avablog

So I’m quickly reading through one of my favorite blogs this morning, and I come across the news that Laura Lieghton turns 40 today. I was never a big Melrose Place fan, but that’s the show on which Laura made her big break. Anyway, she’s from I.C.; I think she went to West High. I had her dad in one of my writing classes in college.
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I was originally thinking that there would be maybe two readers here who would have any interest in reading about the trials and tribulations of my home theater/Apple TV setup, but then — as I thought more — I figured, what could it hurt? Don’t click through unless you know what a TOSlink cable is. You’ve been warned.
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Sort of. Gramary took Ava to the Johnson County Fair yesterday, where Ava did all sorts of fun stuff, including gathering wool from a freshly shorn sheep. Would’ve been nice to have had her face in the picture, but this provides a little more anonymity, after all.

I downloaded the Wordpress app for the iPod Touch. This is a bit slow for typing, but it’ll be nice to have along in a pinch.

you’re part of the problem:

In a subsequent conference call, Apple chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer also braced analysts for unwelcome declines in the company’s gross margin going froward. He said an ongoing back-to-school promotion and an unspecified product transition during the current quarter will see gross margin fall sequentially by 330 basis points to 31.5 percent.

Oops! Thank goodness I don’t have any Apple stock. I thought it seemed like that iPod Touch deal was too good to be true. Talk about a loss leader!

Last night, Ava and I were lying in her new double bed, which was delivered yesterday. She said to me, “This would make a great bed for a baby butthead.” (This “butthead” word, which she did NOT learn from us, is her newest linguistic obsession, with which she daily tests our limits. We’ve been repeatedly chastising her for it, but now I think we should just ignore it and hope it goes away.)
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The challenge: Familiarize your toddler with the Internet/WWW and all its crazy little nooks and crannies.

The answer: Baby’s First Internet

It’s funny because it’s true (< — did you see what I did there?)

Denny, Aprille, Jen, Mara, Dawn, Ben, Kathryn, Cindy (AND Nathan!)…I’m looking at you (not all at once, but, like, one at a time). Sheesh, is there *anyone* we know who doesn’t have a baby at home right now? Crazy.

Ava actually asked me to take her picture as she clutched Leah’s coffee mug during our trip to the Java House yesterday. I’m not sure why.

Would you like some eggs with that ham?

More bad news to end the week:

Deming and Dynarski note that, in the last 40 years, almost every state has raised the age at which children can start school. “This change is remarkable,” they write, “given the strong evidence that, in the United States, starting school later decreases educational attainment.”

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…I will: WTF happened to Carrot Top?!

We didn’t pay anything extra for the flowers in the yard at our house when we bought it last year, but I suspect I may have if it had been an issue. I’m particularly smitten by these blackberry lilies:

I noticed them even before we moved in, since they were just up the street from our old place. It seems like there’s a different variety ever summer. I’m not sure how that’s possible, but it sure is neat.

Then (July 2007):

And now:
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So we had friends over for pizza this evening, and Ava said she’d go along to pick up the food. As I was strapping her in her car seat, she said, nodding to the empty two-cycle motor oil can on the retaining wall near the driveway, “Dad, could you make your next project to take care of that oil can?”

I wonder whom she’s been talking to. Not yet four, folks! Gonna be a long ride for ol’ Pops.

I mean, I never miss an episode of The Hills, either.

I wonder if McCain knows the show isn’t named after Heidi’s chest. I wonder if he cares….

A friend of mine lost her baby yesterday. She was due to deliver him in the next week or so, and yesterday, she noticed that he had stopped moving inside of her. When she went in, the doctors couldn’t find a heartbeat, so they performed an emergency C-section. He was dead when they delivered him, though they tried to resuscitate. They think he had something wrong with his heart. The nurses wrapped him up and let my friend and her husband hold him. My friend and her husband took their new baby’s picture. They named him. They introduced him to his big brother, who is almost exactly Ava’s age. And now they will bury him on Saturday.

All I can think about is my friend lying in her hospital room, recovering from a major surgery with all that emptiness inside of her–and all around her–just waiting to swallow her whole.

You can have the software throw down a “best word” for you if you’re stuck, can’t remember every single word in the Scrabble library, and really don’t feel like playing “DO.” For example, who knew that enations would end up being a 131-point word? Who in the hell even knows what it means?

Cheating? Perhaps. But I don’t mind using the computer against itself if it means victory for me! And in this case, it’s fitting that enations came to my rescue, given that the wounds from my recent mole removals are still healing.

We drove down to Burlington on Saturday to spend the day knocking around and visiting our friends Bob and Jude, who now live in my grandmother’s old house. It’s nice to go and see them and to get to spend some time in that familiar place. Ava likes it, too.

And she likes to play Frisbee. She’s actually getting pretty good at tossing it. Catching, not so much. I nailed her square across the nose once, which caused her to be a little gun shy. But she’ll get over it.

or are you just happy to see me?

Last night, after I switched off the light and turned over to go to sleep, a blue glow suddenly filled our bedroom. I looked over to see that Mark had brought his iTouch to BED with him, so he could continue “messing around” with it at MIDNIGHT! I think he’d be more than happy to roll over in the morning and find that sleeping on the pillow beside him instead of me–such is his passion for technology and all things Apple.

Even though I think it looks cool, I find its technological capabilities overwhelming. Hell, I still can’t figure out how to take photos with my cell phone! I’m a total Luddite. (And yet he married me anyway.)

And by that, I mean I hate people like my friend Ben, who sneakily slide their gorgeous iPhones out of their pockets when I’m not looking. Then, before I know it, I’m staring at this gleaming piece of hardware laid out on some bar table somewhere, and my technolust washes over me like a sepsis-induced fever. But now I have this iTouch, and it simply wouldn’t be like me to take the high road and pretend like I’m not smitten with this thing. (WARNING: Technobabble ahead)
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Our friend Megan told us a story yesterday about how she locked her keys in her car and had to impose on the kindness of her husband, Ed, to dig up the spare keys and bring them to her. Ed wasn’t pleased.

When Megan finally got home, Ed was lying on the sofa with a magazine over his head, requesting that Megan not speak to him for the rest of the evening so as to not to exacerbate his splitting headache. Ava fell in love with the story, and as soon as she was done with dinner, she wanted to reenact it. Here, she plays Ed. Leah is Megan. Enjoy the show.

PS: Note Leah’s new hair color and say something nice about it; it’s best for everyone involved.