©2026 The Daleys
I woke up around 6am (with alarm) and got ready to go to Valda's to get my hair done. I got myself some yummy muesli with yogurt and sat down in the living room to eat, only to see the clock and note that I needed to leave in only a few minutes. I gulped a few more mouthfuls as I put my breakfast in the fridge and ran around getting Faith in her carseat and my coat on. Somehow I miscalculated the time, and I even had to rush to take the next tram. With the diaper bag on my back, Faith in her carseat over one arm, and the garment bag in the other hand, I walked quickly to the tram stop that I had never been to before. I got to the intersection and could not see the tracks. Thankfully, I saw the electric lines above and with only a little more confusion, stepped to the correct platform just a minute or two before the arrival of the tram. I caught my breath during the ride and got off at Neubad. This is a five-way intersection, and I knew that the entrance to Valda's apartment was across the street to the left of the grocery store. So I headed that direction and did not find the entrance. In fact, the whole storefront looked wrong. I looked around the intersection and found that the other grocery store is one street over, and then following my directions from that store, I successfully entered Valda's apartment.
We interrupt the story of the trip with a special news bulletin.
After much fussiness in the morning as we were preparing to leave New Hampshire, Faith's lower left front tooth broke through the surface during the car ride home.
Waking up at the above mentioned 2pm left us just enough time to get ready to go to the Renaissance Dance Rehearsal at 3:00. Janet wanted us to dance to medieval music at the wedding reception and thought it would be a good idea for us to practice ahead of time. About 20 of us were there, and had a very fun time. It's group dancing, like English Country Dancing or Contra Dancing. Each person has a partner, but all the sets of partners dance together as a whole. Some of the dances did not use partners, but were all holding hands together in a circle. We did many different dances and often were quite clumsy at it, but it was fun nonetheless. The boys were not very interested in dancing, and even took a little nap. Noah did join in during a couple of the simpler dances, but was intimidated by the more complex dances (if only he knew that we didn't know what we were doing...). Jonathan was sad that he was by himself, but there wasn't much to do about it since he didn't want to dance, even during the simpler ones - I suspect it was more a pride issue of not wanting to change his mind after saying that he didn't want to dance earlier. I think it might have been different if we started with the simpler dances earlier.
Barbara drove us, with our two big suitcases, three backpacks, computer suitcase, and small/hand bag, to the bus station in Concord. We got there just in time to buy tickets and get on the bus that took us to Logan airport in Boston. Check-in went smoothly and our biggest suitcase was just one kilogram shy of the weight limit. There was some issue with our seating (a recurring problem you will find out) and Jon went to the Lufthansa help person to try to work it out. We ended up with me and Faith in a bulkhead/bassinet seat, and all the males one row ahead of us. It turned out those two rows were separated by the kitchen so we saw very little of one another during the flight. Getting through security went relatively smoothly for five people.
I am now on vacation and so can spare a few minutes to type up the notes that have been hanging in my pocket for a while. I will apologize to my readers for making them wait so long, but I will not feel guilty. Blogging is something most mothers in the history of the world did not have on their list of responsibilites and I will not let it grab a top priority from other important things.
This is the traditional Christmas breakfast in the Daley family. It is too good to only have once a year, and I often make it for potluck brunches. No one knows where the "Presnor" part comes from. The original recipe from Jon's mom has plain monterey jack cheese, but the pepper jack gives it a superb flavor that's not too spicy even for my non-spicy friends.
Eggs Presnor
6 eggs, beaten
1 c. milk
2 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1/2 lb pepper jack cheese, shredded
3 oz cream cheese
8 oz cottage cheese
3 Tbs butter, melted
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 c. flour
chives and parsley for garnish
Preheat oven to 325. Mix eggs, milk, sugar, salt. Add cheeses and butter. Mix
well. *Can be made ahead to this point.* Mix baking powder and flour, add to wet
ingredients and mix. Pour in greased 9x13 pan. Bake 40 min until set and beginning
to brown on top. Garnish.
It has been annoying me that the "tagcloud" on the side panel has the largest word "water", (it sizes the words based on the count the frequency of word usage in our most recent posts), but here I go again, adding to the count.
We had a bunch of water in our basement again, this time definitely coming up from the floor drain. I have figured out more how the system works as time goes on, and I think there is just one question left to answer regarding the whole puzzle.
And we just discovered that there is yet another Pittsburgh tax we didn't know about, and maybe even a couple different taxes we may or may not owe. I called Pittsburgh to cancel our estimated tax forms that they have continued to mail to us, even though we now live outside of Pittsburgh. In the course of the conversation, he said that we would probably still have to pay the payroll expense tax. I asked what that was, and he said, oh, that's the new tax that replaced the mercantile tax. I said I hadn't heard of either of those before...
I am working on a Vista machine for a client, and was trying to update things - the firewall was turned off, windows update hadn't been run in a while, etc. Windows Defender was complaining about not updating for the last 8 months, and currently giving me an error of 0x8024402c. I searched around on the internet, and found people talking about uninstalling defender, restarted the BITS service, running windows update manually, etc. None of that worked - all reported hexadecimal code errors.
I have been working on an interesting project for a customer of mine - and as is with lots of his projects, end up seeing lots of internet headlines while working on the projects. This particular project involves tracking what things people are talking about and searching for. One source of the results comes from google trends, which shows the current top 100 most frequent searches, as well as historical trends.
Lots of searches that show up on the top 10 list are things that I wouldn't ever search for (I am not too surprised based on the content (It seems that a substantial number of people sit and watch tv and type in phrases that people say), but the format of the searches is interesting too). I noticed today that the search frequency for green bean casserole was on the top 100 list, and that it has a sharp peak right around now each year, and then a smaller peak at Christmas time. I've only had a couple different kinds of green bean casseroles in my life, and I don't recall any of them being very good.
I have heard people debate about whether not being able to hear a child playing is worse than hearing one that is really loud. I can tell you that I would take either one over waking up to sounds of water splashing around.
I have been quite behind in my magazine reading, and this morning I caught up to August (2008 - at some points, it has been necessary to specify the year when saying how far behind I am).
There is an interesting article in Dr. Dobbs, by Scott Ambler, regarding methods of estimating costs of software development, and whether the typical, fixed price model is even ethical.
Solve:
Problem 1: If you have 100 gallons of water entering a 10 gallon sink with a partially clogged drain at 4 gallons per minute, how long will it take for the water to spill over the top and how many cardboard boxes get wet? Extra credit: how many gallons of water will be left on the floor, assuming it doesn't all go down the floor drain? Your answer should contain references to R (the occasional rest periods of the water filter), D (the distance from the sink to the drain), H (the height of the drain compared to the sink, hint: it is a positive number), S (the surface area of the basement), and T (the tools and other equipment in boxes not yet unpacked).
Problem 2: If the person who owns the equipment in problem 1 above installs shelving to raise the height of all of the stored equipment, will he be able to protect all of the tools from future damage?
Problem 3: Essay question: Why should you never leave a rubber glove drying on the edge of a sink?