avablog

Ava slept late this morning.  She was in our bed (which is where she often ends up after waking up in a fuss sometime during the night), and as I was getting ready for work, I stopped for a second to watch her breathe all stretched out on the rumpled sheets. I often wonder if […]

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I was at home with Ava on Tuesday while she got over a little rough patch. We think she’s been teething. In any case, she seems much happier now. It was a gorgeous day, so I’d planned to make some headway on a project I’d come up with for the yard. I bought a new […]

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I’m figuring out (over and over) that parenting can probably best be defined as a state of perpetual inadequacy punctuated by brief episodes of competence.  Some people are more inadequate than others, of course.  Thankfully, despite all my shortcomings, Ava appears to be growing up to be pretty bright.  She’s certainly vivacious, and she knows […]

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So, I put our Volvo up on autotrader.com. Yesterday morning I got an e-mail from a gentleman claiming he’s working on behalf of a client who is interested in buying the car. The client — who thus far has remained nameless during our e-mail exchanges — is a diplomat representing Canada at NATO. Fine with […]

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I spent a fair amount of time (and sacrificed one or two skin cells in the process) finishing up our vegetable garden this past weekend.  The official roster now stands at tomatoes, jalapenos, green and red peppers, basil, snap peas, beans, “regular” peas, carrots, cukes, and onions.  I think I’ve got four or five different […]

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I was out of town at a conference yesterday and without e-mail access for an entire day.  There were a couple new Dells in various locations where we were conferring, but I wasn’t that desperate to check my spam e-mail. The conference site was the Hotel Pattee in delightful Perry, IA.  I’d actually been here […]

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What do you get when you put up to 2GHz of pure Intel Core Duo power, an iSight camera, Front Row, iLife ’06, and a 13-inch glossy widescreen display into a sleek case? More than you thought possible for less than you thought possible. Meet MacBook, starting at $1099.

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1998 Volvo V70 Cross Country, 81,000 miles, AWD turbo.  Tell your friends.  More pics here.

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on the list of the greatest things about an iPod is the fact that it can drop a song through your earholes completely out of the blue that courses through your body like a bad case of Dengue fever.  But in a good way.  I don’t claim any understanding of the algorithm that runs the […]

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One well-known method of psychological torture is to slowly build a captive’s expectations of a particular outcome through repeated, similar actions, then to subvert those expections suddenly and without notice.  When coupled with the stress of physical abuse, this process causes a deep mental destabilization that tends to make the subject more reliant on his […]

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I love a good hamburger as much as the next guy. Always have. Almost since I can remember, I’d watch my dad pan fry or grill burgers — depending on the season — to share with all of the friends my brother and I would have over at our house. Dill pickle slices, onion, relish, […]

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Last night our neighbor Q came over with some good news (his name isn’t really Q; it’s shorthand for his last name, which is Cusick. Get it?). He and his girlfriend Shannon are our backyard neighbors. There’s another neighbor whose yard is adjacent to both of ours, and she’s almost never, ever out in her […]

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It irritates me when it rings, and at our house, it rings a lot. Leah’s a phone person, which is fine. She likes to talk, period, but she’s also very close to her family and friends, most of whom live out of town, so she’s frequently on the phone. I prefer e-mail or even IM. […]

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…there’s always someone who has it worse. I was trying to find some time between rain showers this past weekend to put in some plantings that Leah and I bought on Saturday.  Just as I’d get ready to head out the door, another monsoon would hit, complete with strong wind gusts.  Then I’d get involved […]

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