Idiomatic Expression

Ohio.

Katherine and I headed to Ohio for Labor Day to visit with my Mom’s side of the family. While we were there we stumbled upon some of the best doughnuts I have ever eaten at Norman’s in Millersburg, OH. We had fun and have the pictures to show for it. We bought some quilts from MinMar (Minerva Martin) also in Millersburg.

Make sure you check out the gallery for the Amish buggies parked at wal-mart and what appears to be some Amish or Mennonite themed romance novels. UPDATE My mom let me know that this is a novel about Amish life to let non Amish know how they live and why they do not use technology etc. That certainly makes more sense than a romance novel, but the cover is certainly confusing.

It has taken me a bit to get the pictures up as we headed to Vancouver the next weekend to visit with Katherine’s Grandmother and our friends in the area. I have uploaded some pictures from that trip as well.

Not a lot of web posting, or web browsing going on these days, but we are slowly preparing for the baby. Although we are doing our best to limit non-essential baby stuff, there are some things we have to have and Katherine and I found a stroller from Baby Jogger that we love and it is sitting in the dining room all ready for July. The car seat adapter is installed and the Graco Snug Ride car seat firmly attached. We also found a great crib for cheap on Overstock. It arrived less than a week after we ordered, ($2.95 shipping) but the UPS man was pretty pissed that a 30 kilo (66 lbs) package was coming out of his truck. The crib is still all boxed up in the downstairs hallway as we slowly work toward preparing the child’s room for painting.

Check out the Baby Stuff gallery to see the pictures of the crib and stroller, hopefully I will have pictures I took of this stuff posted at some point.

For those of you that I have not seen in person in the last two to three weeks, Katherine and I are expecting a baby in the second half of July.

What we know so far;

• The baby is a boy
• The chromosomal testing revealed neither super powers nor other structural abnormalities (e.g. Down’s Syndrome)
• The baby is coming whether we are ready for it or not.

Reminders, please no unasked touching of the belly, and no we really don’t want to hear that your friend so and so was in labor for three weeks and unexpectedly gave birth to a litter of kittens.

I scanned in the sonograms.

After three years of ignoring most of the non-structural needs of the house, It was back to work about four weeks ago. So far, the unfinished section of the basement has been re-organized, the finished section of the basement has been organized and cleaned into usable space, the third bedroom has been emptied and the wallpaper removed, and the dining room is mostly emptied of random stuff and usable as needed. The next steps are to sand off the loose paint in the third bedroom, paint the third bedroom, and remodel the upstairs bathroom. Every time I think I have accomplished enough to be proud of myself, I make the mistake of reading up on Paul’s exploits and it reminds me to put down the computer and go back to work.

I estimate that I have tripled the usable space in the house, so given the current housing market in an emergency we could now sell the house for a handful of shiny beads, and some mittens.

Happy Guy Fawkes Night

A week on vacation and still too busy relaxing to write anything here.

Portland was beautiful, one of my favorite cities in the US. Most of the pictures from Portland are here, but none from Seattle yet. It looks like the week in Vancouver, BC will have a bit of rain so maybe a bit more time to write about the trip and get more pictures up.

Time for lunch!

If anyone cares a decent list of watches worn in the movies.

According to an article on MSNBC complaining may be making you feel worse about your situation.

At lunch I was talking with a co-worker about her new room mate who is a second grade teacher, and we bother realized that we had no recollection of what we learned in second grade. I remember the time that I got smacked for talking back, and the time I got smacked with a ruler for having a friends stash of comic books in my desk. However, I have no recollection of learning anything. I think maybe we started cursive writing that year. Although if you have seen my hand writing you would be hard pressed to say whether I learned anything at all about cursive hand writing.

Poking around I found the Virginia Standards of Learning. I am not sure if this is what I learned in second grade, but it is what is being taught these days.

Well you don’t actually see me, or hear me, but they do say my name a couple of times.