Entropy Lives Here

Oh, and the other day I went in to wake Eva from her nap and found her like this:

 

Some features: underpants pulled over shorts, barbie car in bed, no blankets. Oh, and also a dinosaur mask.

 

Never a dull moment, I tell you.

 

Wolfman is here!!

He can fight bad guys and break them into a million pieces!
And also he made this neat picture

The universe is safe again!

Kid pictures will be back soon, in the meantime you can read this strip which was brought to my attention today.  I love it. :)

(from xkcd.com)

Thank goodness, we are in good hands.

Just the usual insanity

This morning we finally found a place in Boston to live (a duplex we can rent in Mission Hill). This is a huge relief and exciting news, because it's a great place. It also meant we got to spend the rest of the day outside enjoying the beautiful (but cold!) day.


We took Noah to Boston Common to meet the Make Way For Ducklings ducklings.


He liked visiting the ducks ("duckie!" point point "duckie!") but was dissappointed that he was unable to pick up the statue.


We then headed to the Thoughtbot office for a bit of a warm-up and a snack. Noah is actually very good company at the table.


Also on our walk today, we saw some wierd stuff. For example, this, on the door of a brownstone in the west end.


As best as I can tell, this is a squirrel statue wearing some kind of bizarre sock hat, accompanied by pinecones and cacti.

But that was nothing to what we discovered while walking back across the common - a quidditch practice.


I am not kidding you right now. See the rings they've erected in the back?


Also, they were running around with brooms.


Wikipedia says that over 200 college teams compete in muggle quidditch. This is the second craziest thing I have ever heard. The first craziest thing is the following (from the Wikipedia article):

While the Snitch is a magical object within the canon of the Harry Potter novels, in Muggle Quidditch the Snitch is most often a sort of neutral player, usually dressed in all gold, sometimes adorned with wings. The Snitch, after release, is usually allowed to roam an area beyond the playing field. When played on a college campus the range is often the entire campus.

I am only sorry I left college before I had the opportunity to run into a gold bedazzled Clark student wandering around the WPI campus.

Are you tired of snow pictures yet? No? Good. Because today I had to dig out the car.


Hello? Car?


So that was an adventure. Luckily we have good friends who helped me by watching Noah so I could shovel.

Speaking of Noah, we took a walk to survey the neighborhood today.


It was snowy.


The Bob proved its worth again, as we went through the slush and over the snow with no problem at all.


Hey - the stroller is almost exactly one snowblower-width!


About two seconds after I took this picture the guy with the snowblower came around the corner, directly at us on the same track. Let's just say we high-tailed it onto the street after that.

Overall, it was a really beautiful, sunny day today. It's amazing how much snow has melted already.


So we go back to work and school tomorrow, two hours late. This I do not understand - see how clear that street is already? Just because all of that water is going to freeze into sheets of black ice... wimps.

Hey - it actually snowed last night!


Please observe our beautiful tree in the morning sunlight. The neighbors' trees were pretty stunning as well.


Noah and I took a walk around Ambler, and discovered the mansions had been turned into fairy-tale castles.


And then I had the foresight to clean off the car while the baby was asleep, strapped to my chest. This will make it way easier to go out this afternoon when I have him in the carseat.


Of course, the snow is melting fast and will probably be slush by tomorrow morning. This makes me extra happy we got out to enjoy it this morning.

In other news, Noah has learned how to do the mashed potato.

Here's your test.



For the future, I will try to refrain from posting random internet garbage. But I have a weakness for dancing bears.

What the hell is this?


Yes, that yellow square is a big fat ticket, received on our car while parked in front of our house this morning. Granted, it is technically a ticketable offense to park in front of our house without feeding the meter, but we have lived here for NINE MONTHS without a single ticket. I was all cocky about it, even telling someone this very morning about how they never ticket. And then she dropped me off at my house and said "hey look, someone on your street got a ticket."

ha ha.

My response, of course, "shit. That's me."

So it remains to be seen if our free parking spree is officially over, and we'll be schlepping our groceries from down the street from now on. Stupid rules, when actually followed.

The entire Spring House Technical Center (~950 people) got the following email from the site director:

to: Employees at the Spring House Site

As part of their exciting Pennsylvania primary campaign, we've just learned that Senators Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama will be visiting Spring House this afternoon for a townhall meeting in Emmons Auditorium. The meeting will start at 4:00 and should last about 1 hour. Seating will be on a first come basis so be sure to get their early if you want a seat. Sorry for the very short notice but we've had to keep this very quiet for security reasons. The Senators will be arriving by helicopter at 3:55 on the lawn in front of Building 6. Please keep clear of this area. The Secret Service will start clearing the geese from the site at 3:45 to insure that there is no interference with the helicopters. The TV crews should start arriving and setting up by 2:00. Please do not park in the parking spots by building 6. We need to keep these spaces open.

Thanks, I hope you can join us for this exciting and newsworthy event

Signed, the director of the site. I reacted to this with the following (in somewhere near this order):

- wow! That is so exciting!
- I wonder if Chad can come. He didn't say anything about guests.
- How early will I have to get there to get a seat? Can I get all my measurements done before then?
- Wait a second.... why would the secret service have to get rid of the geese and not our facilities people?
- Hillary and Barak in the same place and the same time, and that place is building 6? None of this makes any sense.

And then I remembered what day it was. And then I confirmed with some co-workers (not without some disappointment on my part) that our site director was messing with us. And went about my business, until we got the following email a few hours later.

to: Employees at the Spring House Site

Unfortunately the geese were too aggressive and it does not look like we can move them. Maybe next year on APRIL 1st we can invite the candidates back.

So at any rate, apparently the spring house geese are even scarier than I realized. In other news, Max and Entropy have learned how to ride a bicycle while singing the score from Les Miserables, and Chad has decided to sell his shares of Thoughtbot to Microsoft so he can take the cats on their European tour.

Wow. This was an amazing movie. It's based on an autobiographical graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi, who grew up during the Iranian revolution. In addition to being a powerful illustration of how difficult it is to simply live under the control of an oppresive regime, it was also a brilliant commentary about growing up as a woman in general. There were parts where I laughed out loud and parts where I was near tears. It was also just beautifully drawn.


Seriously. You should go find the nearest slightly arsty theater and see this movie.


The thing about Iran's repressiveness towards women that blows my mind is that it wasn't always this way. The fact that a country could decide to change TO a culture where women can't be in public without a male escort and the police enforce extreme religious laws is amazing to me. And really really scary.

I am so lucky to live in a time and place where I just can't understand such fanaticism. We are free and well fed so I can say "what is WRONG with these people?" about the religious fanatics (in Iran, or otherwise) but then when I get tired of thinking about it go pet my cat and chat with my husband. So in order to avoid sinking this post into a depressed rant about the state of the world, I will just reiterate how happy I am to have the life I have been given. And also I will not take lightly take my responsibility to pay attention and vote.

So anyway, this movie is worth seeing.

:):):):)

The good tired that comes from 3 matches (11 games) of volleyball in one evening. Yay thursdays. The world is as it should be, and now it's time for bed.

Not for our nocturnal feline friends, by the way, who are racing each other around the living room.

Yay bed :)

Just playing with the photo booth application on my new macbook. THAT'S RIGHT! My new macbook. Which is happily on my lap as we speak. Earlier this evening (during our regular Daily Show viewing) our neighbor from 119 S. Spring Garden rang the doorbell. Apparently they delivered the package there, and his "friend" signed for it. No, I don't know why she signed my name. No, I'm not entirely comfortable with the situation. But the nice man from # 119 led us over to his house and I picked up my package, which was unopened. So I guess in the end, little harm was done. But really. Why would you receive a package and forge someone's signature when you have no idea who they were???


Now to figure out how to use the damn thing. :) Yay!

Dear FedEx: This is not my signature.

I don't know to whom you gave my new macbook (for which I have been waiting patiently since July to get my bonus so I would have the disposable cash to buy). I can assure you they were not part of my household, they were not signing on my behalf, and honestly, I doubt they even know who I am.

I am assuming my macbook (which my mother instructed me to buy, in no uncertain terms) is in use by now, altering the MySpace page of some crappy person who signed for my package.

Sigh. F**Ex.

Pay no attention to the lack of blog posts over the past 3 months. Thank you very much.

This past Sunday we went into the city for the St. Patrick's day parade. What a fun, bizarre day. First of all, the city of Philadelphia totally overlooks the open container law for the day. In the picture above, Chad and I are drinking beers (bought at a bar across the street, they gave us plastic cups for the occasion) with city hall in the background.

Because there are apparently a TON of Irish in the Philadelphia area, there were tons of troupes of step dancing girls. This I expected. I did not expect for many of them to be dressed up as clergy. I mean really. A dancing bishop? In every other troupe?


All I could think as these girls danced by is "honey, you realize you can't actually have that job, right?"

There were also plenty of catholic-themed floats. Featured below, a lovely float including clergy (who apparently all have Santa Claus -style beards), nuns, nurses, firemen and some catholic schoolboys at their desks.


The theme of the day seemed to be: Yay catholicism! Yay beer! Sounds good to me. There were lots and lots of happy people. We ended the day walking all the way across town for a free pint,
and then the train back to Ambler. Yay god! Yay beer!