Category: life

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Stamped in my memory

Today, Jadzia and I were watching “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” Early in the show, Mister Rogers took us to see how the Postal Service makes postage stamps. Whenever we watch Mister Rogers, I always try to do something afterward with Jadzia that connects with the episode. So when we were done watching, I remembered my little stamp collection. I dug it out from the basement and showed it to Jadzia. Yoli gave us a magnifying glass so Jadzia could really inspect the stamps. (Truth is, she still doesn’t quite get how to use a magnifying glass)

Anyway, as we went through the book, I saw my old stamps with new eyes. I realized how I am connected to the places represented by these stamps in ways I didn’t know about when I was a kid collector.

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Free! Free! Free!

Saturday night was Yoli’s annual appreciation dinner for employees of the Ferguson Municipal Library. It was held at the Thyme Table, as usual, and the food was pretty good. This year they had a beef roast, with an egg/potato layered thing, and veggies. There was also a very nice chocolate mousse cake with an Oreo crust. It all tasted even finer because it was FREE.

As were planning for the dinner, we decided to use a babysitter again and make an evening of it. I tried to come up for ideas of stuff to do afterward (art museum? history museum? some sort of concert?). I came up with something different — we should go to The Blanche.

(The Blanche, for those who don’t know, is what I call the “Touhill Performing Arts Center” at UMSL)

UMSL music students were holding end-of-the-semester recitals. There was a violin and piano performance scheduled for 7 p.m. This seemed right up our alley, since we are a somewhat musical family … (Yoli is the one who can actually play instruments. I just sing).

Anyway, Yoli and I showed up. I think we were the only ones there who were not fellow music students. But still it was a lovely hour of FREE classical music. It doesn’t get much better than that!

After the concert we watched a movie called “Once” which I really, really enjoyed. It’s about two brokenhearted people in Dublin — a street musician guy and a Czech immigrant girl — who hang out, sort of fall in love, and make really great music together. That description doesn’t do the movie justice. Suffice it to say that it is probably one of the best films I have seen in the last year. Making it even sweeter? The fact that we checked it out for FREE from the aforementioned Ferguson Municipal Library.

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Houston, we have a Jadzia

Well, we have been enjoying the Republic of Texas for the past 2 days.

On Sunday we flew into Houston to visit with Yoli’s friend Sonja and her husband Jody and their two children. The flight itself went very well with no problems from Jadzia or Ludi. In fact, this may have been one of the best flights we’ve had in our post-childbirth era. 🙂

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International Josh Week

The world is winding down from the tumultous but transcendent celebrations that marked International Josh Week. Here in St. Louis, the festivities were more low-key than usual, but all in all they were good.

The morning of International Josh Day, I got my first present: a new waffle iron. We immediately put it to work. My first attempt was okay, but not breath-taking.

The next day, we tried again. This time, Yoli handled the batter. The waffles turned out much better. Since this was Tuesday, I had the day off, and my parents agreed to watch Jadzia and Ludi. This freed Yoli and I to spend an afternoon together. We decided to tour two institutions that are quintessential to St. Louis: the church and the brewery.

We started at the Cathedral Basilica.

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We’re not outnumbered … yet

Well, I suppose it’s about time we proclaimed the big news: Yoli is several months pregnant! The baby is due around my dad’s birthday in August, though Yoli is hoping he/she will be born in late July (so we won’t add yet another birthday to that crammed month).

Jadzia has certainly kept us on our toes, and kept our house a constant mess. I’m not sure what we’ll do when there’s the same number of children as there are adults. I’m also not looking forward to dealing with two car seats. Somehow we will survive, though. It will be awesome for Jadzia to have a sibling to play with (though we’ll probably have to deal with the inevitable jealousy issues when the baby arrives).

Also, a little tidbit: Jadzia just got some shoes this week (she’s gone around barefoot or socked only all this time). But she doesn’t walk or stand very well in them. It’s going to take some time for her to get used to them. Another thing she’s learning to do is eat with a spoon. She’s getting better each day.

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Snow = sled time

We’ve had several snows this winter, but today was the first time we were able to take Jadzia out for some sledding action. We put some hot tea in a thermos, dressed Jadzia in triple layers, and headed out.

We took her to the place my dad always took us when we were kids: Killer Hill in Florissant.

Since we didn’t own a sled, we took our trash can lid. Unfortunately, it didn’t work — at all.

So we decided to drive around and buy one. Of course the roads were still treacherous, but we eventually made it to a K-mart and found a nice blue sled. We drove back to Killer Hill and I tested it several times while Yoli fed a hungry Jadzia in the car. It worked very well and much fun ensued.

If you click the image below, you can watch video of us sledding:

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Powered down

A winter storm walloped the St. Louis area. Lots of sleet Thursday followed by some snow and ice Friday made roads treacherous for a bit, but worse than that, it caused nearly half a million people to lose power. Our family is among them. The friends and relatives I talked with by phone on Friday were also all without power, as were many of my coworkers at the Post-Dispatch.

So far it hasn’t been too awful bad (says the guy who has been working in a warm building all evening), but overnight it’ll be very cold and in the days ahead it won’t be anywhere near as warm inside the house as it was Friday during the day.

We just moved into this house in August, and we haven’t yet had our chimney cleaned and the flue opened, so we can’t light any fires yet to keep warm.

Today we spent most of the day outside the house, eating out, and going to Target to buy a few Christmas gifts. And I hurt my lower back trying to break through the ice on the driveway so I could back the car out.

Hopefully power will be restored soon, but realistically I know it could be as much as a week before it’s fixed. That’s how long it took for many when back-to-back storms this summer knocked out power across the region. (yeah, it’s been one of those years for St. Louisans)

On a positive note, everything is covered by ice and the tree branches look like they are encased in crystal when the sun illuminates them. With luck we might try and take some photos tomorrow.