Family and Friends

Going out

Cheryl and I rarely go out alone. We have all the usual excuses: kids, work, and the like. But we also have another thing: an unexplainable attraction to misfortune. I won’t bore you with an unabridged list, but here are some of my favorites: During a summer break from UF, not long after we started dating, we planned a trip to the northeast. A few days before we were supposed to leave I…
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Family and Friends

More on the wedding thing

If you’re one of the one or two folks who’ve been coming around for a while, this picture may look a little familiar… I used an edited version of the above picture as part of the theme for an early version of our web site. Cheryl loved this photo (below)… for about 1.23 seconds. Then she smacked me for closing my eyes. I wonder if I could Photoshop me some open ones? It…
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Family and Friends

Congratulations?

I hadn’t thought about it before, but a card that came in the mail today struck me as odd. “Congratulations!” it said. I’ve said it to other people on their anniversary – many times. But today, at this moment, it seems off… somehow not quite appropriate. It makes wedding anniversaries sound like some kind of endurance award, doesn’t it? You don’t…
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Family and Friends

That old house

As you could guess, this is another one of my father’s test scans. It’s another reason I’m eager to get over there and do more. I have few pictures of my grandparents, and I haven’t seen the ones my father has in ages (it’s a chore to haul out the projector, and I’ve never been satisfied with the simpler “hold it up to a light and squint” method of…
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Family and Friends

When we were four

When we were four Originally uploaded by jkauffman Once again my father has upstaged me in our computer arms race. It seems that every time I buy a computer he buys a better one. To be fair, our replacement cycles are similarly modest, he earns more money, and his computing needs are more robust… but come on dad! Give a nerd a break. Well this time he didn’t get another…
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Beth

Leaving church

I reached a new low two weeks ago. My patience wore through and no amount of sympathy or understanding was going to save me. We were sitting in church and Beth’s verbal ticks were firing on all cylinders. They were loud enough that I had trouble hearing the lessons being read, so I tried asking Beth to lower her voice. We think she has some conscious control over the behavior because she…
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Family and Friends

Breakthrough on the Cheryl front

A few months ago Cheryl called the Honda dealership asking if they’d be willing to make a deal on a Civic Hybrid. “Nope,” they said, “those babies are selling themselves. We’re not making any deals on hybrids.” This weekend Cheryl got an email from the sales manager, telling her they’d knock $4k off the price. It’s actually tempting. Cheryl told us…
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Beth

State of the Kauffmans

The obvious place to start is Cheryl, the recently cut open. The doctor said she’d have a rough weekend and she did. Hoo-ray for the wisdom granted those who study modern medicine! It’s supposed to start getting better this week, so maybe we’re almost in the clear. It seems like the end is near. I mean that in a good way, but with every bit of sarcasm mixed in you can muster. In…
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Family and FriendsWellbeing

She's 38

I have a much longer post written (in my head) tentatively titled “state of the Kauffmans,” but it will have to wait until a time when it’s not past my bedtime. Until then, know that Cheryl’s recovery is going as planned, and she enjoyed a little get together with our parents to celebrate her birthday. (She was a little nervous about me wearing my Obama campaign shirt with…
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