Everybody's working for the weekend

I've never thought about it before, but that line (the title of this post) could be interpreted as "everybody's working for the (money to spend on the fun to be had this) weekend". So that's how I meant it.

Got a lot done today, from recycling the Christmas tree, picking up a free changing table on Washington Street, to buying NOFX tickets, and swapping TVs with Carol so we've got this ginormous tube dominating our living room now.

Mostly I'm just writing to toss out some useful links I've come across recently...

• An airfare metasearch engine, Kayak, and another low airfare site, airfarewatchdog.com


• Two similar useful sites for converting a wide array of file types to other types, zamzar and media-convert.com

So that's that. Tomorrow's the last day of 2006 and Lola went right to sleep tonight. Thank you Dr. Ferber.

A New Year....almost

Thanks to everyone for their responses to our announcement. We are excited. I am losing (very badly) at our Rock-Paper-Scissors tournament. I lay awake in bed last night trying to come up with a new strategy.

Lola had a great Christmas. She has quite a fear of Santa, but sure enjoyed everything that he brought her. Amy, our neighbor, was here and assisted Lola in all of her opening. Lola even helped unwrap some of our gifts as she passed them out to us! When everything was open, she was still looking for more presents to open. It was a really nice time. I love Christmas.

Today, I received my first paycheck! I've done some odd jobs since I left Center for Plastic Surgery, but this one, the government got their fair share. It is nice to be able to help out. Marc has been such a great support - financially and emotionally for the past two years! I know that he is happy since there will be 'another mouth to feed.'

Marc and I celebrated our three year anniversary in November. It is amazing how much we have done together in three years and still, how quickly the time has flown by! I never would have imagined that this is where I would be, whom I would be with (I am so lucky), and how fortunate we would be with a beautiful daughter.

So on that note, I resolve to have a healthy,happy year. I wish you all the same. Happy New Year!

New stuff all around

Thanks to you adventurous folks to stepped up to the plate for email subscriptions.  Hopefully that will be a nice way for you to read my ramblings.  Speaking of new tech, prompted by Turi, I set up Google Analytics to analyze my traffic.  Consider yourself tracked!
Mostly just writing to announce some new photos in the gallery, in fact a whole album of the fun we had on Christmas.  Also a few new videos on Lola's page.

So what's everyone doing for New Year's?  I hear the hipsters don't make plans until about 11pm that night.  I think we're going to a party.

I'm at a loss for more to write.  Until next time,

Scans of scans

Forgot to load these yesterday, our first views of the baby-to-be:



also, the email option I mentioned yesterday is now available for those who don't get around to cheztiar often enough and don't do RSS.  Enter your email address in the subscription box to the right and get cheztiar updates delivered automatically!

Announcements

Let me get the important one out of the way first. Several folks know already, but it's time to let the cat fully out of the bag:

We're pregnant again!

Yes, Lola's going to have a little brother or sister towards the end of July 2007. When we can, I want to find out the gender, but Morgan doesn't. To settle that dispute, we're having a daily rock-paper-scissors game - whoever has the most wins when we're able to find out decides whether or not we will.

So one of my announcements was going to be that I was selling the truck and I was going to link to my craigslist ad, but it's so dang effective, I already sold it! Calls were coming in steadily within hours of listing it, called back a couple last night and one this morning, and this morning's call resulted in sale. Excellent.

Not really an announcement, just catching up...Turi and I attended an excellent holiday/winter beer tasting last night. 29 beers tasted in all! A couple pics on Turi's blog.

And the night before that, we saw the most Griswold-worthy light display to put Hidden Valley to shame. This video on RGJ.com gives you some idea, and it might be a bit late to see it for yourself, this being Christmas Eve and all, but definitely noteworthy.

And finally, I'm thinking of setting something up here so for you folks that don't visit too often and don't know RSS from a hole in the ground - reading cheztiar posts by email. You would sign up, and anything posted to cheztiar you'd get delivered via email rather than having to visit the site. Of course, to view photos and such, you'd still have to come here, but you'd find out that there were new items without having to remember to check back regularly. Interested? Post a comment telling me so.

Speaking of pics, I should have a bunch of new ones to post tomorrow, videos too.

Monday morning roundup

Seems like there are a few things blog-worthy floating around, so let's get right to it...

We had our first real snow on Saturday, just a few inches, but it turned streets into a rink.  We ventured out to a retirement party for Morgan's current library boss and my former boss, but opted out of a 2nd party in a far valley.  The lame-duck Toyota performed admirably in 4WD to get us there and back.  Speaking of cold weather, the thermometer this morning reads a frosty SIX degrees!  That's cold!  Fifteen below zero for you non-Fahrenheit folks!

Wellness - Little Lola is still sickly, the scare from eight days ago behind us, now just with upper respiratory issues.  Cough cough, sniffle, sneeze, buy stock in Kleenex.  Daisy has mostly recuperated from her growth-removal surgery, but reeks to high heaven with food, water, and snow getting caught in her headcone and, presumably, rotting there.
Intermission: Check out this remarkable mime performance (8 minutes).  Apparently the music is amazing too, but I had it turned down when I watched it.

Brief movie review: Watched Thank You for Smoking the other night, both thought it was great.  Definitely recommended.

Maggie is off to New York for the holidays, there's a diaper in need of changing, I'm out of time here, so that's it for now.

Comments

I installed a couple anti-spam measures, so commenting is allowed again.  Let's hope this works...

Some stuff

So, this was just going to be another blogaday entry, but suddenly, there's more to say.

For starters, Day 2 of Morgan's employment was today, and Lola got to stay with neighbor Sommer and her baby Ranon. 10am-2pmish, and all went well. Hurray! On a less festive note, we had to make our first parental visit to urgent care over the weekend. Blood in the diaper makes one a bit uneasy to say the least. So far, they think it's a urinary tract/bladder infection, but the jury is still out. Her bouts of unhappiness seem less than they were on Sunday, and we're hopeful that another week of bubble-gum flavored medicine will be sucessful.
Before I digress too much, let me get the blogaday business out of the way. A funny little blog with funny little drawings on index cards to illustrate funny concepts. See: Indexed and enjoy.

News item that doesn't concern me much despite my newfound affinity for soy milk.

For a taste of culture, take a look at the newly redesigned site of our friend Erin, recently relocated to Basel, soon to come back for a holiday visit. Her first stop? The Double-Dutch battle, we're hoping to be there too.

And finally, a brief announcement - I've been bombarded by comment spam lately, so I turned off comments here. Too bad, you were all just starting to come out of the woodwork a bit.

Happy blogaday 5

And now, in honor of Morgan's first day in the library industry, something a tad more professional.   A nice lighthearted library-blog: Walking Paper.  It's not as dull as you might be thinking.  Enjoy!

Ah, a Monday

It has been so long since I have had to 'clock' into a job. I did some Endermolgie, babysitting, and some office work across the street - but today - I clock in. I have a set schedule, a supervisor, and actually had to find childcare for Lola. I know it is just 15 hours a week, but it is a little intimidating. I have had a nervous stomach for days. Today, I become a Library Aide, will receive a paycheck and the government will get their share right out of it!!

Happy blogaday 4

Time for one that's a little less categorizable. Josh Spear. Sort of about...design, culture, just "neat stuff" for lack of a better description. Check it out.

Happy blogaday 3

Sometimes history and death intersect to result in fascinating tidbits of knowledge.  Such is the case with today's blog, Corpus Obscurum.  To put it simply, it reports on the deaths of people who were big in importance but short on fame.  While that may not be completely clear now, visit the site and read through a few.  Founder of the National Hobo Foundation, first black soloist at the Met Opera, and Pope John Paul II's English tutor, to name a few recent entries.

Enjoy!

Happy blogaday 2

Another day, another blog for you to peep...

Today may I present (just in time for holiday shopping)...Tcritic, the daily T-shirt blog.  Lots of cool designs on tees here.  You too can be among the coolest in town when you sport threads like these.

Added bonus: not a blog, but another most excellent site for cool tees: Threadless, where site users vote for which shirts are the best, and those are the ones that get printed.

Happy blogaday 1

Over the next week or two, I'm going to post links, hopefully one each day, to a new blog I've discovered of late.  The old standbys have been Lifehacker, BoingBoing, and Librarian.net for quite a while, but I've recently stumbled into a ton of cool new (at least to me) blogs worth a quick visit.  Some will make it into the blogroll to the right, others just to my personalized Google page, but all are worth checking out.
Today I'm featuring Starbucks Gossip.  Just what it sounds like, a bunch of Starbucks employees, customers, fans all discussing "everyone's favorite drug dealer".  Strangely compelling reading if you patronize SB much at all.

New car and today's walk

So, yes, I've got a new set of wheels. A 2006 Kia Spectra5. Black.

As concisely as possible, here's my saga: Sold the Mini Cooper in February, planned to drive the truck for a year or two to save some dough, bought the Vespa in the summer for an alternate mode and to save gas, the truck's been doing some odd things lately, insurance renewal is coming up, so, thinking now would be a good time to at least look, we went looking. I've sort of had my eye on a Mazda3 wagon; considering cost (I thought), gas mileage, cargo, size, reliability, safety, all that, I thought it would be a great car. Then Brian alerted me to the new 2007 Suzuki SX4, a small wagon, the cheapest AWD on the market. We test drove that, but at a glance I knew it was too compact, I was already a bit hesitant that the mileage was a bit lower than most other small wagons, and the salespeople were, uh, jerks. On to Reno Mazda Kia. Turns out the Mazda3 is only affordable at the low end. A nicely equipped used 2006 model with 8000+ miles was $23K, somewhat more than I was wanting to spend. I had looked into the Kia online anyway, so looked at them. They're very similar to the Mazda, and a brand new one only cost about $17K. And they come with a 10-year, 100,000 mile warranty for the original owner. That's pretty unbeatable. So that, my friends, is what led me to own this:

I can live without AWD.


So, moving right along...took a nice walk out in the hills leading to the Steamboat ditch trail above Patagonia on the west side of town today. Photos from that in the newly added album for now. Also a video from the walk.

One neat thing...I figured out how to burn a VCD from downloaded video clips, watchable on most DVD players. Sort of a poor man's DVD burn. If you wanna hear about it, get in touch.

Updates

Finally got around to adding a new Lola video to the site.  Hope you enjoy it.  Also, while I was at it, I changed the Lola page so the "how old" part loads faster and looks much better.  Finally, made a few changes to the links page.

Dinner at 4th Street was excellent, as expected.

Started watching United 93 tonight.  So far so good, pretty intense.

Last news of the night:  I bought a new car today!  More details and maybe photos tomorrow.

A wide variety of miscellany

Everyone likes to talk about the weather, so I'll just put this out here...it's dang cold here! For those readers across the pond and throughout the land, it was 16 degrees at maison Tiar this morning (or -8 for you aforementioned "across the pond"). High temp forecast for the next 5 days: about 50. Sheesh, winter doesn't start for 3 weeks still...

In other news rattling around my consciousness, I've developed a newfound fondness for soy. Specifically, soymilk. Randomly picked up a box of vanilla, and man, that's good over Life cereal in the morning. Now I'm hooked. Edamame too.

Coupla links to throw out here for you all: This news item is too good to go unposted, and please give a hearty welcome to Turi's blog!

Finally, I should thank my lovely wife this week for being married to me for three whole years, as of yesterday. Thanks Morgan!  Dinner tonight at 4th St. to celebrate. (Coincidentally, that review written by the wife of a colleague here at the lib. Small world.)

Cool search and more

More neato than really useful (I don't see this replacing Google for my typical needs), check out this new search engine, Pagebull, that gives small screenshots of results.

Other stuff to check out:

A local blogger's final visit and description at Deux Gros Nez.

Some pretty crummy reports out of Iraq.

Movies

I forgot!  As rare as outings to the movie theatre are, I feel I shouldn't pass up an opportunity for a brief review of what we saw.

As Morgan mentioned, Lola's first movie theatre experience was "Flushed Away".  Pretty good animated flick, as expected from Aardman.  Nothing to complain about that I can think of.

On Sunday, Morgan and I got to see the new James Bond movie, Casino Royale.  Typically excellent Bond action.  The cars, the action, the women...all top-notch.  I like the new Bond too, he seems cut out for this.  Maybe not as much as Remington Steele Pierce Brosnan, but he's pretty likeable.  Bond trivia note: This is actually the third version of "Casino Royale".  The very first Bond "movie" of all was Casino Royale, an episode of a TV series called "Climax" with Barry Nelson as Bond, then there was a David Niven spoof of Bond movies with that title in the late 60s.
And just so this isn't all about movies, for the benefit of all the non-Reno readers...we've got snow!  Just a dusting here in the valley, but a bit more in the mountains.   Pretty dang cold out there though.

That's all folks, take care!

Old photos

Real quick...added some scanned photos of our house in the old days in their own album.

Recent photos

Just added a bunch of photos...

• A new subalbum from our drive to the top of Peavine


• New photos from my turkey frying adventure, rubble of the Mizpah hotel, and a walk at Oxbow park, all in the newly added photos album.


• An extensive video of me frying turkey.  This is a big file, 26MB.

That's all for now...

Family Holidays

We had a full house for Thanksgiving yesterday. My friend Maggie, Mom, Paige, Aunt Patty, her friend Tom, my cousin Alex from Omaha (currently at Travis AFB), Matt (works with mom and Paige), Marc, Lola and I. Marc fried a turkey and it was delicious. He injected it with a marinade and it only took about 45 minutes to cook. It was really really good! We also made a ham, all the standards, and a runny sweet potato pie. Not sure how that happened. Lola had a ball with all the company and didn't get to bed until late. That of course was after her naked dance for our departing guests. Too funny!!

I think we will be a little more subtle with Christmas. Just a small family gathering. We bought our Christmas tree today. I opted for a real tree instead of our vintage tinsel tree. Lola even has her own little pink Christmas tree in her room. We will trim them both tomorrow and add over the next few weeks until Christmas.

We took Lola to the movies for the first time today. We went and saw "Flushed Away." I should have known that she would not be that into it. She doesn't really like TV and only has the attention span for things less than 5 minutes long. She wasn't too bad and we watched the whole thing - just missing a few parts to step outside to give her a break and change a diaper to give the rest of the theater a break! Yuck! She didn't even want to eat any popcorn! I think any future presentations will wait until she is a bit older.

That is about it for now. We hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday.

What's new

Not a lot actually. Feels like it's been ages since I posted, so I should put something up here I suppose.

A grey-skied Sunday here, Lola napping and we're between tasks. The house has been cleaned for company later this afternoon, Julie, former resident of this very house, and her boyfriend. Her mom couldn't make it, but Julie's bringing some old photos anyway.

Yesterday, after a bit of leafhogging in the morning, we decided to drive up a mountain. Peavine Peak to be exact. It's probably been 25 years since I've been up there, I think I've only been once before, with my parents in the early years of living here. Nice drive and a good view from the top. We also took the opportunity to drive by the former Tiar residences on Moth Circle and Pine Grove Dr. Lots of childhood memories out there.

Sickness update: Still hacking a bit, especially at night, but progress is being made.  I think the fog I've been in for like 2 weeks now justifies my sparse updates on this here website.  I finally saw the light and got some real decongestant.  Did you know the Patriot Act now regulates pseudoephedrine too?  What does fighting meth have to do with terrorism?

Briefest movie reviews ever: Mission Impossible III - Mediocre, typically action-packed, not awful.  The Break-Up - Dumb and painful to watch.

And so we come to the end of another excruciatingly unsubstantial blog entry from Marc.  Thanks for sticking around, please keep coming back, I'm sure more interesting reading is in store someday...

Link o' the day and more

Probably mostly because I find some elements of spam so fascinating (where do they get the made-up names for the "From:" field? How about those subject headers???), I found spamusement.com pretty darn funny.  If you get much spam, you probably will too.

Sickness update: a little bit better each day.  Still fighting some symptoms, but they're decreasing.

Lola's off feeding horses and goats this morning with our neighbor Amy, as she did yesterday as well.  Good fun for her, good free time for me.  Morgan comes home tonight, thank goodness.  I don't know how single parents do it, particularly when they (the parents, that is) get sick.

One last item, this RGJ story today is really good.  Nice snapshot of life in downtown Reno's residential hotels in the wake of the Mizpah fire.  That lady Caral was a frequent library patron some years ago.

Have a nice day everyone.

more news, mine and others

forgive the brevity, I've got a sleeping child on me...

• bought peanut oil and a turkey fryer today, so I think we're going to go for this delicious yet potentially dangerous project for Thanksgiving


• RIP Jack Palance and Ed Bradley


• Happy birthday Carol and Sofia


• wanna buy a camera?

that's all, i can't type like this any more.

New album layout

I've been working to make the photo gallery feel less "segregated" from the rest of the site here.  Take a look, click on the photo gallery link over there to the right.  What do you think?  It's more integrated certainly, but still feels kind of kludgy to me.  My coding skills and available time and patience are not sufficient to make it really slick, I'm afraid.  Let me know if you hate it or love it at least.  One winning point - there's a "home" link to take you back to this page.

News items of note

As sort of an afterthought, some stuff from the news...

• Update on the Mizpah Hotel fire for those who don't follow the news: 12 dead, making it the deadliest fire in Reno history.  They start demolishing at least part of the building today.  Businesses remain closed indefinitely.  2nd Street is open again.


• Election roundup from my perspective: Looking good nationally, continuing Repub rule for the Silver State as expected with one pleasant exception, David Bobzien won.  Several of the ballot questions that I cared about and major races, everything went opposite the way I voted.  Yes, several Dems won minor offices locally, but that's about it.


• You just can't make stuff like this up.

OK, now I'm done.

Lucky winner

Well, I certainly drew the winning card this week. Sickity sick sick sick, and Morgan left for Michigan this morning. Either one of those occurrences would be just fine on their own, but watching Lola for 4 days by myself while sick, well, it's sort of like having to take care of two people, her and sick me. We're about 4 hours into our little solo adventure, and so far all is well.  Morgan's on a layover Denver for about 15 more minutes.  (Update moments later: OK, now it's getting to be more work...3 diaper changes already, and this stuffy head just makes everything so exhausting.)  To be fair, I do have a good support system in place, with several friends and family at my beck and call to help out.
As for sick me, hmm, let's see, I think it started last weekend or so, mostly cold-like, cough, stuffy nose, etc.  But yesterday, the fatigue and aches hit me mid-day and I left work early.  By late afternoon, all I could do was lay on the couch, shiver, and take my temperature (101 if you're interested) and eventually I just skipped dinner (and we were having Vietnamese, dangit!) and went to bed at 6.  I'm actually much better today than at that pinnacle of illness, but there's a broad range between better and well.

Like Morgan said, we got the new camera.  Hopefully I can get some of those new pics up this weekend and list the old camera on ebay.  Actually, I'm really hoping this creeping crud subsides soon...I've got a three day weekend that I don't wish to spend nursing myself back to health.  I've got to go shopping, buy a turkey fryer, and hopefully devour the new Michael Connelly book.

So I suppose that's it for now.  Hoping this finds you well and fine.  Marc

raking leaves

What a waste of time. As I watched the kids run around in the yard, I decided that I should rake up the leaves. I love all of our big trees, except for the annual falling of the leaves. After I came inside, I watched as a new layer covered the backyard. Marc even asked if it was really noticeable. Of course, by that time I had two huge black garbage bags full. Of course it was a big difference - but only for anyone (only me and three children under the age of 4) who witnessed the before image. UGH! So needless to say, if you wander by, you will not think we have done anything to help our problem with the leaves.

I am off tomorrow to visit Dad. I will have a full update next week.

Marc got a new camera from his parents for his birthday. It is really neat. There are so many options, I think they should offer a class. But for me, who had no idea other how to work it other than turning it on, it took some pretty good pics in Evan's Canyon yesterday afternoon during a long hike with Maggie and Lola.

Birthday photos

Posted the best photos from Lola's birthday party, also a few new non-birthday photos while I was at it.

That's it for now, there's a new Simpsons Treehouse of Horror on tonight!

Lola's two

I suppose you're wondering, "Lola's two what?"  Two shoes?  Two skinned knees?  No, sillies, Lola's two years old today!

Birthday party is impending, a mere 50 minutes away.  Balloons still need to be fetched, pizza cooked, cake frosted.  We're on it.  The streamers are hung, mama's in the shower, and I'm writing this blog post.

No other major news at this time, we should have some photos to share soon, and videos in the near future if that new camera shows up soon...

News

'Tis indeed a gloomy day, and not just because of the weather Morgan mentioned below.  The Mizpah Hotel burned last night.  Besides the obvious tragedy of the loss of life (six, maybe more) and injury (over 30), 60-80 people who were mostly barely making ends meet as it was, are now homeless and have lost (mostly) everything.

And let's not forget our friends Pho 777, Blind Onion, Hippies, and the other small businesses that, while they didn't lose everything, at a minimum while probably need to relocate, could potentially lose enough business to close their doors, and are probably facing the single worst day a business owner can face today.
Finally, the other loss is for the city of Reno.  We've lost yet another chunk of our history, a fine old 85-year-old building will probably need to be demolished when all is said and done.  Tragic no matter how you look at it.

Not to change the subject too radically to something less serious, but I just wanted to note, I've recently rediscovered NOFX and am remembering how much I enjoy those guys.  Picked up an EP at Tower, can't stop listening to it, and now I think I need to buy the full CD.

It is November

Waking up this morning to the gloomy skies and bare trees, I have decided that maybe fall is finally here and ready to stay. We had been so lucky with warm, sunny weather. Global warming? Nah!

Lola had her first memorable trick or treating adventure last night. She dressed up in her Princess Leia costume. We went to a library Halloween party, to some friend's houses, around the neighborhood, and then over to the Beckers. There we had pizza and hit a few houses on their cul de sac. We had a bear, dinosaur, ghost, princess, and Princess Leia. Sarah and I decided that Ramona and Lola could keep going, so we went to a few houses up the street. The first house was a random man (who may or may not have been dipping into some kind of homemade, life sucking, teeth rotting drug) with a pitbull tied up in his living room. That candy went into the trash. The next interesting house was the lady who you would have thought was handing out mini vodka bottles to the adults. She was slurring and rocking. I think I moved Lola just in time. As she was telling the kids to 'be careful,' I thought that she surly was going to lose her balance and fall onto Lola. I hope she was 'careful' for the rest of the night. All in all, it was a very fun night and Lola has loads of candy to prove it. It was great to hear her say "trick or treat" and to get right up onto the porches for her treats. She had no problem grabbing into the bucket and bowls to claim her stake.

My favorite Halloween treat has to be the "fun size" candy bar. It is all in the name. There is no other.

Marc's turn

Wow, Morgan wrote quite a bit, how very Web 2.0.  Nice to see (from survey results) that her participation is desired and coming forth.

I was going to title this post "It's a Small World" because of two recent serendipitous events, but now I've got more to say so I won't limit myself to just that topic.  The two events?  One, finding that a colleague at another library branch grew up in our house.  Her family was the original buyer when it was new in 1947, lived here over 20 years.  Her room was where Lola sleeps now.  Her dad worked for the family creamery on 2nd St.  We're hoping her mom can find some old pictures to share, and we'd like to have them over soon.  Pretty exciting, really.

Serendipity #2 - the house behind us has been empty for several months, but if all goes well, won't be much longer.  Friends Jim, Yani, and little Owen had their offer accepted and didn't even know that we were right over the back fence until afterwards.  Neighbors we knew before we were neighbors, fun!  Another brewer and young child in the neighborhood will be welcome additions.

So, other stuff...because I like bullet points so much and time is always short, I'll stick with that winning formula.

• In the "neat stuff online" category, read some good layman's science here.


• Also in technology, those who care probably already know, but both Firefox 2.0 and Internet Explorer 7 launched this week.  I haven't actually downloaded or used either one, but I'm looking forward to the new Firefox features.


• Ordered our new digital camera (now with 50% more megapixels!) yesterday, so we'll have new videos coming before long.


• Timely: Library booksale and don't forget to change your clocks back tonight.


• It's official, tickets have been bought, Morgan is going to Adrian to visit her dad over Veteran's Day weekend.  Wish me luck.

That's it for now, on to more weekend.  Happy Nevada Day everyone!

Happy Halloween

Even though Marc requested that we put the parties on hold, we ventured out to Amy's last night. We brought a few from the party the week before and my "sister's sister" came down from Truckee. We had a Velma, a ghost (like Charlie Brown's with many holes), Stinky Grange, black jack dealer, witch, devil, black cat, and of course the best was Lola's Princess Leia. She was a hit and she loves a party! Then back to Chez Tiar for a little hog tossing.

Holidays are a lot more exciting as Lola is starting to understand and really enjoy the changes around her. Any visit to Raley's includes a 5 minute stand in front of the pumpkins. She can spot a pumpkin from a mile away. Thank goodness that they will be around through Thanksgiving. She will be two in a week. I can't believe how time has flown and how much she has changed. Two!!??

Nothing much else to report. We got DVR and I think our TV viewing is going to take on a whole new level. There are still some issues, but I think that they are on the user's end. Anybody watching "Heroes"? Caught a marathon and now I am hooked, yet still really confused. Marc has recorded so much "Mythbusters" that I am afraid he might start experimenting with things around the house.

Election is nearing. Don't forget to vote. I know that early voting is available at the Downtown Library. If for nothing else, do it for Lola and our future.

So there you go!! Marc has gotten me into it and expanded my abilities. I am afraid that I will end up dreaming about it at night!

Happy Halloween!!

Plane ride

Rode on a C-130 Hercules today, courtesy of the Nevada Air National Guard.  Pretty cool, fun experience.  Photos are posted in the C-130 album of the gallery.

New pics and a survey!

Besides the birthday prom party photos, I also uploaded a few new Lola pictures that had accumulated on the camera...

One neat thing last week I forgot to mention...turns out a sort-of colleague from another library branch used to live in our house!  Her room was Lola's room, and her family were the original owners, living here from 1947 until 1968.  Pretty cool.

One final thing...I want to know more about who reads this thing.  Can you take 2 minutes and fill out this survey for me?  Even if you hate surveys, just answer the first question so I know you're out there, huh?  Thanks.  I'll send out an email soon to get visitors who only come to the site when I do that, but you only need to fill it out once.

my turn

So, I am finally taking the time to write a blog. Funny, I think Marc has kept everybody pretty well updated, including the information on buying beer at Raley's.

October has been a very busy month and has flown by! Nana arrived, followed by my dad, and then my sister and her family. It was a great family reunion on all counts. Nana has been here for about 3 weeks. She leaves on Wednesday and I am fearing that Lola will be scouring the house for days looking for Nana. They have had a great time together.

I held a surprise party for Marc on Saturday night. He did know I was up to something. Personally, I think that it was because he asks so many questions. I knew that he would never let me throw a party for him, so I did it behind his back. It was a great time. Thank you to everyone that helped out! The pictures are on the website....take a look.

Lola will be 2 soon. I can't believe how time has flown and what a great little girl she is growing up to be. Nana has been teaching her some french, she is starting to talk in more complete sentences, and has the greatest personality!! She loves her books, swinging, Nana, animals, balloons, and singing. Stating a biased opinion as her mother, SHE IS THE GREATEST!!!!!

Paige and I are planning a trip to Michigan to spend some time with Dad and see how everthing is going. I think the most important part of his treatments is his positive attitude.

So that is about all..... I am sure that I will think of other things. Maybe I can start to do this on a regular basis. Or maybe not.

To continue...

A little downtime on a pleasant 35th birthday...Port of Subs for lunch, sushi for dinner, oh yes.
So, last night was my birthday party, a surprise affair staged by my dear wife. I sort of knew something was up, I just didn't know what exactly. Turns out she created the "1990 Senior Prom" birthday party for me, since I never went to prom. Yeah. Worth 1000 words.

A bit sad that today's my last day off while Nana is still visiting. Back to work tomorrow and she's back to France on Wednesday. (also in store Wednesday, my flight on a NV National Guard C-130)

Random log:

• We spent all day Thursday and Friday painting our kitchen cupboards white. Lots of work, more than I remotely predicted, but definitely looks good, like a new kitchen Morgan sez.


• My recent batch of spiced amber ale homebrew turned out GREAT, as reported by party-goers last night. For the record, it included cloves, ginger, cinammon, nutmeg, and orange peel for flavors. The keg is still going strong (and supplemented by the kind contributions of our guests and the case that Morgan picked up, our beer supply around here is at record levels!). Speaking of beer, Morgan and I went out while sneaky others decorated for prom, and visited the new Sierra Tap Room on the river. Very nice, old brick, neat location, no smoking, and 6 (I think) varieties of Sierra Nevada beer on tap.


• Yesterday, Lola got to read with dogs at the library, today, fall festival at Bartley Ranch park. Go Washoe County!


• If you need to buy CDs (or DVDs, or magazines), Tower Records is going out of business and discounting to clear out inventory. We stopped by and picked up a few things, only 20% off right now, but sure to increase as time goes on.


• One final plug...it's that time again, VOTE

OK, now I'm done for now. Maybe I'll go load some more photos....

35 years on this planet

Happy birthday to me.

More to come.

Family time

As succinctly as I can make this, just feeling obliged to catch up...

Nana Tiar has been visiting for about 10 days now, Grandpa Dave just left back home after an almost-week visit, and aunt Tracy and uncle Kent leave later today, having been here since Friday.  Obviously, we've been up to lots of good stuff lately.

Played golf with Morgan and her dad, a nice mix of great, fair, and terrible shots for all of us.

Went to a Ikea as an all-day outing last Thursday...aside from the hour-long construction traffic clot we endured leving Reno, and the 45 minute delay in rush-hour Sacramento, it was great!  New bookshelf and mini-dresser for Lola, living room rug, shelves for kitchen and Lola's room, light for over the kitchen sink, etc. etc.

Dinner at the Santa Fe last night, a bit of yard clean up/winterizing both here and at Gigi's house, a visit to a pumpkin "patch" where Lola had her first pony ride, and a nice drive up to Markleeville and stroll around Grover Hot Springs.

So, it's been an eventful time around here.  My 5-day stretch of time off ends today, back to work tomorrow, then a couple more days off at the end of the week.  Tata for now!

Random miscellany

Possibly just because I haven't posted anything recently, an assortment of various stuff that's on my plate, coming soon, etc.

• Coming in the mail to maison Tiar: we finally broke down and ordered a DVR from Dish Network (very exciting!); and for the second time in 3 years, got a free replacement on our faucet-mount Pur water filter.  Does that deserve scorn for poor quality product, or kudos for replacing them so easily?


• Nana Tiar is finally here (visiting from Banyuls sur Mer), after a completely ridiculous series of delays.  Thanks United, thanks SFO, excellent.  Changed gates three times fer cryin' out loud.


• Lola's in a big-girl bed now!  Well, actually it's just her same crib with one of the "walls" removed, but it's like a day bed and she can climb in and out by herself.


• In the "I will never be smart enough for this" category, Netflix is offering a $1 million prize for making their recommendation system better.


• We've seen Natacha Sperka's work hanging at Peg's.  Turns out she's the sister of a Belgian guy I know.


• This little video...some food for thought.  What Earth would be like if only 100 people lived on it.


• Reading Spam Kings now, really enjoying this look at the seedy underworld of spammers.  Also Buddha v.6, which I now see is not the last one.  At least two more to go.


• I've always enjoyed those fun sites that let you create fake church signs and street signs and whatnot...The mother lode of all generator sites is here!


• And finally, my latest library-related blog to read regularly: Librarian in Black

So, that's what I can offer for now.  We'll be doing some fun stuff in coming weeks, Apple Hill, fall festival, Ikea.  Nick's show opening is this weekend, the Atomiks are playing, and good wholesome home improvement like trimming bushes and winterizing.  Plus Morgan's dad is coming to visit and there are at least three birthdays to celebrate.  The world is our oyster this month.

Getting back on track

Welcome email readers!

Slowly getting back into the swing of things, caught up on email at work, bills around here, and, perhaps most importantly for the purposes of this post, vacation photos are up on this here website.  Actually, that may be about all for now.  Coming weeks seem kind of busy: Nana Tiar and Grandpa Dave are coming, baby showers, birthdays, cupboards to be painted, sprinklers and swamp cooler shut down for the winter.  Sorry this seems kind of scattered, but well, that's how I'm feeling at the moment, so dangit, that's what goes up on the website.

On my nightstand: The Long Tail, Spam Kings, and Buddha (v.6).

And a website worth mentioning: dailyepisodes.com has full episodes of Simpsons, Family Guy, American Dad, South Park, and Futurama.  Every episode from every season.  Yep.

Home again

We're home, one day early.  Too tired to blog significantly.  Lola puked in the car, which makes 3x during the trip.  Total miles driven: 1885.  Photos tomorrow (after cleanup and unpacking).  Good night.

Live from Montpelier, ID

Another night, another Super 8 room with wifi...this time in Montpelier, Idaho, population ~2,800.  Good cable channels.  Dinner from the truck stop down the road.  The route here?  Through Yellowstone one last time, through Grand Teton National Park, through Jackson, WY, other small towns, and here we are in Idaho again.  Lola has been generally pretty good with occasional bouts of crankiness.  Tomorrow will bring us through Salt Lake and into Nevada somewhere.   So vacation is winding down.  Lots of photos were taken, good times had with friends, wonderful sights seen.  As I was telling Morgan earlier in the car, my feelings for Yellowstone (and by extension, national parks in general) are mixed - it's amazing and beautiful and I'm glad we preserve such places, but it seems so...staged?  One just drives from attraction to attraction, stopping to photograph animals and geysers and such, and the road is jammed to the gills during the times when it's appealing to visit.  The only way to get away from the crush is to go backcountry.  I suspect one can see equally beautiful sights without the crowds in a multitude of places that are not national parks.  Anyway, that's all I can muster for tonight.  Our route is roughly described by Yahoo Maps beta but may not work in Firefox.

Live from West Yellowstone, MT

Just a quick entry right now. Writing to you from the beautiful, cute, hospitable, and welcoming West Yellowstone library. Yep, that's what we librarians do on vacation, visit other libraries. Weather has been very cold and inhospitable except for this morning. Clouding up now, but it was great before lunch. Thus far, it had been very cold (close to freezing during the day), snowing, and generally not outdoors weather so we've trucked throughout the park. Lola had a big meltdown last night so Morgan and I stayed in town today to let her have a less hectic day. Scott and Patty went back into the park. We did see plenty of elk and bison, but no bears or moose. (We did see some nice grizzlies and wolves in the wildlife center here in town though!)

So that's it for now. We leave tomorrow, not sure which way home, but maybe through the park one last time and through Grand Tetons south to I-80. We'll see how Lola does and what seems wisest.

Until next time...

Live from Pocatello

Writing to you live and direct from room 312 of the Super8 in Pocatello Idaho this rainy morning.  Over 500 miles yesterday, and Lola was a peach.  No meltdowns, great behavior all the way.  She's cranky now, maybe up a little too early, and she wants to go see the turtles in the lobby.  Good stop for the night: free wifi in the room, good continental breakfast awaits, and everything was clean and in good working order, including the La-Z-Boy I sit in while writing this post.  Can't ask for much more than that for $60.  We even got a discount at Applebee's for dinner by showing our room key.

We should be on the road by 8 (and dang it, the computer says it's 6 because of the time change crossing into Idaho - it's still dark outside right now at 7am) and to Yellowstone easily by lunch.

I'm actually getting more and more excited about Yellowstone as I learn more about what there is to see.  Boiling mud, sulfur stink, bears and elk, and of course, scalding water shooting into the sky.  Excellent.

Until another connection opportunity presents itself...

Monday roundup

Got a whole slew of stuff to write about today, and little precious time. After all, we do leave for Yellowstone in a mere 38 hours, but who's counting?

For starters, I'm always getting hassled by my wife for the seemingly trivial nature of my blog posts. So I'd like to take a moment to explain a bit. I do this for a couple reasons: to dispatch fun/neat/interesting stuff I find online without turning it into an email forward, to keep a journal of sorts for myself, to leave a sort of "historical record" that maybe someday Lola (or legions of adoring fans) will want to read, and to keep in touch (at least unilaterally) with friends and family all over.

That said, I'll proceed to ramble.

Past: You might notice a fun little gizmo I added to the sidebar on the right - Blufr seems to be good for some fun and learnin'. This weekend, we: had a yard sale, did pretty well, got rid of a bunch of stuff, had a good time with neighbors who joined in, and made about $100; and painted some of the kitchen cabinets. Why does painting invariably take longer and take more coats of paint than you ever plan for???

Present: Enter this contest and take me on a trip if you win.

I'm trying to get around to reading "55 ways to have fun with Google" but just haven't gotten to it yet. Thought it worth point to anyway.

You might be wondering why we haven't posted any videos lately...our digital camera that we shoot them with seems to have died in terms of video. All we can do is still photos now. So if anyone's looking for that perfect gift...Canon powershots have a pretty good history with the Tiar family.

Weather update since we don't have that little doohickey on cheztiar anymore: COLD last week, but sunny and pleasant now.

Lola update: Geez she's getting big. Combining words into phrases like "Go see Mama", "Smell candle" (candle-smelling being one of her obsessions, along with lip balm), and "take shoes off". Toddler, schmoddler, she's a little girl now.

For those so inclined, a quick roundup of other blogs I enjoy: BoingBoing, Lifehacker, Parenthacks, Fresharrival, and Best Week Ever. There are others, but those are the most FVB (frequently visited blogs). Downtown makeover is good for Reno redevelopment updates too.

Future: Nick's show at Neverender gallery sounds really great in and of itself, but that it's the inaugural show for Neverender in their new building, which happens to be where I first lived alone back in 1993(?) makes it even more fun.

Librarians are gearing up for Banned Books week, September 23-30.

And finally, as mentioned above, we leave for Yellowstone on Wednesday and will be gone for a week. Probably no updates to this site, probably no replies to email, probably no phone calls answered. But when we get back, hopefully a bunch of great photos.

Thanks for reading, bye for now!

Retail beer

Just a quick note...we just got home from Raley's and several beer-buying items of note.

First, Sierra Nevada has bottled their Brown Ale (for the first time?) and is available for $8.49/six pack.  A bit steep for my taste, considering that I'm not a big fan of anything but the flagship pale ale.  Still, neat to see a new brew in stores.  Might be for a limited time, as it's still only listed as a "specialty draft" on their site.
Second, two sale prices worth mentioning: Heineken Light for $9.99/twelve-pack ($5 off), and Bass Ale six-packs are two for $10 (normally $8.49 each).

Neat stuff today

Just a couple items I thought were worth sharing with my audience:

• For our upcoming trip (and for future travels), the Universal Packing List.


• Japanese surf guitar covers of classical pieces - I've got these downloaded, but haven't listened to any yet.  Definitely looking forward to hearing them.


• This site full of music videos also has potential for some serious time-wasting, but wasn't working when I tried it.

Thanks for visiting, bye for now.

Ketchup

That's actually a pun...playing catchup, not really ketchup.  Whatever.  Not that i have a lot to say, just feel like I need to note some stuff to get it "out there" before time whizzes by too quickly.

• Lots of balloonspotting going on around cheztiar this weekend.


• Went garage saling, bought nothing.  Boo.


• Had lunch with Kirsten this week.


• Starting to plan a bit more for Yellowstone trip in a mere 10 days.


• Watching Nip/Tuck off and on as discs come and go.  Season 3 is disappointing.


• Saw some neat ponds and koi at Sierra Water Gardens yesterday.


• Watched "The Sentinel" last night.  Uninspired, but not awful at least.

I guess that's all that merits bullet points.  Also churning through my consciousness, Bart's sister Yuki, SO David, and baby Hebe are here visiting, had some fun with them over the weekend; Maggie's in Portland.

Possibly the biggest news, both Morgan's Dad (Grandpa Dave) and my mom (Nana) will be visiting in October, simultaneously, and meeting for the first time.  Yay!

One final thing that's made me obsessed this week: the random page from Wikipedia link.  Every time you click, it's something different.  Learn something new every day!

New pics again

Added a handful more photos from Burning Man, courtesy of Angie. Thanks Angie!

Also, just decided that I'm such a glutton for punishment that I thought I would take a stab at integrating the Gallery into Wordpress. I don't know why I insist on doing this to myself. Frustrating, challenging, infuriating. Does anyone out there want to do it for me?

Burning Man recap

Got some photos posted. Just the good ones from my roll and a half of film. You'll find them in the album creatively called Burning Man 2006. There will be more as my campers send me theirs, so keep checking back. And as long as I was in there, I posted a very few Lola pictures that I snapped to use up the film. Using up film, boy there's something I haven't done in a while, and one of those things that the next generation will consider a quaint relic of the past like cranking a phone or getting up to change the channel. But I digress...

Yes, we had a great time! We camped next to my friend David, former president of GBFS, and a bunch of his very nice friends. Our camp was me and Morgan, Paige, and friends Maggie, Angie, and Lily. Overall everyone got along splendidly, we ate better food and more of it than usual (including chicken tortilla soup, Indian food, and tortellini...we were offered fresh oysters even!), no major injuries that couldn't be fixed with duct tape. Morgan and I tended to fade early (relatively speaking) and go sleep in our Westfalia long before those who got back to camp, um, around 5am, on a few occasions.

I think I'm getting too stressed, old, and parental for this. There is talk around maison Tiar about this being our last burn for a while. It's starting to feel a bit routine. Just the absence of bad isn't enough to make me want to keep going, and the amount of work, money, energy, etc. that goes into it doesn't return enough on that large of an investment.

Highlights? Randomly running into Jeff Johnson in the middle of 40,000 burners (and that's happened with him before)...the Belgian project that literally took my breath away the first night we saw it...the guy in the pink singlet dancing all "militaristically" with a toy AK-47 to Matisyahu's "Jerusalem"...weather so pleasant I barely touched the warm clothing I brought expecting very cold nights...not living out of a tent in the dirt...kind neighbors with jumper cables and chilled chardonnay...excellent shade, carpet, and general camp layout and best location ever...nice gifts like pressed pennies, little knives, and artistic magnets....fun in the street like squirting passers-by and playing ladder golf.

Well I suppose I've droned on long enough about our little desert festival. Oh yeah, for those who were wondering, wifi connectivity out there was spotty at best, and I only was able to check email once, and it was unbelievably challenging. Should have seen me out there, standing with the laptop raised over my head trying to get a signal....ridiculous.

Back to reality

We're back from Burning Man.  Dirty, tired, hungry.  Cleanup awaits.  Everything was marvelous, everyone had fun, no bad weather, good campful of folks.  Excellent.  Photos to come soon.  BIG thanks to all our wonderful Lola-watchers who took care of our monkey while we were away.  We had a nice little vacation from the real world.  See you around.

The latest

Not a lot of news to report but for two items...  We were triumphant over the aforementioned bike lock using the biggest non-power tools I've ever used.  Killer bolt cutters.  Those things are massive.

And, if ever there were a link begging to be clicked on, it's this story out of Canada via perennial favorite BoingBoing: IKEA insists photo of dog does not show human-like penis

Watched The Empire Strikes Back last night, it's been quite a while.  Forgot how much I like the scenes on Hoth and Dagobah.  And how much Yoda sounds like Grover.

That's all for now.  Over and out.

Today

• There are new Postsecrets posted (as they are every Sunday)


• A guy came into the library to find newspaper articles about the murder he committed years ago. I didn't help him myself, but I think I would have had a hard time keeping a casual look on my face if I had.


• Is the day after we went to Twin City Surplus to buy some stuff for Burning Man. I have really fond memories of going there (even when they were in a previous location) as a kid, back when I was into Rambo and all kinds of military stuff.


• Is also the day after I viewed "the best card trick in the world" on Youtube. It's pretty cool.


• We need to figure out how to remove a U-bolt lock from a bike because the keys are lost. Any ideas?

Rosey Lola, cars, and stuff to do

First off, let me announce that I think this weekend's garage sale is officially postponed. Feeling the time crunch of too much to do and too little time before we head to Black Rock. Just because I feel like documenting it and I love to-do lists: make lip balm to gift, register the VW, pick up Cina's pills, get bikes and scooters ready, go shopping, Home Depot. That doesn't sound like much, but it's actually quite a bit.

We think Lola has roseola. Feverish for a few days, red rashiness all over. From what we've read, very common and practically harmless. It'll pass soon, hopefully. Speaking of Lola, I was going through some old email and found this old page I whipped up to announce her impending arrival. Ah the good ol' geocities days long before cheztiar...

Another item - just because we've been dealing with cars a lot lately, getting the VW ready to pass smog (which it did with flying colors) and register, having the truck checked out before heading to that most desolate desert, I'd like to take a moment to plug both our mechanics, Celeste's Asian Auto and J & & VW Vans. They are both extremely qualified, honest, good, and genuinely friendly. If you need work on a Honda, Toyota, or VW van, I recommend them both without hesitation.

Have a nice day everyone.

(Semi)new Lola videos

It occurred to me in the wee hours of this morning that I had uploaded a few Lola videos but never got around to updating her page with links to them. Still too lazy to do that, but here they are since this is so easy: one video, another video, and another video. I'll update the Lola page later...

Something new, woohoo

More because I feel like I need to keep this blog fresh than anything, I added a new little widget over there on the side. Worldcat is the biggest listing of books in the world, and now searching it is free. I've used it at work with a paid subscription for quite a few years, but it's pretty great that OCLC opened it up to the masses. Search for stuff, it's really amazing. It's a bit abridged from the full version (password required) we pay for, but still...

In other news...a few notes for posterity:

• I'm currently reading my way through Buddha. Also on my reading list is The Wisdom of Crowds, Man Without a Country, and The Long Tail.


• I hate to keep bringing it up, but Burning Man just dominates my mind these days. Building shade structures gets less fun every time.


• Oh, and another Burning Man note...check this amazing project from BoingBoing


• We're (probably) going to have a yard sale this weekend. Come buy stuff!


• I set up a wiki for folks to collaborate on scheduling time to watch Lola while we're on the playa. Pretty cool! I love wikis! (Mouse-hover the first wiki link for the password if you want in to the Lola wiki...)


• Yellowjacket update: Morgan got stung again yesterday, I emptied another full can of poison, found few corpses, so not sure where we stand. Grrrr....


• If I've never mentioned it to you, you should really take a look at PostSecret. They update every Sunday and almost always some pretty amazing stuff to read.

OK, I think that's about enough for now. See ya!

dorodango

As much as a fan as I am of all things Japanese, I'm shocked that I've never heard of dorodango before now. It looks amazingly cool and I can't believe it's that simple. Someday I'll try it.

Just trying to keep up...

So I went to the NLA conference in Vegas yesterday, back today. Tired. The VW van (dubbed Parkerbailey after the two kids of the folks we bought it from) is out of the shop and ready to pass smog. The Vue is out of the shop and blowing cold air again. Burning Man is coming up quickly. And soon on the horizon after that is Yellowstone with the McCormicks. That's it I suppose, I'm feeling uninspired.

First post!

Just a quick and dirty update this time...I finally got Wordpress installed!

But until I get used to it and get it all under my belt..

Highlights:

• After much searching and frustration, we just found and bought a VW bus! 1985 Westfalia, almost everything works. Burning Man, here we come! More camping, and not in a tent! Yay!


• In the photo department, I decided we needed more than just Lola, Lola, and more Lola. So in the 'other' album, I added a "newly added" album to highlight some of the less exciting, yet still noteworthy, things in our life.


• We had a major war with yellowjackets in our yard, but we're finally triumphant. One photo is up as a testament to the saga. Us: 6 stings total, including Cina. Them: countless dead.


• We (well, mostly Morgan, but I helped a little) watched Miss Sofia Becker for two weeks, just a couple photos from that.


• We made a trip to Ikea for our first shopping experience there ever. Wow. Chaos. Got a few cool items, including this light, but we'll be better prepared next time.


• Don't forget to vote!

That's all for now, stay tuned for more, better, more frequent, and more attractive updates, coming soon!