Daley Ponderings

Jon asked me to post this essay written by our friend.

Life as an Immigrant

By Marc Brands

From 1993 to 1996 I did an apprenticeship in Electronics Engineering at Siemens. In Switzerland apprenticeships are very common, students attend about 16 hours of classes and about 32 hours of practical training per week at an employers' site.  (More)

We headed out Friday morning, listening to The Nutmeg of Consolation by Patrick O'Brian on the way.  At our first stop, for gas, Jon realized that he hadn't brought his wallet.  One of our stops was at our "usual" rest area, the one with the pedestrian walkways over the highway.  The boys liked watching the cars and trucks go under.  Jon had some Lime Daley issue to deal with, so we waited in a really long line at McDonald's while he used the free wireless. (More)

Mom wrote recently about thinking the best, and Janet just got back in touch with a lost friend whose email was misbehaving.  Now it is my turn to be on the receiving end of a gracious friend thinking the best of me. (More)

Someone at snurgle pointed this out to me.  I understand that things like this can happen, but when I type "cal 9 1752", it seems strange to see this output:

  September 1752
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
       1  2 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30

We went camping last weekend with some friends from Providence Church and the Venables.  We went to a fairly new, no RV, family-run place near Moraine State Park called Breakneck Campground.   (More)

We're back from a lovely two weeks at the best little house in the world.  I'll save time (so much to catch up on!) by linking to Janet's first post and you can proceed through all five entries.  The boys absolutely loved the sand and water and freedom.  It was rather hot throughout the visit, but at least we had the water nearby to cool off in. (More)

Reading my sister's post about her adventure as a bridesmaid has reminded me to write about my dear husband.  I, like my sister, am not interested in makeup (we do have the same mother!), and am blessed with a husband whose thoughts on makeup are, "But I want to be able to kiss you without getting goop on my face." (More)

Last weekend, we went to Keystone State Park with the Tomans.  We got a group campsite so we could put both tents together.  It was right on the lake and separate enough from other sites for privacy. (More)

The Carnegie Science Center has a promotion that if you bring a snowball in on the first day of summer, they give you free admission.  Although this was the first year I'd heard of it, everyone else in Pittsburgh
knew about it, too. (More)

This is the weekend for strawberry festivals and several local farms have pick-your-own fields.  Last year, when I was about 39 weeks pregnant, Mom, Dad, Jon, Jonathan and I picked 14 lbs of strawberries at Trax Farms. (More)

Our new church has a youth orchestra that Jon has become part of.  They did a few concerts at local nursing homes last weekend and I got some pictures and videos.  The main reason for this post is to  explain the videos.  Our camera isn't primarily a video camera, so it only takes 60 second clips.  That's great for most of what we take, but doesn't work so well for concerts.  (:     (More)

I am up late working on some code, and all of a sudden there is a really loud noise, and I look out my window and watch a car turn kind of sideways and roll over.  As far as I can tell there wasn't a second car involved, but I don't know what could have happened to make him flip over like that.  I called 911, and as I was talking to the guy I saw the driver slowly climb out the vehicle, and then sort of look in the car like he might be looking for a passenger, and then kind of crouched over and ran off.

I went out to see if there was a passenger, but there wasn't.  One of his tires is in the middle of the road, so maybe it fell off and that caused it to flip??  The firemen are here now and are trying to figure out the best way to turn off the car.  Hmmm... I guess bashing in the windows must have been fun, now they are in.  There were tons of people who saw it for some reason - ie. what are people doing walking around at midnight.

Last month, I took Jonathan for his first dental checkup and cleaning.  He did a great job, asking lots of questions and generally having a good time.  But they did discover two huge fillings.  The regular dentist doesn't do fillings for kids, so she had us make an appointment with the pediatric dentist who works in the same office.

In college, our friend Volus used to say that it was always sunny on Sunday.  Even if it was gray in the morning, the sun was out by the time church was over.  I found that he was right for the vast majority of the time.  This weekend was no exception.  Saturday was rainy, but Sunday dawned bright, clear, and beautiful.

We went to Florida for vacation with the Daleys for one week and the Wightmans for another week.  It was a great time.  But this leaves me behind on posting, so here we go... (More)