Thanksgiving 2010

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For some reason, I am really excited about Thanksgiving this year. Maybe it’s because we’ve really been talking it up to the kids and they’ve been drawing hand-turkeys and talking about Charlie Brown and all those things that go along with this holiday? It’s also a chance to get together with Robyn’s family who we definitely don’t see enough these days. Chloe and Gabriel really enjoy playing with Douglas and Hannah so it’s an opportunity for some big fun and now that the kids are a little older, they pretty much entertain themselves while we get some “adult” time to chat with family. In any case, I was thinking about some Thanksgiving memories last night:

When I was really small, we would go to my Aunt Gloria’s house in Southbridge, Massachusetts for the day. In my earliest memories,  she had this big house that I don’t really remember very well with the exception of a few interesting tidbits. For example, there was an airplane in the basement. Continue reading →

First Apple Pie

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After a morning of training in which we reviewed what we covered at the Elias Kryswacki seminar last night, I came home, showered and attempted to make my first apple pie. The kids helped out a little and are really excited to try it. I don’t think they’ve ever had apple pie before (it’s tough to find nut-free pies at most places). Anyway, here’s a picture of me with Elias from the Seminar last night:

Me with Elias

Halloween Has It In For My Son

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It seems like my son and Halloween just don’t mix. Last year, Gabriel got really, really sick a few days before Halloween. So ill in fact, that we had to bring him to the ER one night due to his high fever and dehydration. Although it was never “officially” confirmed, the doctors were pretty sure that he had the N1H1 strain that was so serious (and perhaps a little over-hyped!) last Fall. Of course, he recovered but not in time to go trick-or-treating on Halloween. So, I took Chloe out for her first night of Halloween adventure and we had a great time. The weather was really warm for that time of year so it was quite nice.

This year, the little guy was healthy for Halloween so Robyn and I dressed them up and took them trick-or-treating in the cold. Except for the dogs that barked at many of the houses and one creepy and very realistic mannequin in one person’s house, Chloe and Gabriel had a great time and enjoyed being able to eat a bunch of candy after dinner – especially the chocolate and peanut butter candy that they had not been able to eat until last week. Unfortunately, when we were getting the kids ready for bed, we noticed that Chloe had a couple of welts on her back and she said that they were itchy. Maybe she IS allergic to peanuts after all? Ugh! After we gave her some Benadryl, she seemed better but we were careful to check on her during the night (she was fine) and Robyn called the allergist in the morning.

My mom came down to visit for the weekend, so I had to drive her back home on Monday (the day after Halloween). On my way home from Massachusetts, I called home to tell Robyn I would be there in about 30 minutes. When she answered the phone, I could her Gabriel crying hysterically in the background. Robyn told me that he had been doing that for about an hour because he took a nap (VERY unusual for him) in the afternoon and when he woke up, he said that his throat was hurting. When I got home, he was still upset but we managed to calm him down (after fighting with him to take some medicine) and he ate some dinner. Bedtime was difficult because his throat hurt and he wasn’t tired due to the nap that he had taken so he was up and down a lot.

Today, Chloe is fine (we have an appointment next week with the allergist) and Gabriel is feeling better. Wonder what’s in store for next Halloween?

New Blog…More Writing

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I’ve been working on moving my blog to a self-hosted WordPress. I’m very impressed at the simplicity and quality of the whole CMS and it’s SO much better than bBlog. It’s been quite nostalgic looking over my past 200 and something posts. I’m really glad that I wrote everything that I did because I’m sure that many details would have been forgotten if I hadn’t. That makes me even more excited about getting back to blogging (even if it’s just for my own memories).

Yeah, I suck….

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So, as you can see the last update here was quite some time ago. I think Facebook and Twitter have killed my desire to write on my blog at all. That sucks because anything that’s posted to these other social networking sites is pretty ephemeral (yeah, that’s my big word for the day!). My original reason for writing was to have a “journal” that I could refer to. This just isn’t feasible when we use Twitter or FB (actually, you can use something like Twinbox to archive Tweets, but you need to use something other than just a browser to do so) so it’s sad to see a lot of my “journaling” done on these other sites.

The other thing that has kept me away from posting here is my desire to find some better blogging software. Bblog is long dead and probably full of security holes. I fiddled around with Drupal and a couple other platforms for a while but these ended up being more than I needed and not worth the “price of admission” (the steeeeep learning curve). I think I’ve pretty much decided to install a copy of WordPress locally and go from there since I don’t trust anyone else to host my content.

In other news, it’s been a crazy year so far and I simply cannot believe that it’s already the first of September. So much has happened and so little has changed! One of these days I’ll get around to writing about it all.

Finally Finished “Evolution”!

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Evolution Evolution by Stephen Baxter

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Overall, this was a good book. It was very slow at times and I put it down for periods of a couple weeks a few times while reading it. Apparently Baxter is not known for the quality of his characterization or his compelling plots but there were some real gems within the many stories that were contained in the book.

The author clearly states in his closing words that the book is not 100% scientifically accurate. Although it was vetted by some scientists in the field, he chose to make some decisions about the story and characters based on the quality of the story rather than sticking closely to the science. I’m okay with this because, from what I know, the overall picture that it paints is pretty accurate.

The last quarter of the book is quite compelling as the author moves the plot into the future. I won’t give anything away but it was very interesting and contained some interesting twists. For me, this is what saved the book from being a long, mostly boring read.

View all my reviews >>

Don’s Reading List (15)

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  • A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson – Another great book by Bill Bryson. The author really does touch on just about everything in nature in some way or another including the creation of the Universe, the solar system, life on Earth and the all that these things are made of. Although the reading could be slow and boring, it’s quite entertaining. If you’re feeling a little let down by life or bored, this makes a great read because I was left with the impression that I (and everything and everyone around me) am quite lucky to be a conscious being on this little rocky planet.
  • Ringworld by Larry Niven – I was kind of surprised that this book was considered to be a classic of science fiction because after reading a few things by Arthur C. Clarke, I was expecting more like the serious tone of Clarke’s style but Niven’s approach was quite different and rather humorous at times. Certainly, the star of this story is the Ringworld itself which is so enormous in size that the reader can’t really comprehend – at least I couldn’t. Anyway, the story was interesting but there were plenty of ups and downs where my interest waned. I don’t think I enjoyed it enough to continue with the sequels.
  • The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court by Jeffrey Toobin – I never thought that I would be intrigued by a history and biography about the recent Justices and pivotal cases of the Supreme Court but this caught my eye at the library and it was great. I did a lot of additional research to fill in gaps in my knowledge during and after reading this book so that’s always a good thing.
  • In addition, I’ve been reading lots of training-related material; going back to some books that I’ve had for a long time but haven’t picked up in a while.

Poop as Art

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It finally happened.

Yesterday morning, Gabriel woke at his usual 6:16am and said that he had to go to the bathroom. I got up and took him in to do his thing, changed into his daytime underpants, let him get his toys and then brought him back into his room. Surprisingly, he decided to lay back down in his bed and get some extra sleep even though the sun was “awake.” I went back to bed and slept for a while – in fact, I woke up at about 7:40 to the sounds of the kids playing in their room. I threw on some clothes and my glasses and peeked into their room to see what was going on. Gabriel was standing on his bed looking out the window into our backyard and Chloe was playing in her bed with some toys, so I went downstairs and logged into work to begin my day.

I usually turn the baby monitor on while I’m down there and Robyn’s asleep, but keep it pretty low since Robyn can hear better since she’s right next to their room so I just heard them laughing and playing. Around 8am I thought to myself that they were being really good and pretty quiet and this was a good morning. Then I heard Robyn get out of bed upstairs and go quickly into their room. Then I heard “What the…? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?” in an angry voice and I knew something was up.

A few seconds later, she called me to upstairs right away so I said I’d be up in a minute. When I got into the kids’ room I saw that there was poop on the floor and in Chloe’s bed and Gabriel was not wearing his underpants. Then I looked up to the wall next to Chloe’s bed and saw a dark smear on the wall and noticed that the beds had poop all along the sides. What a mess!

I have heard from people who have kids over the last couple of years that this has happened to them and will probably undoubtedly happen to us, so I wasn’t really surprised. Luckily, it wasn’t too much of a mess and once we cleaned the wall, bathed the kids, vacuumed the floor, changed the sheets and washed the toys (including “bathing” 2 sets of Little Einsteins action figures) that they had in their room, everything was back to normal.