I think chain saws gain mythic proportions in any safety-conscious household. My dad grew up on a rural farm in the early 1900s, and statistically, a farm is about the most dangerous “natural” workplace there is.
I don’t think we ever owned a chain saw. I remember my dad “borrowing” one, maybe once, or maybe it was a friend or neighbor using it. In any case, I have a stronger memory of Dad’s countless horror stories than I do of actually seeing the saw in use.
Anyway, it seemed fitting to buy Biscuit her very own chain saw for Mother’s Day several years back. An intentionally Amazonian gift. In practice, we rarely use it, but it’s there.
Continue reading 'Dangerous Yardwork'»
Here is an adorably geeky photo of Alex and his fiancee, Courtney.
The big story, though, is in constructing the Spock ears. Alex and Courtney made a desperate search of costume stores and such to find pointy ears for Halloween, and found nothing.
Then Alex searched the Internet.
Continue reading 'Making Spock Ears'»
My secret vice is that I read adolescent fiction on my smart phone. This awful habit started years ago. I have the collected works of Louisa May Alcott and Lucy Maud Montgomery and I pore over them when stuck in line or waiting for food at a cafe.
Now I find that Bear is likewise reading reading Eight Cousins on her smart phone.
This is particularly interesting because the womens’ roles in Alcott’s fiction tend to be super-traditional, while Bear’s politics are “progressive” to put it mildly. I generally agree with both Bear’s attitude on womens’ rights and her attitude towards Alcott: who cares if her female characters are so traditional!
I think we both appreciate Alcott’s underlying themes: the pursuit of moral ideals over superficial values (despite the difference in moral values) and the fundamental rights of women to self-determination (despite the different view of womens’ roles). Alcott portrays “strong minded” women as positive role models despite the negative reactions of conventionally attractive male characters.
Continue reading 'Reading Alcott'»
I posted some buddy photos in our photo collection. Some were for Kelsey’s school friends, but one had the old gang from various Boston area rented homes:
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I also posted it on Facebook.
Arlene Schultz (may God rest her soul) took care of our kids when they were younger and was an honorary grandmother. She was smart and hard working, and she was the pillar of an extensive family of good-hearted and capable children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. We lost her to cancer several years ago, and her youngest daughter is in that fight today. Surprisingly, Arlene’s mother outlived her.
Anyway, Arlene liked to make a traditional apple pie on a cookie sheet. It had a crust and a bit of glazed frosting. We ended up with several other of Arlene’s recipes, which are posted here. I’m still looking for her Chicken Pie recipe, which we probably have around somewhere.
Continue reading 'Arlene’s Sheet Apple Pie and other recipes'»
I’ve reverted to my preferred WordPress theme and things seem to work again. I have no idea why things got messed up and then un-messed up.
Perhaps things will Go South again in a day or two. Meanwhile let’s see if things just cleared up on their own.
I hate it when things like this happen. Computers are supposed to be predictable fergoshsakes.
At the proposal of one person, I’ve reverted to the “default” WordPress blog theme.
That’s why the site looks, well, boring now.
I’m going to see if that has a significant impact on the troubles I’ve had.
My apologies if anyone was having trouble visiting the site over the past few days. I updated to a more recent WordPress version, and it broke the site.
After poking at the problem a while, I decided to try upgrading the site’s “theme” file, which specifies the stylistic details of the site’s appearance: fonts, column layout, colors, backgrounds, and so on. The problem apparently disappeared when I replaced the theme. (I say “apparently” because the problem seems to appear, or disappear, depending on cookies and other saved state – until I’ve tried this in a few different places I’m not convinced everything is working).
Continue reading 'New Site Layout'»
Logging in is optional for this site – you don’t see anything logging in that you don’t see otherwise. You only have to log in to leave comments.
Like most sites, you can create your own user name and password to leave a comment. You may also use “OpenID” – a standard way of logging in to many sites. Several sites, including Yahoo and WordPress, provide OpenIDs for their users.
I recently tried integrating RPX – this allegedly lets people log in using their IDs from most major web sites: Facebook, Yahoo, Google, and so on. I mostly wanted it for the Facebook login. But I couldn’t get Facebook to work. It sort of “logged you in” but it didn’t seem to really let you post comments. [see update below: this is an undocumented shortcoming of the "free" or "try before you buy" service]
Continue reading 'Logging In and RPX'»
We made a road trip down to the Harbor View in Pepin, WI, yesterday, stopping for art and junk shops. In Maiden Rock, we visited “Swan Song,” and met Faye Passow, creator of the “Principal Hot Dishes of Minnesota.” It’s a map showing where these hot dishes allegedly reside.
She has a whole line of similarly entertaining stuff on her Keep The Faye web site.
We bought a “Favorite Fantasy” magnet set – it comes with a individual cartoon images of different fantasies plus a couple of figures to add to today’s favorite.
Continue reading 'The hot dish map'»
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