Daley Ponderings

I mentioned our new wood stove previously, and asked some of you for recommendations, but never got around to writing about it here.  We've had it for a couple months, and it has been great!  We ended up buying an Englander 13-NCI . I don't remember what the 13 stands for, but 12 is... (More)

We have had the joy of testing out various mouse trap products over the last year with varying degrees of success. Our goals are, in priority order: Get rid of the mice from inside our house, or at least from inside our silverware drawers Protect the kids' fingers from... (More)

I'll start with most recent and then go to my pocket notes.  Jonathan and Faith both had well child checkups yesterday.  As much as it seems like it would be easier to have two checkups together, it really isn't.  I'll go back to scheduling them separately.  It wasn't too... (More)

We began the day learning about Guy Fawkes Day (Jonathan says now if we ever visit England he wants to visit at the beginning of November so he can participate in the festivities.)  We ended the day by taking Daddy to the ER.  Jon's notes in italics . It was quarter of five... (More)

10/23 - Jon said, "Ask Jonathan an addition problem with two digit numbers that sum to a multiple of ten."  I asked him 53+17, and Jonathan figured out loud, "the seventeen goes to twenty, the fifty three goes to fifty...seventy!" I signed Jonathan up for the... (More)

NEWS BULLETIN: Saying it will improve the education of children who have grown up immersed in computer lingo, the school board in San Jose, Calif., has officially designated computer English, or "Geekonics," as a second language. "This entirely reconfigures our... (More)

I got an email last night from someone who was looking up contact information for one of my customers: Piexx Company . She was wondering if someone was trying to scam her.  The way the scam works is that someone says they are a hiring agency for some company and posts a job offer for a... (More)

After we hear others talking about ticks everywhere, we hadn't seen any at all in our yard.  And then Jonathan gets Lyme Disease.  He had a fever and slept all day for two days, and then he was better so we didn't think anything of it.  A few days later, he gets this red rash on... (More)

Would you send your nine-year-old on a New York City subway by himself?  Would you send him on a horse from Oklahoma to New Mexico and back by way of the deserts of Texas - taking his five-year-old brother along? It can be frustrating sifting through the chaff at the children's... (More)

4/10 - Noah comes up to me, winking, and says, "Mommy, me one eye!"  It was hilarious.  (I couldn't wink until first grade.) 4/11 - Guess which story this is, by Noah: "Let me in.  No, no, no.  Blow up house!" 4/20 - What does Noah say when... (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)

We finished our taxes today, and the kids were around while we were doing it, and then we went out to the Olive Garden, since we didn't feel like cooking at 8PM when we finished the taxes.  On the way home, we were talking about how much the meal cost (Jonathan has various data points on... (More)

 I've been mentioning my garden doings on Serina's blog and in private emails with her, and I thought I'd compile and post the relevant info here. March 15: Whoohoo! I just placed my order with fedco , and we’ve been preparing our squares out front. Jon just... (More)

We are missing a movie, and so went looking around the house for it (the boys had all the movies out the other day, lining them up to look at all of the covers (as well as taking all the Mancala marbles and throwing them around the house)) - see what happens when Mommy leaves for the... (More)

Since I am a lazy Debian user, I am not used to compiling things from source.  (sidenote: It is interesting to me how many people from other distributions are fairly used to mucking around in source code, spending hours working on getting a simple package installed)  But, clusterssh... (More)