avablog

We were driving through Denver on the interstate recently and were passed by a truck that sported this bumpersticker. I had to have it. In fact, I had to have a number of them, and thanks to my cousin Chris (that’s him on the right in the linked pic), now I do. There’ll be one […]

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So say the tulips and daffodils pushing up through the weathered mulch in our flower beds.  And the three male Cardinals whose songs we wake up to each morning as they try to impress the lady Cardinals in the neighborhood.  And the mosquito that landed on Ava’s lapel last weekend when we walked to the […]

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Listening to the radio on the way in to work this morning, I learned that Iowa’s largest free municipal WiFi network is now up and running for the communities of Iowa City, Coralville, and Cedar Rapids. Pretty cool. Take that, Des Moines! Tomorrow I’m going to bring my iBook to work and head up to […]

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This past Saturday evening we attended a birthday party for our friend Dawn. This event is surely the highlight of the annual social calendar for our small group of friends and acquaintances. Over the years Dawn has managed to cultivate a number of interesting, smart, funny, and attractive people in her cadre of pals (thankfully, […]

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Rachel, you can stop reading now. I’ve been working with our family friend Judy to set her up with a new computer. We’ve been telling her for years that she needs to dump her pokey old Windows laptop and come on up to the Mac, but she only recently broke down. Her budget for the […]

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Leah, Ava, and I went to a birthday party yesterday for the son of a friend of ours. The festivities took place at the Iowa Children’s Museum, a place I’d seen a number of times but never ventured into. Turns out the have special birthday rooms there that you can rent out for your party, […]

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You ever have one of those meals that just sticks in your memory? Before we left for our vacation, a colleague of Leah’s clued her in to a restaurant in Winter Park where his brother used to dine when he lived there.  We were looking for a place to eat one evening, and Deno’s Mountain […]

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How’s that for technicalese?! Standing on the shoulders of giants, I got the FAlbum plugin working under WordPress. What’s it do? Well, see that instance of “flickr” over there in the menu on the right? Click it. It’ll take you to a page hosted at this site that is populated with images from my flickr […]

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Get it?  “Roll?”  Like a day-old bakery item or a slow pedal down a backcountry road? OK.  Fine.  Anyway, I know I don’t brag on this woman nearly as much as I could.  Fact is, she makes me look bad!  How’d you like to be a 35-year-old man in good health whose 63-year-old mother can […]

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This morning I helped Ava on with her shoes and then sat on the couch for a bit and watched her toddle around the living room (though “toddle” is increasingly becoming an inadequate verb to describe what she’s doing; it’s walking, let’s face it). Fat beams of sunlight were streaming through our east windows, and […]

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Leah sent along a pretty fascinating article (NYT: soul-sucking registration required) today about Bedouins in Israel whose centuries-old practice of intra-family marriage is now yielding some rather horrific birth defects. My spirit really stumbled when I read about the father who, himself a victim of the mutations so common among his people, chose to marry […]

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We walked out of the elevator at our hotel in downtown Denver the other morning and were stopped by Ava, who was pointing up on the wall and saying, “Unc?  Eesh?”  That’s what she calls her Uncle Kevin and Aunt Rachel.  Leah and I knew they weren’t around anywhere, but we were mightily amused to […]

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…”I’m on my hands and knees, kissing the driveway.” As we drove into Grand Island under a steady drizzle night before last, I thought to myself, “Man, if it were a couple degrees cooler, this would be a real mess.” Guess what?  Yesterday we woke up and pulled the shades back in our tidy Holiday […]

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Leah and I went out for dinner last night while Rachel and Kevin watched Ava. The name of the place is Devil’s Thumb Ranch, and it has a gorgeous view out over a wide mountain valley. Rachel and Kevin had dined there the night before, and they were lucky enough to get a nice clear […]

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We’re having a great time up here in the mountains. There’s been lots of snow. Kevin is off snowboarding for a half day at Mary Jane right now, as a matter of fact. He and I went snowmobiling for a bit the day we got here, which was a lot of fun (except for the […]

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When you have a new baby in the house, it’s easy to get caught up in the wonder of it all (you probably hadn’t noticed from reading this blog). Since Ava was born — really, since I’ve been married — I haven’t found myself missing the single life.  Yes, now and then I’ll reflect on […]

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While I wasn’t there, I’m told Ava’s appointment went very well today.  She’s not 20 pounds yet, which is the bad news.  The good news is that she’s moving up the height charts, which helps explain why she isn’t packing on the pounds.    I’m glad to hear it.  I’m 6’1″, and Leah’s 5’3″ when she […]

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How crazy are we to truck our 17-month-old out to Colorado in the family wagon?  I guess we’re going to find out.  We’re breaking up the trip into two days, which I’ve never done before.  I think if we can get Ava out of the car relatively frequently to run around a bit, we’ll all […]

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I’ve only bought and sold a couple items on eBay over the years, but I have to say I find the place pretty fascinating.  I’m always amazed by the things people do and don’t bid on.  Items you think have no or very little value end up finding some funny niche and just confounding your […]

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I’m wrapped up in a project at work that’s going to keep me away from my desk all day for the whole week.  I only checked e-mail once during the day today!  What kind of life is that? So I was driving over to pick up our pizza last night (I had a Chicago-style, feta, […]

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