Rain!

After a far too rainy spring, we hadn’t seen more than a few drops since May 1.  But today we got a short blast that I think the lawn and garden will greatly appreciate.  Eliza appreciated it, too.  Hopefully we can get a little bit more to offset the 100 degree heat these last few days. 

Tree’s Company

Not only has our little girl kept us busy this summer, but we’ve also had some clean up to do. The last few months have seen some terrible thunder storms. One produced the results below on Sunday, June 27. I had just walked in the door (from the garage) a mere three minutes before we heard a deafening boom and “pop” and saw a bright flash. Lightening had hit our neighbor’s tree. I looked outside to find this.
These are not some of our best photos but it was not the time to improve our craft!

So a tree fell through our garage. The bad news – damaged cars, damaged garage, ugly tree, dead grass (from the tree laying on it too long), slightly tilted swing (which Kirk had finished only a few days prior). The good news – I didn’t pull into the garage three minutes later!

The reason for banged up vehicles.

It took a while dealing with IPL (power), their emergency tree crew, and then the power guys, but by 3am we were finally back to normal (and with 80 degree temps we finally had some air). The food didn’t spoil, and Eliza enjoyed watching the tree crew work until 10:30pm when she crashed, despite having to sleep in a very warm house. When the tree fell/lightning hit, it didn't just knock out power on half the block, but it also fried a couple appliances in our house and partly welded the circuit box closed in the basement.

This is not something I ever expected to see in our narrow driveway! The tree guys had some trouble making it to our backyard in their wide truck. They did some damage to our rocks and trim lining the driveway but after seeing all this, that was minor compared to what I thought may happen.

It was close to 11pm by the time they were able to start sawing the tree . Since this was considered an emergency they worked through the night! When IPL has an emergency tree removal, they only remove enough to get the power back on, but fortunately for us they determined the whole tree needed to be removed from the roof for IPL crew safety. But the tree service does not remove the tree from the property, so we had limbs and large trunk pieces all over the yard still.

Just this week the neighbors’ cut down the other 2/3 of the tree, which is better in the long run, but it also takes away some great bits of shade throughout the day (one reason why Kirk built the swing where he did).

Starting this week (we hope) the crew will finally start repairing the garage. We look forward to the new framing, roof, and garage doors, and we can’t wait to finally park inside a garage again after two months. The Buick already spent over a week at the body shop (it must be the nicest 2000 on the road now!), and the Infiniti will get it’s cosmetic surgery soon.

A Little off the Top (and a lot off the sides and back)!

After almost two years, I've gone back to shorter hair with the actual plan to keep it this way. Goodbye pseudo-mullet, goodbye quarterly haircuts (maybe?), goodbye bushy sides, and goodbye wind-blown dishelvedness. Hello driving with the windows down, even on a workday, and it's all just in time for a trip to sunny Florida!

The New Laptop

After 8 years (yes, that is a loooong time for technology to last!), we have our first new laptop computer, a Dell 17" Studio. It's been wonderful, and compared to our old laptop, it has the following features:

-a battery that works, which means Lynne can actually use it in the family room while watching Eliza!

-500GB hard drive as opposed to the 20GB we were working with on the old computer, which meant we kept having to back things up to an external HDD

-4GB RAM, as opposed to 256MB that caused the old computer to freeze when more than two applications were open (or too many IE tabs)

-a huge 17" widescreen that wasn't a distorted orange color in the corner like our old laptop

-a DVD RW drive so we can actually make dvds from Eliza's videos and not rely on friends to burn them for us

-built-in wireless card, which is the norm, but so much nicer than trying to get my old laptop to recognize the Netgear wireless card we had to install years ago

-great sound system, so I don't have to connect it to a stereo to listen to stuff, ala my old computer

-sub 2.0 drives (or whatever version is newest) that are about 10 times faster than our old USB connections, which makes a big difference when uploading pics and video

Overall, it has been wonderful, but rest assured friends, the old laptop is still up and running and is hosting our printer network, so we'll see how long it can hold out. Here's a surreal shot of 3 laptops open on my desk (one is my work computer), which still seems very weird.

Wednesday Randomness

I was out watering the garden the other day when I saw some weird grass growing on my lawn. It didn't look like your average weed, and it was growing a lot faster (taller) than my grass. I stooped down to take a look, pulled a few strands out of the ground, and lo and behold, I was a corn farmer! It seems that when we were playing cornhole a few weeks ago and the bags broke open on the lawn, the seeds had a fun time sprouting. I know corn is cheap at the store, but if it can grow in my lawn, I know it'll grow in my garden, so next year we'll definitely see what homegrown corn can do in our garden.

Other garden updates: lettuce mix continues to do so well I'm giving it away left and right, swiss chard is excellent (see below for more), all the herbs are looking great, green onions are starting to get thicker, jalapeno and bell peppers are actually growing (some very large, but no peppers yet), and the okra is working it's way up (about 2 feet tall in places). The failures have been the leeks which never took off, the spinach, which were excellent until about a week ago when the dried out and died, and the raspberry bush is still struggling. The blackberry bushes didn't make it either.

Before I left for NYC, we made our first pizza! It was quite easy and as cheap to make as a frozen pizza at the grocery store. Ours had lots of cheese, salami, and thai basil from the garden, and it was very delicious!

On Monday night I made my "famous" lamb burgers. This is one of my favorite quick and easy meals. It's simply ground lamb with herbs and spices, lettuce from the garden, Trader Joe's rolls, and whatever cheese you like (we prefer goat on them). We also cooked our first batch of swiss chard from the garden with some olive oil and onions, and it was so delicious. It's a shame it takes so much greenery to wilt down into one serving, but we have tons in the garden and are looking forward to more chard throughout the summer!

And without further ado, the real reason you visit this blog...pics of Eliza!

She is so attentive! She's constantly studying everything around her...smart girl! :)

Nap times are too dang cute.

Did I startle her?! I love her huge eyes!

Lynne thought it was nap time, but Eliza knew it was a photo-op!

Poor Otis, constantly in need of attention. Here he is at his lazy best. Don't fall off?!

Things to do before having children

While bouncing from link to link online the other day, I came across a blog that I hadn't visited in about two years, and one article title really stood out: 70 Things to Do Before Having Children. While any list like this would be specific to any person/couple's personality, likes/dislikes, sense of adventure, etc. there is a valid point that there are many things you won't have time to do or want to do once the baby arrives. With that, here are some of the highlights from this couple's list that Lynne and I can say we were glad we did before having a baby.

1. Live in a high rise condo with an amazing view.
Not really interested in a high rise, but we have had our share of fun apartments/townhouse/fraternity that I don't think we'd change for anything

2. Take a month long vacation on the opposite side of the world in a city with a completely different culture.
I think two months in Bangkok qualifies :)

3. Attend the Super Bowl live.
Of course I think this would be fun, but what's to say that baby-sitting grandparents wouldn't make this an easy one down the road...especially when the Bowl comes to Indy (here's hoping the Bears are awesome that year). Also, I hit the Rose Bowl back in 2000/2001, which is the Super Bowl of college football!

4. Jump out of a perfectly good airplane.
Been there, done that (I doubt Lynne ever will though)

5. Make love in places you aren’t supposed to.
[Redacted]

6. Swim with the sharks
Doesn't seem that interesting...but you never know

7. Scuba-dive to a large ship wreck.
Thanks to my dad, I can actually say that I've been scuba diving multiple times, so that should count for something! And deep sea snorkeling should count for something (which we both did in Thailand, as well as other locales)

8. Audition to be on TV or in a movie… even if you’re just an extra.
I did try my hand at getting on two reality shows (although I sure didn't try very hard) while at Purdue. I made the semi-finals in a campus search for contestants for the old Who Wants to Be a Millionaire rip-off, Greed, but alas, my head shot wasn't very compelling. I also was one of three guys in my fraternity to put together a video entry for a show called "flipped" that was going to run on Fox (or Fox Family, which became ABC Family) and put people in new life situations they weren't accustomed to (like Wife Swap, but with individuals). They wanted a fraternity to participate, but the show never got off the ground. I remember sitting in my room thinking of the options of places they could swap me to, and honestly, I thought they'd all be exciting and eye-opening. Also, the Smiley family was in a Dodge commercial, and Lynne auditioned for theater stuff, which is way more high-brow than TV.

9. Throw the house party of all house parties. Supply all the booze and invite everyone you know.
This sounds like us, right? Well, we did throw a great ATO Semi-formal post party at the townhouse in Lafayette, since it was less than a block from the dance venue. And Lynne threw me a great graduation surprise party, so those count.

[now editing out the ones that really don't apply, for time's sake]

12. Become skilled with a musical instrument.
Lynne's got her voice, Kirk had the sax, and I'm still fiddling away at the guitar when I'm bored.

14. Live in the heart of New York City, Chicago, Boston or another major city for at least a year.
Downtown Lafayette doesn't count?? C'mon, it's a metropolis!

15. Spend a few weeks vacationing on the beaches of Kauai with your partner.
We've covered the beaches of Phuket, Thailand, and we've been to beaches in Florida and South Carolina together. I know we'll have more beaches in our future, but they will be very different trips with kids!

20. Read at least 30 books.
Yeh, we both have that more than covered.

21. Jump off a cliff into a natural body of water in an exotic location.
Why would I ever STOP doing this! :)

25. Drink warm beer out of a barrel in a real Irish pub.
Why is this even on the list? I did it before I drank and appreciated beer, in Ireland, and it was gross, but I'm sure I'd enjoy it more now.

26. Spend a night pub-hopping in London.
I've had the opportunity to do this in London, Ireland, Scotland, and Germany, all thanks to the Oxford study abroad program so graciously provided for free by Purdue University :) Nothing like putting your scholarship stipend to good use. I think Lynne missed out here.

27. Stage dive and crowd surf at a rock concert.
OK, I've never stage dived at a rock concert, but I have crowd surfed at a punk rock concert multiple times.

33. Go snowboarding in the Rockies.
A worthy list would have this item, but replace "snowboarding" with "skiing" since it's way better. I've been lucky enough to ski in the Rockies on 4 different occasions: Winter Park, Breckenridge (twice), Beaver Creek, and Keystone. Good times with family and friends. Lynne's never skied west of Michigan, but we certainly have the intention to get her a real skiing experience down the road (once she re-learns how).

35. Attain a solid understanding of how the government works in your country.
I guess minoring in political science helps, but it would be more fun to attain a solid understanding of how other nation's governments work, for comparison sake.

36. Master one particular style of dance.
While I was in no way a "master," I did get pretty good at swing dancing back in '98/'99 thanks to the musical influence, underage clubs, lessons, and plenty of girls willing to let me throw them around a dance floor. Once Lynne doesn't have a belly getting in the way, she's going to let me teach her :) Lynne also thinks she can waltz pretty well...me, not so much.

37. Fall in love.
Of course, but it is a bit sad that this is included on the list of things to do before you have kids. Too bad it's not a biological prerequisite.

38. Write a book… even if it’s short and never gets published.
I've won some awards for poetry and expository writing, but never ventured into the novel/novella, but I do have some outlines. Throw my poems into a collection, and *pow* you have a book that will never be published. :)

39. Drive through a (somewhat safe) portion of a third world country like Mexico or Costa Rica to gain perspective on what true poverty looks like.
Or, try living in a slum in an unsafe portion of a third world country, walking around it every day, choosing to dive into it instead of taking a skewed view through a car window, through actual encounters with the individuals who live in heart-wrenching conditions every day.

40. Go skinny dipping in a large body of water at midnight.
Who hasn't done this...even Lynne has! C'mon!

41. Take a shower under a waterfall.
If by "shower" you mean you stink and stand under the waterfall, then definitely. If this requires soap, you're doing it wrong.

42. Decide on your current life goals and write them down.
I actually don't make life goals...just go where the Lord leads. What's that line?..."If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans."

43. Spend New Years Eve in Times Square.
We both think that just looks uncomfortable and NOT fun. There are tons more fun places to spend the occasion, and I prefer Disney World :)

44. Go on a blind date (or a couple’s dinner date with new friends you hardly know).
We've done the couple's dinner date thing, it was fun. Lynne's had one blind date, but it wasn't the best.

46. Hit up Oktoberfest in Munich.
I would love to do this, and I really enjoyed being in Munich for a little summer festival they had in 2000. I could spend all day at the Hofbrauhaus.

49. Experience Spring Break in all its glory in Cancun, Mexico or Panama City Beach, Florida.
Um, not a big fan of "Spring Break in all its glory," since "glory" is infinitesimally too strong a word, but Lynne had a spring break trip to Panama City Beach, Florida, and Kirk's spent spring break in Colorado and Cozumel, Mexico, so he's had the snow and sun experiences (snow is better!).

51. Rent a fast sports car and speed down the Autobahn.
I've been the passenger in a car speeding (very much so) down the Autobahn, if that counts. It was fun to see how fast a Volvo station wagon could go!

53. Buy your first house.
So excited that we did that one last year!! We love it!

54. Own a convertible sports car.
Why own, when you can drive a friend's convertible? The perks without the price or the tickets. Although I do like the sunroof on our 2000 Infiniti.

55. Hike the Grand Canyon.
Kirk's been there, but didn't get to hike down in it (other than for a short little hike), and Lynne hasn't been, so this is definitely a locale for a future trip.

56. Attend a Red Sox vs. Yankees game in Fenway Park.
This item is inherently flawed. Who cares about these two teams? Silly east coast bias. How about "Attend a Cubs vs. Cardinals game at Wrigley Field?" That is the ultimate baseball regular season moment, and we've done it twice (and the Cubs won both times)! Also, Kirk got to see the Cubs play at St. Louis last year, and that was a fun experience to be surrounded by the enemy. Of course, the Cubs won that game, too. Go Cubs Go!

57. Spend a whole day making love without every leaving the house.
[Redacted...again!]

58. Learn to make one mixed cocktail like a pro bartender.
As my friends can attest to, I don't make mixed drinks well (Kamikaze a little strong there fella?), although I used to make a mean martini before I disliked vodka (and we don't drink enough for me to perfect a gin martini now). Lynne's probably much better at this.

69. Master a few fancy dinner recipes.
As our friends Alex and Sonja can attest to, we've done some for sure (despite the occasional recipe going horribly wrong...ok, more like slightly wrong, but in my eyes, it was horrible)

70. Finish up your formal education (but continue learning).
Yeh, we are both sooooo done with that! 8 years and 5 years is plenty!

Hooray for the longest post on our blog ever! If you are still reading, you must really love us, or be pretty bored today.

Some Randomness

Some random notes: although probably not blog-worthy, just interesting to me.

-Babies R Us is a hoppin' place on a Friday night! I gave in to being "old" and making a trip there with Lynne yesterday, and I was simply stunned by the number of couples at the store at 8:30pm. Good to know that there are lots of other guys in the same boat as me...maybe we should form a support group. However, I did get to regress afterwards by reading graphic novels at Barnes and Noble :)

-Purdue basketball is driving me crazy this year, as usual. The nail-biting games, the screaming at the TV, the tragic recent injuries, the refs, the stifling defense, they're all putting me on edge for each game. Thankfully the Boilers won pretty easily today (at least in the second half). Also, as a way to channel all this thought and emotion, I may have news soon of my involvement in a Purdue/sports blog, so I'll keep you posted!

-Boy do I love grand slam tennis! After getting to watch some late night Australian Open action this week, I'm really pumped for the Federer/Nadal final this morning. Now if only I can sneak away from bed at 3:30am to watch some of it live...at least I have a DVR. I'm looking forward to heading to Birmingham, Alabama in early March to see the US (Roddick, Blake, Bryan brothers) take on Federer and the Swiss in Davis Cup action. I can't communicate how excited I am for those matches!

-Is it a sign I'm getting older that I care less and less about the Super Bowl (unless the Bears are in it)? The only other way I'd care is if Drew Brees makes it there one day.

-In ten weeks I'm going to be a dad...yep, still gradually sinking in.

-Never ever EVER turn a house fan on when your fireplace is filled with ash. It's amazing how quickly your living room can look like volcano fallout.

-At my work retreat this week we had to list our top 5 favorite genres of food, be it a general theme, ethnicity, or ingredient). Mine were: Japanese (specifically sushi, be it maki or nigiri), Thai, Seafood in general (if it lives in water, I'll probably eat it), Cajun, and a really nice steak. Unsurprisingly, those are the exact same foods that I prefer to cook myself, while I let Lynne tackle most of the Indian, Italian, French, Americana, etc.

and finally...

-My favorite professor of my 8 glorious years at Purdue, Bob Lamb, recently won an award for being the best professor in the state of Indiana. His passion, commitment to students, and excitement for teaching literature were what made me (eventually) get a degree in it. When I found out that I could turn my minor in English Lit to a major and take classes from Bob for half of the requirements, it was a literal no-brainer. While he's won every award Purdue and the state could offer, I'm sure he'll win some national award one day, too. Cheers to Bob for bringing out the best in all of his students and for staying focused on inspiring teaching even at a research-centric university.

Movie vs. Moving

Well, no movie review this week, faithful readers (if we have any). Our weekend was spent moving my sister and brother-in-law from the northwest suburbs of Chicago to good ole Lafayette, IN. An exhausting experience from Friday morning until Sunday afternoon, it left me too pooped to sit in a theater. I did watch School for Scoundrels on DVD from the couch, however I cannot recommend that movie in any possible way. The ending was a total dud, so I was excited to see that the DVD special features contained an alternate ending. Hoping for a little more entertainment and much better writing, I began to watch ending #2 and wanted to drill into my brain by the end because it was so horrible. It also didn't help this weekend that there wasn't any movie of any real worth opening near us. I don't expect that to be the case in two weeks with 3:10 to Yuma (hopefully they don't butcher Elmore Leonard like the last few movies based on his novels), however this weekend is limited to Balls of Fury, which, I'm guessing since it was supposed to originally released much earlier in the summer, isn't as good as it could be. Then again, who needs movies when Purdue football kicks off this Saturday?!