i hereby declare that the trunk of a galaxie 500 is a legal unit of measure.

forget cubic yards or other boring measures, i think the world should immediately adopt the Galaxie Trunk (GT) as their standard unit for measuring volume. maybe even somebody at nist would be more than happy to fund me to convert everything into GTs.

for example, two sets of golf clubs is equal to about 0.20 GTs. i wonder if the morgue would let me see how many dead bodies equals 1 GT?

in any case, i'm off to the upper peninsula which always has the potential to be a unintended adventure. so wish me safe travels :-)

honestly i didn't think too much of driving the galaxie alone without a cell phone through rural wisconsin and michigan. that is, until somebody looked at me as if i gone absolutely mad when i casually mentioned the plan. i guess one person's fit of insanity is another person's relaxing ride through the countryside.

unless it involves walking 20 miles to a service station.

one is the loneliest hamburger. but still tasty nonetheless.

kris and odin have gone up to da u.p. a couple of days ahead of me in advance of what will hopefully be a fun celebration of odin's second birthday with lots of family.

and sure that'll be fun and all, but for now the house is empty and i'm trying to remember how to cook for one. which somehow seems harder than i remember and obviously i didn't get very imaginative. but hey, thanks to the job and the company store discount the 100% organic pasture-grazed beef cost less than regular hamburger. if you're a carnivore you might want to see if you can get organic prairie meat near you. and they really do give all their animals ( including chickens and dairy cows ) plenty of light and large grazing areas unlike some other organic operations:

"A different kind of organic dairy farm is emerging out west — corporate-owned feedlot operations with thousands of cows that are fed organic grain but, according to critics, get little chance to graze."

"Fears that big operations will muscle out family farms have produced a backlash, including a boycott by the Organic Consumers Association against the country's biggest organic milk brand, Horizon Organic."

"The nation's largest farmer-owned organic dairy co-op, the Organic Valley Family of Farms, based in LaFarge, Wis., says its 572 family-owned dairy farms nationwide already exceed the proposed standards."

Mr. Big Brown Bat!

i was minding my own business working by the light of the laptop when, out of the corner of my eye, i thought i saw something unusually large soundlessly swoop unusually close to my computer screen. just as i looked up and told myself that it was probably nothing, the Definitely Something came in for a closer look before gracefully making an abrupt hairpin turn and flying off into the next room.

sure enough, we discovered Mr. Big Brown Bat literally hanging out in the sun room.

now, i'm not really frightened of bats. the rationale part of me knows that they're harmless flying mammals that, at the very least, keep the insect population under control thanks to their ravenous insectivorian appetite. but the older, reptilian, fight-or-flight part of my brain, doesn't like to cooperate in these situations and insists on going into manual override, creating the irrational fear that the bat is GOING TO DIVE BOMB ME AND GET TANGLED IN MY HAIR! according to my reptilian brain it's a near certainty that i will be reduced to running around the house shrieking like a school girl while frantically trying to untangle the evil, vile creature from my hair before kill! kill! killing! it.

every so often the rational part of me chimes in and asks if i've ever had a bat entangled in my not very long hair, or even if i've ever known anyone who has, regardless of their hair length. no, i haven't. but still, the reptilian part of my brain remains resolute that i must have read something about it happening somewhere on the internet, probably right around the time i read about the poor sap investigating the itch in his ear, which turned out to be a nest of earwigs.

eventually i reached an agreement with all of me that i would try to coax the bat out of the house by swiping at it with a broom, hoping it was smart enough to interpret that as a sign that i came in peace and would really love to live in harmonious coexistence an long as their was no cohabitation clause in our agreement. my reptilian brain sulked but could make no promises that it wouldn't get all medieval on the bat if it even looked the least bit like it had a hankering to go for my hair.

with kris standing by the front door, i swooped with the broom as time slowed down and i saw the bat launch from its perch and make a few this-way, no-that-way, no-really-that-a-way changes to its flight path before heading into the living room and out the front door which kris promptly slammed shut.

all in all, it seemed to be a perfectly executed maneuver and we congratulated ourselves on the fine bit of bat-human teamwork. except that it wasn't. when we stepped out to shut the door to the enclosed porch, we noticed that Mr. Big Brown Bat had decided not to go the distance and had instead landed one of the many porch windows.

and so, back it was to the conversations between myselves, as we repeated the process over and over and over again, each time resulting in the bat simply flying from one end of the porch to the other.

just as we decided that maybe Mr. Big Brown Bat had won this battle, mauja finally poked his head in the open door and asked us ( with a stern "rarrrgh! rarrgh!" ) what on earth we were making such a commotion about.

immediately upon hearing mauja, the bat promptly and decisively made its exit out the door.

the eric update - day 721: making sourdough with mamma.

despite the occasional meltdown, odin really enjoys helping out in the kitchen and he's recently come to appreciate the simple joy of making bread. and really what's more fun than throwing around flour and kneading moist, tasty dough?

some might recall that me and wheat/gluten normally don't get along, but through the process of elimination, i've discovered that i can tolerate sourdough if it's made with plenty of "proofing":

"During the process of soaking and fermenting, gluten and other difficult-to-digest proteins are partially broken down into simpler components that are more readily available for absorption. If the fermentation process continues for long enough and the requisite bacteria are present then most if not all of the gluten may be broken down. This would explain why some gluten-intolerant people can digest sourdough bread without any symptoms of gluten allergy."

so, not only do odin and kris get to spend some quality time in the kitchen while i get ready for work, but i have super tasty, bread that i can actually eat when i get home. who knew bread could be so good in so many ways :-)

if you're just getting into making bread you really can't go wrong with "bread alone", the recipes are extremely detailed and the author kneads in plenty of fun stories about his adventures with bakers around the world.

the eric update - day 720: i think this might be yet another lesson in enjoying the moment.

as odin earnestly enjoyed breathing deeply through his nose to smeeeeeeellllllll the wondrous and impossibly fresh chopped basil and garlic which were slowly in the process of being transformed into pesto ( sans pine nuts because, well, why ruin a perfectly good recipe with a pine nut :-) ), who could have imagined that mere minutes later the nearly rockwellian scene would quickly devolve from an animated discussion about the importance of sharing and taking turns whisking in olive oil and parmesan cheese into a full blown class A tantrum when one of us couldn't get his way.

the eric update - day 719: me, simultaneously teaching odin how to play guitar and not compose a photograph.

today we learned that even though pink floyd's song, money, is the only tune written in the septuple (7/8) time signature to reach the top 20 charts in the united states, it's still a fine and upstanding meter to play in and probably won't turn you into a communist even though it offers seemingly innumerable number of asymmetrical beat groupings that might only be fully and completely appreciated by tranditional hungarian folk dancers.

the eric update - day 718: odin convenes with Owl and Frog in the stroller to discuss the strategy for getting poppi to take them all for a walk

but alas, poppi couldn't take them all for a walk because, amongst other things, he had to clean up a mountain of stinky mauja poop that he left on one of the few patches of carpet in the house. upon seeing the pile of poop, with the instant clarity of hindsight, poppi really had wished he hadn't told mauja to go back to sleep when he was talking rather loudly from the bottom of the stairs at the crack of dawn.

the eric update - day 717: patiently waiting for poppi to come home from work?

while i'm away at work ( as soon as we get up in the morning, he says "buh, bye, poppi. work!", almost a little too happily :-) ), which is a relatively big change for the both of us, supposedly when he awakens from his afternoon nap he'll ask "poppi, home. work?" ; and when the sun starts to get a little lower in the sky, he'll climb up in his stroller so he can more comfortably look out the window while eating a snack.

even if it's not true, i'll always believe that he's patiently waiting for me to get home so he can yell, "poppi! home! work!"

photo credit by kris. maybe if she gets enough encouragement she'll take a few more pictures to document all that we missed ( and there was a lot ) :-)

hey, sonicwall, fix your faulty filtering algorithm!

i've been contacted occasionally over the years from faithful readers complaining that they couldn't reach the site because of draconian content blocking software that has erroneously categorized the vast wasteland as pornographic because of a large number of images with skin tones, but i've never experienced it first-hand and i now can fully appreciate just how irritating it can be.

i can't seem to find a way to contact the presumably fine folks who maintain the sonicwall content filtering database to fix the error so i can check my email while on break at places that use the filter.

any hints would be greatly appreciated.

the eric update - day 713: kicking around the kickapoo on father's day.

one of the qualities that we were taking into account as we composed our short list of potential places to call home was quick and easy access to all sorts of outdoorsy activities. and by quick and easy, we specifically mean, less than 20-30 minutes away because we've come to realize that if something is more than 20-30 minutes away, it's not going to become a regular part of family life; and we really wanted odin to grow up knowing that camping and hiking and swimming and canoeing and snowshoeing and cross country skiing and horseback riding and countless other activities were all part of regular routine and not squeezed into a rushed family vacation once a year.

so, we couldn't be luckier to have the 8,569 acre kickapoo valley reserve close by. originally slated to be flooded and turned into a reservoir in an ill-fated flood control and "recreation" project the area is now a popular destination for outdoor enthusiasts all year round, even in the winter when you can go on horse-drawn sleigh rides, skating and skiing and during the annual winter Festival we'll probably join the locals in "vegetable sailing", which consists of shooting veggies from a slingshot at a concrete tower that's only remaining evidence of the dam that was thankfully never built.

throughout the park you can find examples of the unique features of the driftless region which was untouched by the glaciers that razed the rest of the midwest flat as a pancake, including giant sandstone outcroppings that tower above the kickapoo river, which is considered one of the best canoeing rivers in the midwest.

and then we enjoyed a peanut butter sandwich and pirate's booty right before odin fell fast asleep while we weaved along the winding road back home while blasting the godspeed you! black emperor song that wasn't even finished before we stopped in the driveway just as the clock in town struck noon.

day 712: the garden before we mercilessly tilled it under.

the house came complete with a large-ish ( 15 feet x 20 feet ) garden that is unfortunately so overgrown that we decided to just start from scratch. hopefully odin will have as much fun playing in the soft earth as he has running around the jungle ( luckily he always managed to miss the patch of stinging nettle ).

the eric update - day 712: odin's first trip to the farmer's market.

thanks in part to the success of the cropp cooperative and it's brand organic valley, vernon county has the highest concentration of organic farms in wisconsin, so naturally viroqua is host to a thriving farmer's market.

it's only a couple of blocks from our new house so odin and i made a short trip to get some veggies for the week, the fixings for a yummy strawberry-rhubarb pie and some seedling for the garden.

much to my surprise, he didn't throw a single thing out of the wagon on the trip home :-)

the eric update - day 709: the day i missed odin counting to ten.

today was a big day because after 6 years of telecommuting, consulting and contracting from The Home Office, i actually went into work to start contracting work for organic valley; work that i couldn't have known i'd pick up when we decided to move to viroqua, but i'm absolutely elated at the prospect of getting my foot into the door of a company that i have a tremendous amount of respect for. and it's not lost on me that i've stumbled into a great opportunity to work for a company that just happens to be located on the road that i was driving down when i had the strong sense that we'd call the area home while admiring the rolling hillside and imagining how lucky i'd be if i could see such scenery on my daily commute.

but still, it's a big change to leave odin for the entire day and i'd be lying if i didn't admit that it was a wee bit sad to say goodbye to him in the morning and watch him peer at me out the kitchen window saying "buh, bye, poppi!", as i got in the car.

upon arriving home, just in time to catch odin eating dinner before heading off to a bath and bed, kris excitedly exclaimed, "odin, tell poppi what you did today!"

apparently, when it came time to feed mauja, our little genius decided to dip his hand in the feed bin and dump the food in his dog bowl, counting "one...two...three...four....five...six....seven...eight...nine...ten!"

on a side note: between moving and starting work at organic valley and getting an influx of other contracting work and being a parent, i'm desperately short on "free" time lately; if i take longer than usual to respond to email or call you back or comment on your wonderful comment, or whatnot, please bear with me as i try to organize my life :-)

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

as i walked down the stairs wiping the sleep from my eyes, kris excitedly told me that she had a vivid dream in which she was hanging out with some friends and they were talking about a place west of grand rapids that had rolling green, lush hills and for reasons that made perfect sense in the dream, but which she couldn't quite recall upon waking, it was where we were going to call home.

the timing of the dream couldn't have been more, er, interesting because it came just days before we were supposed to officially compose the short list of future places to live which were to be picked from a longer list of locales that had been generated by methodically ranking areas based on a set of desired attributes such as job growth, quality of living, good schools, affordable housing, access to outdoors recreation, a strong sense of community and a dozen other factors that we've come to appreciate over the years.

"ummmm. ok. so, where is it?" i asked, slightly irritated that she was basically throwing a monkey wrench into the plan which could potentially delay the decision on The Short List.

"that's the thing. i don't know. all i can remember is something about sleepy hollow."

but the sense of the dream was so strong that she interpreted it to mean that the list of potential candidates was all wrong, even if the reasons didn't seem to make much sense, at least when she was awake. and through a process of inspired serendipidy, she happened upon an article about a small town in southwestern wisconsin called viroqua that resonated strongly with her, since the reasons the author eloquently articulated as to why he chose the town after three years of planning seemed to be related to many of the factors that we were contemplating as we composed our short list. and as an added dreamy bonus, viroqua is near sidie hollow park, which is at least somewhat similar sounding to the sleepy hollow of her dreams.

as is her way, she had already booked a hotel for the next day, a friday, and i reluctantly agreed to make the long trip to the town to check it out, thinking that at the very least it would make for a fun weekend. and so, the next morning we set out to visit a town that we'd never been to as i donned my skeptic hat, convinced that as lovely as the town sounded on paper, it probably was just a small town like any other.

after a full day of driving, we pulled into the hotel and smiled the big smiles that we alway smile when The Universe likes to play games with us; i kid you not, right next the the hotel there was a sign for sleepy hollow auto mart. so, Somebody has a sense of humor, but i was still wearing my skeptic hat because i'm too jaded and rational to uproot what little roots we have based on a magazine article and a dreamy coincidence. we had a little chuckle and i decided to go for a drive along the rolling hills to get a better feel for the scale and scope of the area while kris put odin to bed.

with impeccible timing, as i headed out of town, one of the largest great horned owls i've ever seen tracked the car and followed me for for some distance. now, i'm not superstitious, i don't even think about owls very often and i don't have any idea what it means or if it means anything, but i swear whenever A Big Change is coming Somebody cues the appearance of a great horned owl. i know it sounds corny, but it is what it is and i've stopped trying to figure it out. ten minutes later, as i'm heading east through the some of most gorgeous terrain you'll ever see in the midwest ( which is saying a lot since it was mid-april when everything is normally in a drab gray ), i must have temporarily lost my skeptic hat because i was struck the strength of the sense that this was going to be where we'd call home.

the next day, as we strolled around the downtown, we stopped and talked with quite a few locals at the coop, a local cafe and coffee shop, the independent bookstore and the public market and heard story after story after story about how serendipity and a bit of luck had led people to the area and they could never, ever imagine living anywhere else. ultimately, it was the genuineness and sincerity of the stories that won us over. amusingly, we'd later learn that the story of accidently finding viroqua and deciding to call it home is so common that it's not even considered the least bit extraordinary.

that evening we found a for-sale-by-owner house in an absolutely perfect part of town that was a rental home and we scrambled to arrange a visit to see it before we had to leave the next day. on sunday morning we finally made contact, convinced that it would be impossible to get in to see the place on such short notice on a sunday. the nice person on the phone told us that they were just on their way out of town, but that we could come in and walk around while they were gone! kris asked if we should lock up the house when we left and he just laughed. we fell in love with the house and instantly knew it was going to be our new home.

we've already had countless experiences that reinforce what a special place viroqua is, from the teenager who races in front of you to smile and say "hi!" as he opens the door to the bookstore, to the offer to throw a community bar-b-que so we can meet all the parents with toddlers and offers to take care of mauja if we have to leave town and babysit odin if we want a night out, to the neighbors who invited us to come over for a fantastic dinner and homemade pie and the crew of strangers who showed up with perfect timing to help me unload the moving van before kris arrived with one very tired odin. it's really no winder that it's been highlighted as one of the best small towns to live in a various media, including the wall street journal, the cbs evening news, smithsonian magazine, reader's digest and the chicago tribune.

we've both lived in small towns and know that they can come with their own set of challenges and we've heard rumors that not everyone is equally happy to see their hidden gem of a town being discovered by "transplants", but we'll be working hard in the coming months to give back to the community that has already given us so much and prove that we intend to be good citizens :-)

the eric update - day 707: perhaps something in the water is making his hair grow?

holy cow! since we've been on the new set, odin's hair has...been...growing ( view large to get the full effect )!

coincidence, or not?

you can even almost comb it!

ah yes, the joy of owning an older home.

whenever you hear the owner of an older home - one, say, built before 1930 - exclaim, "jeez, the house is just filled with 'character'!" it's really just a justification for why they spend entire sundays trying to do things like find a replacement rubber O-ring for the bathroom faucet so that it will no longer gush water when it's supposed to be shut off.

a sneak peak at one of the new sets for the snowdeal show ®.

pardon our dust while we settle in and test out some preliminary set designs. we only have time for a brief sneak peak today, since we're still unpacking and cleaning and fixing and rearranging. but i thought at least a couple of people might like to know that we've all arrived safe and sound :-)

you can click on each image for a brief description.

oh, chicago construction, let me count the ways i hate thee.

if you've ever been to chicago you know that it suffers from stupendously obnoxious traffic congestion on the best of days. and now that the dan ryan, the busiest road in Illinois, is undergoing self described "drastic lane reductions" and every...single...toll..booth...area is being ripped apart for open road tolling construction, well, it's like a perfect storm of traffic jam suckitude which makes an already very long trip almost unbearably longer. and yes, i know the city recommends that you avoid the ryan, but i gambled and lost, big time.

hi. ho. good thing we're not moving back to chicago; i don't miss the 3+ hour daily commutes one iota.

the eric update - day 702: the conundrum of the moving van.

is it just me, or does everyone think that moving vans are all smaller on the inside than they appear from the outside? someone needs to invent the TARDIS of moving vans, where the interior is much larger than the exterior.

time travel could be an optional feature and it would still be a big hit.

the eric update - day 700: the moment when i realized his arms are a lot longer than i thought.

maybe he's been doing arm stretches in his sleep? whatever the cause, seemingly almost overnightodin has the wingspan to allow him to race cars down both sides of the tub at the same time.

which is - of course - lots of fun even when when you're very, very sleepy.

the eric update - day 699: possibly maybe, the last time The Crew will all be hanging out together for quite some time.

odin doesn't quite comprehend it yet, but the Really Big Adventure is set to begin mere days from now which means that today is possibly maybe the last day he'll get to play with his cousins - mitchel, jagger, ella, evelyn and ruby - at the same time and the same place for quite some time.

and certainly he doesn't yet comprehend why today would be a little sad for his parents, even as they're excited to start a New Beginning.

the eric update - day 697: tragedy of the commons.

as much as we'd not like to have odin associate the mall with hanging out and goofing around, since we'll likely come to regret it when he reaches The Teen Years, it provided the closest and dryest play area after we were suprised to find ourselves running around a local park when black clouds arrived with a 20 degree F temperature drop, thunder claps and a very credible threat of torrential rain.

and the play area in the mall can actually be a fun time, except when it's not. such as today, when after a few minutes after arriving a rag-tag group of older boys arrived arrived and thought it would be a grand idea to crawl in the tunnel under the tree and scream at the top of their lungs directly in the faces of the unsuspecting kids crawling by. odin happened to be their first victim, but i was just a few feet away and quickly scouped him up, his face ashen and frozen with fear, and managed to avoid A Meltdown. as we sat for a minute to gather our wits, we watched as toddler after toddler ran out of the tunnel screaming, frantically searching for Someone Safe.

i'm not normally one to get all up in another parent's grill about their parenting skills, but i looked around trying to find someone who might be responsible for them to honestly ask them if they thought the kid's behavior was something they thought was appropriate. but alas, i couldn't find them before odin let me know that he'd really rather be somewhere else. we could still hear the hooligans screaming hundreds of feet away as we bought some comfort food in the form of a chocolate chip cookie and chocolate milk.

so i ask teh internets, what's the appropriate course of action when you encouter a similar situation? just leave? kindly ask the offenders to stop? seek out the other parents/caregivers and ask them as nicely as possible if they could pretty please get their demon spawn to stop tormenting the other children?

the postcard project: philadelphia, pennsylvania.

the days when odin could comfortably wear the very nice gift that he received on his thirty second day of life have long since passed; but we'll never forget melody's gracious attempt to give odin an edge with the penn admissions office when he gets a little older :-)

[ see the postcard project slideshow and the postcard project/google maps mashup; visit "postcards from budapest" for the current postcard project address. ]

the postcard project: somerville, massachusetts.

there's not much to add to this, except to say that getting unexpected postcards from long lost friends made us smile big, happy smiles when we we spent 96 days neonatal intensive care unit. and now somerville is but one several places massachusetts that will be on our Postcard Project travelling adventures.

[ see the postcard project slideshow and the postcard project/google maps mashup; visit "postcards from budapest" for the current postcard project address. ]