avablog

Today seemed like a good day for this particular blast from the past: Thing is, I can’t tell for sure if that’s me or my brother my mom’s holding there. I’m fairly certain it’s me, but the face looks a litte more round than mine. Anyway, it looks even snowier in that picture than it […]

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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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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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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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I don’t know if you can be a parent and not lament at least a little bit for the world in which your kids will grow up. Maybe it’s simply because of the aura around our carefree youth made it seem like there were no troubles, or at least that there was always someone around to handle those troubles for us. Maybe it’s because, as adults, we see so much more potential for all the nasty things going on in the world to affect our lives. Maybe those are the same thing.

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As I’ve mentioned, I was born in Madison, WI, in 1970. Shortly thereafter, we moved to Evanston, IL, where my brother was in 1972. I don’t recall a thing about living in Madison, though something about the place seems vaguely familiar when we now visit the place where my family used to live there.

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Every year, about this time, I find myself wondering about the average amount of dead leaves a typical Oak (White, Red, Pin, whatever) puts off over the course of its life.  Aside from causing all the raking I do, it seems like it must be a pretty significant amount of biomass.  Couple hundred pounds?  Can’t […]

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It snowed yesterday.  SNOWED!  October 11.  Well, I don’t know if a meteorologist would call what fell from the sky snow, but it was white, and it didn’t look like sleet. And I suppose Iowans, by nature, are always ready for this weather, especially in the fall.  Spring’s the same way.  Cold, windy, and gray […]

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We had a great weekend in Madison visiting Aunt Rachel and Uncle Kevin. As usual, our time there was full of good food and drink, walks, coffee, and at least one knock-down, drag-out fight between the Klevar sisters. After we got settled in on Friday evening, we dined at a nearby Thai restaurant that Rachel […]

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Last evening, Leah, Ava, and I walked downtown to have pizza. It was a gorgeous stroll. The restaurant was pretty crowded when we arrived, but we were able to get a table after only a short wait. Ava loved standing out on the sidewalk and watching all the foot traffic go by. After dinner, we […]

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This is a confounding time of year, weather-wise. I’m starting to get this nervous feeling that I need to take advantage of every minute of mild, sunny weather, before the cold rain and then snow of winter sets in. Take yesterday, for example. A couple friends and I biked over to the Amana Colonies to […]

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As I write this, it’s 6:08 a.m. and pretty much pitch black outside.  The darkness, combined with the cool temperatures at night, is making it fairly impossible lately to get out of bed in the morning with any sort of conviction.   Compounding the problem is that Ava’s been sleeping soundly through the night for the […]

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Words hardly do justice to the splendid meal we had at Simone’s Plain and Simple last Friday night. It was everything I hoped it would be. And a little bit more. Here’s the menu: An assortment of Hors d’oeuvres ‘Gougère bourguignonne’ – a wreath of puff pastry with mild Swiss cheese ‘Estouffade de Bison’ – […]

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I wish I could’ve come up with a pithy title for this post. Yesterday morning I noticed a bunch of weird orange…stuff on the ground in the park next to my office. I was about 150 yards away, so I couldn’t make it out very clearly. I figured if it’d been trash, someone would’ve come […]

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So much for intuition.  I decided to leave the planter with the chrysalis on it outside until the butterfly revealed itself, and this morning I stepped out on the front porch to find it gone.  All that was left of it was one thin green section lying near a couple dark splotches on the pavement […]

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As you know, I’ve been eating delicious little cherry tomatoes out of my garden for a couple weeks now, but I’ve yet to harvest one of those nice, big, meaty fruits that really make the tomato’s name. Well, it looks like it won’t be long now. These two beauties are probably only a couple hours […]

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So we’ve a little insect drama going on at our house, and I figured I’d present it in pictures: It showed up on the edge of one of our hibiscus planters the other day and worked its way around the drip shelf five or six times. It finally found a spot it liked and started […]

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Pictured above are some tasty treats from my garden. In the foreground are a couple Sun Gold cherry tomatoes, and in the back is a Sunsweet F1 cucumber. The Sunsweet was a surprise; I’d never seen one before, and at first I was sure we’d been sold some mutant seed. But they’re actually very good, […]

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Here’s a shot of my brother-in-law Kevin from one of our hikes in Grand Marais last week: And here’s a shot from one of our hikes in Grand Marais back in 2003: Rachel, Kevin’s wife, has now threatened to do away with the t-shirt featured here. I anticipate a major battle shaping up. Kevin’s stated […]

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