Archive for 2010

Happy birthday Caroline!

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

Our baby girl is 2 today.
Karen took this picture at Caroline’s school.

Caroline's 2nd birthday

Caroline watching the snow

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

Little miss enjoying today’s blizzard.

Caroline watching the snow

After the snow…

Sunday, February 7th, 2010

Our driveway got dug out last night around 6:00pm – by a front-end loader. You might think that’s a little excessive, but with about 28 inches or so of snow, it was probably the easiest way to move it. So the snow is now in one giant mountain; should be nice and messy when it actually gets warm enough to melt.

One of our neighbors hosted a small party last night, in an effort to prevent us from going all-Nicholson in The Shining. It was fun: we brought the girls and hung out for a while.

I went to the grocery store this morning (my usual shopping day is Saturday and there was no way I was going out even if the store was open). Surprisingly, there were not many people in the store and I was able to easily find everything I was looking for.

I had to go into work today and drove in. I brought things home to work on, but it’s just not possible to get enough quiet to get it all done. And Karen’s sick, so she didn’t mind being without the car. It must have been a-hole driver day. Twice within a three block stretch, parked cars pulled out right in front of me. A dicey proposition when the roads are dry and downright insane when there’s still a little snow on the ground along with ice, ruts, etc. Lucky for me that I anticipated this stupidity, and avoided accidents.

I should have gotten the weekend key for the building garage; the pay lot was a colossal rip-off. I managed to get done what I should have finished days ago. Still a little behind where I want to be, billable hours wise, but I just didn’t feel like staying too late. And I had no interest in watching the Super Bowl. Caught the last two minutes though.

The bus ride into work tomorrow morning should be interesting. The two routes that I can take into the office are currently showing as running normally, though that may change by the morning commute. Happy dig-out!

Snowed in on Saturday

Saturday, February 6th, 2010

Yay! Another weekend blizzard! OK, while it may not technically be a blizzard, about 2 feet of snow and lots of wind is pretty close for me.

A picture from out our front window, looking towards the neighbors.

Snow out front

And since we’re stuck inside, we’re looking for things to do, short of going all Donner Party and cannibalizing each other. So Caroline played ballerina.

Caroline the ballerina

And she’s sleeping peacefully at the moment, along with Daisy (the dog, in case you forgot). The weird way the wind has been blowing has dropped only about 2 inches of snow on the sidewalk near the mulch where Daisy does her business. Of course, there’s about 2 feet of snow in the mulch, so the sidewalk will have to do for now.

Just finished playing some Wii Sports with Victoria. She kicked my butt in tennis, baseball was a draw, golf was close, and I actually won bowling (thought she was going to fling the remote through the TV while bowling).

It looks like it might have finally stopped snowing (around 3:15pm). The plow is supposed to come through around 5:00; I’ll see what else I’ll need to clear away after they’re through. The driveway in the picture above is a private driveway and not a city street, so we have to pay to get it plowed. But since a city plow won’t likely visit my neighborhood at all, I really don’t mind.

Patent attorneys on TV?!?

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

Thanks to NBC’s upcoming 10:00pm weeknight schedule change, there may be a new David E. Kelley legal drama, featuring an ex-patent attorney (see the second paragraph of the CNN article). Apparently, actual patent attorneys aren’t interesting enough to be the featured characters on a TV show. And I don’t have a problem with that. We patent attorneys are a fairly boring bunch.

24gasm on Season 7

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

I finally finished watching Season 7 of 24 on DVD over the weekend. (I was trying to be clever with “24gasm”, but found out some more clever people beat me to it.)

Spolier Alert: Some plot points from Season 7 follow. If you don’t want to know, stop now.

A few comments on Season 7.

  • Which Tony is it? First he’s alive, and a bad guy. Then a good guy. Then away for a little while. Then back again, but still a good guy. Then a really bad guy. Then in custody. That much flailing around leads to a high degree of difficulty (a PDF document explaining how to calculate the degree of difficult for diving); I’d says it’s at least a 3.5.
  • More Kim Bauer stupidity. That whole thing in the airport: chasing the bad guy while wearing heels, the security guards get shot, the car crashes through the barrier and flips over. Kim reaches in to grab tha laptop and the car catches on fire along with Kim’s arm. Makes me wistful for the cougar from Season 2 (read this as a “jump the shark” moment).
  • I still really, really hate Chloe. Really. Please kill this character. Go all Chef on her, so she can’t come back, a la Tony. And while you’re at it, kill Janice too.
  • A season-ending cliffhanger? Will Jack live? (Well, duh – he’s in Season 8.) Will Renee go all Jack Bauer on Alan Wilson? (No, she doesn’t have the stones, and he wouldn’t break anyway.) What’s going to happen to Tony? (Rot in prison until he receives a poison pill to swallow.) What’s going to happen to Olivia? (Go back to being a consultant in the private sector. Conspiracy to commit murder charge? Feh.)

Just a few more days to the Season 8 24gasm. Enjoy!

Too cold to run

Sunday, January 3rd, 2010

Not a great way to start the running year. I ran a little over 4 miles on Jan. 1, not wanting to get anywhere near the Broad Street crowds gathering to watch the Mummers.

Since then it’s been too damn cold for me to get out and run. After several years of trying various clothing and low temperature combinations, I’ve found that my limit is 20F, either with or without wind. So with temps in the low 20’s in the morning and crazy windy, there’s no way I was going out to run. We’ve even had to put the sweater on the dog to take her out.

And I’m getting my right knee injected again on Tuesday, so I’ll be out of commission for a few days due to that. Fun!