• Credit due

    I was picking on Beth earlier, at Cheryl’s behest. Now the good parent wants to toss a little praise around.

    I woke up late for Church this morning and Beth was already up. Not only had she made her own breakfast and was almost done (pancakes), but she’d fed Adam too.

    I came staggering out of my room with excruciating pain in my sinuses, dreading trying to get the kids ready on the quick. I can’t recall another time I saw a mess in the kitchen and felt euphoric.

    You are awesome kid.

  • Our poor Beth

    We’re not perfect parents, but I like to think we’re at least average. Beth is on the cusp of that time when parents become ogres with wallets. It’s not really like that here, but what fun is a blog if I can’t exaggerate once and a while.

    There’s a punishment that’s particularly effective with Beth, owing to her love of the computer. She gets that from her father’s side of the family. It involves taking away electronics privileges. When we have to exercise the nuclear option you’d think she was being sent away for life in prison.

    Here’s Beth trying her hand a criminal law.

    “Mom, isn’t taking away a kid’s electronics considered a form of child abuse?”

    Nice try kid.

  • New look

    *UPDATE: it looks like Mobile Safari doesn’t deal with static background images very well.

    —

    Maybe you noticed the new blog theme. If not, take a closer look. It’s hard to miss. I showed it to my editor (Cheryl) and her response was: “It looks kind of cool, but I like colors. This looks kind of depressing.”

    It’s good advice, but I’m keeping it for now anyway. I’m not sure I’m cool with the degree of transparency in the posts – in Safari and Firefox for Mac anyway. I’m not sure I have the patience right now to fire up Windows on the iMac to see how the poor, unfortunate souls trapped in Windows will fare. Blogs with text that’s hard to read is a peeve of mine… and now I fear I’m sinking to their level. What good is a blog if you can’t read it? Though, in this case maybe it’s a blessing ;-)

    We’ll see how it goes. I’ve been testing various backgrounds on my test blog. And yes, I have such a thing. I had been working on converting a three column theme I saw a while back to two columns. What the heck, just for kicks (mine, not yours) you can see it here (a rough version anyway).

    This background picture seemed to fit both my mood, and was something that wasn’t too busy (not a lot of sharp and changing contrasts that would interfere with the foreground). I’m fond of this particular picture for a couple reasons. One, I took it on an awesome hike with Adam along the beach on a rare foggy day. Second, it reminds me of my mother, during her saner days. She used to like to drive out to the Dunedin causeway and watch the pelicans fish. I used this image for the cover of a picture book I had made for her for her birthday last year.

    Maybe you wouldn’t believe it from the tone I often take, but I’m my own biggest fan… with more returning hits than any other source. I’m weird that way. Although the colors are dark, the picture itself reminds me of my mother’s better days.

    So for now it stays. I hope it won’t turn you away.