Grandma and Finley

Posted on October 8, 2008 3:02 PM | link to this entry | comments (0)

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.

Posted on July 22, 2008 9:36 AM | link to this entry | comments (0)

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.

Posted on July 10, 2008 5:02 PM | link to this entry | comments (0)

Distracting Myself.

My pop is now off the ventilator, with a tracheotomy tube, and sitting upright, which is a great sign. He's writing things we can actually understand and itching to get out of the bed; most of all he wants to EAT.

This is a revisit of the postcard Jen and I bought months ago, and for this one I decided to overlay the old with the new to see the changes 100 years will make. It took a little finagling with depth of field and a bit of Photoshop work to get the postcard light enough to see, but the results are worth the effort.

Posted on May 9, 2008 12:52 PM | link to this entry | comments (1)

Hospital Visit.

I'm currently upstate visiting my Dad, who's recovering from surgery on his ticker. He's currently waiting to get the stupid tube taken out of his throat so he can talk again instead of us having to struggle to understand his handwriting.

Posted on May 8, 2008 5:14 PM | link to this entry | comments (0)

Multiplication.

January 29.
Dear Zygote,
I'm writing this to you so that I'll remember how it felt when the OB showed us a small dark spot on your mother's uterus, centered it, and said, "That's your baby." It was a peculiar sensation somewhere between my stomach, which felt like it was on spin cycle, and my head, which was alternating between happiness and dizziness. I reached for my wife's hand and held it while the doctor printed out some grainy pictures.

We've been working on this particular project for a while now, and when she told me we should look into buying a pregnancy test, I was cautiously optimistic. We'd had several false alarms in the second half of last year, so I wasn't going to get my hopes too high. One Saturday afternoon in January, we shopped for groceries and home supplies, and when we returned home I got lost in my project, obliviously walking past her several times with handfuls of tools intent on breaking something. When I brought her in to look at the progress, I wondered why her eyes were welling, thinking, dirty old wallpaper can't make her this happy. In a rare moment of clarity, I correctly guessed the reason for her emotion, we held each other in the half-demolished doctor's office, and I was caught between waves of joy and stark terror. This is for real.

Today, before the first meeting with our OB, we sat in the waiting room for our appointment, both nervous and lost in our own thoughts. I skimmed Outside magazine, unable to put the sentences together, and held her hand. Inside the exam room, with the lights turned down, I was amazed that a spot five millimeters long could have such a strong effect on me. The doc pointed out the highlights (not much, considering your size) and assured us everything was fine and that our conception date was most likely the one we thought it was.

February 12.
Dear Lima Bean,
We can see your little heart beating clearly in the grainy black and white monitor next to the exam table. I reach for your mother's hand again, and we both are smiling as the doctor takes measurements. I'm not ashamed to say I got choked up as she told us it's looking good, and that we're past the first big hurdle.

February 26.
Dear Kumquat,
That's what we're calling you this week. See, mommy gets these emails every week that talk about what to expect and what's happening and what to look for, and they compare your size to fruits and vegetables. Which is ironic.

At first, the changes were minor, but now we are dealing with the brutal onslaught of morning sickness, which should be renamed monthly sickness. Food—the mere thought of food—seems to have lost all of its appeal; certain things now go by codenames so as not to make your mother's fickle stomach backflip with displeasure. There are days when the subject is completely verboten, and I must simply place some substance, any substance, in front of her and pray it will not turn her stomach. We have tried all the usual cures: Ginger, watermelon, saltines, graham crackers, ice water, etc., etc.

You laugh at these things. Our normal lackadaisical eating schedule has been supplanted by your demands: YOU WILL BRING FOOD EVERY THREE HOURS. I am horrified to find myself in charge of the menu planning, which is sort of like letting a blind man fly a plane: it's only a matter of time before the whole thing becomes a smoking crater in the ground. You'll find out soon enough what a lousy chef your father is. Thankfully, there has only been one time mommy has sent food back to the kitchen, a dark experience involving a bean burrito unknowingly sabotaged with zucchini. You and mommy both don't like zucchini. Bananas and cantaloupe are always welcome on the menu, but when you get tired of these failsafes, we're fucked.

Meanwhile, the trick has been to keep an outward sense of normalcy while we wait for the first trimester to pass while lying to everybody. Sorry, everyone, we're sorry for the subterfuge, avoidance, and outright lies when you've asked how things are going: "Nothing's new here." The truth is, we're both worn out. Your mother's had to beg off from dinner plans due to 'food poisoning' once already, and we're trying to avoid any social occasion that involves alcohol. This has not been 100% successful, especially given our, ahem, well-known love for the grape and grain. You'll find out about that, too. Meanwhile the secret is killing me.

March 11.
Dear Fig,
Today your parents dragged themselves out of bed to be in the city by 7:45 for a more comprehensive checkup at the hospital, a scant two days after the federally mandated joke called Daylight Savings Time. See how much we love you? You'll find out how grumpy we are at six in the morning in a couple of months.

We got some higher-resolution pictures of you from a cheerless technician who jabbed the sensor clear through to mommy's spine, and for the first time we heard the strong, clear whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of your heartbeat, which made me dizzy with pride. You look good! You have a nose, and little arms, and every time the tech bonked you on the head with the sensor you jumped around like a flea. You're a bit larger than a fig, actually—eight centimeters, to be exact. So we want you to know that you're ahead of schedule and to slow down a little. Your neural tube looks good, which is a relief. We talked to the counsellors about our family histories and tried to remember all the aches and pains and diseases that run through our family trees, and then they took about a gallon of your mommy's blood for testing, and then we were done and it was time for a SANDWICH.

Mommy is holding up well, considering you make her feel like throwing up all the time. I'm running out of ideas for dinner, though, so I'd appreciate it if you'd lift the ban on vegetables, chicken, potatoes, salad, and, well, everything else besides cantaloupe, bean burritos and Trader Joe's Ginger Almond & Cashew Granola cereal. Because they can't make enough of that stuff if that's all the two of you can eat.

Lately there's been a lot of talk about subprime mortgages, stagflation, and unemployment. These are all fancy terms for HOLY SHIT THE SKY IS FALLING. They say "timing is everything", and it looks like we've picked a swell time to start our new family. Things are still reasonably OK right now, but I'm hoping the country hasn't devolved to a Road Warrior state of anarchy by the time you're ready to pop out. All of this cheerful banter has daddy laying awake late at night pondering different ways of earning money to feed you. But don't worry, little one. I'll do whatever I've got to do to keep you safe, warm, and happy.

March 18.
Dear Lime,
Today was a huge day for the three of us. We saw the OB this morning to listen to your heartbeat, which always chokes me up, and every time we talk with her I like her better. I hope she's the one who hands you to your mother on your birthday. We started making some calls to my family to give them the good news, and sent your first picture, and I'd like to thank you for the best birthday present EVER.

We've started telling a few people now, which is alternately exciting and tiring. Your grandparents are thrilled, and they're chomping at the bit to spoil you rotten with all kinds of things they never would have dreamed of giving us, their children. Your great-grandfather really couldn't hear us too well, but after the fifth or sixth time shouting "We're having a baby" into the phone, I think he got it. It's this whole complicated thing with his hearing aid and batteries...we'll explain that to you someday. Hopefully you will get to meet him in person, and hopefully he'll be able to hear you.

Mommy would like to thank you for reducing the level of nausea to a dull roar. The past four or five days has been much better on her, and it's good to see the two of you up and moving around. The three of us took a drive to Lancaster this past weekend to peep some furniture at an outlet store, and you both held up surprisingly well. She's now deep in migraine territory though, which means many evenings are spent in a dark, quiet cave awaiting the bliss of sleep. The cats are not happy with the new arrangement, because they are now banished to the basement each evening, following a frightening moment when one of them used your head for a launching pad (sorry about that). And hey! That Which Shall Not Be Named isn't so vomit-inducing anymore! Talking about it is still tricky, and smelling it still isn't acceptable, but she can actually fix some things for herself in the morning, to which I have to say THANK YOU, because suddenly you've decided that you're getting the two of you up at 6:30AM, and I just can't hang with that.

March 23.
Dear Medium Shrimp,
Yeah, I'm sorry you're now being compared to shellfish. I think they could have come up with something more imaginative than an hors d'oeuvre, and my guess is that you're larger than that anyhow. I've never had the pleasure of eating a shrimp bigger than a lime, but I bet it would be good. I'm sure you'll smell better than shrimp, unless it's shrimp with Old Bay. In which case daddy might have to snack on one of your arms with a cold beer. And hey, what's this whole thing about the smell of beer making mommy want to puke her guts out? You're Irish, kid! Beer is the lifeblood of our people! And your father just learned how to brew it for himself. This is a cruel joke, little one.

This weekend, some carefully laid plans to tell your mother's family at Easter dinner were waylaid by an abrupt visit to the emergency room (not you or your mother, so don't worry), but your aunt is now at home and doing fine. We did finally share the good news with them, even if it wasn't quite the way we wanted, which means it's now time to notify the internets. Dear Internets: WE'RE HAVING A BABY.

Posted on March 25, 2008 4:00 PM | link to this entry | comments (2)

Score! (again)

After one and a half years of quiet on an Ebay watchlist, a Berarducci gallette iron in the correct size (GRAND GI-3) finally popped up this evening. I have a client who pays me with PayPal for small jobs, and it just so happened he paid me last week for some old work. One email to the seller later, the iron is on its way to us.

Posted on March 24, 2008 11:21 PM | link to this entry | comments (0)

Jet Danger Intake

Visiting Jen's father this weekend in the LP City, I played hooky for a few hours and brought the big camera over to the Patuxent River Naval Air Museum to shoot some planes.

The museum is a curious collection of donations, acquisitions and working machinery, and they have a remarkable collection of hardware parked outside spanning fifty years of aviation history. I am always drawn to older designs, so I spent hours skulking around the oldtimers in the group, trying to find good angles and interesting subject matter. Ducking inside for what I thought would be a quick review of the exhibits, I was shanghaied by a friendly, garrulous older guide who showed me every nut, bolt, and rivet of the exhibits inside on an hourlong personal tour.

Back at the house, I pulled the last of the shelving down in the corner, exposing a pencilled note from the original workmen. The room was, as far as I can tell, finished out in 98° heat, on July 12 19(28?)

Then, I pounded all the nails out of the debris on the floor of the exam room and stacked it neatly in the garage for disposal. Tomorrow I'm going to swap filters in my aspirator and start pulling drywall and molding from the walls to see what's underneath.

Posted on March 10, 2008 11:17 PM | link to this entry | comments (1)

Well, I Went Back To Ohio.

We gathered around the gravesite, huddled under a small blue tent with three open sides, waiting for the priest to finish the final part of the ceremony, and all I could think was didn't he already go over this stuff in the church? Seriously, I think we asked the Lord three times to hear the same prayer.

This marks the second funeral I've been to in Ohio in January, and it wasn't any warmer this year. Ohioans are a strange bunch, too—when all sensible out-of-state visitors have returned to the heating vents in their vehicles, coaxing blood back into their extremities, Ohioans stand around the gravesite chatting like it's an afternoon in August.

They are kind, too. They will open up their church on a Sunday Saturday afternoon and cook a huge meal for a frostbitten family, load our plates with food, offer us freshly brewed coffee, and provide a table of desserts loaded to the breaking point. They understand that doughnuts are an important part of the grieving process, and for that I will be forever grateful.

Posted on January 27, 2008 10:54 PM | link to this entry | comments (0)

Ken Hoover, RIP

Photos by Shannon Bishop

We just got word last night that Jen's uncle passed yesterday after a long bout with cystic fibrosis.

I didn't personally know him very well, but the few times I did get to spend time with him, I enjoyed his company. He was a big man but he gave off a gentle vibe, and he smiled almost constantly, telling stories on Jen when she was younger with a twinkle in his eye. I'm told he loved a good party, and in true fashion, after a long night of laughter and fun, he left our wedding late with slurred speech and a six-pack of beer in his hand.

Posted on January 24, 2008 10:08 AM | link to this entry | comments (3)

Off the Road

We're back in town from Christmas, Part Two. We left the Ville in single-digit weather, drove north to the snow and enjoyed two cozy Christmas celebrations: the first was a white elephant party with the extended family, where the rules of the game were more complicated than some drinking games I've played. After careful theft contemplation and manipulation, we walked with a bottle of Irish cream whiskey and a box of funnel cake mix.

Sunday we had a smaller celebration with the nuclear family, enjoying our customary champagne breakfast and a lazy morning of unwrapping, lasting well into the mid-afternoon. Thank you, everyone!

Coming home through our neighborhood this evening, many of the cheerful lights are now gone, and the weather is an unnaturally high 60°. Christmas always seems to come too quickly and end too soon.

Posted on January 7, 2008 10:56 PM | link to this entry | comments (0)

New Garage.

Last week, when I took my family to see the, uh, unique display of Christmas cheer that is 34th Street, I spied a small sign in a window high above the busy street: A tombstone-style wooden radio flanked by a pair of antennas, under the title "Retro Radio/Audio-Visual Service". Excited, I patted my pockets for a piece of paper and a pencil, then suddenly remembered I was carrying a camera. Duh.

Today, after getting my Garfunkel cut in the same neighborhood, I stopped back over to 34th Street to investigate. I was met at the door by a very friendly older man who invited me in out of the snow to a landing surrounded by radios, amplifiers, and electronic equipment of all sizes and shapes. At that moment, I knew my ten-year search was over.

Long ago, when I suddenly got into collecting old tube radios, there wasn't a whole lot of information to be found on repair. I cleaned the cabinets up but had no idea how to fix the wiring inside. After some research, I found a guy in the phone book who did radio repair, and drove out to Lauraville to meet him. The shop was old-school to the point of time warp: rickety shelves holding dusty TVs and radios, oscilloscopes, HAM equipment, and assorted junk, old RCA and Emerson signs, and a pleasant musty smell. I remember the proprietor as a wiry old fellow who seemed surprised a skinny kid was bringing him a set to work on, but he told me to leave it with him for a couple of days and he'd see what he could do.

$30 later, I had a working set that sounded as good as it looked, and I started bringing him more as I could afford it—he rebuilt five or six of my bakelite sets, and sorted out the guts of my console (no small task). After about six months of regular visits, other financial priorities kicked in, and I had to postpone further repairs. A few years passed, and by the next time I was able to return, the storefront was completely gone, replaced with a CVS parking lot.

The fellow I met today was friendly and personable, and as I talked with him, I started mentally cataloging my collection to decide which one would get looked at first: the wooden Philco, or the wooden Emerson? Or, maybe the off-brand Everbest?

Posted on December 5, 2007 11:47 PM | link to this entry

St. Mary's County Oyster Festival 2007

This weekend, Jen's family threw a surprise birthday/retirement celebration for her father. His children made him wear a crown to his birthday dinner, but he owned it as if it was his birthright, and we taught him all the proper gang signs to throw when he wears his bling in public.

Sunday's events were centered around the Oyster Festival, which has become something of a family tradition, and an event Jen and I look forward to every year.

Oysters fried and raw were sampled, to varying degrees of approval.

Happy birthtirement, Mr. Lockard!

Posted on October 22, 2007 10:43 AM | link to this entry | comments (3)

MMMMMM Beer and Crabs

Saturday evening Jen treated her sister, her sister's boyfriend and I to a crab feast on the picnic table out back. Happy Birthday to the twins, and thanks for the Old Bay, baby.

Posted on July 24, 2007 12:55 AM | link to this entry

Whoops

Hey, I forgot to send birthday shout-outs to my sister yesterday. Ren, happy birthday!

Posted on July 11, 2007 1:49 PM | link to this entry | comments (1)

Return From The Land of Cheese.

The Lockard Tour Van is back in town after a whirlwind three-night limited engagement to support Annie, who kind of got her diploma Saturday morning, and all I can say is that I'm still tired. Our first stop was Ashland, Ohio, to prepare for the graduation ceremony, and as we loaded up the van we were given our itinerary, typed neatly on a single sheet of paper. To the hour, our schedule was outlined in Times New Roman to keep the caravan on track, and even though it was handy to have, we used it to poke fun at Jen's dad good-naturedly throughout the trip.

Despite some last-minute drama, the graduation went off without a hitch, and even though the threat of rain loomed, it turned out to be a beautiful day. We shared a late lunch with Jen's aunt and then passed out back at the hotel to sleep off the carbohydrates. Before venturing out for a late dinner, we hijacked Jen's father into a visit to the CHEESEBARN, an inexplicably-named highway attraction up the road from our hotel. Unfortunately, the CHEESEBARN was closed and we weren't able to explore its wonders in detail.

However, we did stop for a picture out front.

Then we enjoyed a prolonged tour of the seedier side of Mansfield, OH, looking for somewhere other than a Perkins to eat dinner; the directions given were, shall we say, vague, and it took a while to get oriented until we found an Olive Garden to stop at.

Sunday morning we were under strict orders to be loaded and ready by 8:30, because the day was tightly planned: we were stopping in to visit with Jen's great aunt, who is in a retirement home, and then on to visit her mother's gravesite. Her great aunt is still sharp and funny, and we were presently joined by a group of cousins who helped us take over the entire front room of the facility.

Driving on to the gravesite, we passed fields that had been flooded in January of 2005 (we were some of the last cars allowed in before the state troopers shut the highway down that night), through the sleepy, worn-down town, and up the hill to where her marker sat in bright afternoon sunshine. The family had about ten minutes alone with her before a gaggle of extended family arrived, and then we stood around and caught up with folks we hadn't seen in two years.

And then, it was time to load up the van and get on the road. The trip back was uneventful, apart from everyone in the van (including driver) dozing off after lunch at the Sonic, and we were treated to a tour of the rolling hills of West Virginia and miles of empty countryside until we made it back to town last night. And I'll be damned if Jen's Dad didn't get us home a half-hour ahead of schedule.

Posted on May 14, 2007 9:28 AM | link to this entry

As far as my rental car can go.

We're back for a whirlwind couple of days before we leave again, this time to Ohio for a graduation which might not even happen. (More details on this as we get them.)

Getting upstate to see the family was great, and long overdue. My parents hosted my grandfather's birthday party at their house, and apart from a minor crisis involving aluminum foil, butter, and forty ovens worth of smoke, everything went off without a hitch. The weather even cooperated enough for us to get a few peaceful, warm hours on the front porch, something I always look forward to when we're up there. Grampy enjoyed the party and kept us laughing through the entire celebration, even though he hasn't changed the battery in his hearing aid this year and is as deaf as a post. Luckily he always had one of his children sitting with him and translating whenever anyone posed a question from across the room.

Back here in Maryland, we have finally picked up our new rug for either the blue room or our bedroom, whichever it looks best in. Choosing carpet is difficult at best in flourescent light, with small paint chips, and under the watchful, predatory eye of the carpet salesman, so we narrowed the possibilities down to two rooms. Unfortunately, the room it's most likely to go into is also one of the least used rooms in the main section of the house.

I've spent the last two days alternating between paying work and computer maintenance; the parts for Jen's Powerbook came in while we were away, so I stripped it down to the bare frame to replace the DC/power board and both display cables. I spent many nervous hours consulting various manuals and writing notes to myself while organizing tiny screws in yogurt containers. Strangely enough, what took me about six hours to disassemble took only two to reassemble, and it was with a deep breath and a long prayer to the Sky Pilot that I pushed the power button. I got the lovely startup chime, a few minutes of nothing, and then...the same two-thirds-black screen I had before I started.

Rooting around for answers, I'm hearing that it's the LCD itself from a parts vendor ($300), or could be the inverter board itself, the only part I didn't replace ($60) when I had the monitor assembly open. I'm now about $500 into this thing and the prospect of spending another $300 does not please me.

However, we did find a workaround for Jen to be able to run InDesign CS and CS3 on the same machine (to recap, CS3 takes control of all InDesign documents regardless of their creator version after it is installed and run for the first time, making it impossible to re-edit them in CS) by creating a second user on the same machine and using CS as that user. Not elegant or ideal, but it gets the job done for now. Adobe gets the big Middle Finger for that one.

Meanwhile, I have been afflicted with record-player disease for the past few weeks: this is when a snippet of one song repeats endlessly in the back of my head, all day long. Last week, it was Rental Car by Beck, which wasn't so bad, but this week I got the chorus to a Counting Crowes song stuck in my noggin when we heard it in the Korean grocery. I hated this band when they were big, and now I am cursed with the melody of their second-rate hit day and night. It got so bad yesterday that I stayed up until midnight to try and resuscitate our music server, which suddenly up and died a few weeks ago. From what I can tell, it stopped booting completely, so I transplanted the drive into a spare, only to be met with a flashing questionmark. This was too much to deal with at midnight, so I tested the third machine and realized it was my old work music server, the one with about 65% of my collection on board. Good enough! The main drive with all our music is fine, but it just won't boot in that particular machine. Strange.

Posted on May 9, 2007 10:05 AM | link to this entry

92 years young!

We're at my parents' place to celebrate my grandfather's 92nd birthday this weekend. He's almost a century old and still kicking.

Posted on May 5, 2007 11:16 AM | link to this entry

Porch and Lake

Posted on May 4, 2007 11:52 AM | link to this entry

A Present For My Lady

This afternoon I won an auction for a galette iron to give my bride, after waiting around for months to see one pop up. This one is a model G-1 (petit), which means it's not as big as the family iron, but I figure it's worth a shot for $9.

I'm keeping my eye out for the large version, to be sure.

Posted on April 13, 2007 6:19 PM | link to this entry

Birthday boy!

And before I forget, let me throw out some birthday props to my Pops, who just turned four today. Happy Birthday, Dad.

Posted on January 30, 2007 4:19 PM | link to this entry

Jen, listening to her father

We stopped down to Jen's father's house this weekend to install his new DSL modem and get his laptop set up to be on the internets. Afterward, we sat around in the kitchen and swapped stories.

Posted on January 15, 2007 10:52 AM | link to this entry

News From The Hospital

My father seemed to be doing much better during the first half of last week, until early Wednesday morning when he was found wandering the hall pushing his drip tree, unable to remember why he was in the hospital. After some new testing, it was found that his C0² levels were still high and that he was not exhaling hard enough while sleeping, thus starving his bloodstream of oxygen.

A new breathing machine was rustled up and prescribed for the following night, and the change was dramatic. The other bit of good news is that the chest tube will (hopefully) be coming out today and he can heal up completely. Now, the only problem will be braving the ice storms to get him home.

Posted on January 15, 2007 10:19 AM | link to this entry | comments (1)

The Camera Ate My Homework.

Well, I'd have a ton of nice photos to share of my father, the spooky house across the street from my parents', and some artsy-fartsy TTL shots of the family, but the memory card in my Canon up and died this afternoon with a mysterious "Card Format Error" message and the dreaded Yellow Questionmark Of Death. So, you'll have to settle for some family photos.

My Dad is doing very well; when last we left him, he was sitting upright in a chair, surveying the wreckage of his turkey dinner, and waiting for the nurse to decide it was time to move him back to the bed. All signs point to "better", including his lung capacity, appetite, skin color, and personality. This whole excercise has been nervous-making but he seems to be coming through fine, and we're hoping it will lead to a serious improvement in quality of life for him. So keep your fingers crossed.

In the meantime, before the memory card blew up, I found a feature of my Canon I hadn't noticed previously, and started experimenting again with through-the-lens shots with my Duoflex II. The manual focus feature seems to fix on the very closest of the details in the picture plane, while leaving the distant ones blurry. I have to do a lot more experimenting with it to refine the technique.

Posted on January 7, 2007 10:30 PM | link to this entry

My Pops

Over a tray of clear liquids, which is a good sign. His appetite is strong and he's looking much better.

Posted on January 6, 2007 10:21 PM | link to this entry

Dateline: St. Joe's Hospital, Syracuse.

We're in the admitting ward of St. Joe's, waiting for my Dad's surgeon to pass the word so that they can wheel his tired hungry ass down to the OR and get this show on the road. My father hasn't eaten since dinner last night, and I can hear his stomach groaning and gnashing and constricting from across the room. He's being very calm about the whole thing, but I know the section of his brain that controls his appetite has swollen to four times its normal size, and it's releasing chemicals into his bloodstream which are making the voices tell him to EAT THE CHAIR, EAT THE CHAIR, I DON'T FUCKING CARE, JUST EAT THE CHAIR. My father going without food for 12 hours is as common as a bear using a bidet; unfortunately this misfortune has been compounded by the omittance of a remote control in our waiting room. The benefit to this, however, is that we don't need to sit through this episode of "Charmed" at a volume setting of 96.

Update: He's out of the surgery and recovering without a breathing tube.

Posted on January 5, 2007 4:54 PM | link to this entry

Diabetic Sage

Sorry, I posted this from the vet's office yesterday and meant to follow up with details (typing out words on a Motorola 551 keypad is as much fun as sticking bamboo up one's own fingernails) but I got caught up in finishing a rush project.

Sage has been losing weight pretty steadily for the last three months, and his back legs have begun to get erratic and shaky. His water intake has increased dramatically. He's been weak and unwilling to haul himself up onto the bed with us this last week, which is sort of like the sun suddenly refusing to rise. We've had problems with one of the cats missing the litterbox while urinating, and when I clean it up, it's sticky and never seems to dry completely. Before we left New Jersey on Monday the first thing Jen did was call in an appointment for him.

After a protracted fight with one of those little test strip machines, our vet concluded that Sage is diabetic. One blood test and about a half-hour later, the results were confirmed: his blood sugar was 601, an astronomical sum compared to the standard 70-110 shared by humans and cats. The sticky urine is due to its massive sugar content—he's probably too weak to make it all the way into the litter pan after navigating the basement stairs.

The vet gave us a quick course in insulin injections, which boiled down to grabbing a handful of scruff and shooting 3cc's subcutaneously under the skin, on their stunt cat Tommy with some saline. Jen administered quickly and professionally, and Tommy happily obliged my fumbling attempts to hold both him and the needle correctly, drooling all over my sleeve, knowing he'd get fed for his trouble. (I am terrified of needles, both giving and getting.) I was able to inject on my second try, and Tommy made it out alive.

We picked up the insulin and a 100-pack of needles, and worked out a crude system where we distracted the other cats with canned food while we gave Sage a special diabetic formula, and while he wolfed that down (the resemblance to Randy, the little brother from A Christmas Story, eating mashed potatoes with his nose, was uncanny) Jen shot him with the insulin. He didn't even notice.

The vet tells us it's going to be a while before his sugar evens out and recovery is noticeable, so we shouldn't expect him to bounce back tomorrow. For us, this is frightening, considering what we went through with Penn, but having a solid diagnosis and clear treatment options provides a huge sense of relief—this is Jen's first husband, after all.

Posted on December 6, 2006 11:30 AM | link to this entry | comments (4)

Peace, Out.

TOMS RIVER — Dover Township retired Sgt. Thomas Joseph Dugan Jr. died Wednesday, Nov. 19 at Jersey Shore Medical Center.

He was born July 25, 1945 in Point Pleasant and was a graduate of Toms River High School, class of 1964, Ocean County College and Northwestern University Traffic School.

Tom Dugan served in Vietnam as a sergeant with the 173rd Airborne Division and was awarded the National Combat Infantry Badge and the Bronze Star.

Tom began his career with the Dover Township Police Department in 1968. He was promoted to detective in 1976 and to sergeant in 1977. Sgt. Dugan retired in 1994 after 26 years of outstanding service. Sgt. Dugan's two sons followed in his footsteps and are currently Toms River police officers.

His life will be celebrated by those family members he left behind, including his wife, Nancy Dugan; his oldest son and daughter-in-law, T.J. and Sarah Dugan; his daughter and son-in-law, Robyn and Paul Guichard; his youngest son, Brian Dugan; his parents, Tom and Grace Dugan; his sisters and brothers-in-law; Patricia and Lowell Gutridge and Kathy and Harry Cafiero; and by his beloved granddaughter, Samantha Dugan. Tom has another grandchild on the way.

Tom Dugan was a loving and supportive husband. He was an outstanding father. His newest role, as "Grandpa Friday," was his most enjoyable. He served well as both brother and son. His living example touched the lives of all who knew him and his presence will live on in the minds of friends and family forever.

Visitation will be held from 2-4 p.m. and 6-9 p.m. Sunday at the Anderson and Campbell Funeral Home, 703 Main St., Toms River. A funeral Mass will be held at 11 a.m. Monday at St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church, 509 Hooper Ave. Toms River. Cremation will be private. In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation in his memory to the American Heart Association, 2550 Route 1, North Brunswick, NJ 08902 or www.americanheart.org.

Posted on December 3, 2006 12:38 AM | link to this entry

In Threes.

Bad news on the phone today, making up the trifecta (and hopefully, last) of bad news for the rest of the year. This was unexpected and totally unfair; a kinder, gentler man I've never met. It looks like we're driving to Jersey within the next week to pay our respects.

Posted on November 29, 2006 1:08 PM | link to this entry | comments (1)

Home, Interrupted.

My Dad is doing well, although they had to check his pulmonary function this morning and stop in to the ER to check on a fever this afternoon. From what we understand, the pulmonary stuff is a side-effect of the medication they gave him after the surgery.

Posted on November 22, 2006 11:00 PM | link to this entry

Take Off, To The Great White North

My pop is doing pretty well. He's been on some heavy antibiotics since his appendix came out, but one of the side effects is anxiety, which makes it hard for him to sleep. Today a call to the docs resulted in some new meds and some benadryl to help knock him out. He looks better this evening than he did yesterday, and he seems to be firing on more cylinders. We got to sit around the table and have dinner as a family this evening, and that felt very good.

Upstate New York is as picturesque as ever, if your idea of compelling subject matter includes ruined barns, abandoned cars, and empty, widswept fields. Which mine does. I had to struggle not to screech the car to a halt on the way in to town to snap photos every half-mile. Perhaps tomorrow I can break away to shoot a little while my father naps. I'm also going to try to get up and visit my Grampa, hopefully in the morning when he's awake, and catch up a little with him.

Posted on November 20, 2006 10:34 PM | link to this entry

Win Some, Lose Some.

My Pop is out of the hospital after getting good blood tests back; the infection is gone, so he's simply trying to rest up and heal. We're loading up the Jeep and driving north to see him tomorrow for an impromptu Thanksgiving visit. I'm looking forward to seeing him.

This morning I went into the office to pick up some stuff for an early client meeting, and it was quiet and lonely.

Posted on November 18, 2006 10:23 PM | link to this entry

Youth In Asia

Penn, the Holy Orange Terror, is not in a good way. After much fucking around, the internal medicine vet got back the results which neither confirm nor deny the presence of FIP. In his professional opinion, though, he thinks it's nonspecific cancer of some kind, which sucks, because we can't treat it with anything.

After several days of forcefeeding, general apathy and lack of sleep, the little guy was wandering around like a meth-head on a four day bender, so we brought him back in to the referring doctor (herself a subject for a later post in detail) for some subcutaneous fluids, a steroid shot, and a healthy painkiller/tranquilizer to help him sleep. Of course, because he's Penn, he's burning through the trank like it's a glass of Coke, so he's still awake but very interested in checking out the floor from eye-level. (If you remember, this is the cat who went through an entire pharmacy of attitude adjustment medication in the search for the One True Drug that would allow him to roam the house free and not view Geneva as the target of ninja assassination. Jen recently threw these expensive drugs away, as they were all taking up valuable space in the egg holder of our fridge, and the urge to self-medicate with some of them has come up now and again.)

I picked Penn out of a lineup at the Baltimore SPCA for two reasons: He was orange, and I have a love for orange cats. He was also the only cat in a room full of cats begging for attention who (I thought) was smart enough to be meowing constantly, at a metronomically precise rate, to get my attention. He was staring straight out of the bars of the cage at me, his little mouth yammering at a frantic pace, until I asked the lady to pick him up, and then he was quiet. He crawled around my arms a little while until he found a comfortable spot, and then he started purring contentedly. I was hooked. (Little did I know that his method of gaining my attention was also his standard method of being alive; this hyperactivity got exponentially more hyper as he got older.) His given name was actually Dandy. I can't think of a more horrifying, stunting name to give a child or a pet than Dandy—besides, perhaps, Britney.

His brother, Teller (originally Raymond) took the opposite tack. Teller laid in the bottom of his cage on his back, playing contentedly with a yarn ball, oblivious of the people outside the cage staring at him and forty other cats. I thought this hard-to-get ploy was pretty slick, and as soon as I picked him up, he seemed to fit perfectly in my hands. Again, this naiive process of selection has come back to haunt me in later years, but at the time it seemed reasonable.

Back at home, in my rowhome in Canton, we settled into a comfortable routine, and the boys seemed to get along with each other pretty well. After I finished the basement, I would let the boys run free in the house, and every once in a while one of them would sleep in the sidewalk-level window. Before long, some of the kids in the neighborhood saw them, and they became a fixture on the walk home. I had the opportunity to introduce them to the kids, and one of the girls couldn't get the name right, so she called him "Mr. Ben." This name stuck, and we've been using it ever since, along with Pennyonce, Penndandy, Mr. Pencil, Pendleflex, Pendleton, and Pennsyltucky, to name a few.

As I've mentioned here before, merging two households of cats was 4/5 successful. Penn, who thought he was alpha male, did not recognize Geneva's rightful claim to that title, and they fought to the point of bloodletting.

After having Geneva stitched back up, Penn got banished to the upstairs office (dubbed the Pennitentiary) and the atrium by himself, and in the summer he had the run of the attic as well. The first year of captivity was pretty lousy, as he didn't get to see as much of us as anybody wanted. We weren't in the office more than a couple of hours a day, and the loneliness got to him. His favorite trick was to wait until we were comfortably asleep and then he'd sit on his haunches and scribblescrabble at the office door, making it bonk against its hinges, until I got up and put him out in the atrium.

I'm having a hard time with this situation because I have a lot of guilt over having to lock him up by himself. The other cats got to glom all over us in the cold winter months, stapling us into the bed under their sheer weight and leeching our precious body heat; they had plenty of lap time on the couch, and they got to socialize with guests who found themselves unlucky enough to be trapped in a house with the crazy cat people. Penn had to sleep and eat by himself for two years. There were many days when I had bad things to say about our problem child, and plenty of days when I just wished he was gone so we could have some harmony in our household. For these thoughts, I'm feeling horrible, like Penn deserved a better Dad than me. I am a pretty selfish, misanthropic human a lot of the time, and I didn't spend enough quality time with Penn when he was on his own.

After our failed attempts at chemically altering his behavior, I looked into adoption services with little success. There is no easy solution for adoption when the cat is full-grown, and I couldn't bear to think of Penn sitting alone in a cage at a PetSmart for three months waiting for someone to pick him, especially after he'd already been through that experience before.

Since Jen's been working from home, and especially this last year after I joined her, we've been around him for eight or ten or twelve hours a day, and he's been much happier and a lot mellower. Jen set up a wine box with a pillow in between our desks and he'd spend long afternoons asleep with us, relaxing us while we stressed out and staying up with us to hit deadlines. He became a fantastic studio cat, only occasionally spilling the odd glass of water or scrabbling at the door. (He never did grow out of his habit of meowing constantly the minute I got on the phone with a client.) This summer we remarked more than once how different he'd become, and that the change made us both feel better.

This last month has been tough for all of us. I didn't notice the changes in behavior or weight loss until Jen pointed them out, and because they were gradual at first, it took a long time for me to accept that something was wrong. As his condition worsened, the changes sped up until he became a shadow of his former gregarious self. I feel guilty about this too, although from what the doctors are telling us, there really is nothing we could have done anyway. That's cold comfort, though.

Last night we corralled the other cats in the basement, moved his box into our room, and let him stay with us for the first time in ages. He laid on the bed and stared off into space, unable to sleep, and he was like that when we both drifted off. This morning, after the painkillers wore off, he gave us a wheezy purr as we scratched his back, and that made us feel a little better, like he actually realizes we're there and that we love him. I'm making an appointment with the vet in the afternoon, and I have to decide if I want a wooden box with a plaque or something more ornate for his final resting place, but that seems kind of garish for a working-class cat like Penn. I'm also wondering where I'm supposed to put this thing. On the mantle? On my dresser? In the closet?

This sucks.

Posted on November 16, 2006 6:23 PM | link to this entry | comments (3)

Mr. Penn

Posted on November 16, 2006 3:15 PM | link to this entry | comments (2)

Crap!

My sister called this morning to let me know my father is in the hospital having his appendix removed today, so our Thanksgiving plans are out the window. Cross your fingers for my pop, will you?

Posted on November 15, 2006 11:11 AM | link to this entry | comments (2)

Beer and Oysters

Six years ago, Jen invited me down to the County to attend the Oyster Festival with her family. I underestimated the travel time and arrived late (not a good first impression) but attempted to make up for it by trying raw oysters for the first time to impress both Jen and her mother ( I still don't know if I was successful, but we're married, at least.)

Saturday we took Jen's father for his first time, and while we didn't get him to try the oysters, we did enjoy some St. Mary's stuffed ham, funnel cake, and Sam Adams Octoberfest on a warm, sunny autumn day. What could be better?

Posted on October 23, 2006 10:33 AM | link to this entry | comments (2)

Birthday Girl

I took Jen to Jordan's last night for a birthday dinner, after breakfast in bed, a day's worth of flowers, and the promise (yesterday was a work day, after all) of a relaxing soak in a mineral bath with fresh lilies and scentless candles. Thursday night is live jazz night, so we were entertained by a guitar/bass combo who put a silky touch on jazz standards and Hendrix alike—it sounds strange, but believe me, it was perfect. The food was fantastic, and the ambiance was just right. We returned home to four birthday messages on our machine, a bottle of red wine, and more fresh flowers.

Happy birthday, baby. I love you.

Posted on August 11, 2006 3:03 PM | link to this entry

2006 Dugan Open.

I'm writing from New York State, where I'm winding down from this year's golf outing and keg party, organized annually by my 90-year-old grandfather. The day turned out to be perfect, with 80° weather and a cool breeze blowing off the lake. I hauled my clubs out of the basement, brushed the sawdust and cobwebs off my bag, and proceeded to shoot a lousy game of golf, punctuated with infrequent moments of competence. Luckily, my family plays somewhat regularly, and between my father and sister's drives and my mother's putting, we didn't embarass ourselves too badly.

After lunch and the prize announcements, we hit my uncle's house on the lake for a continuance of partying (which, at this stage, means watching my cousins' children run around in water wings while sipping beer, eating chips, and catching up with family) and a lazy afternoon boat ride on the lake. After eating dinner, we retired to my parents' front porch where I proceeded to pass out for an hour with my feet on the railing as the sun fell below the horizon.

I took a bunch of pictures, which I'll probably post tomorrow, and got a pretty decent farmer's tan, which will be gone in three days. But right now, I'd like to strangle the drunk guy singing Rolling Stones covers at the lawn party down the street so I can go to sleep.

Posted on August 5, 2006 11:47 PM | link to this entry

The Natural Order.

Let's all wish my sister Renie a warm, wonderful 29th birthday today! Renie, we hope it's a great day for you.

There's not much to discuss here in C-Ville, other than the fact that we're A. totally finished with picnic food for a while (them nitrates will clean you out, and not in a good way) and B. embarking on a Campaign To Eat Healthier, all in the wake of the 4th of July Parade. Being left with 24 hamburger patties on the 5th means we gave the FoodSaver a workout, stocking our freezer for the next year's worth of grilling. One of the benefits of post-party cleanup is that we still have a sizeable cache of beer in the basement, something that's been in pretty short supply around here lately.

Also, I finished the V entry for the Alphabet Project this morning, bringing order back from chaos. I'll make a slight detour to work on an obituary piece to commemorate Ken Lay's passing, and then return to X later in the week.

Posted on July 10, 2006 1:35 PM | link to this entry | comments (1)

Gradjeate.

Reporting from Atlanta, we have witnessed the successful graduation of the fourth Lockard child, from Georgia Tech. Among the way, we have encountered fickle Georgia weather, unreliable public transportation (Note: the Georgia Dome has an abnormally small parking lot—be warned) a restaurant called Maggiano's, where food is delivered not on plates but in shipping-container sized portions, and a little too much red wine. Now the process of shuttling people back to the airport begins.

Posted on May 7, 2006 11:20 AM | link to this entry

A Little Video Research.

Last night I refocused some of my ADD into working with the images I scanned in New York. Because I scanned them at such a high resolution, I wanted to know if I need to reduce the image size or change the file format to work with the program I've got (iMovie 5.1). Doing a little reading, I found some advice online that scared me away from using iMovie to do the photo montage work altogether. Apparently when still images are exported to DVD from iMovie, the program throws out every other line of resolution so that the images show up onscreen without flicker. This obviously tosses half the image quality of the photo, which is less than optimal. I was also impressed but not excited about the photo manipulation tools in iMovie, so I followed some other advice and found two applications that look promising: Still Life and Photo to Movie.

Still Life is a nice little application, set up like a Quicktime window with a little timeline below. You can add "shots", essentially keyframes for pans and zooms, and add in fades. It also allows for the layering of music tracks, although I haven't fooled with this at all.

Photo To Movie is a step above Still Life; It opens up with a timeline view at the bottom and features adjustable panning and zooming, something iMovie and Still Life lack. It also has an adjustable background color, something I couldn't find in Still Life—which makes using scanned photos much easier. Best of all, it took about 3 minutes to be up and running in this application. In a half-hour, I had four photos positioned, panned and scanned, titled (no small feat with multiple subjects in each picture) and ready to go. I'm most likely going to spend the $50 on the full featured version of this program after a DVD test later next week—I'm putting Photo To Movie up against iMovie in a head-to-head duel.

Posted on March 16, 2006 9:11 AM | link to this entry

Family History: Wrap-Up.

From a best-guess estimate, I've got about 800 photos scanned from my grandfather's archive. This includes some (but, tantalizingly, not all) of the oldest family photos in his posession. The total haul is about 5.11GB of data. Some of those are dupes- I did the highest-resolution scans I could of the most important and rarest photos in the collection, which means that Thomas, my great-great grandfather, is preserved in ones and zeroes at 1200dpi for the long-term future.

I've got about eight hours of videotape of my grandfather reviewing his collection, some with and some without my father helping to draw stories out of him. He seemed to want to get to the latest photos immediately, and we had to explain to him several times that we were more interested in his earlier history, the stuff nobody knows about. Once he warmed up, he was rattling off the names of people who had us stumped. It was interesting to see where his memory was sketchy, though—the names of dogs, for example: On the farm, they had a long succession of barn animals with names like Soupy, Shnooky, and Pumpkin. It seemed like he identified every dog from every decade as "Judy", an interchangeable and unknown (to me) mutt who died before my time.

Based on my experience, I have a few recommendations for anybody tackling this project in the future:

• Bring a scanner and scan everything and anything you can. Scan the fronts and the backs of the photos-often times there's better stuff on the back than on the front.


• Have someone helping you draw the stories out of your relative. If a memory pops up about a particular photo (and you'll see it on their face when it does) ask them about the place, time, people who were there, and how it made them feel. You'll be amazed at what they remember, and that will lead you to more questions.


• Your relative may start out slow, but once you engage them, it's amazing how much they look forward to the process. My grandfather is 90, and I think he was thrilled to have us talking to him about his history.


• Block out a lot of time. I had five days, and they went by quickly. Between filming four hours a day and scanning at night, I was exhausted at the end of each day.

On the way out of town, I stopped back in and showed him my photos of all the work done on the house since we moved in—something to make the housepainter in his blood proud. He peered into the LCD of my laptop as I took him through the rooms, asked questions about the work I'd done—clucking when I mentioned repairing plaster, and shaking his head at the hallway cieling—and nodded approvingly when I was done.

I've always felt that I never spent enough time with my grandparents. Because we were geographically the second-furthest grandkids from their house, visits in the summer and for holidays were usually quick and over before they'd started. Because I'm a weird half-social misanthrope, I have a difficult time keeping relationships strong and fresh, often letting the time between contact with important people in my life stretch on far too long. As a result, I always felt like an outsider at family gatherings, like the kid who stood at the back of the school dance and watched everyone else have a good time.

This visit changed that for the better, I think—not only because I recorded some of our family's history, but because I began to change the way I see my family. Seeing my relatives in their younger years somehow made me feel closer to each of them, like I was watching over them as they grew up and formed families of their own. Instead of feeling like an outsider, I felt like I was more of a part of their lives, even if they were frozen in time on a piece of paper, especially as my grandfather rattled off names and told me which house they stood in front of and whose wedding they were attending. One of the resolutions I made for this year was to be a better son, husband, and friend in my relationships, and I made this trip the kickoff of that promise to my family. Spending time with my father and his father (and the rest of my family, between scanning pictures, ha-ha) meant a lot to me, and I think it meant a lot to each of them. More importantly, it wasn't that hard to do. The hard part is in the follow-up, and that's an ongoing process that's going to take a lot of discipline, something I don't have a lot of.

As I was leaving, I noticed the wind had blown the trail of my footprints in the snow away, as if I'd never been there at all. I'm glad I got the time to spend with my grandfather, and that he got to know me a little bit better; My next project is going to be collating the photos I have with the information I've got and try to put something together for him to share with his family—and to be there when he does.

Posted on March 6, 2006 1:55 PM | link to this entry

Family History, Day Four.

Yesterday we got two solid hours of Grampy's time on tape. He went to mass in the morning, so we got about a half-hour in before lunch and another half-hour afterwards, making our way through the envelope marked "the 60's". I left so that he could take his nap and returned to the house with a pile of photos to scan, most of which I got done. We headed back up at 3:30 to continue with both envelopes from the 70's, and as a bonus, we got about fifteen minutes of Grampy talking to my Dad about his parents and grandparents.

I'm heading back over today to talk about the balance of the photos, which consist mainly of the 80's and anything else we didn't get to. I'm going to try to power through that relatively quickly, and then get back to just talking with Grampy about anything pre-1950 I can think of while the tape is rolling. Then, one more evening of scanning, and we'll call this expedition done.

Fuck, I missed Lost last night. What happened?

Posted on March 2, 2006 8:06 AM | link to this entry | comments (4)

Family History, Part Three.

We got a later start Tuesday than Monday, but it was still very productive. Grampy pulled out another box full of pictures, neatly separated into decades and marked in my father's writing (an example: "The Big 70's") featuring an envelope of shots from the 40's we hadn't looked at yet. We filled the better part of two more tapes with recollections and names, and Grampy even pulled out a photo of my great-great Grandfather.

He's doing really well with the photos. Even though many of the subjects are of his wife's family, he's able to pick out an average of 75% of the people involved. It's amazing to see my grandparents as 18-year-old kids vacationing in Budd Lake or at Point Pleasant; it's another thing entirely to finally understand the family tree and be able to pick out faces with some degree of success.

During one of the breaks, I decided to head back out into the wind and cold (it's hovering somewhere in the 20's this week) to shoot some pictures of the farm. First, I put the Jeep in 4-wheel and drove out to the west hedgerow, where two gravestones have stood among the weeds since the early 1800's. Then, I shot some pictures of the barn.

When my grandfather bought the house, he also bought the 53 acres it sits on and a gaggle of outbuildings, all of which are now gone. (Total cost in 1953: $6,000) The barn itself still stands, as a testament to its post-and-beam construction. I poked inside, making sure to stick to the sills so that I wouldn't fall through the rotted floorboards, and shot a bunch of pictures of the beams and joists. I didn't make it into the silo, which will probably stand long after the barn is gone—it was put up with ceramic brick at some point before my grandparents owned the farm, for a sum of $100. The wooden roof blew off in the last big windstorm of last year, but the structure is still intact. The milking shed my grandfather built fell down long ago, but I have pictures of it from ten years ago when the stanchions still stood and the windows looked out onto the back 40.

There are a wealth of pictures starring my aunts and uncles, and, of course, my father. He appears as a pudgy newborn with his mink-clad aunts and uncles and as a skinny college student home on break. I commandeered the kitchen table and spent the last two evenings scanning photos, everything at 600dpi and a select bunch at 1200dpi (the oldest and rarest, as well as my father's baby pictures) for a current total of 2.5GB of data.

Today is Ash Wednesday, so we're getting a late start after Grampy gets back from church. I'm going to use the afternoon after his nap to get another hour or so, and hopefully we'll make it to the 50's—which hasn't even been scratched yet.

Posted on February 28, 2006 10:47 PM | link to this entry | comments (4)

Family History, Part Two.

My grandfather met us at the door this morning with a smile, and waited for us to carry all the gear inside. He led us into the living room, where he'd spread out the contents of three or four boxes on the loveseat, coffee table, and easy chair: scores of black and white pictures dating back to at least the turn of the century. On the back, where he could remember faces and dates, he pencilled in information in scratchy uppercase lettering. After getting the camera set up and the mics in place, we started rolling.

Grampy did very well on his first day. With a quick break for lunch, we shot about two and a half hours' worth of tape, which covered a thick pile of photos. It turns out that his side of the family shot a handful of pictures, while my grandmother's side took whole albums worth. As a result, we had to set a large number of material aside where he couldn't identify any of the subjects. (Sorry Grandma, we did our best!)

We did find a pile of photos my father has never seen, and I got a first look at my great grandfather—whose face is about the size of a pencil eraser in the photo. Grampy's going to look for his other photos of our namesake tomorrow, and I've been warned that he's not even warmed up yet. He also unrolled the family tree he's been working on, which dates back to 1854, and fittingly, is written in pencil on the back of a roll of wallpaper.

I was able to pull the video off the camera and onto my iBook with absolutely no problems—however, my iBook is having some kind of issue where it's missing approximately 30 GIGS of hard drive space. I mean, it's not there, and I have no idea where it went. I've cleaned every cache I can think of and burned off DVD's to free up space, and run diagnostics: No luck. I'm going to break down tomorrow and pick up an external hard drive to store everything until I can get time to troubleshoot the problem. I had to twist my mother's arm to get her to come to the local Target with me. The horror!

Update: From this link, I learned to do a simple thing:

Using the Finder’s Go to Folder feature (in the Go menu), look at the sizes of the contents of these folders, by pasting in these pathnames:

/Volumes

Simetimes, backup programs that cannot find an intended destination (or target) volume for a backup create a folder with the same name as the destination, and put the folder into the /Volumes directory. There are cases in which the entire startup volume has been backed up on itself, in a folder inside /Volumes. If the amount of missing space is about the size of your user folder, such a backup is likely to be the explanation. If you use Carbon Copy Cloner and have its preferences configured to create a backup on a schedule, and the intended destination volume is not mounted or is sleeping at the scheduled time, the backup is created in the /Volumes directory.

To check the size of the normally invisible /Volumes directory on the active startup volume, open a new Finder window. Select the startup volume in the list at the left, then choose column view (the one at the right of the three views). From the Finder’s Go menu, choose Go to Folder, and paste in:

/Volumes

The /Volumes directory becomes visible in the Finder; find its size by selecting it and typing Command I. My /Volumes directory is reported to be 12K.

I just found 48.6 gigs of space I didn't have before, from an old copy of Deja Vu, which was dumping stuff on a ghost volume of my old Powerbook. w00t!

(I could see the ghost drive from the Terminal but couldn't remember how to delete it because the name contained a space.)

Posted on February 27, 2006 11:49 PM | link to this entry | comments (2)

Family History, Part One.

Much of my family history is, to me, a vague bunch of names and dates, people I don't have a whole lot of contact with, or never met in my life. I've gotten more interested in my kinfolk as I've gotten older—I think it's something that comes with the realization that one isn't 19 forever, and it hits sometime around the second year of mortgage payments. That time in life when one's friends are all recent parents, and the people we used to shut the bars down with are now on the PTA board.

My grandfather is nearing 90 years old. He's a retired housepainter. In his prime, he used to load a panel van full of supplies and drive from the Finger Lakes region of New York to Manhattan on Sunday night, at a time when highways didn't exist. He painted houses in the city from Monday until Friday. Then, he'd load the van back up and return home to his family, and spend the weekend repairing a 100-year-old farmhouse with no insulation or running water, only to turn around and do it again. He has always been a commanding sort of man, the kind of septuagenarian who could still kick ass and play a mean round of golf, even when his backswing was reduced from feet to inches. I remember wiry, ropy muscles in his arms, under a short-sleeve shirt, hoisting my cousins for a tour of the barn. I remember cookouts in the side yard, with he and my grandmother holding court by the Coca-Cola cooler, and cars lined up four deep in front of the house. I remember huddling around the heat registers in the bedroom upstairs, quietly listening to my aunts and uncles tell jokes in the smoky kitchen below. I remember my grandparents full of life, and that's how I'll always keep them in my memory.

The last time Jen and I visited with my grandfather, I realized how little I really know about him and my own family. I don't know if I've ever seen a picture of my namesake (I am the Fourth.) Travelling in Ireland last year, it became painfully clear to me that I don't know where my people came from, or when they arrived. I've spent a lot of time trying to help Jen's father get his family history archived, going as far as humping computer equipment to a reunion and scanning every photo album. I haven't spent nearly enough time with my own family, nor do I know nearly as much about us as I should.

I hatched a plot with my father a few months ago, and got his help in planning for a trip north to sit with my grandfather and talk to him about his family. He has shoeboxes full of photos and reels of 8mm film that may or may not have seen the light of day since the Truman administration. He has letters and pictures and most importantly, his memory to tell the stories behind the pictures, and put faces with names. And luckily for me, as I worked more on this plan, the pieces fell into place faster and easier that I could have hoped.

I mentioned the plan to a friend of mine, purely by chance—I was discussing scheduling for some freelance work. Graciously, he lent me the use of a very expensive professional digital video camera, two very expensive lavalier microphones, and a matching tripod. Junior and Senior will get mic'd, and my father will guide his father through the pictures, getting stories and faces and people straight while I scan and archive everything I possibly can.

We're heading up there at 9AM tomorrow, and I'm told Grampy has been telling everybody about it excitedly. He's been instructed by his daughters to shave, wear his good shirts, and behave himself. I'm as excited as he is—there are a ton of questions to ask, and I'm anxious to hear the answers.

Posted on February 27, 2006 11:32 PM | link to this entry | comments (1)

Piels Real Draft.

I helped my Dad set up a slide scanning attachment on his Nikon this weekend, and we did a quick runthrough of the Dugan Family Slide Archives. There are three large boxes of slide trays in the attic, and an unknown number of binders holding the balance of the collection. At some point I want to get rest of the collection scanned, and I'll probably have to call in some bigger guns, but this was an excellent start.

The rest of the weekend was peaceful, fun, and festive; our Christmas with the family was wonderful. We got to hear my folks sing in the choir of the Presbyterian church across the street from their house, and visit with my namesake, William Dugan Jr., who is nearing 90 years of age and still kicking. Thanks to everyone for a happy holiday!

Posted on December 19, 2005 8:58 PM | link to this entry

My Father And Some Trains.

Posted on November 29, 2005 6:40 PM | link to this entry

Turkey Day Wrapup.

Thanksgiving 2005 at the Lockardugan house went over exceptionally well. With the aid of a New And Improved! kitchen, preparation of the bird went much easier. Along with my family, we invited some friends from the neighborhood (and my old job) to join us, so we had the patter of little feet in the house to make the place cheerier. The bird made it on the table a few hours late (I'm still getting the hang of this new stove) but I think everybody had a great time. I'd like to post pictures of the day, but I didn't have the time or presence of mind to touch my camera.

Friday we took a field trip to a few places I'd read about but never been to before: Second Chance, an architectural salvage warehouse, and Housewerks, another (smaller) warehouse with one-of-a-kind architectural elements. Second Chance is an old home enthusiast's wet dream. More wooden doors than a person can shake a stick at; fields of cast-iron bathtubs; hinges, porcelain tile, sinks, and shutters; and a whole warehouse with overstocked new/used building materials (windows, cabinets, etc.) Housewerks is located in an old gasworks building I'd been to 10 years ago in its previous life as a photographer's studio. Think of old signage, wooden gears, carnival canvas, stained glass, and other unique finds from all over the country, and you get the idea. (The kind of stuff you can't fit in a house like ours, but would go great in a loft/warehouse-style apartment.) It kind of sucked not having any money to spend, but I'm positive we'll return there when we do.

We then saw the new Harry Potter movie, which I'd give four stars out of five. I've not read the two books, but it was fun entertainment—just don't go hoping to see some of the details in the books fleshed out (I'm told they cut a lot of it out.) They'd better hurry up and film the rest of them before the kid who plays Harry hits middle age.

We got the two train nuts together for a trip to the B&O Museum on Sunday, which turned out to be a fun afternoon. My Dad spent his childhood blocks away from a major switching yard in Jersey City, and much of the freight going west through Pennsylvania went through Jen's father's town, so they wandered the yards and asked the old-timers about engines and steam and cars they'd grown up looking at. The Museum has done a lot of work in the last year, adding new cars, opening the work shed, and updating exhibits—it's great to see. Meanwhile, my mother and sister launched a full assault on the local Kohl's and Target, and filled the back of the car with Christmas presents.

This morning, they stuffed the car and headed home into the overcast skies. I always get a bit down after Thanksgiving, because of the build-up and excitement of the weekend, and this year is no different. This year I also have to come back to reality and figure out where the mortgage payment is coming from, which is why I'm writing this and putting off what I should be doing.

Posted on November 28, 2005 1:40 PM | link to this entry | comments (1)

Oh, And By The Way...

I have a vivid memory of riding on the giant, vinyl backseat of my mother's