschool, I was following behind a car that had two people riding in it. One of them, the passenger, had a very strange sillhouette. His head looked bumpy and huge, and it seemed to be moving around in a very strange manner. Suddenly, there was a flurry of [...]

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We went out for supper this evening with some friends whose daughter was born just a few days before you entered the world. We two mothers were watching you and Nora running around outside Whitey’s–covered in pink, bubble-gum ice cream–and we wondered aloud at how in the world you’d both grown up so fast. We [...]

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A picture from Ava’s photo shoot at the UIF, courtesy of photographer extraordinaire Jill Tobin.

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No economy is fundamentally sound in which a 12 oz. bottle of Bud Light costs $4. Bud Light! I should write my congressperson.

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Tonight at supper, Ava was asking me questions about her dad’s “class” in Chicago this week (he’s there for more software training). She wanted to know who would be in his class–and how many chairs would be in the room. I told her it would be men and women, and she said, “Oh.” She sat [...]

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Well, girl on film, at least. And, actually, not on film. Eh. No matter. Ava’s coming in to work today to have her picture taken for a publication we’re putting out. She’ll be sharing the spotlight with the inimitable and adorable Arlo. These two should make a cute team. The setup, as I understand it, [...]

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I’m home with Ava today. Leah says she’s sick. So, in an effort to try to get her back on her feet before a busy weekend, we’re home resting today. After breakfast, the first order of business was painting. We’ll see if I can get her down for a nap in a bit. I have [...]

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