Let There Be Light.

Could I be happier? No, I don’t think I could be.

Windows, Day One

This is what happens when you hire professionals to work on your house: shit gets done right. We are HAPPY.

Dear Quartet of Navel Oranges.

Yeah, I know, the comparisons are getting weird. What can I say, these are the jokes, kid.

It’s been a while since we’ve talked, and I apologize for that. I haven’t felt much like writing lately, and I don’t know why that is. It’s been a hectic couple of weeks, and the rest of the coming month is more of the same. We’re padding out the social calendar now while we have some time, knowing that we will be beholden to your stomach for the months following your arrival. It’s good, too—lots of people to catch up with, things to do. I’ve been working my tail off trying to complete a bunch of work that’s all due right around your birthday ahead of schedule so I’m not making client calls in the delivery room.

Your checkup was today, and they measured you out at five pounds, which is a full pound above average. This also moves your expected delivery date ahead two weeks (the computer offered an emotionless prediction of 9/11, which would be Very Much Not Cool) which is what I’ve been saying all along. I’m cool with the 78th percentile, but your mother and I would rather you seek to excel in the intelligence tests and not on the sizing charts. Your mother has been eating less food with more frequency these days, which means you’re definitely making yourself comfortable in there, sitting directly on her bladder. We had to hit the Target up for two king-sized pillows so that she could try to get some decent sleep again. She would really like it if you could hold it down while she closes her eyes—we understand that hiccups are beyond your control, but quit the breakdancing lessons until you’re walking, OK?

Meanwhile, we took last Friday afternoon off to go witness a quiet marriage ceremony and enjoy the afternoon on a patio in Ellicott City with friends and cold drinks.

Sunday we drove down to the Eastern Shore to visit with some other friends who have bought a beautiful house in Easton (and who are trying to get your parents to move out there with them). I don’t have pictures of that, because I was too busy laughing and enjoying myself, but I did snap some shots of this Land Rover for sale on the side of Rt. 50. It’s a little too expensive for us, but we will have one someday, I swear to you.

Leaving that parking lot, Jen spied this interesting, uh, display, and thought it deserved a picture. I’ve always thought it was “Deer Corn”, but what do I know?

Finally, good news: our windows arrived yesterday afternoon, which means we can get the porch rolling again!

Eight reasons even the innocent shouldn’t talk to the police

File this under You’ve Been Warned: Eight reasons even the innocent shouldn’t talk to the police. The upshot: don’t let Pembleton get you in the box without your lawyer.

Kodak Zi6 Pocket Video Camera

Oh, snap… I just read about the KODAK Zi6 Pocket Video Camera, which is poised as a possible Flip-killer, via Daring Fireball: HD video at 60fps. I’m going to hold off until I read the review to see if Kodak can make a decent camera again.

Flickr slideshow

flickrSLiDR is a nice clean Flickr slideshow with an adjustable size.

Curse of the Crying Boy

After reading this article about an “art print” which brings bad luck to those who hang it, I’d like to know why exactly anyone would hang this ugly-ass thing in their house in the first place.

PowerShot Woes.

Apparently the Canon point-and-shoot we own, the PowerShot SD110, has a known issue with the CCD going bad and distorting images. According to the service notice, they will replace the CCD, but I don’t know if this offer is still good. I’m going to call tomorrow to find out.

Update: They believe the problem is theirs to fix (but aren’t sure yet). They have sent me a prepaid UPS label and an address to their repair facility so that I can send it in. For a four-year-old camera clearly out of warranty, I am truly impressed by their customer service. This is the kind of thing that keeps me loyal to the brand.

Eureka! BOOM.

Update from the local Panera: After being chased from the house by an electricity-killing thunderstorm, I have finally, FINALLY cracked a DHTML tab panel problem I’ve been banging my head against for the last week, which feels like the weight of the world has been lifted from my shoulders. Essentially, the script I’d started with was using the visibility attribute of CSS instead of the display attribute, and in concert with some poorly-advised absolute positioning, the whole thing was appearing outside the document flow (floating above everything else instead of pushing the content downward gracefully). After trying and discarding about ten different scripts, I came back to my old reliable one and finally made it work. Hallelujah.

Slow Food Trends

This article in the NYT, about the slow food movement, brings up a fascinating new trend: people are hiring gardeners to plant, maintain, and harvest a garden in their backyard. Have we become this lazy as a society?

Summer Showers.

Somehow, we made it back from New York State yesterday, our jeep stuffed to the gills with new baby gear. Intermittent thunderstorms didn’t dampen the beautiful baby shower my mother held for us on the front porch of the house, and we were overwhelmed by the generosity of our family, who brought thoughtful gifts and sage advice. Thank you, everyone.

The rest of the weekend was spent relaxing on the porch, eating too much cake, and visiting with my mother’s brother, who I haven’t seen in years (and who hadn’t met Jen yet). As always, the weekend was too short, and we had to head home to the heat.

Test Result.

Sage, it turns out, has small-cell carcinoma, another way of saying “lung cancer”. They give him 3 to 6 months.

Quickly…

Sage is back from a hellish hospital visit. His belly got shaved again, and he spent the majority of last evening dragging himself around the atrium in an opiate-induced haze. The doctor still can’t give us a clear determination between cancer or a very bad infection, but in the meantime he gets to eat whatever the hell he wants in the hopes it’ll put some meat back on his bones.

There is drywall on the porch as of last night. The guy I’m using flaked on us twice but finally showed up on Monday to start the job; I’m not altogether pleased with the initial results but I’m hoping his skill with a drywall float will cover up the major blemishes.

We’re getting ready for a trip north to see my folks and present The Belly to the extended family this weekend. Showers will be attended, parties will be held, pictures will be taken, and laughter will be heard. In the meantime, I’m doing everything I can to get a bunch of work out the door before we leave.

We have made it through ¾ of a dish of cherry clafoutis and ½ of a blueberry pie since Monday; there is still about 4 lbs. of blueberries and cherries left over, waiting to be canned. Blueberry pie is delicious for breakfast, by the way.

Also: I’m fooling with TypeKey authentication for comments on this site, seeing as I’m getting slammed with dumb spam for russian pr0n and offshore gambling sites. If you have any problems with signing up, let me know via email and I’ll either fix it or disable the whole thing. (If you’ve got a TypePad account, I’m pretty sure you have a TypeKey account too).

Update: Nevermind. The TypeKey documentation was too hard to find in under 5 minutes, and I don’t have 5 minutes right now. Back to moderated comments.

iPhone domain shortcut

For those with the iPhone 2.0 upgrade: Domain Shortcut Helps Type URLs in Your iPhone More Quickly. I’ve been waiting for this one.

Dear Butternut Squash.

I’ve told you about our family car situation before, so it’s no surprise I’ve got alternate forms of transportation on my mind these days. Your mother and I got some test driving in this weekend due to a last-minute cancellation, and I’m pleased to report we’ve got a contender.

The test drive process is pretty interesting. I kind of figured the salesguy would ride along and yammer in our ears, but they just made a copy of our license, handed us a key, and pointed us at a $16,000 toy. We checked out the Fit first, and it was a hard act to follow. They gave us a red one, which was pretty spiffy, and we both took turns wringing it out (or, as much as one can wring out a 1.5 liter engine) on I-70. When compared to the Jeep, and even the Saturn, it’s not as powerful a ride, but it still has zip. The interior is completely misleading—it looks like it would be tiny from the outside but it’s cavernous inside. The controls are easy to use, and the wheel, steering, and brakes are all tight as a drum. And when the salesman showed us how the big half of the rear seat folds down to a flat cargo deck (without touching the smaller half, where you’d be strapped in), I was sold. Strollers, christmas presents, livestock, shipping containers—I could fit anything in there.

The Civic sedan was less than impressive. The interior felt alternately cramped in some places and huge in other places, and the wheel felt like it belonged on a go-kart. They could only give us an automatic for a test drive, so we didn’t get to feel out the engine, but everything about the car was adequate enough. Quibbles: the speedometer is placed waaaaay up on the front of the dash and the tach is right under the steering wheel. The seats were comfortable and the controls were pretty easy to use. Overall, for the money, I’m not as impressed as I should have been.

Finally, we tried out a Matrix up at the Toyota dealer. They’re already showing the 2009 models, which have been redesigned into ugly streamlined blobs, and again all we could get was an automatic to play with. The inside of the car is uglier than the outside. It feels like the dashboard was shoved up under the windshield by a snowplow, and the gearshift sits almost vertical on the center console like an old Alfa Romeo. The gauges are clear, but when I pushed the seat back to get my legs comfortable with the pedals I felt like I had to lean way forward to touch the wheel. The rest of the cabin is functional but uncomfortable. The car itself has more power than the Fit, but gets lousier gas mileage. The back seat feels smaller than the Fit, and the rear deck isn’t as spacious. Overall, it’s just not as well-designed inside, and the base model is $4K more than a tricked-out Fit. Sorry, Toyota.

In other news, your mother took us on a Sunday field trip: there’s a pretty pick-your-own farm out west of here with rows and rows of ripe blueberries, raspberries, and cherries she’s been dying to visit for years. We got an early start out of the house and were in the fields, bag in hand, by 10:30, and after an hour or so had collected over 5 lbs. of delicious ripe blueberries. A half hour later, we were standing under cherry trees bending under the weight of the fruit on their boughs. I noticed an interesting phenomena out there too: we picked alongside families with everything from bundled newborns to bored teenagers, and after a few initial minutes of inaction or complaint, everyone seemed to get in on the fun together, which made me look forward to the day we can take you picking with us.

Ooooooooooooh, Barracuda.

There’s a guy near here who has a ’67 Barracuda with a 10-foot paint job (it looks great from 10 feet away or more) that I finally stopped to shoot pictures of. It was parked in such a way that good shots were hard to get, but I did my best for you, esteemed readers.

Gas mileage savings calculator

According to this gas mileage savings calculator, I would not save any money trading in my Jeep for a Honda Fit. Well, duh.

Put On Your Best Face.

My Dad beat me to the idea, but my intention was to post this for my sister today:

Happy birthday, sis. We love you.

Wifflegate

From the New York Times: Build a Wiffle Ball Field and Lawyers Will Come. Quickly: Kids take it upon themselves to clear an abandoned lot and build a wiffle ball field. Adults freak out. “They think we’re a cult,” said Jeff Currivan, 17. “People think we should be home playing ‘Grand Theft Auto.’ ”

The iPhone App Store

From Forbes.com: IPhone Apps Likely To Launch Thursday. I wonder if this means they’re going to provide the 2.0 software update for the iPhone today as well. I still stand by my decision to forego the 3G version, and I think in the long run it will prove itself out.