Jul
29
Family Sites
- Photos Our photo site, hosted on Picasa.
- That's the Way Andy’s personal site.
Pictures
- Photos Our photo site, hosted on Picasa.
Jul
28
Maya Ann was born at 3:43pm weighing in at 6lbs 1oz, 18″ long. Devin Hayes
was born at 3:44pm weighing in at 6lbs 7oz, 19″ long. Mom & kids are doing
quite well!! More pix soon.
Love,
Andy, Stephanie, Devin and Maya
<<DSC_0154.jpg>> <<DSC_0156.jpg>>
Jul
27
Yay, ice cubes! And, it’s 10:21am. Kids are being born in 3½ hours. Strangely, I am not the slightest bit bothered by this. It’s still very surreal. We’ll see how that holds up at 2:30pm. 
Oh, and one other bit of news. If you use a digital camera that accepts SD cards, Best Buy is running a $20 mail-in rebate on 2GB SanDisk SD cards, which brings the price down to $50. Not bad! Hurry up though, because the promo ends tomorrow (7/29).
Jul
27
Luckily the D50 arrived today with little time to spare! Only 22 hours left!! Here’s my first shot. I did it in RAW format, just to be all cool and what-not. 
Jul
27
36½ hours and counting. It will be an interesting weekend. Steph’s Mom is coming up for a few weeks, and Mom & Dad are coming down for the weekend. It’ll be a full house for certain, although we will actually be in the hospital for 4 days while Steph recovers from have the kids cut out of her. That’s actually a bit scary if you think about it too much. I have made a vow to be rather polarized about when end of the operating table I’ll be on, and it will be the one without the scalpels.
On a side note, I am still waiting on my D50 to get here. Let’s hope it’s tomorrow. I would hate to have to post 3.2MP pix of the kids. 
Jul
21
I’ve added some nice little links on the right: tunes I’m listening to, books I’m reading, and the niftiest feature: the NetFlix movies we have at the house. Snazzola!
Jul
21
Devin is 6lbs 12oz, Maya is 6lbs 10oz. Everybody is doing fine except Steph, who is ready for the kids to leave the nest already. We have the regular OB appointment this morning…perhaps he’ll go ahead and schedule that C-section in the next couple of days. We’ll see!
Jul
19
From an article in the New Zealand website “Stuff”:
A Christian group urging parents to smack their children, using discipline sessions lasting up to 15 minutes, has been accused of promoting what amounts to child abuse.
Family Integrity has produced a controversial eight-page booklet on how to use physical punishment under the present law. Parents are told that smacking can be a “10-to-15-minute process” and that if a child reacts angrily, such as by slamming doors or “pouting”, they should be smacked again.
“Smacking is meant to drive the foolishness, the sinful manifestations, out of the child’s personality so that they do not become permanent fixtures,” it says. Smacking is justified because children younger than age eight “do not think straight” and lack a developed sense of fair play and duty.
Here’s a clip of the pamphlet:
Jul
19
Apparently good taste finally won the battle over art. This sculpture, which was outside of a local video production company here in Atlanta, is gone. I don’t know when it was removed, but I drove past its former location a few days ago, and saw that either the composite of soup cans and bumpers had been painted with a new light-bending stealth paint, or they rusted away, or perhaps somebody just moved the damn thing. I’m betting on the latter, even though the former sounds way cooler. Actually, the video production company moved and I think they gave the property management the finger and took their damn statues with them. I bet they had to use the bigger U-Haul truck.
I can recall a few details from the placard: The piece was made by some US artist, now living in Spain, out of some 3,500 soup cans and old car bumpers. It was meant to symbolize the struggle of the weak against the overly powerful. I hear that the meak taste good with ketchup*. Anyway, here’s a photo of the joint in memoriam.
*Interestingly, did you know this could be spelled catsup as well? I remember reading that on a bottle when I was a kid.
Jul
18
At least, that’s what I’m telling myself. You see, after several weeks of off-n-on rain, coupled with the fact that I’ve been overbusy with assorted double-ended homestead preparatory tasks, our lawn has been left to, well, the weeds. And grass. Lots of grass. Let’s just say that the back 40 was creeping up to calf height, and we’re talking about bermuda grass here, people.
Mowing it was incredibly fun this evening. So much did I relish this task, I forewent (huh?) my trip to the gym, knowing that plenty of workout would be had beating back the assorted greeneries and weedytufts that have propped up residence in our yard. At least I was moderately prepped for the task – so much so in fact that I didn’t start until 6:45pm, and finished up about 8ish, rightly drenched in swizzeat.
I like – nay – love grass.
Jul
17
No babies yet. Keep your fingers crossed. Also, I haven’t posted recently due to a light bout of food poisoning which kept me out of commission for most of Thursday/Friday. PS. I just watched “Super-size Me”, and I don’t eat fast food very much anyway, but now I won’t ever.
Jul
10
Strobist: How To: DIY $10 Macro Photo Studio
I’m linking this to save for when my D50 comes in… time for Macro fun!!
Jul
10
Jul
10
Two more pix of the redone stuff, including the dresser and my shoes, and Steph in a borrowed recliner in which she sleeps about 50% of the time (when there’s sleep to be gotten).
You might also notice my stack of books in the top picture. This is stuff I’m currently reading:
1. David McCullough’s 1776
2. Barlett & Steele’s Howard Hughes: His Life and Madness
3. Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons (again)
4. Clive Cussler’s Fire & Ice (again)
5. Clive Cussler’s Sahara (again)
6. Senzaki’s The Iron Flute: 100 Zen Koans
Jul
10
1. Me in front of our calligraphy mural, done by Steph. Peace, Love, Health, Music (not in that order).
2. The furry kids on our redone bedroom. It used to be a chocolate brown. I told Steph I was tired of waking up feeling like I was in an anus. Not that I know what that’s like, but I imagine it would be warm, moist, brown and dark. Our previous bedroom decor matched 50% of those criteria. I repainted our bedroom furniture from this orangey-colored wood to a nice Beluga Black, then topped it off with a few coats of Polycrylic. Walls were repainted from HersheySquirt Brown to Corn Husk Green (or some such color).
3. Here’s another shot showing the repainted mirror and to B&W pix that evoke a mystical, ethereal feeling. One is a shot of some mountains from Tahiti, the other of a spruce forest in Alaska.
Jul
7
A picture of Maya in utero from July 6, 2006 (34½ weeks). Devin was too crazy to get a good shot
Jul
7
We’re cruising at 34½ weeks. Picked out our pediatrician, a nice lady from South Africa. Not much interesting from the ultrasound appointment, other than the news that Devin is 5lbs 10oz and Maya is 5lbs 2oz. So, Steph is carrying around almost 11lbs of baby! I have to give her credit for hanging in there. We got an interesting ultrasound pic of Maya’s face coming soon.
In other news, we found that the commuity center pool is open, nice, and inexpensive. Steph can spend all day in a low-g environment for $3!
Jul
2
As Plato once said, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” As such, I have given birth a new salsa recipe. I happen to love salsa and am quite the connoisseur, if I do say so myself. And I do. So, I had a few friends over for an impromptu night of Euchre, and we absentmindedly forgot to retrieve salsa from the local Kroger – bad news!
So, I whipped out my new food processor (sidebar: I upgraded from a “chopper” to a full-fledged processor with the intent to prepare baby food in the not-to-distant future.) and mixed up a batch of salsa using items I had readily available.
Heretofore I had expounded upon the virtues of Don Pablo’s salsa, and the made-in-the-restaurant salsa of Los Bravos (a local Atlanta CheapMex™ chain). I can proudly say that I will not be needing to procure these any longer! Although that will probably reduce my marguerita intake, but I digress.
So, without further adieu, my salsa recipe, including various taste modifiers.
Basic Red Salsa Recipe
- 1 can diced tomatoes. I’ve tried several versions, and the best is Contadina’s Roasted Garlic Tomatoes. Since these can be hard to come by (I luckily got a 12 pack on my last trip to BJ’s), I’ve resorted to using Kroger brand No Salt Added. It’s not bad.
- 1 can ROTEL. You have several choices here. The best tasting is the Mexican version with lime and cilantro. It’s not a heavy cilantro flavor, so it won’t overpower the salsa. If you want heat, go with the Extra Hot flavor – but get some cilantro (not too much!) to add some flavor.
- 2 heaping tablespoons minced garlic. This is something you should have in your ‘fridge at all times anyway. You can use fresh if you like – if you do, make sure you roast it! Also, make sure you get some of the garlic juice from the bottom of the jar.
- ¼ cup of peppers. You have several choices here, obviously based on the amount of heat you want. Everest: habanero. McKinley: jalapeno. Kilimanjaro: poblano. Backyard: serrano. You can also get pickled versions too, for a bit of “afterbite”. I mainly used serrano for taste and jalapeno for heat. Just drop them in whole, washed and without stems.
- Lime Juice to taste. If you got the ROTEL Mexican variety, you only need a bit of this, or perhaps none.
- Fresh Cilantro. Go easy on this. It doesn’t take much to overpower the salsa! If you got the ROTEL Mexican variety, you only need a bit of this, or perhaps none.
- Red Pepper, Crushed & Dried. You should have some of this in your pantry anyway. Just a couple of teaspoons of this for some pizzazz.
Now it’s time to chop, dice, frappe, or whatever. If you like your salsa chunky, you need only to dice the peppers and just stir the remaining ingredients in. If you like your salsa more pourable, as I do, just drop everything in the blender/food processor and go to town on it!
Coming up next… tomatillo (green) salsa!
Jul
2
Via Josh: Wm. Shatner sings My Way at the 2005 AFI Life Achievement Award: A Tribute to George Lucas show. Actually pretty funny.
