Faithful readers, it seems that the wave of pestilence is starting to recede.  The first blows (literally) came at approximately 2 am on Sunday, April 21.  Clara threw up 3 times in the middle of the night and continued vomiting for about 2 days.  During this time, Janny had a runny nose.  Then Clara had diarrhea, and Janny got the stomach bug (thankfully for only 1 day), followed by diarrhea.  Then they both got coughs and now Clara has an ear infection.

The stomach bug afflicted me with coming out both ends syndrome on Thursday night.  This was the third time I've been sick since fall, and all 3 rank among the worst I've ever felt.  On the bright side, during the most recent episode I made some strides in my vomiting technique.  In the fall, I feared that my stomach was getting ripped in half.  This time, I was able to relax and let the goods flow.

Jill escaped this round with tummy uneasiness (that and taking care of the rest of us).

While carrying Janny recently, I realized that she is now the size that I picture Clara being.  Yikes.  They're growing (with the mandatory aside that they are both still quite small for their ages, and yes we work super hard to get them to eat more and better food but all Janny ever wants to eat is Nutella...).

 What a wet April!  We celebrated the rain by stomping and splashing in our backyard puddles and rainfall-filled pool.  We are very pleased to not have a basement.

Our basketball team beat the undefeated 1st place team in the semi-finals!  Our superstar Bryan hit a 3 with five seconds  left to give us the lead.  I haven't felt so proud of a sports accomplishment in a long time (What's that?  Oh, sure I'll tell you the last time.  I won a bike race once).  We worked super hard and wore down the other guys.  Unfortunately, we had very little left for the championship game an hour later.  We couldn't handle the full-court pressure (punk college kids never get tired) and wide big guys of the champs.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!

We celebrated by having lunch at our house with a bunch of friends.  Thanks to Nancy and John for cooking up the yummy ham.

We're just about ready to start enjoying the warm weather.  Janny was knocked out by a cold early in the week.  Then Clara got it.  She spent most of the day Friday sitting on the couch staring out the window.  On Saturday, I really knew how she felt.  After sleeping for 10 hours at night, I took a 2 hour morning nap, 2 hour afternoon nap, and an hour evening nap.  Is part of getting older that colds/flus get worse?  Thankfully, I'm feeling much better today.

Last weekend before the big snowstorm, we were working on our garden.  In addition to removing  several big roots (we're hoping for a big yield this year!), I unearthed a big pinkish rock.  The internet told me that it's likely rose quartz.  No big money gained from the discovery (I was thinking giant pink diamond!), but supposedly there's some metaphysical healing bonus.  Alas, we could have used some physical-physical healing this week.

One of the perks for accepting a job at Wolfram (have I mentioned the other ones?  Free tea and hot chocolate, a discount card to some local businesses, a 6th floor window office (okay, cube) with a view of Assembly Hall, a mug) is that one gets a copy of A New Kind of Science by Dr. Wolfram.  Instead of using it as my monitor height adjuster, I decided to take it home and read it a little.  The big hypothesis of the book is that the universe is governed by a set of simple computational rules.  This idea is quite challenging to my engineering trained mind.  We like to have our equations and simplifications/approximations.  With Wolfram's rules, there is no shortcut to finding the solution.  One must compute the solution obtained by following the rules.  Is he right?  Hopefully, we'll find out soon.

I'm still enjoying the job.  This week I started my officially assigned topic of image processing.  When I start to get a handle on it, I'll show some really cool stuff.  For now, charcoal!

Janny is 2!

Our youngest kid, Janny, is 2 years old today.  We started our celebration last night with our across the street neighbors.  We had brownie cupcakes with pink yogurt frosting.  Yum (but a little hard to remove from the paper wrappers).  Tonight, we opened Janny's present from Grandparents K, a huge dollhouse.  Janny and Clara greatly enjoyed it.

Janny is an independent person, but even introverts invite friends for tea sometimes.

Recently, Clara was chasing Janny around the house shouting, "Are you my sister?"
Janny:  "NOOOOO!"
Clara:  "Yes you are!"

And so it goes.

Miss Tonya made a toy salad for Janny's birthday present.  All the kids had a blast with it.  Janny wouldn't let go of the carrots.

Maybe tomorrow Janny will open her present from daddy, a turkey baster and a pack of red funnels.  She loves to play with water (just like Clara used to and still does).  I'm hoping that my $4 gift gets much use.

I'm a little ashamed to confess a primary reason that I haven't been writing much lately.  We've been watching too many tv shows.  On our list now:  American Pickers (or just Frank and Mike), Suits / Psyche, and Survivor.  Plus, I've been watching Illinois basketball occasionally.  Sometimes we'll watch the Daily Show.

While I'm confessing, here's one more:  I bought another bike this week.  It should fit the girls from ages 9ish to 13ish.  So now I almost have their whole lives covered.  Maybe it's time to work on a new project for them?

We have one more regular season basketball game.  We were destroyed by the first place team this week, but again we were without our superstar (though it wouldn't have mattered much).  I think we'll end up in 4th place out of 8.

still wintering

Jill is turning into superwoman.  In addition to taking care of our girls during working hours, she watches another 2 year old once a week, tutors a grad student and some high school students 3 afternoons a week, and cooks extra food for dinners twice a week for our college student friends and neighbors.

Our Bible study group lost the only couple younger than us last year to graduation, but we have a lead on a new couple.  Here is the current crew.

Lately, moost of the 'what a cute girl!' comments from strangers have been directed at Janny (before that, Clara was the focus.  Before that it was Jill, though if a guy said so I would have socked him).

Being the slow on the uptake guy that I am, it took quite a while to understand.  Mind you, Janny is adorable right now, as I'm well aware.  Clara is as well, but she is now shy around strangers which does not translate into cuteness.  Janny is still young enough to look them in the eye and turn on her charm.

 Winter is dragging on here, so we've had to plan more indoor activities.  Good friends bring some much needed cheer.

It feels like the weather has been really terrible for weeks.  But only once did I have an icicle hanging off my rear fender. I'm really looking forward to spring.

Our church basketball team is now in 3rd place (out of 8), though we were crushed in our last game by the 2nd place team.  We were missing our superstar, so maybe we'll give them a better game in the playoffs.  About once per game, I make a good play.  

peace in our time

This 25 second video (yes, I now know how to upload videos to the blog!) encapsulates much of our home life right now. 

First, the girls are playing with something that has the potential (and often the will) to result in a big mess.  Then we have some sharing conflict with Clara taking the role of drama queen and Janny as the calm instigator (the roles can be switched, but this is most often the case).  Janny, in her calm rational mode, decides that the pleasure of holding the cup is dwarfed by Clara's wailing and gives it back.  A moment of peace is enjoyed by all.

Then there's me in the background-- not being a creep by the way -- working on the house.  I was adding some temporary caulk to our vertically opening wood windows.  I feel like this has helped cut air leaks a little bit, but we've had generally warmer temperatures since I did it.

We got our energy report for January this week.  We ranked 11 out of 100 of our neighbors in terms of limiting our use.  We use about 2/3 as much energy as the average house in this group.  During the fall months, our ranking dropped to around 25-30, which suggests that we use more hot water than low energy consuming neighbors.  I would like to see hot water usage drop, but the other members of the household aren't keen on taking very short showers and wearing outer layers of clothing (pants, sweaters, etc) multiple times.  For my part, I use cold water to rinse dishes heading for the dishwasher.

For the past few weeks, Jill has been watching another girl from a family in our church.  Their language at home is French, but perhaps an additional dialect is also spoken (how crazy is it that a 2 year old can be fluent in at least 2 languages!).  After I came home from work one evening, I was rather startled to hear Clara using that girl's accent for "l" and "r" sounds.  Words like water have a fun new twist at the end.

And speaking of water, Janny has started using Clara's old word "mado" for water.  I guess she says it for fun, since she can say the word "water." 

I'll conclude with a mid-season basketball report.  We are 2-2 with one loss a blowout to a much superior team and the other when our star player was out. For my part, my fitness level is fine and all joints are in great shape.  But I generally feel like I haven't played in about 10 years.  I'm looking to improve positioning for rebounds and moving my feet better on defense during the rest of the season.

State of bicycling 2013

You already know that Jill and I like bicycles?  What is new:  the bike nut community is growing.  Here are a few observations from this month (being January, where high temperatures have been regularly less than freezing. 

1.  There are 2 boys (I believe in junior high) that ride their bikes to school every day.  And I mean every day.  I took the above photo from the comfort of my living room because it was about 10°F outside (also because I didn't want him to think I'm a creep).  Both guys rode through the 1" of snow on the road the next day.

2.  At 8:15am on said sorta snowy day, I was the 4th set of tracks on the gravel path I use for commuting.

3.  We went to our matriculated-adopt-a-student's housewarming party along with a number of his friends.  His new to him fixed gear bike was much admired by several friends.  A young lady said she dreams of owning a Peugeot like this. As we were leaving (dark, cold night), another young lady was unlocking her bike and to ride to a dance party.

What's the dream bike for these co-eds?  This is where my hope for mankind is slightly dampened.  A young man said Cervelo.  Are you paying attention, Mr. Colnago????

4. Moonlight rides continue through the winter.  I skipped this version for the housewarming (and we probably rode about as far as the moonlighters did), but still 7 people rode in the dark with sub-freezing temperature.

Our backyard looks like this right now.  Somehow, all our bigger storms have been warmer this winter, so we get lots of rain and tiny amounts of snow.  And cold days.

Finally, during the sermon at church today, I counted the number of people chewing gum.  Out of an estimated 150 people in my field of view, there were 9 gum chewers.

Interludes

You know how when you change jobs, it takes a month or so until the new benefits kick in?  I don't love that policy.  In the two weeks since I switched jobs, our big daughter has taken two trips to the doctor.  The first was to convenient care to check on a possible UTI.  Thankfully, that turned out to be a very minor case.

On Friday night, we took a trip to the ER.  Clara was brushing her teeth (using the verb very loosely.  The important point was that the toothbrush was in her mouth.).  She slipped on one of her 5 dresses and bumped her toothbrush on her play kitchen counter.  She cried out and then gagged a little.  At first glance, I couldn't see anything, but eventually got a flashlight to take a better look.  There was a small hole in the back of her mouth, just above her epiglottis.  Yikes!

Thankfully, the ER was not crowded.  Clara got checked out quickly, and the news was good.  It would heal in a few days, and all she just needed some anti-biotics.

And then come the bills...

 I think Janny's face is looking more toddlery every day.  It goes well with her strong oratory skills.  My favorite saying is "too spicy, don't like it".

 There is a whole lot of dressing up happening now, mostly by Clara.  First, just one costume was enough.

 Now she wears about 3 dresses, angel wings, head bands, scarfs, hat, shoes, and I don't know what else.  Is she a bag lady or an eccentric great aunt (not insinuating any of our relations, of course)?

We've had beautiful weather for the last 2 Saturdays, with frigid days in between (it was 6 degrees this morning).  For the first, I rode with the Wildcard gang to Monticello.  For the second, I tracked down the source of the clicking on my Boulder bike. This turned out to be the interaction of the BB cable guide screw and the BB.  The screw was slightly too long and had scored the surface of the BB.  If I pedaled hard enough, the screw would slip out and back into the groove.  Let's just say that wasn't my first guess.