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... (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... (More)

Yesterday, Noah poked a coat hanger into his eye.  All is well now, but I wanted to post the adventure.  My mom wrote up the story after my phone conversation with her, so I'm going to paste that here to save typing.  I'll interject where I want to add details or... (More)

I went on a fairly long walk tonight (take a look at the topological map too, there were some decent hills) - I am in Seattle with one of my customers who is having their annual retreat, and invited me to come along. We are staying at the Palisades Retreat Center , which is a lovely place to... (More)

24 pounds, 9 ounces.  30 inches tall. He didn't cry a single whimper for his shot or any of the blood drawing for his hemoglobin and lead tests.  What a brave, tough guy!   He's added water (flicking his ear with his fingers - an unfortunate way to say it, but... (More)

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... On one of our many walks in Clearwater Beach, Jonathan was walking along with a little stick hanging out of... (More)

Jonathan was wearing a shirt he got from Auntie E for Christmas and he looked down at his chest and said, "zero-s-h-k-zero-s-h.  Oshkosh!"  That was interesting to me because when he was first learning numerals, he called zeroes "o."  When I menioned that in... (More)

We finally went skiing for the first time this year and although it was pretty cold, we did have a lot of fun and stayed a lot longer than we did last year. We had a little  trouble getting our tickets - it is always hard to find the ski club people, and I was incorrectly asking for Carnegie... (More)

I lost my planner just before Christmas (as far as I can deduce, in a shopping cart in the parking lot of Jo-Ann's on McKnight Rd - anybody seen it?  Please return it, you can keep the gift cards, I just want the information!)  It had several notes in it about cute things the boys... (More)

It has been a long time since the last time Jonathan and I went out on a trip together, and Heather suggested that I take the kids to give her some time to clean and other things by herself. First, we glued all of the dining room chairs, since they have been falling apart more than usual... (More)

Tonight, due to the Steeler's game, the first snowfall, and regular silly commuters, my trip home took an hour and 15 minutes, resulting in an average speed of 3.5 miles an hour. The last mile and a half took 45 minutes. I even saved a half an hour by calling Heather when I got close to... (More)

Jonathan woke up late on his birthday morning and discovered a bouquet of Happy Birthday balloons tied to the foot of his bed. He had a good long drink of mommy milk and then discovered his birthday crown on the sewing table which he put on after dressing in his "wedding clothes."... (More)

Somehow the appliance spies informed our dryer that we were at Sears looking at a new dryer.  Heather wanted to get a new one, since this one doesn't have a low heat setting - but the dryer has worked fine for years. The next time we used our dryer, it refused to start a couple times,... (More)

I happened across Wynne's blog today, since I was poking around on various CMU alums' web sites. She recently linked to this story about standardized testing . I don't have much that is original to say about this, but figured some of you might like to read the article. (More)

Serina wrote a post on raw milk that I started to comment on, when I decided it deserved a whole post on my own blog. I thought the person quoted in the raw milk article made a good point about lettuce, etc. making people sick. Think of the recent spinach/e.coli thing. Are states now... (More)