Gingerbread house stained glass windows

This was insanely easy to do, I can't believe we didn't know about this before, and all future gingerbread houses will have stained glass windows.  Next year, we'll swirl them a bit to make more interesting patterns.

Important Note: strongly recommend parchment paper for this.

Just add a few Jolly Ranchers on the sheet...

...and they bake right into the frame!

Dragons or Lorelais

Tough choice.  We were all set to start A Year in the Life tonight when Game of Thrones, Season 6, disk 1 arrived in the mail (we netflix everything late).  So it's either the multigenerational conflict that promises death, drama, and fights to uphold a family's honor, or Peter Dinklage and CGI dragons.

(ed. note: this was originally posted to friends on FB in 2016, so I am backdating to that date.  It was added to this blog in 2025)

I am not throwing away my squash

Twitterfeed is dead. Long live...

dlvr.it?  

In advance of the sad day when Twitterfeed shuts down, I'm testing out options.  In addition to buffer.com and dlvr.it, it looks like IFTTT is a possibility.  If this were a fair test and, I would try out all three services and compare and contrast, but I'm just looking for something that is quick and easy, so if this dlvr.it test works out, that's what I'll use.

One positive so far is that it looks like dlvr.it will pull posts from my blog and send to both twitter and facebook.  The "post to FB" feature broke on twitterfeed a while ago, and I've just lived with it only sending to twitter (blogger already does its own automatic send to G+).

So here goes.

A Night in the Lonesome October

October has begun, along with our traditional month-long family bedtime reading of Roger Zelazny's A Night in the Lonesome October, his last novel, and my favorite of his.  The book is broken into a chapter for each day of the month, which makes it great for doing a chapter a night and following how the story progresses over the course of the month.

The characters in the book are all references to existing character in fiction and life, and while some are obvious, others are not.  Christopher Kovacs has an illuminating essay on this topic, perfect for *after* you've read the book.

Coffee cake: A tale of 48 hours of love and loss in 3 pictures

Meet cute

Midcake crisis

Grieving

Replaced a laptop keyboard

Kids broke a number of keys on my laptop keyboard, and I finally put on my big boy pants and replaced it.  It was surprisingly easy to follow the official instructions and swap the thing out.  The hardest part was attaching the keyboard connector, getting the pins lined up just right so that it clicked in place.  This step took a few minutes and only mild cursing, and is more evidence why it's a good thing I'm not a surgeon. 

You've been a good ole keyboard, daddy, but you done broke down

2016-09-11

Fifteen years ago today, Sarah and I were in the midst of a move to Burlington, Vermont.  Sarah had already driven out 2+ weeks prior (with power of attorney to sign for me) in order to close on the house.  I was remaining in Chicago through September 25 in order to finish up work on the latest version of SPSS.

On the day in question, a few of us were already in the Pubs Warren when Chantal arrived and announced that "all these business types in suits were on their cell phones in the lobby talking about a plane that crashed in New York."

So we immediately checked the CNN site, which wouldn't load because of too much traffic.  Same with the NYT site.  Finally, success on the Chicago Tribune page.  After 20 minutes of reading everything available on what looked like a horrible accident, the image on the page refreshed and the South Tower had been hit.  Suddenly, getting out of the Sears Tower seemed like a good idea.  As everyone gathered their things, they announced over the speakers that everyone should leave the building.  

I went to the Metra station and asked if there would be extra trains heading out of the city that morning.  "Why?"  (In 2001, there hadn't been enough time for news to spread -- no twitter.)  I walked to the El and took the Purple Line back to my nearly-empty apartment, called Sarah, and then read books from the Evanston Public Library for the rest of the day.  

(note: published 12/31/25; backdated to when I wrote it)

2016 Colchester triathlon

The 2016 Colchester Triathlon has come and gone.  Many thanks to the volunteers and Colchester PD for staging another successful event.

The results are in, and at least I haven't gotten any slower overall.  Still need to work on the swim time.  

Once again vtsportsimages took pictures, and for the first time, I don't look terrible on the run (pictured below). 

I'm still face down in the water.  It's very shallow there, but I'm faster swimming than those guys are wading.  Look at the beautiful form on that arm!  

Not visible are the worried looks on the faces of the
people watching the race, because I breathe so
loudly while running

Amusement park rules that were meant to be ignored

Local primaries

Phil Scott wants me to vote for him in the primary on August 9.  Former Governor Jim Douglas agrees, though nowhere on the big, glossy postcard does it say which ballot he'll appear on.  In fact, nowhere on either side of the postcard does the word "Republican" appear.

EDIT: A friend points out that closer reading of the postcard reveals that Scott's party affiliation is there, if you only read between the lines, and provides the following, clearer view:

This view also makes me realize that the postcard includes a pokeball in the upper right corner.  Given the absence of any words that might describe Scott's positions on any policy ("if you won't take a stand, Scott, what'll you fall for?"), I will take this to mean that Scott has a favorable attitude towards Pokemon Go. #VoteForEmAll  

Never mess with a mathematician

Sometimes analog is better

Went swimming at the Y for the first time in forever and in the locker room they've swapped out the old mechanical scale (the kind with the weights you fiddle around with) for a digital scale.  

1. Stepped on the digital scale. Nothing.  
2. Flipped over digital scale, pushed button on the back, flipped it back, stepped on it. Nothing.
3. Ten seconds later it finishes booting up, stepped on it. 189 pounds. Now, the last time I weighed 189 pounds I had an IBM PC with a 20MB hard drive. For the last decade, I've been in the 200-210 range. So I'm not believing this.
4. Flipped over digital scale, pushed button on the back, flipped it back, waited for it to give some vague indication it was ready, stepped on it. Still 189 pounds.

Well, it's amazing how swimming just makes the weight slough right off.

Crazy stat of the day: suspended licenses

VTDigger reports that 59,000 Vermonters have suspended licenses.  For a state with just over 600,000 people, that sounds insanely high.  If there only about 460,000 people of driving age (and not all of them have licenses), then likely somewhere between 1 in 7 and 1 in 8 drivers have a suspended license** in Vermont. 

Poking around, this article suggests 1 in 10 for drivers nationwide (and 1 in 7 in Florida), so Vermont is hardly out of the norm for the U.S.  Just wow.


** I'd like to guess less about the number of licensed drivers in VT, but this site suggests there are 549,000 licensed drivers in VT, which clearly isn't right.

'Tis the season

...for pine trees to litter the roadways like used condoms, their purpose fulfilled, having shielded us from the oppressive dark of winter with twinkly decorations and the promise of spring.

Of course, the de-decorated pine trees can extend their useful life if you have neighbors with goats; for example, the goats at Pine Island Farm like nothing better than a tasty pine tree treat.