avablog

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 […]

[Read more →]

Sometimes I think Ava must be one of the most-photographed kids in the world.  An exaggeration, sure, but it seems I’m just as used to seeing her displayed on a small LCD as not. Even with all the shots I’m taking at home, Leah still likes to have “professional” shots taken on milestones like birthdays […]

[Read more →]

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 […]

[Read more →]

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, […]

[Read more →]

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 […]

[Read more →]

Pictures. More later. XOXO, Us

[Read more →]

I call them “buzzer bugs” when I ask Ava if she can hear them. I don’t know if it’s been the warm weather or what, but I can’t recall the cicadas being this loud…ever. I was out in the yard the other night, and the racket was nearly deafening. I’ve been finding these spent shells […]

[Read more →]

After some futzing around, the photo gallery is now back online. I haven’t added any new pictures in a couple days, though I have been taking pictures. I’m thinking now that I’m going to archive all my photos on Flickr. This approach has a couple advantages. I have a pro account there (I jumped on […]

[Read more →]

Of the three hard disk drives I have sitting around running at any one time, the one I’m most worried about dying is the one that holds my photo archive. We had a thunderstorm last week that caused a power outage at the house.  Everything came back up just fine, except for the drive that […]

[Read more →]

It was a busy one. Our friend Judy was in town to receive some instruction on using her new 15″ MacBook Pro. It sure is a dandy little machine. I’m really looking forward to seeing what Apple comes up with for the iBook replacement. Judy really caught on quick. She was coming from an old […]

[Read more →]

This time of year it seems like everything that can procreate is procreating. And rightly so. The water is running and tender shoots of grass are everywhere. All of my flowers and even the trees are loaded down with pollen, and fat bumblebees sometimes bounce right off our windows with dull little thumps in their […]

[Read more →]

The year’s first tulip burst open this morning in the back yard. I really do like this variety a lot, with its bright red petals and yellow center. A quick tour of the yard revealed a number of other tulips on the verge of blooming. Also, we have more fern peonies this year than I’ve […]

[Read more →]

It was a bit windy all day yesterday, which made two things more difficult than usual: Biking (west) and getting clean macro shots. There was a lot of nice light in the sky last evening as we were getting Ava ready for bed, so I took the opportunity to get out in the yard and […]

[Read more →]

Thick fog lay between the houses and in the branches of the bushes and trees on our block this morning. The air is heavy with the aroma of budding leaves, and thin twigs grow slightly less-thin as sap runs under their delicate bark. The daffodils that grow in clumps at the border of the back […]

[Read more →]

Maybe I’ll go to Hell for bragging about my wife. Maybe it’s just unseemly.  So be it. When I look at Leah I feel like Patrick Dempsey in Can’t Buy Me Love when the hottest girl in school says she’ll go out with him (yeah, he has to pay for the honor, but he’s still […]

[Read more →]

It’s getting pretty exciting around here. Today’s gorgeous sun and warm temperatures were just too much for this daffodil to take, so it started to spring open. There are a couple others nearby, as well as some fern peony shoots and a bunch of thick, hearty tulip leaves that have little nibble marks all up […]

[Read more →]

We had a nice weekend in IL. The two basketball games we watched weren’t very good, and George Mason’s improbable bid for a national title has ended. Too bad. So sad. I’ve got new pictures up in the gallery, which, as it happens, has been updated to version 2.1. I’m not sure I love the […]

[Read more →]

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 […]

[Read more →]

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 […]

[Read more →]

Ava got her first stomach flu yesterday, which wasn’t fun for anyone involved. She’s much better today, but I stayed with her at home this morning in order to adhere to the daycare’s policy of a 24-hour banishment for anyone who tosses chunks (little known fact: Leah and Rachel are emetophobes). Also, the A620 came […]

[Read more →]