Modi does politics

(Originally posted on Saturday, February 25, 2006 by Cathy)

Modi's been having some fun with Gimp. Now if only dogs could vote! Click here to see his full selection of political bumper stickers.

I'm back

(Originally posted on Saturday, February 25, 2006 by Tim)

It has been more than 5 months since my last Chezmodi post and lots of great stuff has happened. It occurred to me that if I was going to try to catch up on all that stuff, that I would never manage to get posting again. I?ll just assume that, if you are one of the select few that read these posts, you already know most of what has been going on.

The biggest news is that Cat now has a tenure track position at Roanoke College and Cat is also pregnant. Cat is about 4.5 months along. I have wanted to post about it for a while now, but we had to keep things a little quiet until she finished her job search. Everything has gone well with the baby. She had her last ultrasound done a few weeks ago and as you can see from the picture, it?s a boy. We?ve been thinking about names and the one that has stuck has been ?Dalton?. Non-chemists don?t get it and chemists groan when they hear it. It can also be shortened to one syllable, a requirement in the Midwest. It?s perfect.

I suppose the most significant event of the week is that I boiled some beans for a beans and rice dish. It?s a very simple recipe and also quite tasty. I?ve modified it from a side dish that we have had at a local California/Mexican restaurant.

Ingredients
1 cup black beans
1 cup brown rice
0.25 cups salsa
0.25 cups cheddar cheese
1 cobb corn

Place 1 cup of dried black beans in a pot and cover with 4 cups of water. Cover and let sit overnight. The next day, start beans boiling on the stove. DO NOT GO INTO THE OFFICE AND START PLAYING VIDEO GAMES. DO NOT FORGET THE BOILING BEANS. SET A TIMER. DO NOT FORGET THE BOILING BEANS. THE FIRE ALARM IS NOT A TIMER.

As you might have guessed by now, I haven?t managed to finish the recipe. By the time the fire alarm went off, the visibility in the kitchen was about 10 feet. We aired out the house immediately and once more on a warm day this week. It is getting better, but it still smells like the dogs are chain smoking Marlboros while we are at work during the day. I?m hoping for warm weather this weekend.

Dalton Hates Tummy Time

(Originally posted on Monday, December 25, 2006 by Tim)

As I've indicated earlier, Dalton is less than fond of being on his tummy. I'm convinced he has been able to roll from his back to his stomach for weeks, but he's been holding out on us because he has figured out the consequences. As part of the process of avoiding tummy time, he has become quite an expert at sitting on his own. Still, he occasionally topples over and finds himself on his stomach.

Today's picture was taken by his aunt Laura. As you can see, he's been developing a tolerance for tummy time. It's a process akin to that described in old spy movies where one of the spooks has spent years slowly developing an immunity to some obscure poison. Dalton has spent months working working his way from ballistic the instant his stomach touches the floor to being only moderately annoyed for the first three or four seconds. His mood then escalates geometrically until someone corrects the situation.

Not what I expect from an over-priced coffee shop

(Originally posted on Tuesday, November 29, 2005 by Cathy)

This story is actually most of a month old, but I was reminded of it today and thought it was still worth telling.

So we were at the mall trying to do some shopping, when Tim decides he needs an Orange Julius. Now, there -is- no Orange Julius in the mall. Actually, there's very little of anything in this mall. In terms of clothing, there's very little in petites, and all of it is would look just fine on a 70 year old. Most of everything else is geared at the 18-22 crowd, which I guess makes sense, considering where we are and all. Anyway, there's no Orange Julius. What we do have in the mall is a coffee stand. So I manage to convince Tim that a smoothie from the coffee bar might vaguely resemble an Orange Julius. Although I'm willing to drive to the mall in Roanoke for clothes, I am NOT willing to do it for an Orange Julius. Go figure. Life isn't fair.

So we're in line waiting for this smoothie and eyeing the various over-priced pasteries, giant muffins, etc that seem to be ever-present and ever-overpriced at these sorts of establishments. As usual, everything looks good, probably because everything looks fattening. Then we see this cake slice. It might be a pound cake, but it has this radioactive neon yellow frosting sort of spattered on top, under the layer of saran wrap that is protecting the cake slice from the rest of the world, or maybe protecting the rest of the world from the cake slice, in this particular case. It doesn't look good. We don't buy it.

Later on, still running errands, we're at Walmart. Yes, I know, Walmart is evil. Walmart is also the only place in town that stocks vegetarian salami slices, which are really the only type of fake lunch meat actually worth eating. So we go to Walmart with some regularity, at least for the fake meat.

To get to the fake meat at Walmart, you walk sort of through/past the bakery. I wasn't really looking at what was in the bakery, except that there was this radioactive neon yellow glow coming from one display. So we looked closer, and it was something that looked suspiciously like a pound cake, but with yellow frosting spattered on the top. I guess the frosting looked slightly more appetizing before being smashed into a piece of saran wrap, but we were still highly amused to see that the small $4/piece cake slice in the over-priced coffee shop had begun life as an $8/cake cake at Walmart. Somehow, that's just wrong. If I'm going to spend $4 for a piece of cake to go with my $3 trendy coffee-like drink, it had darn well better have a better pedigree than Walmart!

Argh, domain thieves

(Originally posted on Saturday, November 12, 2005 by Cathy)

A combination of errors today:

• My credit card expiration date came and went since the last time I paid dotster for a domain.
• The email address I use for domain email (and mostly spam) was on the fritz.
• labarchive.net expired
• I didn't notice during the grace period.

So someone poached it. Don't bother going there to look, you'll just drive up their traffic. The lab archive is now at labs.timistry.net. Go THERE for science lab experiments of all sorts.

Let's Celebrate!

(Originally posted on Tuesday, September 6, 2005 by Tim)

CELEBRATE NATIONAL PAYROLL WEEK!

Did you know that it's National Payroll Week? Neither did I. The above message greeted me in cheerful, bold, capital letters when I opened my paychecks today. When I think of it, pretty much all of my paycheck is written in bold and capitals. Well, that is, everything except the actual amount I am being paid. That is written small, non-descript type. If fonts were animals, my payment type would be an ant. Not the big, black ants that seem to follow us around from state to state. It would be a small ant...the kind without mandibles.

So how the heck did we get a National Payroll Week anyway. Did some past president stand behind the podium and announce, "I hereby dedicate this week to all the payrolls out there who work hard to maintain this great nation of ours." How am I supposed to celebrate? Am I supposed to buy someone a card? Can I go down to my local Hallmark and find the Payroll Week cards between those for Plumbers Day and Lawyers That Aren't Evil Day (a small section). Once I have picked out an appropriate card, who do I give it to?

While you reflect on this questions, I wanted to share another funny moment from my day. Cat and I work at different schools that are about 25 minutes drive apart. As such we communicate alot by email. Well actually, we've been known to communicate by email when we've worked six doors down the hall from each other, but now it's better justified.

We only have one car and so one of us drops the other off each morning. I try to drop Cat off more often than vice versa because she can take the bus home and that makes the total car commute 45 morning minutes and 15 evening minutes vs. 45 morning minutes and 45 evening minutes. It just so happens that I did the driving this morning. Cat's parents and sister were in town this weekend and we are still trying to finish off the massive quantities of leftovers from when we had them over for dinner. In pursuit of this goal, I packed some large lunches.

As I drove in this morning, I ended up arriving at work just as the lab I am teaching was starting. I have three labs to teach today as I am covering for a co-worker and this means that I have only 11-12pm and 2-3pm to eat my lunch. At 11am, I head back to my office feeling hungry and I am decended upon by multiple students who delay me by about 20 minutes. I now only have 40 minutes to eat my lunch, grade some papers, and finish off my annual faculty report. I start hunting around my office to find my lunch and it is no where to be found. I think, "Hmmm, I must have left it in the car and the car is at Virginia Tech. Rats (not the actual word I used), I'm going to have to buy lunch and I've got no free time today." I fire a quick email off to Cat and ask, "Did I leave my lunch in the car?" I then proceed to do a bit of grading.

Cat replies to the email in a couple of minutes. Remember that I have the car at Radford as I dropped her off. Her reply is, "That module in wife is not installed. In addition, YOU have the car. However, based on your question, I would have to assume the answer is yes." Sigh, well this doesn't quite seem as funny as it did earlier today. I guess you had to be there.

Just in case you were curious, my lunch was in the car and it was quite good.

I also love my swing

(Originally posted on Tuesday, August 29, 2006 by Cathy)

We're slowly evolving into a pattern where Dalton takes a morning and afternoon nap. Well, sort of. If we're out and about (like this morning, when we interviewed a daycare provider), Dalton will snooze in the carseat, but we'll get home and he will be tired and cranky and need a longer nap, but it can be a couple of hours of struggle and fuss before he takes one. (Can you say "overtired"? I can say it, but I keep causing it anyway.) So today the "morning" nap started at noon. Then the afternoon nap starts who knows when. Actually, I'm a big fan of the "afternoon" nap starting around 5pm, so that we can make dinner using all four adult hands. On Sunday, the afternoon nap started late enough that it was still going at 7pm. "Oh great, I thought, I'd better wake him up so that he'll actually sleep tonight." So I procrastinated until 8pm (some things don't change), and then tried to wake him up.

You'd think, having slept for three hours that he'd have been ready to wake up, right? Nope. I even changed his diaper, which is usually good for several Moro reflex startles, followed by wide eyes. Well, he did open his eyes and look at me, then promptly fell back asleep and the end of the diapering routine. Aw heck, I thought, we're really in for it now. So our quiet baby free evening had this overhanging sense of dread, since we both figured we'd be up at 2am. Miraculously, he actually slept (aside from more or less constant nursing) through the night, and wasn't raring to go until 6am. Phew.

Anyway, back to the picture. Dalton generally won't fall asleep in the baby swing, but he will sit in it for a solid 3 minutes (long enough to pee!), staring at the rotating stuffed bugs. He'll also nap in it, as long as he's asleep when I put him in. He tends to open his eyes and/or make cute little whining noises every so often, but then the eyes slam back shut and he goes back to napping. Good enough.