The tree trimming crew was here during the week. They really did a great job on the main tree in the back. Before the trimming, the tree looked like this. After trimming, it looks like this:   I’m showing a high view, taken from our laundry room, so that you can see the situation with the fence a bit better. The tree is growing between our wooden fence and a chain link fence on the Sergio side, but if you look at the way our fence runs, the tree does seem to be on our property. So it’s weird, indeed,…

When we heard that it was 45.8 degrees C in Sydney yesterday, we rushed to the handy Celsius / Fahrenheit converter that Miles made in kindergarten to see if that is as hot as it sounds. It is! Whew, a whopping 110 degrees F!!! Fortunately for Colette and Colman, and everyone else in Australia, it seems to have cooled off. Right now it looks like it’s a very comfortable 72F / 22C.

We started the new year with a traditional visit from the Gorskis, in town from Denver to visit Eric’s family over the holidays. Annette, Dave, Nadia and Sylvia regrettably couldn’t make it, since the girls are doing their best to avoid large gatherings of germs this first winter. Liam also had to skip out early, since he had plans to meet some classmates and work on a Macbeth project for his British Literature class. Hope to see everyone next year! Taking measure was a priority. Will noticed our height marks on the kitchen wall last time he was here and…

Liam came across a new breakfast idea — pankeggs. The instructions said to fry an egg for a minute or so, then pour the pancake batter on top to create a half fried egg – half pancake combo. We tried a few other ideas too. We thought that pouring the pancake batter first, then cracking an egg on top would work better than it did. The pancake surface was slightly rounded and the egg slid off to the side. The sliding egg had to be held in place with more batter. Not too pretty. This is the way to go.…

The American Elm in our backyard has done us a lot of shade service, and we’ve pretty much neglected it. Not so in 2013! An arborist came out today to give us an assessment of the tree’s needs. As you can see, the tree is really 3 trees, with the largest trunk on the north side of the fence (but still on our property, the fence sorta swerves to the south to go on our side of the tree) and two smaller trunks on our side of the fence. He recommends we cut off the two trunks on our side…

Santa and everyone else was very good to us again this year! We then had some cinnamon rolls that John won in the white elephant gift exchange the night before (thanks, Carolyn, delicious!), skyped with Nana and Grandpa in KC and Granny, Grandad, Phyllis and kids, Barry and Frankie and Colette and Colman in Dublin, then headed downtown to have a walk through Millenium Park. I always like this view of the bean at Millenium Park. Even with a gray sky it creates some amazing illusions. Photo orchestrated so that Liam would look taller than he is. Not sure why…

Glad I left work at 4 today, it was just dark enough to see this steam but the sun was still over the horizon, lighting it up nicely. Nice start to our Christmas break!

We put up our tree and other decorations tonight, making the house very festive!  

This photo of a computer screen with mouse hovering over the submit button may not look like the ecstatic culmination of 2 1/2 years of graduate school, but to me it was a joyous moment. I handed in my last two assignments this morning and (all going well in the grading department!) I am a librarian at last. Whoo hoo! Readers who suffer from insomnia are welcome to check out my final project: https://sites.google.com/site/4aphotosanalysis/assignment-4c The system I analyze is the same system we’re implementing at work, so it’s actually been very useful to do as a class project. Having said…