Category: General

Schools Out!

Hooray! I have taken my last final and DTS has let out for the summer. I have been pounding the keyboard for the last couple days, catching up on projects that have languished in my inbox for far too long. I talked to Melissa Dewey yesterday and she commented that things must have been busy during the semester because I didn’t post much on my blog.

Not having a television, it is hard to imagine where all our time has gone. However, throughout the day, this breathtaking little beauty comes crawling or cruising into the room insisting on attention. She is quite pleased to absorb every spare second we will give her. She is still a perfect little angel. Quite honestly, it is hard to be the least bit objective about her. After all, she is so much more cute and loveable than anything else.

When Jen and I are not working, Kayla enjoys keeping our keyboards from experiencing any loneliness.
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We also have a few games she enjoys playing. A favorite is peek-a-boo, which sounds a bit like pah-poo. We now have a number of words, including da-dee, ma-ma, uh-oh, and mmm. The later is just what you’d guess, “Yo, big people, how about sharing that food down here, eh?” Speaking of size, she has gone from 19″ (birth) to 25″ (6 mos) to 28″ as 11 months. It is good to see that all the food she eats is going somewhere other than into the Diaper Genie.

About a month ago she became highly mobile (crawling and cruising) so now she gets into everything. We like the toilet paper to stay on the rolls so the bathroom doors stay closed. We let her play in all the cupboards that don’t have glass or toxic cleaners in them. The cupboard doors used to have little pads on them to keep them from slamming. While unattented, she enjoys removing them, so now we don’t have a door left with them. They got in the way of, slam, slam, slam, which is far more fun than, dull thud, dull thud, dull thud.

When we are not otherwise occupied with Kayla, our work, or my homework, we learn how not to destroy Kayla’s chance of ever having a “normal” life. We have graduated from What To Expect When You’re Expecting to What To Expect: Your First Year. Now that Kayla is in her 11th month and the shelf of baby books is full, its time to step up a notch. I have started with with Making Children MIND without Losing YOURS by Kevin Leman. He’s the same guy that wrote Sex Begins in the Kitchen which is another book I enjoyed reading.

Kayla got a present in the mail today from Mike & Deb Surls. It was a small box which alone provided a good 25 minutes of entertainment.
Kayla's Present

The contents were a little more mysterious. Enclosed was a very cool Aerobie Superdisc (frisbee) which I suspect was for Jen and I. However, also enclosed is a package of blue washcloths and a blue receiving blanket. Our theory is that the blue items are the first gifts for Junior 2.0, and the Surls are rooting for a boy. I would like to have a boy and if we get one this time around I won’t have to twist Jen’s arm for number three. But if its a boy, then daddy gets the big snip snip. I am of two minds.

There is more news to post, but there’s also 173 emails and two inches worth of papers to finish dealing with.

two chicks

Last week we saw a hot new chick in the neighborhood and I’ve been trying to get a photo of her ever since. We’ve seen her fly by a few times but yesterday was the first time she held still long enough for us to get a good look, and did we ever. Jen ran for the binoculars and I grabbed the camera and the 400mm telephoto lens.

Lucky for ya’ll, she held still long enough for me to snap a couple candid shots. In addition to the shot above, I also got one of her dropping her drawers to take care of some business. In the interests of moral sensibility, we’re not publishing that one. Today we saw her again, and she was at the top of her game. She was with some guy, and she had her claws sunk deep into him.

And the two were becoming one flesh, literally. We watched for 10 minutes trying to see exactly she had laid her claws into. Unfortunately, she was outside the range of my 400mm lens and our binoculars. Our best guess is: a cat.

And here is the other hot little chick in the neighborhood.

Texas is heating up!

Thursday morning on my way into school traffic was backed up more than normal. We meet at 6:30AM and at that time, traffic going into downtown is heavy but not congested. Because I carpool, we get to use the HOV lane and typically never slow to less than 60mph. On Thursday, traffic was backed up past 635 (where we get onto I-30. A couple miles down the road, we passed the source of the backup.

On the North side of road was a grass fire blazing away with a few fire trucks working to supress it. On our way home, there was a good sized black patch along the road. Make no mistake, it’s dry here. The Governer has declared the entire state a drought disaster. The warm and sunny weather isn’t helping. The Texan cattleman are beginning to cull their herds, the cotton producers can’t till the soil until some rain falls, and they’ve imposed a state wide burn ban. They have even banned arson! Shucks, and I was planning…oh never mind.

Christmas Road Trippin’

I turned in the my last final, yay! After a false start (I forget our 2nd iPod), we’re on our way to Michigan. We’re taking I-30E through Texas, Arkansas, and then turning North at Memphis. From there I-55 N to I-70 through Indianapolis and finally Lansing. We’ll probably be in Michigan tomorrow afternoon morning.

7:58PM – Lat 95,30,08 Long 33,08,47.
9:09PM – Lat 94,02,33 Long 33,27,59. Texarkana
4:13AM – Lat 90,08,00 Long 37,56,32. Near St. Louis
4:56AM – Lat 90,13,33 Long 38,35,13. St. Louis (downtown)
9:56AM – Lat 86,07,18 Long 39,47,39 Indianapolis
2:00PM – Marshall, MI

Whole wheat is icky, right?

Nutrition experts claim that whole wheat is very good for me. Experience tells me that whole wheat products taste nasty. My prior experience using whole wheat flour to make bread resulted in bricks. Great for building a fireplace or a pyramid, but not suitable for eating. Nothing good ever resulted from my early forays with whole wheat flour. I solved the problem the same way other bakers do, ignore the nutrition experts and use white flour.

A couple months ago, I learned something that intrigued me. Whole wheat flour is something of a misnomer. You can’t even buy whole wheat flour at the supermarket. The reason is quite simple, the bran and the germ of the wheat go rancid within hours unless the flour is kept from oxidizing. Since storing bulk flour in a fridge/freezer is impractical at the store and your home, both must be removed. You’ve heard of wheat germ right? It’s got a nice nutty flavor and it’s full of vitamins and nutrients. It comes in sealed containers that must be stored in the fridge. Well, that is what is missing from your flour, as well as the bran. It gets replaced by synthentic nutrients.

None of that is newsworthy. However, a bunch of different sources led me to believe that whole wheat flavor is a function of freshness. What you can buy at the supermarket isn’t very fresh and the additives and preservatives are why it has poor flavor. There are only a couple ways to get fresh whole wheat flour. One can buy it direct from a mill or co-op, where they vacuum pack it with nitrogen so it doesn’t oxidize. Once opened it must be refrigerated or frozen to keep it fresh. Shipping is expensive.

The other option is to mill it yourself. The advantage to milling is that your flour is always fresh (grind it as necessary). Wheat berries are purchased in bulk and they last for decades. We buy wheat berries for $0.59/lb at Whole Foods. The disadvantage is that we had to buy a mill. I did a bunch of research on mills and bought a Nutrimill.

The results have been quite surprising, living up to all the claims. I started out by making a loaf of whole wheat bread. The flavor was actually quite good, but too dense for sandwiches. We finished it up as a batch of superb french toast. My next batch of bread was wonderful. I shared a loaf with our human neighbors who claim to like it as well. Whole wheat that isn’t icky! Pleased with the results, I tried it next in pancakes, again with superb results. I have since taken loaves to numerous social events and everyone likes my bread. Even the kids come back for seconds!

We had bought a few different kinds of wheat so Jen used some of the soft wheat (lower gluten) for flour in her chocolate chip cookies. They too were excellent! She baked up a couple dozen extras and we shared them with our neighbors. Nathan and Vicki weren’t home so we left a dozen cookies with their two teenage sons. Twenty minutes later Nathan returned from dropping Vicki off at work and all the cookies were gone.

Excepting my experiments such as the Thanksgiving loaves where I used soft wheat instead of hard wheat to see what difference it made, I have had consistently good results. When I do experiment, such as my first attempt at sourdough, our furry neighbors find it quite acceptable. They stop by our back porch each night to see if I’ve made anything new that fails to meet human consumption standards.

“All I want for Christmas…”

I’m six and a half months old and all I want for Christmas is my two front teeth. Yesterday I touched and discovered mommy’s teeth and now I want my own. I thought about it sooo much that I think it’s happening. This morning mommy and daddy got excited and kept trying to stick a finger in my mouth to touch my gums. I didn’t like that and kept pushing it out. Anyway I do, I do, I do have one or two lower front teeth coming in for Christmas.

Here’s a picture of me practicing poses for the Christmas family photo.