avablog

Anyone unfamiliar with the quote in the subject line of this post really, really needs to go check out The Young Ones (now on DVD!).  But I digress. I’ve been backing up all the video I have sitting around on MiniDV tapes to my NAS.  It’s been great going back over all the stuff I’ve […]

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grouse about how long Leah spends in front of the mirror, so long as she keeps her legs. Just weird.

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With all this talk lately of possibly moving to a new house, I’ve been thinking occasionally of the house in which I grew up. It’d be great if Leah and I could give Ava the kind of experience I had, but, then, maybe Ava wouldn’t have any interest in playing in the mud every day. […]

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And speaking of dogs (trust me, non-registered users, I was just speaking of dogs), here’s a shot of me, my mom, my brother, and our first dog, Zipper, taken sometime around…oh boy…uh, ’77? Zipper got her name from being really fast. She’d zip all over our back yard and hop the short fence between our […]

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So, I have this thing I do with Ava once in a while where I hold her really close and whisper, “Do you want to hear a secret?”  Then she whispers back, “Yes.”  And I say, “I love you.  Don’t tell!” So, this morning we’re all lying in bed together, just starting to wake up.  […]

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I hope I make it through the day.  Our staff is having breakfast with our president today at the Edgewater Grille, which is a restaurant located in a new hotel near our office.  Should be interesting. For lunch, we’re having our staff “holiday” gathering at the Olive Garden.  The lunch was scheduled before the breakfast, […]

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We made the mistake of giving Ava a yogurt-covered pretzel on a spin through our co-op a couple weeks back.  Now she’s all about yogurt-covered pretzels. The first time she asked for one, though, she said, “Can I have a yogurt kind of pretzel?” “A what?” I asked. “A yogurt kind of pretzel.” Now, for […]

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“Poop!” *laughter* “Poop!” *laughter* “Tell me a story!” “Tell me a story, please!” “Tell me a story about poop!” *sly grin* “Poop.” *laughter* Sure, it’s not Tavern on the Green, but it’s fun. Try not to laugh when your two-year-old becomes infatuated with saying “poop.” Just try it.

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This upgrade to the latest version of WordPress was the easiest yet. It’s especially nice to be able to do the update remotely using FTP and have it all work so smoothly. I only use a couple plugins, and as far as I know, they’re all working OK. And I love the fact that this […]

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All right. Here’s the point in our program when I geek out on my daughter’s brilliance. Look, you knew it was coming, right? Don’t act all surprised.

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We were at one of the local coffee houses this weekend, and I got a big kick out of looking at all the different laptops people lug out in public.  Lots and lots of Dells, which you’d expect.  A couple Apple units here and there.  I think I might’ve even seen a Sony.  But my […]

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I’ve misplaced the cable I need to get pictures off my camera, so we may go as long as two days without a moment of cuteness.  I know.  At least I can see Ava in the flesh everyday.  You, poor reader, must rely on this blog for your daily fix (aside from those of you […]

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We took Ava sledding this afternoon at a hill near our house.  She certainly is becoming an independent little thing.  It seems like she always wants to do things by herself, whether it’s shovel the sidewalk using the little plastic shovel her neighbor friend let her borrow, or pull the sled all the way to […]

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I feel like I should be getting college credit for having read it (no, I don’t usually read spam, but I was looking for an account confirmation e-mail that I thought might’ve been mistakenly killed). In its entirety:

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Leah and I heard tell recently of a child attending daycare at another facility in town who’s dropping the F bomb at school. It’s kinda fun to consider these little tykes wandering blind through this new forest of language, but there are obviously some dark parts of the woods they’d be better off avoiding.

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I was at Subway over lunch and noticed the branch I frequent no longer accepts travelers cheques.  Who pays for a sub with travelers cheques?  They’re also not taking any $50 or $100 bills, I expect because they’ve been hit by the recent “flood” of faux fitties and hundos in the area.  According to a […]

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This is a shot of me with my grandfather (mom’s dad) many years ago at Christmas. Here I am with the quintessential gift, a big red hook-and-ladder truck. It was great. If memory serves, it even had a working hose that squirted water! I wonder what ever happened to it. Today’s the kind of day […]

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I spotted Kevin a flickr pro account; no one should be without one. He’s putting up some pictures, slowly, and he got one up recently that shows the attic at his house that we spent the past weekend drywalling. It was mostly finished off before I arrived, so all Kevin and I had to do […]

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This is what our car looked like when we got up this morning: That was at 8. It’s been snowing steadily since then, and the winds are supposed to pick up as soon as the snow dies down. So, instead of risk the snowy and slippery roads this afternoon, we’ll wait until tomorrow morning and […]

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We had to drive three hours to see our first snow of the season, but we got it today in Madison.  It’s little more than a dusting, but Ava’s excited.  I see from looking at my Webcam that Iowa City got a light dusting today, too. Right now Ava’s at the fish store with Aunt […]

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