avablog

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, but when the president calls….

Grandpa Chuck is coming over for dinner, and he’s bringing some frozen Pagliai’s pizzas he got as a gift.  No cooking today!

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 the uninitiated among us, these are the moments in parenthood when it’s impossible not to smile and bend down to give your kid a big hug.

“You mean a yogurt-covered pretzel?”

“Yeah.  Yogurt kind of pretzel.”

“Yogurt-cov-ered.  Not kind of.”

“Cov-ered.”

“Right.  OK.  Here you go.”

*Cut to scene of little girl exiting kitchen, happily clutching yogurt-covered pretzel*

“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.

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 version’s release name is Ella. Classy.

There’s some house non-news to share. Leah and I had our first price conversation with our neighbor, and now we’re crunching numbers to see if we can afford to live in an 1,800 sq. ft. house. I’m what you would call fiscally conservative, and when I owe a debt, I feel like I’m carrying around a lead weight in my stomach. Not fun. Our parents are extraordinarily generous and kind, but they haven’t worked all their lives just to have their kids come along and gut their savings (“gut” may be a bit strong, but it’d be nice to be able to buy a new house on our own, with no help other than from the bank).  There’ll be more news on the house exchange soon, I’m sure, which you’ll know when we know.

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 very favorite was a Compaq (anyone remember Compaq?) that was easily the size of a briefcase.

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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 in I.C., who always stand a chance of catching a glimpse of her in the wild).

I’ll try to get by The Shack at noon to see if they have what I need.

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 the hill (which we put an end to when it became clear we wouldn’t get to the hill before dark).

Ava and I went down the hill together the first time.  When we got to the top for the second go, she wanted to do it alone.  Leah wasn’t thrilled about the idea.  Ava was one of the younger kids there, and most of the other kids her age were going down the hill with their parents.  I was thrilled that she wanted to try it.  So, I set Ava in the plastic tobaggon, showed her where to hang on, and gave her a small push.  She zipped right down the slope without tipping over, finally coming to rest just past her mom, who had run to the bottom of the hill to wait for Ava.  She wanted to go again.  And she did, a couple times.  It was interesting to watch her watching the other kids to see what they were doing.

Independence is great, and I’m thrilled that Ava is pretty confident.  But it already makes me a little nervous about the day she wants to stay over at a friend’s house for the first time or drive by herself or go off to college.  Must…live…in…the…moment….

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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A couple days ago, Ava was sitting at the table eating when she started saying what sounded like “don’t smoke!”  We asked her where she heard it, and she said her Gramary had said it.  “Why did she say that?,” we asked.  Ava rambled on about being out on a walk, so I figured they must’ve come across a cigarette butt or something.

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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 local paper:

Counterfeiters, most likely experienced and just passing through the state, have struck at least three Iowa cities and flooded the market with fake $50 bills, Iowa City police reported Wednesday.

So far, somewhere between 12 and 18 fakes have been identified in Iowa City and Coralville. Businesses that have been targeted include Hollywood Video, Cost Cutters, Mr. Movies, and several stores in the Coral Ridge Mall.

I’m a huge fan of debit cards.  HUGE.  And the story above is only one of the many reasons why.

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 that really makes me long for those simpler times. Leah and I met with our neighbor last night to discuss our crazy house trading idea, and the numbers weren’t so good. It’s frustrating, and we need to sit down and figure out exactly what kind of budget we can live with to be able to assume another $500 or so on top of our current house payment. And that doesn’t include the possible addition of another child care payment if we have another youngin’. Whoowhee! I think it was Jay Z — or was it Sartre — who said it best: Mo money = mo problems.

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 was take care of some of the problem areas. And in a place like this, there is never a shortage of problem areas. Hopefully Kevin will get some pictures of the work we did and get those up for comparison.

Kevin’s having a guy come by today to give him an estimate on taping and mudding the room; I can’t wait to hear what he has to say. Hopefully it won’t be something like, “Did you have a group of Chimps hang the drywall in this place, or what?”

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 venture out. Sure, we’ll miss a half day of work, but that’s just the way it goes sometimes.

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 Rachel and Leah; we think she’s going to surprise us with a couple new fish when she gets home.

There’s almost nothing I hate more than driving in winter weather.  Well, bad winter weather.  Last March Leah and I drove back through Nebraska with Ava during a miserable snow storm.  We got out of North Platte within hours of the area being hit by over three feet of snow.

Our drive to Madison today was characterized by a steady drizzle.  At times it got heavy enough to create ice on the windshield, which was great.  After a while it became clear that the road could well be getting as icy as my windshield.  But, we made it through all right.  And tomorrow Kevin and I will commence hanging drywall.  I’m hoping to weather forecast for Monday doesn’t come to pass, as it’s calling for snow down Iowa City way.

The WWW’s killer app.  I’ve been waiting for this since 1990.  Why didn’t I think of it?

So Leah mentioned the other day that the sound coming out of our entertainment system was inadequate, somehow.  She was right.  We had some family over tonight, and I was firing up some Jazz for background music while we supped.  Sure enough, we were missing audio out of the left front channel.  Time to troubleshoot.

I pulled the (admittedly) prodigious rack away from the wall and checked all the connectors on the back of the receiver.  Everything looked OK.  I disconnected the right front speaker and switched it out with the left front.  Nothing.  No sound from left front.

So I went back to the connections on the back of the receiver, and while I was down on the floor, I noticed the balance knobs on the front of the receiver were off to one side.  The balance knob.  Jesus.  I managed to fix our sound problem by turning the balance knob back to middle so that both front speakers were getting the same signal.  Good old Ava.  I hadn’t thought at all about her monkeying around on the floor and futzing around with the front of the stereo.  Now I’m older and wiser.

Really, I don’t measure stuff that often.  Except when I’m cooking a recipe I don’t know well, in which case I have my little measuring spoons at the ready.

But then I read this story today, and it really hit home that Ava’s going to grow up in a mostly metric world.  Her old man may as well get familiar with meters, liters, and kilograms.  For starters, I weigh 88.4505122 kilos and am 1.8542 meters tall.  Hey, this is going to be easy!

Leah and I were lying in bed this morning at 6:30, alone (what a luxury!), when we heard the pitter patter of tiny feet coming from Ava’s room.  Sure enough, she’d hopped out of her bed by herself for the first time and walked over to our room.  She had her dog Sissy with her to keep her company on the trip.

Our bed is too high for her to climb into (at least toting Sissy), so Leah hoisted her up so she could snuggle with us.  We’d been waiting for this day ever since Ava started sleeping in her big girl bed.  Hopefully she won’t be getting up at all hours and walking around the house on her own.  Actually, as long as she doesn’t come in and wake me up, I’m fine with her walking around the house on her own.