Monday, May 30, 2005

driver's seat


driver's seat
Originally uploaded by shalberg.
Claire sitting in the driver's seat of Uncle Dave's truck while tailgating before a Brewer game.

She seems to like it there...

parking lots and life

I was at the grocery store earlier this week and as I was pulling into a spot, I noticed an old wrinkly man walking slowly across the parking lot. He was headed towards two cars. One was a big beige Buick and the other was a small flashy silver convertible. I was pretty sure he was going to get into the Buick, and I think its safe to say the majority of people seeing the same situation would agree with me. But as he got closer he held out his keychain and popped the trunk on the convertible. Then he got in, put on a baseball hat, cranked up the radio (talk radio) and drove off.

Sometimes things stick with you and make you think. For me, this is one of those things.

Monday, May 23, 2005

Peep


Peep
Originally uploaded by shalberg.
This is what you would see if you looked through our peephole. The picture turned out great, I think, and it makes a cool picture. Kind of makes me want to start a series of peephole pictures.

Mark this down on the calendar!

Claire slept (thus allowing me to sleep) until 8:30AM! It was so awesome. I needed the sleep a lot. I think this might be one of the first times she has cooperated with this sleep in idea. Almost always, when Mike and I stay out late she wakes up extra early. Its like she knows we were having fun without her, so she punishes us for it.

Speaking of waking up, I have to go buy a new alarm clock today. Last night Mike set the alarm to go off at 6AM this morning. It went off at 9:00PM. I've never seen an alarm clock do that before, usually the mistake is made by setting the clock to PM when you really want AM. But this clock not only ignored that, it got the time wrong as well. We both had to check it a few times because the clock is never wrong, of course. It goes off at the wrong time, you completely assume "Oh I must have set it to the wrong time. What was I thinking?" So is this possibly a little clue as to why Mike oversleeps some days and wakes up at 2AM others? Mike has been known to wake up at all hours, shower, eat breakfast and get ready to go only to realize its like 11:30 at night or some other crazy hour. I've always assumed he is under a lot of stress when this happens, and afraid of being late so his body wakes up super early. I still think this is the case almost every time it happens, but maybe the clock is playing games with him as well!

Sunday, May 22, 2005

Weekend

We had a great weekend. Friday Mike and I watched 'Whats Eating Gilberg Grape'. I'd seen it before, a long long time ago. I liked it the first time, but it was better this second time. Then Mike stayed up really late getting a news/email type thing downloaded and working. Saturday morning I got up and deleted it because I didn't recognize any of the icons and thought it was some useless stuff that tagged along with a different download. Mike wasn't very happy about it when he woke up. Then Mike went to play tennis and Claire and I took a THREE HOUR nap! Oh man did I need it. I was pretty tired and crabby. Saturday night we had a BBQ with some friends and we played wiffel-ball and poker. It was a really fun night. It seemed like it was just what we all needed, to get together, talk about the next steps in the med school adventures, laugh and unwind a bit. And Sunday we spent in Ripon visiting with some of the Halbergs. We played poker again, and I totally cleaned house. It was the first time I'd ever won when playing with more than four people.
But we got home late, and Mike is making something to eat. So I better get going and clear the laptop off the dinner table.

Sunday, May 15, 2005

God

The last book I read, with Adam, was about fly fishing ("The River Why"), and about half way through it I stopped, put down the book and had an amazing warmth; suddenly I believed in God. I don't know how much it had to do with the book, but the main character is a fishing nut that explores religion and philosophy at times. Anyway, I suddenly realized that I have been going about things backwards all the while. I have always tried to start with what I knew about the Bible, the sermons I have attended and such and keep learning more until I figured out whether their was enough evidence for me to believe. When I put down the book, I realized that I must work the other way. I know that there is a God, and now I am going to work backwards. I figure there is not enough evidence to justify belief, but there may be enough for me to eventually figure out what God means in my mind.

If you are still reading Adam, I can't believe you didn't tell me the ending! That is crazy, she is soooooooooo hot!!!!!!! I teared up (but don't tell anyone). How far are you in The Da Vinci Code? Oh, and is it okay for a married guy to call a girl hot if she is an imaginary character in a book (who probably looks a lot like Sheela.)?

Thursday, May 12, 2005

pretty girl


claireh281
Originally uploaded by shalberg.

Normal?

Well its been a while since I've had any time to write an entry. The furnace installers I wrote about in previous entries are STILL HERE! If they come back tomorrow I am going to start charging rent. Have these guys moved in? Is there an apartment in the attic now? What can they possibly be doing?? To be fair, I really have no idea what it takes to put a furnace in the attic and then make it work, but you would think it would take less than two weeks. These guys are professionals after all. And I've seen those shows where they completely level a house and then build a sparkley new one in its place in seven days. They obviously have NOT hired the furnace guys we have to do all the heating and cooling stuff.

Anyway, last Wednesday I went to Green Bay and stayed there until Sunday. The furnace guys (can you believe I don't even know their names, even after this long?) asked me to take Claire and leave since it would be noisy and dirty. I wasn't around for the noise, but they were right on with the dirt. They made one heck of a mess. You don't realize how many surfaces you have in your house until they are all completely covered in filth. But they are finished with the messy stuff, and are just putting on a few final touches. I've been able to clean just about everything other than the areas they are still working in.

Those areas will have to wait, because Claire is now sick. She must have picked up a bug somewhere, she can't keep anything down. She's been sleeping a lot, and when she's awake, she's either crying, trying to sleep, or vomiting. Poor kid. I am always amazed at how much laundry one little person can create. She seems to be doing a bit better now than yesterday, so I think its on its way out.

On a happier note, friends of ours had tickets to the Brewer game Tuesday night and invited us along. Our seats were in the 300 Club, right behind the plate. Probably the best seats I've ever sat in. It was perfect baseball weather, and the Brewers won, what could be more fun?

Friday, May 06, 2005

Sweet Corn


claireh266
Originally uploaded by shalberg.
Claire eating raw corn.

Tuesday, May 03, 2005

High Fashion


pearls
Originally uploaded by shalberg.
I don't know where Claire gets her fashion sense, but she's right: There is no better way to dress up a diaper than with a string of pearls.

Nothing New

There really isn't much going on lately. Actually, the real reason I'm even posting at all is so that I don't have to go do the dishes. There are TEN days left of Mike's OB/GYN rotation, not that I'm keeping track or anything. I think he'll be glad to be done, all the work is starting to catch up with him.
Claire is on fast-forward with learning lately. A few days ago we were reading a shape book and I found out she knows a lot of shapes: rectangle, circle, star, square, triangle, diamond, and even oval. She can point them out when I ask her. And then yesterday we were playing with blocks and I asked her to get me a red one, and she did. I went through some other colors, blue, green, yellow and purple, and she got them all. We've been doing this a lot now that I know she knows her stuff! She's really good until she gets tired of the game, and then she'll just bring a handful of different colored blocks. She can also answer to 'what color is this' in sign language for red, blue and orange. A lot of the other color signs are so similar (and Claire not yet precise enough), that I can't tell if she's right or not. I was just thinking about how she would go through development stages where she would start babbling and grabbing toys all at once, or she would learn to walk and and say three new words over a day or two. Its been a while since she's gone through a 'growth' stage like that. Its really fun to see.
And in other news, I got a new Incredible Art Board! That is actually the product's name, and I think they are right with incredible. Its for stretching my watercolor paper, and I love it. What a wonderful tool.