avablog

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 Compaq Presario running some version of Windows pre-2000, so coming to the MacBook was like jumping out of a Festiva and landing in a Veyron.

I took last Friday off to help Judy, too, but I also ended up going over to a friend’s house to get some plants from her garden that day. She’s a master gardener, so everything she had was in great shape and was quite gorgeous. I ended up with about 12 plastic bags filled with diggings from her yard, and I managed to get it all planted by the time Sunday evening rolled around. I also got our wren house cleaned out, painted some trim on the back of the house, relocated a big bunch of phlox to another area of the yard, and dismantled the Hummingbird feeder so I can get it cleaned up; it won’t be long before the Humingbirds show up looking for a snack. The last three days just flew by.

The weather was also beautiful all weekend. It was still enough that I was able to get some nice macro shots of one of the purple tulips that’s blooming in the yard right now. One of the last things I planted this weekend was a “carpet rose” bush that Leah bought using a gift certificate her sister gave her. It’s a nice plant that reportedly blooms from late spring to late summer, so we should have some pretty color over on the east side of the house once the tulips — and even the iris — are done.

Ava had a good weekend as well. Anytime she can get outside, she’s pleased, so the nice weather suited her to a T. Much to our puzzlement, though, Ava has returned to nursing after having abandoned it for a week or so. She’s been eating fine otherwise, and she hasn’t been sick, so we’re hard put to figure out what’s going on. That Ava…she’s always full of surprises.

Or at least to the 3/4-mile path between our house and daycare, which is where I’ll be towing Ava now that I got her a new bike helmet.

I’m also trying to brainstorm other low-traffic routes that I can access from our house. It’s not so easy, especially with high school still in session a mere two blocks from our house. But that’ll be over soon, and we’ll start to get our street back between 8 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. on weekdays.

Ava’s been in the Burley a couple times now and seems to like it OK. Her previous rides were a bit marred by a loose-fitting helmet that kept sliding down over her eyes. I expect to have that problem solved with her new headgear. Pictures soon (of course)!

I’m not sure what ever possessed me to think to sing this as a lullaby to Ava, but, well, I did, and she seems to like it. It always puts her to sleep in a couple minutes. Anyone who’s ever seen Jaws will know the tune.

Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies
Farewell and adieu to you ladies of Spain
For we’ve received orders to sail to New Bedford
And perhaps we shall never more see you again.

I finally managed to make a meal last night that Leah enjoyed.  Ava, not so much.  But Leah did mention a couple times that she liked what I cooked, so I thought I’d record it here for future reference.

We stopped at our local CoOp yesterday to ask about particular fish that might be more suitable than others for feeding to a toddler.  According to “the meat guy,” it’s best to stick with smaller, non-bottom-feeding fish, as they tend to absorb less of the nastiness that’s floating around out there in the sea.  We ended up with two nice tilapia filets and even a suggestion on what to cook it with.

One of the things I like best about fish is its ease of preparation (unless you’re cooking fresh-caught salmon or trout over a campfire, and even then you can pretty much just toss it on the coals at the edge of the fire and let it ride for a couple minutes).  I was at the Pike Place Fish Market a number of years ago and remember asking one of the guys who works there about the best way to cook fish.  “Squeeze a lemon half over a salmon filet, rub some salt and pepper into it, and throw it right on the grill.”  It may have been only a personal preference, but the Pike Place Market does have a number of tasty recipes for seafood.

Last night I grilled eggplant, portobello caps, and the aforementioned tilapia.  The tilapia got wrapped in foil with some salt, pepper, and thin lemon slices.  I treated the eggplant with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and the mushrooms got some oilve oil, soy sauce, and sesame oil brushed over them while they cooked (I should start earlier next time and do an honest marinade for the mushrooms).  Everything turned out really well.

I’m really looking forward to a lot of grilling this year.  Leah and I have signed up to take part of a vegetable share through a local CSA (same person I get my pig from each fall), so we should have all sorts of tasty things to eat all summer long.

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 excitement to gather it all up.

I usually try to give the birds and the bees plenty of space this time of year to carry out their biological imperative, but it’s not easy. When Kevin was here this past weekend, he and I were kneeling in the front yard, looking at some ground bee burrows, when a mating pair of bees fell out of the sky right at our feet. They didn’t take much notice of us, and we just sat there and let them go about their business.

Two evenings ago, I was out on the front porch with Ava when a couple cool-looking bugs crawled by connected at the abdomen. I went inside to get my camera and snapped off a couple shots of them while they did what bugs do this time of year. Again, they were pretty oblivious (who wouldn’t be?).

Meanwhile, the local male Cardinals are making an awful lot of noise as they try to drum up some female interest. With luck, we’ll get another pair nesting in our mock orange bush near the porch this year.

Leah mentioned a couple times over the weekend that it was one year ago that Ava had her first ear infection. Between that weekend and last October, she suffered through seven ear infections and finally ended up getting tubes put in, which stopped the infections (or at least the suffering that they cause).

This year was much, much nicer than last year. All of Ava’s grandparents and aunts and uncles came to see her for brunch on Sunday, and she even got to do a short Easter egg hunt between rain showers. As nice as Sunday was, Saturday’s weather surpassed it by a mile. Ava got to spend a lot of time with her Grandma G.G., Aunt Eesh, and Unc Kevin.

Kevin and I took a stroll downtown with our cameras Saturday morning while the girls went to Kindermusik and to Deluxe Bakery for some sweet treats. After Kevin and I returned home, he was generous enough to help me with a little yard work before everyone else returned. In the afternoon, Ava, G.G., Leah, and Rachel dyed eggs and frosted cookies. It was a very full day.

Before Rachel and Kevin left on Sunday I dug up some fern peony plants for them to take back to Madison. Rachel has the perfect spot picked out for them, apparently, so I hope they survived the transplant OK. If she can get them started and keep them alive, they should spread really nicely.

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 ever seen before, probably because I pruned back a couple of the larger standard peony plants.

This flower sure was a welcome sight after all of last night’s hail and wind and rain.

It was some night. Pictures of some storm damage are here in the recent photos group. These were taken by our neighbor Dave.

(10:24 a.m. update): I just added pictures to this group that I took on my bike ride in to work this morning. Some are blurry because I was pedalling and shooting at the same time.

More pictures. And some more at the Iowa City Press Citizen. Still more. Some shots of downtown from today.  And a couple more at flickr.  And again.  I think these were taken with a fisheye lens?  Lots, including some shots of the coming storm.  Just more, more, more….  Guess what?  Some good shots of St. Pat’s.  OK, I’m done.

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 grab some photos of the buds and blooms that are showing up all over the place.

The picture featured here is of the first thin leaves breaking out on a dogwood branch in the back yard. Unfortunately, this was actually a branch I’d trimmed from the rangy dogwood that stands at the border of our yard and the back neighbor’s place. The tree is really nice, but it’s getting crowded by a huge pussy willow, which is a shame, because it doesn’t have much room to grow as it needs to. I should probably take it out completely at some point, but the birds like it.

I have some more shots from last evening in the April 06 dailies gallery. Enjoy!

It’s a better way to tie a shoe!

Why was I wasting so much time with the old method all these years?  Gah!

And Steve was still sporting a turtleneck (note the hole in his right shoulder).  Woz looks sleepy.

I’m going to try something new with the comments on this blog, and it may not last. Up until today, I’ve allowed comments only from logged in users, which has kept my daily spam average pegged right at 0. It’s nice.

My Webalizer logs tell me that there are a lot of people reading this blog who aren’t commenting. Which is cool with me and certainly the norm across the blogosphere (I do hate that word so). But I thought I’d open things up a bit and accept comments from unregistered users. Here’s how it’s going to work: When you make a comment now, it’s going to get moderated by me (or by my anonymous partner). What this means is that when you post a comment, I’ll get an e-mail alerting me to that fact. If your comment isn’t spam (and why would you do that?), I’ll approve it, and it’ll show up on the blog. I’m never too far from my e-mail, unless it’s the middle of the night here in the Midwest, and even then I’m still physically near it, just not mentally near.

So, we’ll see how it goes. I’ve heard spam horror stories, so if this effort starts reading like a Clive Barker novel, we’re back to registered users only.

Last evening was only my second grilling event of the season. I know people who grill out all through the winter, but that’s not my idea of grilling. I like to be able to stand in my driveway with my flipflops on and watch the bees buzz around the iris shoots in my flower bed. Or laugh at the neighbor kids as they cruise up and down the front walk over and over again on their scooters. I could just never get into the whole “running in and out of the cold” thing just to enjoy a brat, burger, or chop. Besides, a lot of the stuff I like to grill requires fairly close attention toward the end of its cooking time, so I’d have to stand in the snow next to my grill in order to have things turn out the way I like. In the spring and summer? No such worries.

Witness last evening. I grilled up a couple burgers for Ava, a chunk of Coho filet for Leah, and four gorgeous pork chops for myself. Georgie brought me some peach grilling sauce from her recent trip to Savannah, and I was eager to try it on some pork. It was fantastic. Fortunately, Leah’s not a fan of pork chops, so I end up having them all to myself. I also broiled some asparagus in the oven, as there was no room for it all on the grill (my only gripe with grilling asparagus is that it takes up so much room on the grill). It still turned out very nicely.

I was at one of the local Hy Vee grocery stores the other evening picking up some supplies, and I happened upon one lone bag of Fiery Habanero Doritos. Score! This snack started out in limited release on the West Coast (isn’t it always thus?), and I managed to grab a couple bags when we were in Colorado last month for spring break.

I first saw mention of the chip over at Cabel Sasser’s blog (which is a darn fine blog) and became intrigued. Could these chips be as hot as he claimed? Well, they’re hot. Hotter than any chip I’ve ever had. If you eat five or six of these things in a row, you’ll end up with a nice warm glow all over the inside of your mouth.

For you locals, I got my bag in aisle 7 of the First Ave. store, but as I say, it was the only bag there. The big Doritos display is in the next aisle over, a curiosity I didn’t take time to explore as I hustled my prize up to the checkout.

My mother has generously provided for a new Burley for Ava to ride around in once she gets a helmet. Today I put it together and got it hooked up to my recumbent in preparation for the biking season ( I’ve been a bad biker and haven’t been on my Volae all winter).

This is a really, really nice carrier. And the build was a snap, which is great. After I got everything put together, I went over to the local hardware store and got some supplies to create a fancy light pole for the back of my recumbent (since it sits so low, you know).

I took a quick spin up the street after everything was hooked up, and it seems to work great. I’m hoping to be able to drop off Ava at daycare on my way to work on the days I bike, which would be great. She was outside with me while I was getting things put together, and she kept asking me to put her in the Burely. I hope this means she’ll like it.

The only problem is that there’s a tremendous amount of car traffic around here in the morning. I think I can work around it if I can manage to get out of here early enough, before the high school kids start showing up for school. My plan is to take Ava to daycare in the Burley and then leave it there while I ride on to work. Shouldn’t be a problem. You’ll know when I know whether it works.

Or something like it.

Yesterday Ava was outside in the yard with us when she started to fuss. It was weird, because she’d been playing around quietly by herself for an hour and didn’t appear to have any reason to be upset. We took her inside as her crying got worse. Then, out of the blue, she threw up. Then she threw up again. Over the next 90 minutes she threw up a total of 7 times. In between, she took a couple of one-hour naps.

She woke up from her last nap and seemed good as new. By 9 (way past her bed time) she was running around busy as ever, talking up a storm and being cute as can be. She slept all night and today is carrying on like nothing ever happened. Whatever. Kids. What’re you gonna do?

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 yard are conspiring, as they always do, to open in unison.

Two days ago, when Ava was helping me in the yard, she walked up to one of the daffodils and plucked its readying bloom right off. Then she grabbed another and did the same. She had her hand on a third before I got to her, but it was spared. She has a thing or two to learn about spring.

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 stoked).

Greg and I were chatting last night (he has his own attractive wife to brag about), and at one point I mentioned that my old lady needed to use my iBook for a bit, interrupting our conversation. He scoffed at my “old lady” comment and was incredulous when I revealed Leah’s age, thinking surely she was only 25. ‘Tis true, she doth evince a youthful glowe.

So today Leah sent along a couple proofs taken by a friend of hers who’s one of the professional photogs here at the office. I think they turned out great. I never dreamed I’d live in a house full of pretty, smart, funny women. I did work at a sorority house for a couple years in college, but that wasn’t really the same.

In deference to my in-laws, most of whom have a fairly low tolerance for technology (with one notable exception), I don’t make too many computer-related posts on this blog. But Apple did something today that stands to change the way people buy and use personal computers, and that’s big news.

Starting today, you can officially (as in, Apple sanctions and supports your activity) run OS X and Microsoft Windows XP on your Intel-based Macintosh computer. This kind of functionality has existed on the Mac for a long time, but it’s come through virtualization (basically, in software rather than in hardware), which means the Windows applications would run slowly and weren’t always able to use the Mac’s video drivers and other interfaces. No more. Now that the guts of the Mac are the same as the guts of a Dell, Windows can run on an iMac just as it does on a Dimension desktop.

In typical Apple fashion, their marketing copy is as snarky as ever:

Macs use an ultra-modern industry standard technology called EFI to handle booting. Sadly, Windows XP, and even the upcoming Vista, are stuck in the 1980s with old-fashioned BIOS. But with Boot Camp, the Mac can operate smoothly in both centuries.

Windows running on a Mac is like Windows running on a PC. That means it’ll be subject to the same attacks that plague the Windows world.

As big as this news is now, it’s going to get even bigger when Apple announces its pro desktop models using the Intel processor. Let the benchmarking begin….

(And now back to your regularly-scheduled programming.)