Category: family
A Day in the Life (of my new camera)
In anticipation of our trip to Italy this fall, I bought a camera.
I’m not much of a picture taking person (as my children will attest), but maybe I’ll reform.
The camera came, I read the user’s manual, and today I’m trying things out. If you’re a close family member or really have nothing more interesting to [...]
Change in the weather
Yesterday it was in the 70s, warm and humid (for this part of the country, anyway). A truly beautiful fall day. As part of the world’s slowest landscaping project, my husband chopped down the viburnum that had completely outgrown its little niche next to our bedroom window, as well as the monstrous junipers on [...]
(Full Post)My son the Petri dish
Now that I’m fairly sure he’s not going to die, I can tell you that my youngest, a senior in high school, has both mononucleosis and West Nile Fever. This seems like overkill, and somewhat unfair.
What I’ve learned about West Nile:
About 80% of the people who are infected experience no symptoms at all
About 20% of [...]
For Mother’s Day - The Lanyard
I have been feeling pretty guilty in the mother department recently; hearing Billy Collins read this on A Prairie Home Companion helped a lot:
The Lanyard
Billy Collins
The other day as I was ricocheting slowly
off the pale blue walls of this room,
bouncing from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
I found myself in [...]
Blizzard 2006
There’s some snow outside:
My beloveds (husband and kids) did a wonderful job over the last two days clearing off the driveway and the sidewalk:
More pictures at flickr: Blizzard, December 2006
(Full Post)All I want is a regular Christmas tree
Where are the regular Christmas trees? By “regular”, I mean a) real, and b) not pruned and shorn into a tortured, stunted, overfilled cone. I’m already at a disadvantage when it comes the Christmas tree buying, because I was taught at my mother’s knee not to put up the Christmas tree until Christmas Eve (it’s [...]
(Full Post)Training
I frequently tell my children that I wish I had trained a dog before I ever had children, because I learned so much about behaviour that way.
Eldest Son kindly sent me this article:
The central lesson I learned from exotic animal trainers is that I should reward behavior I like and ignore behavior I don’t.
Back in [...]
A message from Annapolis
I feel so modern and connected.
(Full Post)Evidence of Christmas decorating
20051220-stockings
Originally uploaded by Katja Stokley.
First try at blogging a flickr photo.
(Full Post)Christmasy
Very Christmasy around here. Youngest Son went out with his father yesterday to bag a tree; they found a very nice one. It’s half decorated. We’ve been a little confused about stockings; we used to have two fireplaces, but one is now gone and the other has no mantel. I discovered brick clips at Ace [...]
(Full Post)Out in the Cold
I’m feeling very bad for my husband, trying to sleep in his truck in Limon surrounded by a bunch of big rigs (”like trying to sleep in a truck stop”, he says). I hope the night passes quickly for him and the highway re-opens soon. I’ll be very glad to have him safely home tomorrow.
8:03 [...]
Various
The boys and I had dinner at Trattoria Girasole, on Pearl Street, this evening. There was a very accomplished duo playing Greek, Gypsy, Celtic and Spanish music on violin, guitar, bouzouki: E Muzeki.
We also watched the first episode of Guns, Germs and Steel on PBS, which Youngest Son proclaimed a retread of 7th, 8th and [...]
At the Kitchen Table
From Eldest Son:
After reading the Dialogues of Plato, Monty Python is much funnier.
From Youngest Son, on being asked if he wanted to come to my (secular) choir concert:
I would come if you people didn’t sing about God so much.
iPod Generation
Living with the iPod generation is like living with a bunch of people who are hard of hearing.
(Full Post)Go, girl, go
The Daughter participated in RMVR’s Precision Driving School this weekend, driving the 1972 BMW Bavaria. She was a little stressed; who wouldn’t be, with only a couple of months of street driving behind her, and a dozen race-happy guys on the track with her? At the end, she was named Most Improved Driver.
On the [...]
No Fish!
For the second year in a row, a high school swim team girl has decided that it’s cute to give goldfish (last year it was one, this year it’s three!) as a gift. NOT! Girls, a water bottle is not a suitable goldfish container. A house that doesn’t already have fish is not a house [...]
(Full Post)The truth dawns
We’ve been married twenty years, and I think I may finally be convinced that he’s not kidding when he says he doesn’t like garlic.
Maybe I should throw the garlic press away, as penance. (It’s such a nice one, though - I’m not sure I’d ever find another one like it, when I’m a widow.)
VIR pictures
From left to right, Ron, Jake, Mike (kneeling), The Car (number 51), my beloved, me. It’s not our red pickup truck. There are more pictures in the VIR 2004 album.
(Full Post)I may have raised a writer
From Eldest Son:
Crew is really great. Stroking with seven other people in synchronicity is beatific (although we are not very good at this), and it’s really nice to wake up in the dark but NOT need to get into a frigid pool. Friday morning we were overtaken by the Annapolis rowing club, with whom we [...]
(Full Post)College Envy
Here I am at L & J’s house outside Annapolis, lying on the chaise with the borrowed Mac (very sweet of them - an added benefit is that I can check all my sites with Safari/IE5 - looking pretty good so far).
Eldest Son and I arrived in the wee hours on Tuesday, got a couple [...]
Flags at Half Mast on July 4th?
Via Fazia, a link to an article explaining the conflict between flag protocols: Honoring Reagan, Flag Day Rules Conflict.
I find all this flag protocol stuff interesting but simultaneously amusing; my father was a Foreign Service officer, so I’m intimately familiar with State Department diplomatic protocol, but my mother was a refugee from Nazi Germany who [...]
Backyard fox
There seems to be a little red fox living (?) in my backyard. It’s as cute as can be. The dog is going nuts.
NWF - When the Red Fox Comes to Town
The Little Foxes
Triathlon, or Mad Dogs & Englishmen
Just back from the Longmont Triathlon, which seems to get smaller every year. The husband placed second in his age group, closer to his annual nemesis than ever before. The daughter placed fourth, out of four women under 20, and is very happy to have finished in under two hours. Youngest Son is crowing about [...]
(Full Post)Moving On
Eldest Son graduates from high school today.
So, first, when did I get old enough to be the mother of a high school graduate? I’ve got mixed feelings about this - on the one hand, I think that unlike sometime in our agragrian past, high school graduation is pretty much a minimum (sub-minimum?) requirement for life [...]
Happy
We’re happy at my house; Eldest Son was accepted at the College of His Choice.
(Full Post)The County Fair
My sister, her husband, the two kids and I went to the county fair this week. My sister and her husband live in a large West Coast city. He’s originally from the New Jersey suburbs.
Boulder County is becoming increasingly urbanized, but it’s still refreshingly rural compared to, say, San Mateo or Fairfax.
We went in the [...]
And the Living is Easy
Still working on the wireless problem - I’ve moved everything pretty much back to where it was and upgraded the firmware on the wireless access point, and now I’m worse off than before - the computer has trouble even finding my access point. I did get a really long Ethernet cable, though, so that’s easing [...]
(Full Post)Summer Vacation
I’ve got teenagers. I don’t blog about my kids, but I’m just going to say — summer vacation starts tomorrow.
Scared yet? Yes. Thank goodness I have a job to go to.
Too cool!
My uncle:
Der Fachbereich für Politik- und Verwaltungswissenschaft der Universität Konstanz lädt ein zu einem wissenschaftlichen Symposium zu Ehren von Professor emeritus Dr. Gerhard Lehmbruch [Translation]
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