avablog

Send me an e-mail that asks me to send it along to (x#) other people.

I’m sure that something really cool happens if I add my name to the list and pester 10 of my friends to do the same, but on the chance that even one of these people finds these kinds of things half as annoying as I do, I stomp on these e-mails and dump them as soon as I get them.

If you insist on mailing me a message like this, try to include something cool or useful so it’s not a complete waste of my time.

I’ve decided to remove the login requirement for getting to the blog. What this means is that you’ll no longer have to log in just to get to some blog content. If you want to see the juicy posts about Ava, though, you will have to login. Here’s how that works: In the menu on the right you’ll see a “login” link; it’s there…scroll down a bit. Click it, then log in. You’ll see a “dashboard” page, and in the upper left will be avablog and “view site.” Just click on “view site,” and you’re in.

If you’re seeing this post and you don’t have a login, go ahead and register. As long as I know who you are, we’ll get you an account in no time.

Enjoy.

Yes, this blog is still in production!

I upgraded the software on the server and reinstalled everything, so you’ll notice a few glitches here and there for a while. Persevere!

More to come….

I hopped on the scale yesterday morning and was gratified to see it read 183.4 lbs. That’s down from 200 two months ago.

You’re asking yourself, “But how did you do it? Atkins? Starvation?” Neither. I’ve identified three key areas that resulted in my successful bid to shed my winter weight gain:

1. No beer
2. More biking
3. Smaller meals

Well, maybe not no beer, but I cut way back, sad as that prospect is. I’ve been biking to and from work, sometimes even over the lunch hour, as much as possible.

But the smaller meals is the real foundation of the plan. As I pointed out to Leah’s family when we were sitting down to a meal of Mabe’s pizza in Decorah recently (imagine a bunch of Norwegians trying to replicate a Totino’s frozen pizza by hand, and doing a poor job of it), instead of ordering myself a large pizza and consuming it all in one sitting, I’ll just have three or four pieces. I eat more veggies and fruit. Cup of green tea every morning and a banana or whatever else is around and quick; I fried up two XL eggs this morning and had half a banana.

In the end it’s really just a matter of discipline. Did I really need to eat eight hot dogs at a sitting? No. Of course now that the biking has kicked my metabolism up a notch, there’s more room for indulging now and again if I feel like it. I’m just glad that it’s summer and there’ll be so many good things to indulge in when the mood does strike. I think I could probably eat BBQ chicken for every meal and not get tired of it.

The most important development to arise from this process has been Leah’s banishment of my “Big Boy” pants to the deepest, most remote reaches of our closet. They’ve been replaced by what I’ve dubbed my “Little Boy” pants, which Leah picked up for me recently at the mall. They’re exactly like my Big Boy pants in every way, save they’re two waist sizes smaller.

Thanks to my good pal Kevin, I now have a pretty cool calendar app that you can see via the Web.

Here’s how it works: Leah and/or I update our calendar here at home using Apple’s calendaring app, iCal. There are other applications you can use on other platforms, I just happen to use a Mac. The second the calendar is updated in iCal, it writes a calendar file to a folder in the directory on my computer that holds the files that you all can see on the Web. I set up a symlink that copies the content of this file to another file in a different directory that enables it to be displayed in a Web browser. It all seems to work pretty well.

I figure now everyone can keep up to date on where our family will be when, and why. You can also access the calendar from the link in the menu at right. Enjoy!

So I take Friday off and spend the last three days working in the yard. Weeding. Digging. Moving wire plant baskets. Carrying bucket after bucket of river rock and sand. Laying dozens of feet of bed edging. And of course it’s not until I’m all done and Leah asks for a breast pad do I manage to gouge my finger almost down to the bone on a little piece of metal up inside our recessed cabinet in the hallway. I mean this puppy was deep. Just a *bit* more pressure when I was going for the pad would’ve sent that little blade right through to my bone.

For a breast pad.

My first Ava-related injury! And on her 7-month birthday, too. How fitting.

The last couple days I’ve been scanning a lot of old pictures. There are many, many pictures of me in various stages of development, from 1 year right on up through grad school commencement. It’s been a real nostalgic trip through the past; I even have some pictures of my mom as a baby.

It was obvious pretty quickly that the majority of the images I handled were taken by my grandmother. Her photographic fecundity surpassed mine by miles. With six grandchildren all in the same general age group, every Christmas turned into a photo op to rival the red carpet at the Golden Globes. Every time we saw her, it wasn’t long before our faces were cleaned and our hair was slicked back in preparation for another shoot. The holidays were especially big events, and every year my grandmother would line all the kids up, according to height, in front of her garage door and take a picture.

As my brother and I got older, we’d concoct funny poses every time my grandmother pointed her camera our way. Often we’d make like we were examining some object or other in great detail and with all our concentration. My grandmother seemed not to care much, so long as we were in the frame somewhere.

As I upload all these pictures of the flowers in our yard and of Ava, it occurs to me that my grandmother really would’ve loved this Web site. She would’ve loved looking at every one of these pictures of Ava and her little smiles and stretches. I never lose sight of the fact that — even if we take some of them for granted now — someday we’re going to be really glad to have all these images of our early lives together.

Must’ve been that 80-degree day and all the sun yesterday that convinced these daffodils it was time to make an appearance. I’ve been watching my flower bed every day as these leaves sprang up from the ground and grew taller and taller. As of last evening the stems had started to bend over just a bit under the weight of the developing petals, but the blossoms hadn’t opened up.

One of our backyard neighbors, Susan, has bunches and bunches of rather plain yellow daffodils growing in various spots across her lawn, but I prefer this variety. The blossoms are asymmetrical and have this great, heavy texture to them. It’s also nice that the petals are two shades of yellow.

So far, the daffodils are the frontrunners in the flower garden. There’s an old tulip that’s just about to bloom, but I don’t think it’s one of those my mom and I planted last fall. I’ve also noticed that the big patch of peonies I thought I’d removed completely to make way for the daffodils isn’t quite gone. There are a couple stragglers that have pushed up through the mulch and are now mingling with the new flowers. I was going to pull them, but I’m thinking now maybe I’ll leave them to see if they bloom at all. It’d be kind of cool to have some big, red blossoms sitting amongst the yellow and scarlet of the other plants.

My honeysuckle is also looking very good after the aggressive trimming I gave it last year. I’m very eager to see what it does over the next couple weeks.

I was kicking myself at about 11 o’clock today. The sun was shining bright, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. It was 70 degrees out. I would’ve ridden my bike to work if I thought it was going to turn out that nice, but the forecast called for thunderstorms. I thought the weatherman had fooled me again.

But in the space of half an hour a wide gray sheet of higher-level clouds started to roll in from the west. Shortly thereafter, larger, lower, nastier-looking clouds followed along and the wind picked up to a dull roar. Deadwood fell from the trees, and the last dry leaves of fall raced down the streets and across open lots following jagged, frenzied paths.

I was just picking Leah up from daycare when the full force of the storm blew through. It was a beauty. Even bereft of leaves, the scraggly canopies of the trees near the daycare whipped back and forth and bent against the force of the gale. After a couple seconds the rain began to fall in sheets of huge, heavy drops that flew vertically through the air.

It was all tremendously exciting. And brief. After only a couple minutes, the rain had stopped, and the sky brightened in the west. I was hoping my flowers at home had enjoyed at least a small drink. Every day another sign that summer is right around the corner.

It must’ve been back in the early 80s when my grandmother first introduced me to an Apple ][e. Something clicked (and it was more profound than a mouse button). I suppose if she would’ve gotten us a Commodore or some other box I might be making $250,000 a year right now, if I weren’t retired and living on an island somewhere.

I used computers on and off, then, through junior high and high school. But it wasn’t until college and my Mac SE FDHD that I realy started getting into computers. That was the summer of 1989.

After the SE came the LCIII and its infamous pizza box design. That sucker ran at 25 MHz!! The LC III made way eventually for one of the fruity iMacs, which was replaced by one of my favorite Macs, the iMac DVSE in graphite. After I’d had that for a while, I was lured into another Mac purchase — and my first portable — when the iBook SE (FireWire) was released in Key Lime. I came to like this computer even more than my iMac DV (which is still in service at a friend’s house). I finally sold the Key Lime on eBay (and got a great price for it).

The Key Lime really marked a turning point, as it awakened me to the wonders of wireless computing. For a while there I’d even sworn off desktop systems altogether. After selling the Key Lime I picked up a 900 MHz G3 iBook, the last of the G3s. That’s what I’m using now, and it’s been pretty solid. Thinking back now, it’s downright miraculous I haven’t had more problems with all these computers than I have. The latest iBook was the first one that ever had to go back to Apple for anything (bad logic board). That was fixed promptly and satisfactorily.

The 900 MHz iBook was also that machine on which I started messing around with serving Web pages from home. I built a Gallery site and started adding pictures to it so family and friends could keep up on our lives. I bought myself a SLiMP3 device and started serving music online to selected, high-quality individuals.

As my digital photography and music obsessions grew, it was becoming clearer that I needed a dedicated machine for hosting all this stuff. First I built a PC with tons of invaluable technical and hardware assistance from Kevin. It’s a dandy machine when it’s not running Windows.

After the PC I came across a good deal for a G4 Cube, a computer I’d always admired from a distance. I bought it, dropped a larger, faster hard drive in it and bumped up the ram to 1GB, and the nicheplayer.net server was born (don’t tell Mediacom). This blog is just the latest addition to the server.

Through it all, I’ve had my eye out for solid, good quality hardware that wouldn’t give me too much trouble. I’ve been lucky. In fact, I’m starting to think that I’m just too darned lucky. So lucky that I’m wondering, for example, if I’ll ever have to buy another digital camera. The model I own now is my trusty Canon A70. I’ve taken well over 5,000 pictures with it. I’ve carried it around in my backpack and bike bag without a case. It took a four-foot drop onto a ceramic tile floor, cracking open its case and fouling the lens’ telescoping mechanism, but I’m damned if it hasn’t now fixed itself! I just popped the case back together, and the lens would make a disconcerting grinding noise every time I powered on the A70, but that only lasted a couple weeks. Now it’s like nothing ever happened to it.

Well, almost. A couple times lately I’ve taken shots that just haven’t come out right. Usually I’d chalk it up to user error, but closer examination of the image reveals that there’s definitely something going on with the camera. I don’t know if it’s the flash, or the lenses, or the sensor, or what, but I think this may be the beginning of the end of the A70 (Lord knows I’ve been wrong before).

And though I’ve really enjoyed this camera, there are some really compelling models out now that would make great replacements. It’s amazing how much camera goodness you can get for not a whole lot of dough. My current plan is to baby this A70 as much as I can until it just flat out stops performing. I took a series of macro shots with it last night, and it still seems to be doing all right. Now I just have to pray that Canon doesn’t come out with anything too tasty before this camera dies. Please don’t come out with something too tasty, Canon. Please?

I’ve been thinking about the purpose of blogs. Or at least this blog.

And I’ve come to the conclusion that this particular blog is really meant mostly for the dissemination of information about our daughter, along with tidbits about our daily lives. Set the world on fire? Probably not.

So, in the spirit of isolation and fear of the unknown, the blog is being locked down to all but registered users as of this Friday. I have the e-mail registration issue fixed, so click that link and get your registration in while you still can (you might not be missing anything if you don’t, but remember, Leah can make a grocery list sound good).

Yesterday was a pretty exciting day. Well, the small span between arriving home from work and preparing dinner, at least.

I grabbed the yard waste bin from the garage and started removing all the dried Oak leaves that I’d spread over our flower beds before this last cold snap. There was lots to see.

One of the things I was most excited about were my two varieties of bee balm, which are already showing signs of getting an early start on the summer. My red, or “domestic,” bee balm is an acquisition from Grandma Georgie’s neighbors in Decorah. It’s a gangly plant with long, scarlet petals. I put in only two or three single plants late last year, but already I’m seeing lots of small green leaves cropping up from the shoots the bee balm has sent off. The plants I had last year were so tall and thin, they didn’t stand up very well to wind and rain. I’m hoping that this new breed is a bit heartier and will give the hummingbirds more to aim for. Also of note regarding this variety of bee balm is that it can be used for cooking. Not surprising, really, since it’s a member of the mint family.

I also have a purple, or “native,” version of bee balm that I bought at a nursery in Decorah last year (it was a big summer for plants). This is my favorite of the two varities, and it appears to be spreading at the same pace as its scarlet cousin. After this summer I may have to split that planting and relocate part of it; as far as I’m concerned, you can’t really have too much bee balm, especially when you’re trying to attract hummingbirds and bees.

The other exciting appearance is the columbine I planted as a transplant from my mom’s front yard (again) last summer. I’ve always loved columbine; the leaves and stems have a great, delicate look to them, and the blossoms are exotic.

What I didn’t know about columbine was that it springs up in these beautiful little sprigs of soft purple leaves and stems. I wasn’t even sure what I was looking at when I uncovered this group yesterday, but closer inspection revealed that characteristic leaf shape. There’s no real way of knowing yet what this bunch might end up looking like, but it certainly looks healthy enough right now. One of the nice things about columbine (and bee balm, for that matter) is that it spreads very quickly. After this summer I hope to have some really well-established bunches of each of these plants. Along with the two honeysuckle vines at either end of the clothesline, and the hummingbird feeder just outside the window in the sunroom, I figure I should be able to attract every hummingbird that flies anywhere near Iowa City.

Now if I just had a telephoto lens for my camera. Are you listening, Santa?

Apparently some mail servers are grabbing the registration confirmation e-mails sent out by the blog and grinding them into dust.

If you registered and did not get an e-mail containing your username and system-generated password, let me know. Your user has been created, you just didn’t get your confirmation e-mail. I’ll reset your password, send that new password to you, and you can then log on and change it to whatever you like.

Sorry for the rigamarole.

UPDATE: Thanks to Kevin and my cool OS X book, I have a line on fixing the e-mail registration problem. I’ll get it implemented just as soon as I can. Until then, you can e-mail me directly if you’d like an account on the blog, and I’ll set it up for you.

Surprise, surprise.

I’ve upgraded the WordPress software to version 1.5 (from 1.2), and I need to do some work before I get it back to the way it was (now done, pretty much). Hope I can do it. In the meantime, get your e-mail addresses and passwords ready, because I’m going to be locking this sucker down tighter than a nun’s habit to all but registered users. Yes, that means you! If you haven’t yet registered for the blog, do so now using the “register” link in the lower part of the menu at the right.

Love,

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I ain’t gonna lie to you. This has been a rough winter.

No, no, I haven’t had to manually disimpact myself or suffer the fatigue and constant illness as acutely as Leah has, but being cooped up inside with a teensy, tiny baby took its toll mentally and physically.

I went to the doctor two weeks ago to see what he could do about a persistent sore throat I’d been dealing with for 10 days or so. I hopped up on the scale on my way back to his office and had the nurse read me the news: 199 pounds. Sure, that’s fully clothed with shoes and my jacket and my iPod in my pocket, but still. Six feet, one inch. Two hundred pounds. And I know I was heavier than that recently. What happened here?

A little background. I’ve always had an ability to put away atypically large quantities of food. Same with my brother. And my dad. We’re not huge people, but we were born with metabolisms that could turn a large meat lover’s pizza into a bathroom break in about three hours. When Scott and I were still in grade school, my dad would take us to taco places and burger joints and order literally heaps of food, much to the shock and awe of the knobs behind the counter. We were each very active, and everything we ate burned off quickly and without too much effort.

But life intervenes. Days spent at a 9-to-5 sitting in front of a computer and less and less time to get out and exercise or cook good meals — coupled with a metabolism that’s slowly but surely succombing to the ravages of age — are conspiring to add pounds to what used to be a pretty svelte frame.

“Wait,” you say. “You insensitive clod! Think of how much your wife’s body has changed in just the last year. You think you got body troubles?” True, Leah’s body has gone through changes that I couldn’t have even imagined a year ago. Though I can’t know the true depths of her despair at the loss of her nice flat stomach or her cute little inverted belly button, I’ve been witness to the short bouts of depression brought on by her transformation.

Thing is, Leah’s got something I’ll never have, and never had. I may have a gut that could process a gallon bucket of roofing nails, but Leah has style, and grace, and looks that stop traffic. If she were one hundred pounds heavier and wearing a potato sack and mucking boots, she’d still be one of God’s most glorious creatures.

No, I have considerably less to work with, and so it’s time to get serious about getting back down to a fighting weight of 185. The days are getting longer, and the bike’s just come back from the shop. Before long, honest-to-goodness fresh vegetables will be showing up on the shelves at New Pi. With a little work, I’ll be able to come up with a schedule that’ll let me get some exercise in and still get to work on time and spend plenty of time with Ava and Leah.

The game, as they say, is on.

One of the things I’ve tried to keep up on, at least a little bit, during all this Ava madness is my cooking. I have a freezer in the basement (thanks, Harvey and GG!) that’s packed full of tasty organic pork and Greazel beef.

So yesterday I defrosted a pork shoulder and tried to come up with a recipe. I was looking for something simple and garlic-free, and the New Joy of Cooking had just what I needed: Lemon-glazed pork shoulder. One cup fresh lemon juice, one cup sugar. Melt the sugar into the juice, score the roast, and then cook the roast at 325 for about 4.5 hours, basting every 15-20 minutes with the lemon.

I was really pleased with the way it turned out. As you can see, it looked gorgeous. And the meat was nice and juicy, too, unlike my last poak roast (to be fair, this is a fatty cut and had a bone in it).

As good as the roast was, however, it was upstaged by the fruit salad my mother brought along when she joined us. The salad itself didn’t contain any really fancy fruit, but the cheese cutouts she used to adorn the top of the salad were hilarious. She picked up a couple small cookie cutters last time she was in Amana for breakfast, and she’s quickly working up dozens of interesting ways to use them for anything and everything but cutting cookies.

In the picture you can make a couple different shapes. There’s a cow, in honor of Grandma Mary; a moose, in honor of Grandma Georgie; a pig, in memory of the pig that gave its life for our wonderful roast; and some hearts to symbolize our love for little Ava.

Grandma Mary also trucked in some steamed red chard and spicy sweet potato wedges. It was a great meal!

Good ol’ Iowa. One day it’s 70 degrees and sunny, not 24 hours later it’s in the upper 30s and snowing. Glorious. But that’s March for you, after all.

Besides, this cold snap isn’t going to be enough to stop the flowers that have decided it’s time to poke up through our mulch in the beds around the house. We have daffodils, tulips, and other assorted beauties scattered here and there along the side of the house and in the bed outside the back room.

I took advantage of the warmer days recently to get a little bit of yard work done. Just some raking and minor trimming here and there, though I did give my honeysuckle a good pruning. I can’t wait to see how it comes back this summer. I’m hoping that the drastic cut I gave it will result in a lot more blossoms (though it’s difficult to imagine there being many more blossoms than last year). It’ll be great to sit out in the back yard with Ava and watch birds.

Speaking of which, I also need to get the wren house cleared out. I know I must’ve made a note somewhere last year on the day I first say the wrens return. Was it May? In any case, at least one of them stuck around all summer, despite the meddling of the sparrows that descend on the back yard in pesky flocks and generally annoy everyone.

Before long I’ll be able to put up some pictures of my blooms!

A while back Kevin and Rachel were in town for a visit. While they were here, Kevin and I took a look at the PC he helped me build last year. In particular, we were looking at the copy of Half Life 2 I’m running, which Kevin and Rachel (I think?) got me for Christmas last year.

Kevin helped me get past a spot in the game I was hung up on, and then the suggested I up my video settings. I’m running a graphics card that’s capable of running the game at pretty much max settings, so we turned everything up all the way. It looked awesome. We didn’t play it much at the time, and I didn’t have a chance to get back to it before they left town, but I did play some after they left.

The first time I sat down for a session after we’d changed the video settings, I got about 40 minutes into the game before I started feeling queasy. What’s this? I’d never encountered anything like this before. I thought maybe I was getting sick, so I kept playing. But the feelings got worse, and I was feeling like I was going to throw up. I shut down the game and the computer, went to the fridge and grabbed a New Glarus, and sat on the couch for a bit. After an hour I felt much better, but why had I felt that way in the first place?

Turns out I’m not alone. The graphics in Half Life are so good, and so immersive, that even people who’ve never suffered from motion sickness (like me) are getting ill at the keyboard. Luckily, there are solutions to the problem, which I’ll implement soon. What a weird thing, though.

Leah and I have become hooked on this show, “Supernanny.” It’s really come at a great time for us, because we can excuse our consumption of this pap as homework, study into the methods of how best to raise an obedient, happy little kid.

Of course we’re really into it for the same reasons everyone else is.

The show’s star, Jo Frost, is a great combination of Julie Andrews, Kelly LeBrock, and Mrs. Doubtfire. She’s stern yet compassionate, forceful yet gentle. And you just love it when she leaves the parents alone with their kids, because you know the kids are going to break every single rule Jo just established, which means Supernanny is going to have to step back in and show the parents what’s what.

Leah and I are still at the stage where we can look at the parents’ foibles and shake our heads in knowing disapproval. But there’s a healthy amount of fear under there, too. Each of us — based on our behavior as children — deserves to have a kid who’s a real handful. At least if there’s anything to this karma stuff. Most of the time we just stare in disbelief as some little boy or girl runs rings around these parents, yelling and screaming and hitting and mocking. It’s enough to chill new parents right down to their marrow.

The producers of the show do a great job of showing the kids as both monsters and cute little angels, as the scene warrants. Here’s hoping our little Ava will be an angel more often than a monster. By that time, Mom should have her supernanny routine down pat; a few trips to the naughty spot will make it perfectly clear that there’s behavior going on that we just do not find asseptibul.

So some bored beer drinker came up with the idea for the United States Beer Drinking Team, an inspired contrivance that celebrates the team-based enjoyment of American beer and sells funny t-shirts.

From the site:

We believe that beer drinking is a team event. You never want to drink alone. It’s always better to drink beer with your team. This way you can share your passions with your “Beer Buddies”. We have a common goal. Our goal is to promote the “brotherhood and sisterhood of beer in as many ways as possible. Further our goal is to increase our team membership and loyalty along the way.”

Free registration? I’m in.