Digging My Blog

The top row is the three faces of Tucker. Second row is Tucker in action. Last row is all three kids: Regan, Tucker and Jared....

A few days ago Tucker (who is now 10 months old!) got a new toy, a singing Winnie the Pooh . It is really cute and he seems to like it. Whenever we sing the song he looks around the room for the toy so he is showing some associative recognition, which is very cool. There is a problem, however. I cannot...

No, no, no - it is alive and well. I don't have much to say today after the spanking the Cleveland Clowns put on my beloved Cincinnati Bengals yesterday. It's also much too early in the fantasy football season to begin talking smack. And the normal late summer / early fall activities have kicked into...

My 9-year-old daughter just came into my office and said, "Dad, I was talking to my friend on the phone for 40 minutes. Can you believe it?" I replied, "You are getting more and more like your mother every day."

Like most holidays, Memorial Day is a day for me to cook some man-food. This almost always involves the grill and my smoker. I've been making some good baby back ribs for a couple of years thanks to my buddy Andy and his web site Andy's Ribs . Ouch, I just saw on his site that he'll no longer be selling...

First I must apologize to friends and family who I usually keep some type of regular contact with, I have been slammed lately. I do see the light at the end of the tunnel, though. By the end of next week I think my life will return to its normal chaotic state - which will be a welcome relief from its...

I've been a bit to busy to post and they are starting to pile up. Hopefully this is the first of many this weekend. Desserts by Dawn , the company not the web site, is coming along nicely. Dawn has a verbal agreement in place with a local company who hosts lots of kid parties that could mean she would...

I mentioned before that I would be coaching my daughter's spring soccer team . I didn't really go into this spring planning on coaching, but they needed another coach and I thought I might be useful. I was a bit nervous about it though, as I've never coached soccer and I've never coached little girls...

A couple shots of my favorite little man, Tucker, for friends and family:...

The last couple of weeks may have been the proverbial straw. Between the freezing cold, the damned snow, the sleet, the flu, the (bad word!) heating bill, the flu and just being locked up indoors all day... we've about had it with our beloved Cincinnati-area homestead. Sometimes I can't believe that...

Today is our 18th wedding anniversary. I can hear all the gasps now. I know what you're about to say, "But Dan, you look way too young to have been married for 18 years." Yeah, well, it's a gift - good genes. Or maybe it's just the acne. We were married January 3rd, 1989. I was 18 years old and on holiday...

The quote of the day on my Google homepage is: "My Grandmother is over eighty and still doesn't need glasses. Drinks right out of the bottle." - Henny Youngman This reminds me of my great-grandmother that lived to 100+ and passed away a few years ago. She always said that the secret to her long life...

My brother, Andy, is running for Trustee for the IAM/AEIF local union (Machinist's / AK Steel). AK and its workers have still not reached a work agreement. I have some homeys who have been out of work for 9 months now. It is a real shame. Hopefully my brother can get elected and get into the negotiations...

Finally - tomorrow is the day. Tucker will be born tomorrow. Yes, we finally settled on a name - yesterday. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers. I'll post birth stats and pics as soon as I can. I think the hospital has wireless :)

I think I figured it out - why we have been debating for 8 months and we still haven't decided on a baby name for our unborn son yet. We actually gave up for about 3 of those months and just recently started talking about it again. We figured we might try to nail something down since we're less than...

Agenda for next few days: Tuesday - carpet installed in new bedroom in basement: DONE Tuesday night - move all Jared's stuff from current room to the new one: DONE Wed/Thurs evenings - clean/prep/paint Jared's old room multiple shades of pink: DONE Friday evening - move all Regan's stuff from current...

Jose chided me a bit yesterday for knocking off a bit early and saying, "I have to help turn a lovely 8 year-old girl into the bride of Frankenstein and get my boxers into their costumes". He wanted photo proof. Well, Jose, here you go: For more, visit here ....

I don't mind them when other people have them - occasionally I'll look for the hidden diamond in the rough. I hate when we have them. My wife is adamant about having a garage sale each spring and each fall. Each time it is an exercise in futility. Her announcement of a garage sale is always followed...

Remember when I said that I was surrounded by piles of computer pieces, odd parts, CDs, stacks of paper, etc ? I wasn't kidding and here are the pictures to prove it: The day before these pictures were taken I was using the old dining room table as my desk. That table has since found a new home - someone...

As promised , here is one pick of my starting point in the basement. We had a contractor do the framing and run the electric, a plumber do the bathroom stuff, and I did a bit of HVAC and am planning on doing everything else. I started drywalling Monday evening - it has become my evening job, spending...

As promised , here are a few pics of our summer project, a new deck. Well it wasn't actually my summer project to build it. It was my summer project to pay for it. But I/we did design it and provided a lot of feedback during the building process (in other words: lots of changes)....

Today is day 2 as part of the CS Team at Telligent Systems. That's the biggest news of course, but along with a short bio I sent out to the rest of the team yesterday I let some other tidbits go that I had been holding pretty close to the vest. More information (and pictures in some cases) to follow...

This evening I heard a story from my son about his sister: Regan had gymnastics practice today. After practice was over she and a couple of the other little girls were standing around a fan talking into it. You know the whole oscillation/reverbration thing is pretty cool (even to this day I can't help...

I'm speaking about my 7 year-old daughter, Regan. I don't write about my family too often in anything more than passing, but I'm afraid this is the first of way too many stories about the girl. There are plenty of others that have not been fit to share, but I thought this one had enough humor to be worth...

Having just finished up a lunch composed mostly of a couple of Boca burgers I thought I would pass on a "tip" for those with children who are fans of Cartoon Network and specifically SpongeBob SquarePants. We keep a couple of boxes of Boca Burgers on hand because they are simple to prepare for a quick...