• It’s a nice feeling to come home and see some one else mowing your lawn. This is probably the 4th time this has happened in 3 years, but it’s better than nothing. Maybe this will be a new trend?
• This weekend is the Lovely Tess’s first birthday party. Seriously. How the hell has it already been a year? It’s definitely flown by.
• We’ve decided to ditch our original cake plan for the party and now plan on making our own. Of course, that will mean multiple test runs this week along with a full day of cake making on Saturday. Yes, we realize that we’re just asking for trouble and will end up spending more time and money than just ordering one, but we’re dummies like that.
• We got ourselves a Flip last week and I’m really pleased with it. Back before Tess was born, I wanted to get a video camera, and even went so far as buying one, trying it out, and then returning it after being really unhappy with the video quality. I knew that I wouldn’t use it that much, I didn’t want another camera to carry around, I’d much prefer taking still photos, and I wouldn’t have the time and energy to deal with tapes or DVD’s and converting and editing and such. But the Flip changes everything. It’s tiny and light and can be thrown in a bag, it takes an hour of digital video, uses AA batteries, and has all of the editing software right on the camera. A USB plug flips out, you plug it into your computer, and it shows all of your videos, lets you edit them, and then gives you options to save them, email them, or directly upload them to youtube. It couldn’t be easier, and the video quality is actually good. I don’t think that any video clip should be longer than 30 seconds or a minute, so this is perfect. So yes, there are now Tess videos up on youtube. Although they are private, so if you want to see them, you have to become my best friend.
• A big tree branch fell on the Lovely Suse’s car last week, denting the hood and scratching the headlamp, front fender and left front quarter panel. Sweet. So it’s in the shop for a week. On the bright side, my parents are on vacation, so we’re borrowing one of their cars for the week. The car has all sorts of bells and whistles and buttons and knobs and navigation systems and auto this and heated that. But I realize now that I really like my nice and simple car better. I used to like all of the gadgets, but I just don’t need them or want them anymore. I like that if I want them temperature hotter, I just turn a knob to hot. Maybe I’m just becoming a simpler man.
• The Lovely Suse made Rice Krispie Treats last week for her student advisees, and it’s probably been about 15 years since I’ve had one. I used to be able to eat these things by the plateful, but it took me two full days to get through two of them. They’re just so sweet and buttery. And delicious.
• I played a fair amount of Wii bowling and tennis last week. My current high score in bowling is a 264. Of course, the Lovely Suse’s is 265. She’s good. Although I whip her ass in tennis. We expect the Lovely Tess’s birthday party to quickly turn into a Wii party.
• I made it through my first two classes for school. Hey, only 22 months to go!
• I really want to put ceiling fans in the living room and the Lovely Tess’s room, but it’s going to be a lot of work. Unlike in our bedroom, the other two rooms both have ancient electrical boxes, so they’ll need to be cut out of the ceiling, replaced with new ones, I’ll have to deal with the ancient and brittle wiring that’s there, patch the ceiling, and then install the fans. Is it worth it? Yeah, I’ll probably suck it up and just do it. Or hire some one else to do it.

• The Lovely Suse celebrated her first Mother’s Day yesterday, and I think she had a pretty good one. A nice relaxing day at home, beautiful weather, a nap with the kids, some tasty meals, and some gifts from the Lovely Tess and George. George is checking out her reiter8 bag made from a recycled sail above.
• Greenward is chock full of eco-friendly and well-designed stuff. I wanted to buy everything in the place. It’s like the best of all of the cool stuff I see online all packed into one store. For some reason, I’ve had a difficult time consuming for the sake of consuming lately, but places like this can at least make me feel good about what I’m buying.
• Speaking of which, I dented my Sigg bottle yesterday. I dropped it on the floor and now there’s a little ding at the bottom of it. Not a big deal, but now it rocks a little bit. Apparently, these dents are like battle scars, and I should be proud of them. Unfortunately, I didn’t get this scar from being out in the wilderness enjoying nature. I dropped it in my office on the way back from filling it at the water fountain.
• After a miserably failed attempt a few weeks ago (and a prior successfully attempt prior to that), I had to give April’s Rosemary Straw Potatoes recipe another shot. I realized that my problem last time was not cutting the spuds thin enough so the insides weren’t cooked fully by the time the outsides were done. That makes for a mushy and soggy tater. I brought in the mandoline to help me out, and they came out every bit as addictively tasty as the first time. I will never attempt to fry a potato at home any other way. I could eat these things all day long, but then, of course, I would be dead in about 12 hours.
• This is the last week of my first semester of classes. I think I made it through ok, but I have another 20 months to go. It’s going to be a very long haul.
• The Lovely Tess decided to pack in a whole bunch of development all in one weekend. She’s now pulling herself up and walking around the ottoman, she stood up in her crib, she has two more teeth coming in, she waves hello and goodbye to everything and everyone, and she learned to shake her head “no”. That’s a rough one. I get the feeling that the answer to every question now is going to be met with a shaking head. Also every piece of decoration in our house that’s lower than three feet from the floor has been removed. We appologize for the house looking so empty now.
• The charcoal grill and our patio furniture made their first appearances of the season. We plan on eating plenty of meals outside this summer. Or at least more than we did last year, which totalled one. We blame the Lovely Tess for that.
• We’re in our 30’s and we’re spending our Saturday nights at home playing video games. This is normal, right?

• Happy Cinco de Mayo! Go eat some tacos. I know I will tonight.
• I’ve been doing some heavy duty Wii training. I was a little sore on Saturday morning after all of the bowling and home run derby. There’s something oddly fun about trying to knock down 99 pins at once.
• I have to give some props to The Upper Crust. One recently opened five minutes from our house, and we’ve ordered from there two weeks in a row. They make a thin crust Neapolitan style pie (but without the puffy outer crust) with good quality ingredients, a nice chunky tomato sauce, and they don’t overload their pies with mountains of cheese. They’re thin and crisp and pretty damn tasty, and they practically seem good for you since they’re so light. They’re not cheap, but I think the price is justified for what it is. Armando’s still holds a special place in our hearts, but I’m willing to spread our pizza love around. They’re totally different styles, and it’s nice having options nearby. Oh, and Tess ate a whole slice by herself. She just sits there saying “yum yum yum yum yum” while shoving it in her face as fast as she can. Yes, she’s our daughter.
• After 8 years of use, it was finally time to replace my grill grates. There is 8 years worth of grease and gunk caked on the bottom of them, so they were constantly catching fire. Plus, they were starting to rust and corrode, which isn’t something you really want in your food. I replaced the enameled cast-iron grates with stainless steel ones, so we’ll see how well they work. The first run with them last night was successful, so I think I’ll be happy with them.
• Happy birthday to George. He turned 2 last Friday. Tess has been giving him a run for his money lately, and she’s completely fascinated with his crate. She’ll scoot over to it, open and close the door (sometimes with him inside), she’ll take out his food dish, try to eat his food, and then start putting her toys inside. Poor George just looks violated.
• I’ve spoken often of the glory of the tonno sandwich at Domenic’s, but they also make a fantatic chocolate chip cookie. Sharing a tonno sandwich, a bag of salt and vinegar potato chips, a limonata, and a chocolate chip cookie is a pretty perfect way to spend lunch.
• I composted all week, and I have to say, I’m hooked. Instead of throwing my vegetable scraps down the disposal or in the trash, I just keep a bowl next to me while I’m cooking and throw everything in there. When we’re finished cleaning up after dinner, I just dump the bowl in the composter outside. There were nights that we didn’t have to use the garbage disposal at all. I don’t really care that much about the actual compost that it will produce, but I just like the idea of all of this stuff breaking down naturally. I think I can get used to this.

• Do you know what’s better than spending a beautifully warm and sunny Friday and Saturday in class? Pretty much anything. OK, it wasn’t that bad, but I miss my weekends.
• On the bright side, I did get to eat in a college dining hall for the first time in 11 years. I sort of forgot what it’s like to eat in one. The quality of the food is pretty much what I expected (not great, not bad), but it’s the sheer volume that I forgot about. For $5, I could have eaten a panini, a pizza, a hamburger and fries, tacos, a turkey sandwich, a salad, 4 bowls of cereal, a make-your-own stir-fry, as many soft-serve ice cream cones as I wanted, and four bunches of bananas. The all-you-can-eat concept is not something that I’ve encountered a whole lot lately, I decided to take advantage of it and stuffed two bananas in my bag for later in the day. Of course, both got smooshed in the bottom of my bag and got banana all over everything. That’ll learn me.
• A Saturday night of Chinese Food, beers, and Wii was pretty much the perfect ending to a very long week. I must admit, I never envisioned being in my 30’s playing video games at home on a Saturday night. With my wife.
• Lawn maintainance has begun for the year. I didn’t have time until yesterday, but I finally raked up all of the dead junk, mowed the crazy-long patches in front, seeded, and fertilized. I’m hoping that the week of rain will get things off to a good start. I’ll need to be better about the deep watering this year as I sort of let it slide last year resulting in weeds taking over a good chunk of the lawn. Never again!
• I also took the opportunity to clean out my grill. And by clean, I mean hack away at the layers and layers of charred grease and fat that was caked into every nook and cranny in the grill. You know you’ve got problems when the entire inside of the grill lights on fire anytime you leave it on high with the cover closed for five minutes. I’m sure my neighborhood will appreciate me not filling the street with black smoke.
• The Lovely Tess’s favorite foods of the week: miso-glazed salmon and stir-fried broccoli with garlic. Until the third consecutive day of it when she took a handful of the broccoli and unceremoniously dumped it on the ground. The girl knows what she wants and isn’t afraid to let you know. Oh we’re going to have our hands full.
• Seriously, we’re going to compost this year. I started doing it last year and quickly lost steam. This year, I’m going to be better about it. I swear.
• So I’ve been routinely having late-night conference calls multiple times a week for school stuff. As the Lovely Suse needs to get her beauty sleep, she’ll go to bed while I’m still busy talking about school nonsense. Of course being the considerate husband that I am, I make great efforts not to wake her up when I finally go to bed. Last week I failed miserably at that. At around 11:30 on Wednesday night, with the house completely dark, I made an ill-fated attempt at returning the phone to the charger on her nightstand. It being completely pitch-black, I failed to notice the full glass of water perched atop a stack of books on the nightstand. Of course I knocked the glass over dumping the entire contents all over the table and the floor. Oh, but it gets worse. The glass happened to knock into the glass globe-like lamp that the Lovely Suse loves oh-so-much. Of course, the thing cracked and broke into multiple pieces, waking her out of a dead sleep. You know the look that a wife can give a husband when they’ve done something really stupid? Multiply that by about 1000 and you know what I experienced for about two full days. Yes, I’m an idiot. That’s been well-established by now.

• For anyone who was grossed out by last week’s post, sorry. It had to be done. Life is full of poop.
• Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!. The greatest wife of all time surprised the hell out of me and got me a Wii for my birthday. Granted, she seems to love it as much as I do (and has more time to play it than I do), but what a great gift. I haven’t owned a video game console since the original Nintendo (which pretty much defined my life from 5th grade to 8th grade), and I’ve never been much into the modern video games. I get bored easily and don’t have the patience or the time to devote to playing. But the wii changes things completely. You’ve seen how it works, and it’s every bit as fun as it looks. The interface is ingenius, and the game play is super-intuitive and fun. We’re completely hooked. We’ve only played the included sports games, but I’m looking forward to seeing how games stack up. I see Guitar Hero in my future…
• George and the Lovely Tess got me my very own Sigg Bottle. It’s light, it’s sleek, it’s sturdy, it can be used as a weapon if necessary, oh, and it holds water too. In light of the growing concerns over BPA, this bottle hopefully won’t kill me.
• The Lovely Suse and the Lovely Tess both get the day off today for Patriot’s Day. I’m so jealous. I am, however, not jealous of all the people running the marathon today. Been there, done that. And my body has no interest in ever doing that again. I’m pretty sure that if someday I decided to run another marathon, my legs would revolt and intentionally try to injure themselves to prevent me from running ever again. Let’s just say that they didn’t really enjoy the first marathon experience so much.
• Our main internet router died yesterday. You don’t realize how much you depend on the internet until you’re completely cut off from it. My email, calendar, phone numbers, and every piece of information that I seem to need is online. I started walking around the house searching for an open wireless network in the neighborhood, but amazingly, everyone had their security enabled. That’s just not right.
• My favorite pair of jeans is about to die. I give them about 4 hours before giant holes start appearing. I’ll be very sad, but I guess I can’t complain. I’ve worn them probably 5 days a week for about a year and a half. I can only ask so much from an item of clothing, right? In the meantime, there are a bunch of those iron-on patches in the inside to try to beef up the high-stress areas. It’s sort of pathetic.
• I’ve got to come clean about something: I have those little fun packs of peanut M&M’s in my desk at work. I’ve gotten into the habit of eating one a day. Seriously, there are only like 5 M&M’s in each pack, but it’s still sort of funny that I now NEED to have those in there. In fact, it’s 9:30am and I just ate an M&M.

So the week starts off with a call from daycare saying that the Lovely Tess is sick. Poor Lovely Tess. So I pick her up and bring her home and she has a miserable time of it with a nasty stomach bug. The Lovlely Suse stays home with her Tuesday, and I take Wednesday duty. Early on Wednesday, I know that something is not feeling right. I had caught the bug earlier in the winter, so I knew what it felt like. And then, it was on. Four straight days of horror. I’ll spare you the really gory details, so let’s use some euphemisms. Let’s say I spent last week playing golf. A lot of golf. Most of those four days, I was playing more than 18 holes a day. Some days, almost 36. At some points, I was playing a hole every five minutes or so. And let’s just say that those holes had a whole lot of water hazards. Yeah. So take those facts, and add in the fact that while this was going on, I was trying to also take care of an equally sick 10-month old. Except she split her time between soiling every piece of clothing that she owned, every sheet and towel in the house, the poor dog, and taking every book off every shelf that we own. All the while I was writhing in pain on the floor.

By Thursday, the Lovely Tess was on the mend and by Friday, she was back at school. My sickness lasted through Saturday, however. This is a key point, because Saturday night would be our annual Pete’s birthday visit to Craigie Street Bistrot, our favorite restaurant around. We tossed around the idea of cancelling, but due to our schedules, we knew that it would be a long time before we would be able to find another time to go. I started feeling slightly better over the course of the day, I we would make a go of it. An hour before we left, my stomach sounded like a couple of dogs attacking one another, and I was experiencing what I can only assume were labor pains (piercing, long, unable to speak, felt like some one was taking my guts and twisting them into a knot), but miraculously, they went away just a few minutes before we left. Somehow, I had willed my body into allowing me this glorious meal. Hooray! Our karma was confirmed when for the second year in a row, we snagged one of the precious four parking spaces directly in front of the restaurant. It was time to finally indulge a bit.

Now here’s where my judgement may have been a little off. With the condition I was in, I hadn’t really eaten much of anything since Wednesday. In fact, I can’t remember ever in my life eating so little over a span of time that long. I managed to get down a couple of slices of dry toast, a couple of slices of pizza (also not the best choice, but I was desperate), and that was about it. I forgot about the little fact that your stomach tends to shrink after that. So what’s the best way of dealing with a very sensitive and very shrunken stomach? Obviously a meal consisting of a nice slab of a chicken/quail/goose liver terrine and toasts, marinated sardines, pork three ways (braised belly, of course, sausage, and confit suckling pig with the crispiest candy-like cracking imaginable), the largest and meatiest scallops I’ve ever seen, clams, mussels, and a bottle of wine. Smart, right? It was midway through our entrees that I knew that I had made a big mistake. So big that I couldn’t even finish my piece of suckling pig (although I did eat the piece of crackling that was left). Dessert was not an option . Of course, we’re then presented with complimentary ancho chili and cardamom infused hot chocolate and little madelines, which was obviously just a cruel joke. It was basically a cup of pure melted goodness, and I really couldn’t insult the chef, could I? I knew I always already going to pay for it, so I might as well finish it off in style.

The drive home was uncomfortable to say the least. I got home, took off my pants, and just laid down in bed, moaning in pain. You know that feeling of being “bad full”? The just completely uncomfortable, sweating, miserable, why the hell did I eat that much feeling? Multiply that by about 1000. The growling dogs returned to my stomach, and I had a miserable night. Was it worth it? Definitely. Amazingly, I felt completely fine the next day. It was a miracle! I had been healed by pork! Oh well, let’s hope that the start of my 32nd year is a lot nicer than the end of my 31st.

• Thanks to some fantastic craigslist snooping, the Lovely Suse snagged us a new slipper chair for the Lovely Tess’s room (though a different fabric, thank god). That is one comfy chair. I’m a little worried that I’ll fall asleep while giving her her bedtime bottle.
• It took me an entire month and a half to figure out where random sounds on my MacBook were coming from. Turns out every time one of my Skype contacts becomes available, it makes a sound. Have I mentioned how much I love my Skype? Sign on and send me your info and you might get a call from the Lovely Tess.
• Is it a conspiracy that almost evey mattress manufacturer has a name that starts with “S”? Sealy, Simmons, Serta, Sterns and Foster, etc. As if mattress shopping wasn’t confusing enough, they try to make it even harder. Not that I plan on replacing my ten year old mattress any time soon. It’s still the most comfortable bed I’ve ever slept on. Ok, maybe a few hotels have had better beds, but I still love ours.
• The Lovely Suse has turned into a sewing machine. Not literally, but for a couple of weeks, she was finishing new projects every couple of days. A couple of bags, some pillows, an apron, She’s good. I think Tess will be getting lots of pretty dresses in the near future. Maybe I’ll get some too.
• I recently discovered that the public wireless network in my office doesn’t block the same sites and ports that the normal network blocks. Nice. It’s completely random what they choose to block, which is pretty annoying. Now, I don’t have to worry about it anymore.
• My new favorite grain: farro. Also labeled hulled wheat, it has this really cool chewey texture and nutty, slightly sweet flavor. I bought a bag of what I thought was the right thing at a nearby Greek grocery store, but the package didn’t have any English on it. I took a chance, and we boiled it and mixed in green olives, lemon zest, olive oil, parsley, and scallions. It was a winner.
• Our chives dn oregano are starting to pop through the ground. Ah, Spring weather is on the way. Finally.
• I’m pretty sure we made enough food for Tess yesterday to last her until her 4th birthday. I tell you what, that girl eats well. Turkey, pork, lamb, chicken, cheese, corn, zucchini, green beans, edamame, squash, carrots, apples, pears, mango, bananas, chickpeas, lentils, crackers, cheerios, dried cranberries, etc. At this point, we’ll let her try bites of whatever we’re eating, and so far, she likes it all. I know we’re lucky that she’ll eat anything, so let’s hope that it stays that way.

• Did you miss me last week? It’s ok. I’m still alive. It was my first week of school, so I was a bit preoccupied for pretty much every second of every day last week. I haven’t been that busy in a really long time. I don’t think I read a newspaper, magazine, or website, or watched a single tv show or listened to any music for the entire week. And I think I saw the Lovely Tess for all of 5 minutes. Not a whole lot of fun. The actual school part was really good and I’m really excited for it, but I missed having a life. It will pretty much be the equivalent of having a second job for the next two years. I’m planning on still updating this, but you’ll have to forgive me if I start slacking a little bit. If you want to know what’s going on with me, you might actually have to do something crazy like emailing me or calling me. I always have time to say hi.
• In the run up to last week, but home PC picked the perfect time to die. Seriously, that’s exactly what I wanted to be doing last weekend, right? The problem was that the computer would just shut down for no apparent reason and in no discernible pattern. It would be on for hours on end and then shut down, or it could be on for 5 minutes and shut down. I couldn’t figure out what the problem was, and we actually talked about getting rid of it all together. Did we really need a separate PC if we each had our own MacBook? Not wanting to waste the entire weekend, I made a deal with the Lovely Suse that if I couldn’t fix it in a day, I would take it apart and sell off the pieces. Luckily (I guess), I figured out that the video card was busted (and after three trips to Microcenter), it was fixed. I think. It’s still having a few issues, but for the time being, we’re back in business. I hate PC’s.
• The Lovely Tess has been given the green light to eat everything except nuts, honey, and shellfish. So obviously, it was time for her first slice of pizza. Luckily, we happened to be passing Frank Pepe’s on Saturday, so I was proud to have her first slice be one of the best in the land. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen her so happy to eat, just shoveling the pieces into her face as fast as she could. She had a big smile on her face for the rest of the day. Yes, she is officially my daughter.
• After many failed attempts at making fries at home, I finally found a recipe that works: Jamie Oliver’s “April’s Rosemary Straw Potatoes with Lemon Salt”. Holy crap these were good. All nice and crispy and salty and good, even after they had cooled down. Whereas in the past, I’ve cooked the fried twice, once at 350 and a second fry at 375 and then drained them on paper towels, this recipe has them fried just once at 350. After draining them, I dropped them into a metal bowl with the lemon salt and tossed them to coat them and cool them off (the steam is partly what was making them soggy). Once cooled slightly, I dropped them onto to paper towels to absorb any remaining oil and then transferred them to a bowl after cooling. Oh were they tasty. I was on the verge of completely giving up on making fries (much like I’ve given up on making Indian food and Chinese food), but this one is a winner.
• Wow, this looks familiar.
• It’s official: everyone we know is pregnant.