Daley Ponderings

8/7 - Faith started using the more sign consistently and spontaneously.  She will now also use it to mean "I want that." 8/11 - Faith took her first step.  It was sort of accidental, since she was walking holding to my hand, and I slipped my finger out.  After... (More)

We are the happy recipients of two used swingsets - one from a family at church and one from the next door neighbors.  It is loads of fun and we're planning on building monkey bars between the two sets. Recently, when I was reading one of our storybooks about Noah and the flood,... (More)

I guess I fail the test , since I answered "no" to both questions, though I suppose Brad Andresen from college (the one who always said of me, "You're more liberal than you think you are.") would be happy to hear that I'd be more likely to think it alright to slap my dad... (More)

I haven't looked at how much time it took us to do taxes this year - I thought we were doing pretty well, time-wise, until we blew 8 hours or so today finishing them off (or is it them finishing us off, I'm not sure which...) I noticed a number of places where the strange, complicated... (More)

Heather and I spent several days over the last week at our old house, cleaning and fixing various things that our previous tenants broke. It is pretty annoying to have people totally not care about your property, and live in pretty disgusting conditions, presumably to get back at me for... (More)

Very early in the morning, we got up, had breakfast and said goodbye to Sarah (all the other Dutlers said goodbye the night before.) Janet and Stephan came to pick us up and we crammed all ourselves and stuff into the mini-minivan. They took us to the Basel airport where we spent quite... (More)

Once again we took an early tram to thetrain station, meeting Janet and Stephan there. Then we rode to Zurich and the first thing we did was walk to the historical museum. We saw ancient gold, medieval and more modern weapons, and costumes, elaborately panelled rooms, banners and medals from... (More)

I woke up around 6am (with alarm) and got ready to go to Valda's to get my hair done.  I got myself some yummy muesli with yogurt and sat down in the living room to eat, only to see the clock and note that I needed to leave in only a few minutes.   I gulped a few more mouthfuls as I put my... (More)

And we just discovered that there is yet another Pittsburgh tax we didn't know about, and maybe even a couple different taxes we may or may not owe.  I called Pittsburgh to cancel our estimated tax forms that they have continued to mail to us, even though we now live outside of Pittsburgh. ... (More)

I have been working on an interesting project for a customer of mine - and as is with lots of his projects, end up seeing lots of internet headlines while working on the projects.  This particular project involves tracking what things people are talking about and searching for.  One source... (More)

...is going great, but has its challenges.  I'm probably not the only one to brush someone's teeth with one hand while bouncing a crying baby with the other.  But bedtime is pretty much the only time of high demand from all at once.  Jonathan is great about waiting and about helping Faith... (More)

We signed up for a new phone number for dealing with rental stuff, and bought the numbers to go on the sign today.  Three hours later, we got our first call.  Crazy.  I haven't gotten around to getting it on Craig's List yet or anything. The guy is deciding between a house and a... (More)

Our first daughter was born this evening at 6:35, weighing in at 9 pounds, 3 ounces and 20 and 3/4 inches long.  She doesn't currently have a name that we know of yet, but those of you who have been around at the boys' births probably won't be too surprised at that.  So, I guess for now,... (More)

I have to say that the real baby is much more squashed in me than that little graphic baby is on the sidebar.  (S)he pokes up knees and heels all the time and increasingly presses on my bladder.  I am ready to go, but still have plenty of things I can do while waiting.  When Mom and Janet... (More)

Our new house has fairly long hot water lines to the kitchen and bathroom, so I was looking for different solutions to getting there to be hot water quicker.  I researched some tankless heaters, and for the kitchen and washing machine (on one trunk) a small heater (12 amps) would have... (More)