Daley Ponderings

After breakfast on Noah's birthday, we went to the dollar store to buy him some balloons.  Jonathan thought Noah shouldn't come, because it would spoil the surprise, but I said that since Noah likes to go on walks, he'd have a happier birthday if he came with us.  And what's another 10 minutes to wait for a surprise?  While we were there, both boys were intrigued by the gumball machine, so I consented, for the birthday's sake.  Noah didn't understand that it was gum and was ready to throw his ball across the room.  Then, when we told him it was for chewing, he sucked all the candy part off and then slowly nibbled off a bit at a time and swallowed it.  Right.  Too young for gum.  Oh, well! (More)

Saturday, May 17 was a big day for both sides of the extended family.  (More)

Noah was sick Tuesday, then I got it Thursday morning. We were going to go to a homeschool conference, just for fun this year.  We decided not to go, mostly not to infect our hosts, but we wouldn't have enjoyed the conference at all.  Jonathan got it yesterday, and Jon is feeling unwell in bed today.  At least we weren't sick at the same time, so we could take care of each other.  But another benefit is that nothing was planned for this weekend, so we had time to just hang around sick in bed.

I try to be an informed voter, but I find it very hard to find information that will help me become informed.  I finally found this link at SmartVoter where you can type in your address and get information on what your ballot will say.  Unfortunately, it does not have the most local information, but it does tell me what district I am in for state things (how confusing to be in different districts for different things...)

Every single election I have voted in previously, there has been some surprise on the ballot that I was not prepared for.  It's even worse with the new computerized voting machines because they complain if you leave a blank spot.  (They let you leave it blank eventually, but I think it even beeps at you.) But I won't vote for something or someone I don't know anything about.

Now to find the info for my local information... 

We had Easter dinner at the Venables with four families (total.)  It was a fun time and we got home after it was fully dark.  As I was getting Noah out of the car I noticed that the sky was perfectly clear and the stars were shining as much as you can expect in a city.  I saw Orion and the Big Dipper and the North Star.   I told Jon and Jonathan they should go look for a few minutes, so they sat on the hood of the car for quite a while.  It was fun to watch them out there and it will be fun to hear the report of their conversation.  (More)

I should have given the phone to Jonathan.  That's who she asked for. But I hesitated because after the first greeting I had doubts about whether she was my sister or not.  So I double checked, "Which Jonathan would you like to speak to?"  "Um... Jonathan Daley."  "May I tell him who's calling?" "[name which I've already forgotten]" "From where? [if you're a client, I'd like to know which company]"  "Hillary Clinton Campaign."  Oh.  Good bye.  I should have given the phone to Jonathan.

As some of you know, we have been looking for a house for the last couple of months, and we think we have found one!  I asked a couple guys from church to come look at it today, and give their thoughts, and they generally approved.  Someday, I'll probably make the kitchen nicer (ie. an addition out the back) but for now, Heather says it is okay, and we'll make what the realtor called the "master" bedroom an office, and we'll sleep upstairs, which solves a space crunch issue for our bedroom.

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Whew... For some reason, taxes took longer than they have in other years.  Part of the time was spent trying to get out of a federal tax penalty for not calculating the estimated taxes correctly.  We spent 14.63 hours (courtesy of worklog), mostly together working on them.  I am finally mailing them in today.

We convinced them (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Federal) to only take 15% of our income...  I have wondered about MIT's/Huckabee's tax pseudo-flat sales tax and what that would look like for us.  We do get a bunch of credits and deductions, and under the prebate/sales tax model, I don't think any deductions would apply.  But on the other hand, we also probably spend less than a lot of people, so maybe whatever rate that would be picked wouldn't be that bad.  And of course, the cost of saving 27 hours for having a simpler tax code would be nice.

Can I condense three weeks of activities into one post?  We'll see how it turns out.  One thing we discovered at Christmastime is that Noah loves cocktail sauce.  He just dipped his finger in and licked it off, licked the bowl clean and wanted more!

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Just when I thought I was a geek, the bar is raised...

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This is what the HP technical support person said to me when I called about our printer.  Our faithful HP LaserJet 6L, which was manufactured 10.5 years ago, and given to us 6(7?) years ago.  It printed Mom's boarding pass just fine, and then one day later, all three indicator lights came steadily on.  The manual says that means an internal hardware error and if unplugging for 15 minutes doesn't work, call your service representative.  Well, Mom, were you wondering about something to get us for Christmas?

Here is my original post to enter the contest, here is my update.  

Our computer room/guest room is now functional and neat.  There are still two actively-being-worked-on server computers on the card table in the room.  We had hoped to have them both in their finished locations by the end of the month, but a broken new hard drive needed to be exchanged, and the colo guy hasn't gotten back to Jon yet.  It's possible that clementine will go there tonight.  But it still fits in the purpose of the room - the computer room - and the area is organized and neat. (More)

This month has been full, busy, and blog-sparse.  Because we're actually living life instead of blogging about it!  But here goes:

Noah is experimenting more with sounds.  He copies a lot.  Still not much consistently, but here are some things we've heard him say: "where?" "Papa" "more" "Dad" "no" "none" "that" "hot" "hat."  He also often covers his mouth when he sneezes or coughs.

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Normally, when we have an update to a post, we just put it in the comments, but since I've entered us in the 30-Day Challenge, here's a separate post to link up.

Now before any other "challengees" faint when they see my pictures, I'll remind you that we have guests coming tonight, so our deadline for a presentable room was much earlier than the end of the month.  Also, there is internal organization still left to be done. (More)

My friends Bonnie and Liz participated in the last Challenge, and quite intimidated me by doing so.  But I put OrgJunkie's blog in my reader (one of only three strangers' blogs I read) and have slowly been gaining confidence.  The real enouragement I give myself is to note what I can accomplish in little bits at a time.  Whenever I feel like I can't do it, I can point myself to an area that's working (like my system for kids' clothes) and realize that though I have far to go, I've also come far from where I was (or could be!) (More)