recent news
I'm sick...I have a cold and I feel awful. I'm really glad I'm on vacation (starting tomorrow) until the 5th. I need sleep and I need food. (I can always tell when I'm getting sick because my appetite jumps through the roof.)
Also, my company is closing one of three large facilities, suspending a major project, and is laying off over 200 people. I have tried really hard not to be doom-and-gloom about the economy, because Fear Is The Mind Killer, but this is not good. I am still employed...but I'm more uncertain than ever.
holding on
The other day, Nate fell asleep clutching my hand to his body as if it were a stuffed toy. I marvel at the simplicity of this act and power that it has over my psyche.
He is so full of energy and of life. His joy seems limitless and his innocence is infectious. I want so much to write down and preserve all that he's doing right now...it is the source of so much amazement in my life... I can feel it all slipping away so very quickly.
....
It will not be long before affection from his father will be looked upon as a burden...something to suffer through... I will love him and He will, God willing, love me, but not as a boy...as a man. I know it's absurd, but I lament this change already, if only because I cherish it so much right now.
This is a rambling mess of an entry, I apologize. The words are just not coming together.
Audra Mae's cover of "Forever Young."
May God bless and keep you always,
May your wishes all come true,
May you always do for others
And let others do for you.
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung,
May you stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young,
May you stay forever young.May you grow up to be righteous,
May you grow up to be true,
May you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you.
May you always be courageous,
Stand upright and be strong,
May you stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young,
May you stay forever young.May your hands always be busy,
May your feet always be swift,
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift.
May your heart always be joyful,
May your song always be sung,
May you stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young,
May you stay forever young."Forever Young" - Bob Dylan
wasted effort
All of our wonderful snow was converted to a small (and now frozen) lake between our house and our neighbors to the north.
**sigh**
I guess we're really going to have to do something this spring about the drainage issues. I really don't want to have to cut through large tree roots...but it may be the only way.
winter is for digging through the archives
Winter, for me, often means that, instead of being out with a camera capturing and creating new photos, I'm in my existing archives digging for forgotten images.
A little reflection on the past year or two isn't a bad thing though. It's nice to look back.
Case in point: this image is from one of my lunch-hour visits to the Garfield Park Conservatory.
I need to get back there a couple times this winter. It's a great way to enjoy some hot and humid temps without getting on a plane. 
work those cold fingers away
It may have "warmed up" to all of 5 deg F today, but I was plenty warm as I cleared the driveway of all the drifted snow. Once I really laid into that shovel, the coldness in my extremities vanished.
I think we have to throw away our finch feeder. We let it sit too long in the fall and rain clumped up the seeds left at the bottom of the feeder. It turned into a decaying mush that then turned into some sort of thistle seed cement. We tried cleaning it before but no go and I gave it a shot again today (using a long-shaft garden weeding tool) but I still couldn't reach far enough.
I did, however, lay some seed out in a planter base and put it near the front window. We did this last year with great results. Lots of sparrows visited and Nate got a great view of the birds hopping around and eating.
Wordpress 2.7
I upgraded this blog to Wordpress 2.7 today. The RSS feed might be a little messed up (it isn't showing me the latest entry in Google Reader). I'm not sure what happened there.
Otherwise, things are all different with the admin side of things. But it does have this "quickpress" feature for dropping in a short entry with a minimal amount of fuss. I'll take me a bit to figure out where all the features were moved to, but all in all, this feels like a solid upgrade.
and he’s off…
Friday marked my last day of work until December 29th and I'm only working then and the 30th that week. It'll be nice to have those two stretches in a row off. But the rest of January and February (with limited holidays) will be rather difficult to get through.
The snow last week was great and we ended up adding around 10" on Friday. I feel bad for those to the south of us that got hit with ice instead. I'll gladly take a foot or two of snow over ice any day. Especially because we don't have a generator for the house...
The cold today, however, is brutal.
That's what it was like at 8 am with a windchill of somewhere between -20 and -30. As 
helloheather mentioned, we tried to head to Milton, WI but Route 14 was getting worse and worse the further north we went. I'm disappointed that we had to miss the baptism but I think we made the right decision.
Lastly, just a note: cetan.org will be down for the foreseeable future. I will still be uploading images to my flickr account if you're at all interested: http://www.flickr.com/photos/phule.
Oh and Happy Winter Solstice.
something fishy
Saturday night, helloheather and I left Nate in the care of one of his sets of grandparents and then we drove in the ice and snow and rain and slush and traffic to the company Christmas party at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago.
Said traffic put us there too late to fully enjoy the aquarium before it was time for dinner. However, unlike a standard visit to the Shedd, there were no busloads of school kids, no strollers blocking the walkways, and far fewer people unable (or unwilling) to turn the flash off on their camera.
What was also missing, due to it being night and all, was anything resembling an appropriate amount of light /for/ photography. If only I had brought my tripod, I could have set up some really amazing long-exposure shots. Ah, well, they probably would have prohibited it.
We didn't get to sit around the Caribbean Reef (those seats were snapped up a long time before we got there) but we did sit in one of the galleries (Rivers of the World). All in all, a nice time.
what is brewing
In the department's little kitchenette we have an industrial 3-burner coffee maker. We have glass coffee pots with the traditional orange handle for decaf and a black handle for regular. We actually have two for regular (one of which is extra-strength indicated by a rubber band on the handle).
It has been, literally, weeks since the orange-handled pot was used. At all.
And so this is the state of things. Even the decaf drinkers have abandoned all hope. It's a good measure of what work has been like recently.
the long dark tea time of the soul
Because I've been making my lunch at work (having access to a full-size fridge on my floor is great for keeping a variety of food available) I've done almost no walking in the past month. When I have walked it's either been to the store or for short distances and never with a camera.
The situations has not helped by the fact that, we've been averaging 10 deg F below normal for this time of year.
I want to walk, but I also want to eat. And eating out all the time is not a trend one can maintain for very long, especially in this economy.
I need a good kick in the rear. I also need a camera that I can use while wearing gloves...or I need to come up with a better method to keep my hands warm than ski gloves. A post over on the Luminous Landscape website has give me something to chew on.
Also, I just have to make it through the next week and a half, then I'm off the entire week of Christmas, back for two days, and then off again from the 31st until the 5th. I can't wait.
RSS syndication on livejournal seems to be broken
I don't know why, but for some reason, getting the RSS feed for this blog to update on LiveJournal Syndication has always been annoyingly difficult. I have to go into the PHP code and modify the GMT off-set by hand (something that should already be set by the GMT off-set in the configuration but apparently wasn't good enough for LiveJournal.)
Of course, every time I update this WordPress install I have to go and re-edit the PHP files for RSS feeds.
Further complicating matters was that I seemed to have /no problem/ whatsoever having RSS updates from cetan.org show up rather quickly on LiveJournal. I don't know why, but It Just Worked (tm).
However, ever since the big LiveJournal server move nothing seems to be updating for hours and hours. I updated cetan.org this morning at about 6 am CST but it just now (~3 pm CST) it showed up on LiveJournal.
All the more reason, I guess, to use something like Google Reader for feeds rather than LiveJournal syndication.
Edit/update (2008/09/12) - Well, it seems like I'm not only one annoyed by this. Enter jwz:
http://www.livejournal.com/support/see_request.bml?id=937843
The luxury of heat
I wrote this last week and never posted it...
Standing on a train platform when it's 3 deg F out and the windchill is somewhere around -7 deg F, makes for a chilly morning.
Stepping onto a heated train car and feeling the comfort of warm air surround me, reminded me of a photo essay by photographer Cosmin Bumbuţ in an issue of LensWork Magazine a few years back. The photographer had traveled Romania by rail, and photographed some of his fellow travelers. The cars are not heated and people bundle themselves as much as possible. Some warm themselves with fur, pelts, and that staple: vodka.
The photo essay is here: http://www.bumbutz.com/portfolio/transit/
And when I say it reminded me, I mean: I am extremely thankful for, and grateful to have, heated rail cars. It's a luxury not enjoyed by some when traveling.
Where’s Jupiter?
A lot of children's books that feature a night sky include illustrations of various planets. Of course, these are exaggerated views and often the objects are "planet-like" variations of objects from our own solar system.
One planet, however, stands out: Saturn. Saturn (or a Saturn-like planet) is in almost every illustration of the night sky I've seen in a children's book. Of course, its distinctive rings make it an easy visual target.
Every once in a while, a book renders Saturn fairly well, and even manages to include other fairly-accurate representations of other planets. In our house, this book is "Where is Coco Going?" by Sloane Tanen.
This is a popular bed-time book in our house, and since before he was 2, Nate has known that the illustrations on a particular page are of Saturn and Jupiter (which he pronounces "Jupiper").
But if we're reading another book that also features some sort of night-sky illustration, inevitably there is a Saturn-like object but no clear Jupiter (if there's another planet at all). And Nate immediately asks: "Where's Jupiper?"
I cannot fully express to you how much joy it brings to my heart to hear him ask this question. Watching his development and growth has been (and continues to be) nothing short of astonishing.
