This is what happens when you haven't taken a vacation since your kid was literally a baby ( Read more... )

Maybe I'm too upfront with Jonny about the realities of life.

Jonny has a friend he plays with at the mall sometimes, named J.J. We haven't seen him in a while, probably since well before Christmas. The other day I was doing my mall-walking thing, pushing Jonny along in his stroller, when he turned to me and said, "Where's J.J.? Is he deaaaad?" ( Read more... )

Reading this book put me in a Pacific Crest Trail state of mind. Of all the long-distance hiking trails in the US (or, for that matter, in North America or the world), I've wanted to "do" the PCT most. Hiking segments of the Appalachian Trail cooled my interest in thru-hiking the eastern corridor, but I've never lost my love for the Pacific Crest ( Read more... )

Back when we had money and liked to throw it at things, I was deep into one of the deepest dorkdoms possible: I collected Lego sets. I wasn't as nuts (or as awesome) as those people who fill rooms with intricate table-top dioramas, though I wanted to be. I mostly just bought nifty sets to display on dressers and shelves, until I ran out of space, ( Read more... )

This is Jonny's favorite song right now:

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He's obsessed with it. Any time we drive to the library he expects it, repeating on a loop. His delighted exclamations -- "He's a microwave!" -- make it worthwhile.

This is my current musical obsession:

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I must have listened to it six times on my drive to and from my hike last weekend.

Trying to leverage social media to run a "business" is exhausting, never mind that my "business" doesn't entirely exist yet. Never mind that I've barely done anything but tweet a dozen times, either. The practicalities and considerations are never far from my mind; my brain babbled about it until 3 this morning, keeping me awake and unsatisfied ( Read more... )

We had our friends Francesca and Egor over for a low-key New Year's thing, dominated by Egor's Russian New Year's treats (homemade lox and other, less tolerable seafood items) and my endless Song of Ice and Fire fan-squeeing with Francesca (more on that in a later entry). Unfortunately, around 9:30 pm, Francesca had some kind of gastrointestinal ( Read more... )

How would you feel if a random old guy walked up to your 2 year old son in the mall and handed him a teddy bear? Part of me feels bad that, even though it was probably just a nice act by a guy who sees us mall walking every day, I can't suppress my "Okay, you're a creep" instinct. I don't want to be one of those paranoid, over-protective parents, ( Read more... )

Jonny spent Saturday night and most of yesterday with Jen's father and his partner. It was nice to have 24 hours without him underfoot. We bought some Christmas gifts for him and decorated the house, and I organized the sock drawer, which I'm inordinately proud of. Apparently Jonny was quite the gentleman over the weekend. When Jen and I walked ( Read more... )

I'm feeling a little bit less Chicken Little today. I mean, the Senate voted to permit the military to indefinitely detain American citizens on American soil without trial or charge, and the Senate will soon vote on whether to permit media corporations to shut down websites based merely on content sharing allegations, without a review process, and ( Read more... )