Ahem....

Coming in late July....

Three, oh, it's a magic number

In case you're keeping track, the old Laleblog has been at it for three years.

OK...three years and five days, officially, but you know, sometimes these things get lost in the shuffle that is life.

Thanks for tuning in.

Finally!

It seems like Cubs fans are as split on this decision as America was (and still is) on the election.

I, for one, am in the relief column. I think Woody should have been let go a long time ago. He was a great pitcher when he was young, but he never corrected his mechanics and it led to years of injuries and paying him millions of dollars for not pitching.

If you ask me, he and Prior should have been cut the Cubs should have kept the core of their starters from the 2003 season, instead of dismantling a team that came closer to a World Series than any other Cub's team since 1945.

So long Kerry...thanks for the memories. Maybe we can use your salary to buy some decent pitching.

Yes, we did.

Enough said.

Vote early...

Nope

What a difference a few days makes.

Three days ago, this was the forecast for Hurricane Ike:



And that would be San Antonio, right in the middle of the path that was forecast. We stocked up on supplies, local weather guy was predicting 100 MPH winds, and it was general doom and gloom us.

Of course, we all know how difficult it is to predict the track of storms, as has been evident by all of the doom and gloom that just didn't come true this year.

This is Ike's current track:



At this rate, it looks like Mom and Dad may get more rain out of it than we will. I've been watching the skies all day, and we've had some beautiful high clouds, but that's it. No rain, no wind.

I hope we get some rain tomorrow, but with as far off as the forecasts have been all week, I won't be surprised if we get left high and dry from Ike. It's a lot like Rita a few years ago...pouring rain in Houston, just three hours east, and not a drop of rain here.

Strength

I'm not going to go into details here, because it's really not my place to do so, but just know that our good friend Maria needs all of the prayers and good thoughts she can get right now.

We're all pulling for you, girl, and we hope you get well soon.

Home

We made it back from our trip to New York. It was a great trip, and all of my worries about going there turned out to be just that...worries. Nothing more.

We had a wonderful time and I'm glad I don't have to be back at work right away so I can take some time to recover. We walked way more in those 5 days than I think we walked the rest of the year!

Instead of posting a bunch of pictures here (I took over 300) I'll just direct you to my Flickr photostream. If you've been checking in over the past couple of days, I'm sure you've seen those four thumbnails on the right changing every couple of hours as I upload.

I've created a few sets on Flickr to kind of categorize things, so if you want to see the wedding pictures or touristy things, or architecture, pictures of our family, gargoyles, or pictures of the Brooklyn Bridge (yes, I took enough pictures of it for its own category), they're all there. You don't have to go wading through all of them to see the things you like.

I think we're going to have to go back. Soon. The list of things we didn't do is about as long as the list of things we did do.

New address

One of the many changes you'll notice around here is that Laleblog has a new address. I've been trying to get my entire website a little better organized, and one of the ways I wanted to do that was to create a subdomain especially for Laleblog. The new address is http://blog.namelal.com - that's it. Nothing else to remember, nothing else to type. It's a little more simple than the old address and it allows me to keep all of the blog stuff out of the main site folder.

GEEK SPEAK AHEAD
If you happen to view this site via a feed reader, the feed will be changing as of today too. After today, the new feed will be located at http://blog.namelal.com/atom.xml

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

In case you hadn't noticed, Laleblog is going through a few changes. It started off as a little tweak to the code to allow me to post larger pictures, because we all know, bigger is better. It's turning into a little more tweaking here and there, so be on the lookout for new things soon, and bear with me through the mistakes.

So long, farewell, good bye.

Last week, a chapter closed in the educational history of San Antonio.


Horace Mann Middle School closed it's doors for business after 70+ years of service. The building will be re purposed, but it will no longer be the "Home of the Tigers."


It was the first place I ever held a teaching job. The first place I ever coached. The place where I started fiddling with computers. The place I met my wife.


It is a sad occasion when a school board makes political decisions that effect an entire community. The neighborhood around Horace Mann will no longer have a school to call their own.

Rumblings

So, I haven't posted anything personally about Monica or I for quite a while. This has pretty much become the "Rachel blog," but the name at the top still says Laleblog, so I suppose it's time to let you all in on a little thing that's been going on the past month. I've been reluctant to say anything about it until now.

No, we're not pregnant.

I was offered a job.

The job I've been shooting for since we moved back to Texas: I was offered a position as a technology director.

The funny thing is, that even though I was really excited about the whole thing, there was just something about it.

I turned down the job.

Had this been two years ago, I probably would have jumped on the opportunity. But I'm older, you know? More mature.

OK, maybe not, but there were an awful lot of factors that came into play that I didn't even consider when I started the process of applying and interviewing for this job. In the end, the timing just wasn't right.

It's an interesting position to be in, getting an offer when you're not really looking. I'm really happy where I am, and while this would have been a fantastic opportunity, I absolutely made the right decision.

What's Old is New Again

I just received my Grandparent's 'weather station' this evening via UPS (thanks, Mom for sending it!). You know the one...it used to hang just to the right of the doorway. Here...let me show you:



OK, so not the most flattering picture of Grandma, but it's the only one I could find that showed where this thing was in her house.

Anyway, as you can tell from the picture, it has three dials on it. A thermometer, a barometer and a hygrometer (You know, it measures the humidity. Ha! Betcha didn't know that I actually knew the name for that. Well, I didn't. I had to look it up.)

It's been hanging in that same spot in Grandma's house for as long as I can remember. In fact, when I think of Grandma's house, it's one of the first things I remember. So anyway, when we were up north, I told Mom I was going to take it with me, and she said something about it needing a good cleaning. So when I got it this evening, I set about trying to clean it.

It's amazing what a difference a little glass cleaner can make. These first two were taken after I'd cleaned the thermometer, but not the other two:




And you can see what cleaning just half of the face of the barometer looked like:



Now it's all clean and shiny, and hanging in our house.

Yo updates and stuff

It seems that I have a case of the Sarahs when it comes to updating the old Laleblog lately. I just haven't had the time or the energy to get on here and tell ya'll about how we've been doing.

Maybe it's been the cold cool, rainy weather we've been having. I've heard folks around here complaining about the lack of sunshine after two days and I was all, "You ain't seen nuthin' till you've lived up north, where it's cloudy, dreary and cold for three freakin' months."

So yeah, it's the weather. I'll blame it on the weather, which works really well as an excuse because the last couple of days it's been sunny and in the 70's which would then explain why I'm writing again, because I've gotten my happy dose of sunlight and warmth.

Anyway, it's been an adventurous week around here. We had quite a little debacle with Rachel at a restaurant last week. We'll just say that she was one of those children. You know, the ones you see and you say to yourself, "I'd never let me kid behave like that."

Then Friday we found out that we had a blockage in our sewer line - the hard way. Which means we spent Saturday morning bleaching the bathtubs and the floors of the bathroom. Fun times!

Rachel updates and new pictures coming soon!

Hot and cold

It looks like it's finally trying to be winter around here. We woke up this morning to a chilly 38 degrees.

Of course the high is supposed to be 71. Saturday is supposed to be 82.

And so goes December in south Texas. Just a taste of winter. Just enough to get you into the Christmas spirit, then it's back to shorts and t-shirts for the weekend.

Best part - no shoveling snow, no scraping ice off the windshield.

Ill-annoys

So we made the trek up for the week, and when we got here we were amazed at the beautiful weather.

Then, today, the weather gave us a cold, wet, slap in the face. This is one of the reasons we moved back to Texas. That, and the fact that we live like kings in San Antonio on salaries that would put us just above the poverty line in Chicago.

We're looking forward to seeing some family while we're here, but mostly we're enjoying just hanging out and having four extra hands to help with Rachel.

Elementary, my dear Watson...

Well, I'm glad to know that my nieces can supposedly read and understand my blog. Not that they do, read it, that is.

New digs, a year later

So this past week marked a couple of anniversaries. The first was my one year mark at my new job. Even though it can be stressful at times, I feel a lot better knowing that when I say something it will be listened to and that I have a big role in the decisions being made for our district. Even though the job title is the same as my last job, the responsibility is much greater, and I think that fact, in and of itself, alleviates the pain of having the drive over 60 miles every day.

The second is our one year anniversary of being in our new house. It's funny how quickly it went by. In our first house, I completed a bunch of renovation projects in just two years: replacing the back fence, making a garden (of sorts), creating flower beds along the edge of the house, remodeling a bathroom, redoing Rachel's room, taking down and rebuilding an entire wall, replacing the lighting in the living room and dining room, and replacing the kitchen floor.

In our new house, I've laid sod in the side yard and replaced the flooring, and even that isn't completely finished since I've never gotten around to replacing the baseboards, and we still have crap for carpet in the bedrooms.

But we are raising a child, which is a remodeling project all on it's own, every day. Now I know why people hire other people to do that kind of work for them.

Comfort Food

Tuesday evening, there was a chill in the air.

OK, maybe mid 70's isn't a chill, but around here, it's a break from the usual.

Anyway, it felt a bit more like fall. Overcast all day, cool(er) damp, air. The kind of weather that made me feel like cooking something. Not something on the grill, but something in the kitchen that would (ack!) warm my soul.

Monica was at class, so Rachel and I went to the store, we bought veggies and egg noodles. Monica had already defrosted the chicken, and when I got home, we started on dinner. I made us steamed broccoli, zucchini and carrots, chicken with a cream of mushroom sauce and noodles. The kind of meal I used to love having in the dead of winter. The kind of food that made me gain 20 pounds when we lived in Chicago.

But it was good, and it did warm the soul.

Then on Wednesday, it was over. Sunny, humid and 90.

So goes October in South Texas.

Balanced

We are so doing this with Rachel.

Erin

Just in case ya'll were wondering, yes, we did get slammed with Tropical Storm Erin today. Since the center of the storm came on shore south of San Antonio, we got the rainy side. It started raining today around 6 AM and didn't stop until late in the afternoon.

Luckily, I had taken a half day off since Monica and Rachel are both not feeling well, and I came home from work at noon. The worst of the rain hit early in the afternoon. Overall, we got somewhere between 8-10 inches of rain. Other parts of the area got well over a foot.

It's funny, actually, because I'm not used to warm rain, but the rain today was warm, like a lukewarm shower. Usually, when it rains around here it's because a cold front is moving through and the rain is chilly.

These pictures are from Culebra Creek, which runs close to our house (but not too close). Normally during the summer, it's a dry creek bed. Maybe a trickle of water running through. Today, it was way out of it's banks. The houses in the background are about 15-20 feet above the lowest point in the creek bed. The trees in the middle are fully grown.



And this road has been flooded out so many times this summer, I can't even count them all anymore. This is the first time I've ever seen the water this close to the barricades, though.



Everyone here is OK...our house sits about 100 feet above the creek (and almost a mile away). Just a lot of water, but the winds had died down by the time the storm had made it this far inland. We had some gusts, but nothing too big.

Of Thunderstorm and Sniffles

In case you haven't been paying attention, it's been raining in San Antonio for, oh, about 3 months now.

Oh wait. In New York or Los Angeles that's a news story. Because we're flooding like crazy, we only get a quicky 30 second mention every two weeks or so.

"And coming up after the break, we're going to do an in-depth story about steam tunnels. What they are, who maintains them, how New York is kept alive by them, and why they break. By the way, all of south Texas just slipped into the Gulf of Mexico. We'll get back to the steam tunnels right after this."

So, yes, it continues to rain here. We've almost received our total average rainfall for the year, and this morning, we had some particularly nasty thunderstorms come through. Lightning, thunder, the whole nine yards.

Rachel, as usual, slept through the entire thing.

But God forbid, I actually got up to go to the bathroom, and getting back into bed, I sniffled, which evidently was enough to wake up my daughter.

No matter that I'd been up for two hours already listening to the thunder and rain, which woke me up, a freakin' freight train could probably hit our house and she'd be fine, but if she hears someone moving around that's all she wrote.

Where does she get that from?

Tell everyone you know!

There are 15 days left to vote for photos for the newest issue of JPG Magazine. One of the categories is "family" and I submitted this photo for the magazine:


If it gets enough votes, it will appear in the magazine. You can vote for it here. Thanks for your support!

Ick

First of all, I want to apologize to anyone who became sick after attending Rachel's party on Saturday. Everyone in the Laleman clan was laid up for the remainder of the weekend too.

It appears, at this point, that it had something to do with the hamburgers we served. If you came to the party and became ill, could you please let me know. We're trying to narrow it down, and I've contacted the Texas Health Department. Hopefully we'll get some resolution to this and find out what it was that made so many people sick.

Even if you didn't eat a burger, but still got sick, please let me know.

Again, we're very sorry, and we hope it doesn't deter anyone from coming to any of Rachel's birthday parties in the future!

Dinger

Monica's NEW CAR! has a BIG DENT in the side, thanks to our neighbor (who happens to work at the same school as Monica). Evidently, she was mowing her yard, and didn't bother to check for rocks before she started mowing. Her mower managed to throw a mighty chunk of south Texas Limestone right into the rear driver's side door.



Luckily, she told Monica about it right away, and her (our neighbor's) insurance is going to take care of the whole thing.

Because I need to keep up with my sister...

You know, I've been crazy busy this month. I can't believe it's almost the end of May and I've only made three posts. I'm sure ya'll are getting bored seeing the same old thing every time you visit Laleblog...and my sister has four posts for the month, so I need to step it up.

Speaking of my sister, she's about to become very famous. She's signed up to be a part of Bill Waldman's 365 portraits. She'll do her photo shoot tomorrow (her birthday...Happy Birthday sis), and her picture should be up Tuesday morning.

I also realized recently that it's been quite a while since I took Rachel's picture. Or posted video. I don't have any new video to post (I've shot some, but haven't had the time to pull in down yet) and we went to take pictures of the little one yesterday so we'd have a recent picture for her birthday invitations.

Rachel is learning to walk, and while she started off none too happy about going place on two feet - in fact, she cried every time we tried to get her to do it - she's getting a lot better at it...and she doesn't cry so much anymore.

Another NEW CAR!

Monkey see, monkey do.

Actually, I had been thinking about a new ride for quite a while. As much as I loved that truck, my commute every day was killing me in gas, and I didn't use the truck as it was intended often enough to justify the $60 per week it was costing me to fill 'er up.

So I researched, and I worked the numbers, and I researched some more. And this is what I came up with:

A 2007 Nissan Altima 2.5 S. Sporty, yet a family car. Great power(175 HP), but awesome gas mileage. It gets 34 MPG highway, and will save me somewhere in the range of $1000 a year in gas.

It's the first brand new car I've ever owned. Yup, that's right, I'm 35 years old, and this is the first time I've ever purchased a new car. It's also the first car I've ever financed for less than 5 years. I'll have this one paid off by the time Rachel is 4 (that's 36 months, for the math-impaired).

I'm amazed at the leg room in this thing. I can actually stretch my legs out completely in the driver's seat.

I did have to change one thing right away, though. I got new wheels put on it. I hated the stock wheels, but wasn't going to pay the dealer $1200 for new ones. I went to Discount Tire today and got the ones you see here.

A NEW CAR!

I can picture Rod Roddy saying it now:

This 2007 4Runner comes with everything you need to go to the beach, take the kids to school, or go on that road trip to Montana.

Equipped with power windows and locks, automatic transmission, an AM/FM stereo with MP3 CD player, roof rack, climate control and California Emissions.

And it could be yours...if the Price is Right!

Monica has had it for just over a week now, and she loves it. It's a little dirty already because it's been raining a lot here in south Texas, and it feels a bit like south Florida lately with all the humidity.

Rachel is holding her set of keys in the picture.

I would walk 500 miles

Since March is over, we're going back to basic black.

This month's banner is up and it reflects Fiesta which takes place this month, when people feel the need to dress stupid and go out in public.

Yesterday, our family did the Race for the Cure. We had to get up earlier than we normally do during the week, and walked over three miles, but it's all for a good cause.

There were over 25,000 people downtown walking and running to help find a cure for breast cancer. We were happy to be a part of it.

And the winner is...

I make movies.

To me, this is no big deal. It's just something I do.

I like playing with audio and video, and I like making stuff for the family to watch. I teach teachers how to do it, and it's fun...a hobby, like photography.

Last summer, my Uncle Jeff approached me about helping him put together a video about some Minneapolis Moline tractors that our family once owned. The tractors were experimental, meaning that they were never in production, and the fact that our family owned them was a pretty big deal.

I told him I'd love to help out.

Over the past 9 months or so, he's provided me with photos of the tractors, and video interviews with my Great Aunts. I started picking up steam in February, putting together the story and script, and I worked a lot on it in the weeks before spring break. Over the break, I worked a bunch to finish it up because Jeff wanted to submit it for a big Minneapolis Moline collectors convention which was this weekend.

But it's really all about Jeff. Without his work over the past several years uncovering this story, this documentary never could have been made. He has done all of the legwork, all of the research...I just put it together in the 10 minute nugget you'll see below.

I found out last week that the video was going to receive an award. It got a preservation award from the Minneapolis Moline Collectors Club.

It's funny, because I've never really received an award for anything I've done for fun. I once submitted a photo to an art show, but didn't win anything for it. I just did this to preserve a part of our family's history, and here it wins an award.

So here it is...my award-winning documentary. I guess I'll have to put that on my resume.

And we're back...

I think that driving to Illinois this last time was the cure for driving to Illinois ever again.

In other words, we're flying the next time.

Our trip back wasn't bad, but the trip up...my oh my.

We left on Friday night, which was planned, but what wasn't planned was that it would take us damn near 20 hours to get to mom and dad's.

This is usually a 17 hour drive. I've made it in 15 1/2 hours before.

Not 20.

We left around 6:30 and we expected to hit traffic in Austin. That was around 8 PM. Then at 10, we came to a standstill outside of Hillsboro (not even to Dallas yet) and traveled at anywhere between 10-30 mph for the next 10 miles because there was construction. But there wasn't any construction actually going on...just reconfigured lanes which evidently confused EVERYONE who was driving north.

Around midnight, we had finally made it through Dallas, and were traveling at a pretty good clip. Then, suddenly, everything stopped. I was trying to see what was going on, but it wasn't until we had sat for almost 45 minutes that we saw all 5 lanes of the expressway were being forced off onto the access road.

After we got past that (now 6+ hours into our trip) we headed up the road some more trying desperately to get out of Texas. Then at 1 AM, the road was closed again, this time in Sherman, Texas, just south of the Texas-Oklahoma border. This one was really big because they even had the access road closed...an air life helicopter was sitting on it. So we had to traverse through Sherman to get back on the expressway.

We finally made it out of Texas 7 hours into our trip. This portion of the drive usually only takes 6 hours max.

And so went the rest of our trip. Between having to stop in BF Misery (or Missouri) to sleep so I didn't run off the road, and having to rescue a runaway truck that some kid forgot to put in gear, WHILE keeping Sparky's leash in my hand, it was one hell of an adventure.

But we made it there, and we made it back. Grandma Connie and Grandpa Rick enjoyed having their granddaughter around, and Sparky enjoyed playing with Rhett.

We had a great week, and enjoyed visiting with the folks we saw and I'm sorry that we didn't get to see everyone, but when you're traveling with a 9 month old, everything is on a tight schedule. We had a limited amount of time at each of our destinations, and the only days we didn't travel somewhere were Monday and Thursday. Every other day we were on the road for at least 4 hours. I think our next trip is going to be just to Bloomington.

And have I mentioned that we're flying?

More to come...

I'll be updating soon. I was kinda hoping to hear something back from ABC News about their flub. I even sent it to them, but evidently, they're ignoring their mistakes. Maybe a video on YouTube about it would get their attention.

Things have been really busy around here, but never fear, I will have a monthly newsletter for Rachel come Friday.

In the meantime, check out the new feature I added, over there to the right. You can now see my four newest pictures that I've posted on Flickr, and it links right to my photos.

Snow Day, Part Duex

Um, yeah...it got worse. We moved back to San Antonio to escape this kind of stuff!


Actually, the surface streets are just fine. Wet, but drivable. It's the bridges over creeks and stuff that people forget about. The state has taken care to shut down interstates and overpasses, places where people could get into big trouble, but those creek bridges seem to be causing people problems, too. Of course, not for us, because we actually know how to drive in this stuff.


Last night, our power went out (looking at the ice in these photos, you can probably guess why) at about 6:30, just as I was finishing cooking dinner. Monica and I waited it out until 9:30, then packed up the family and headed over to Maria and Gregg's. At about 11:00 we realized that our power was finally back on (we called and our phone rang, as opposed to going straight to voicemail) so we packed everyone back up and headed home.


We would have spent the night at Maria and Gregg's, but Rachel was having all kinds of problems going to sleep over there. I guess she's getting to the point where she recognizes when things are out of the ordinary.


Our power went out again around 7:30 this morning, but luckily, this time it was only our for about 90 minutes.


Enjoy the photos.

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

Do you see that? There, on my truck.

Yes, I need to wash it...but there, on the bottom part...


Yup, that's ice. We're getting freezing rain here in San Antonio and it's a huuuuuuge deal. All of the schools are closed, and the morning shows have been on the air going on four hours now. I don't know why...there's nothing new to tell us. Last night, they told us all of the schools were closed, this morning, they could have told us in just their usual couple of hours that interstates are closed (because it's evidently really hard for TXDOT to get a truckload of salt from the panhandle) and so now they're just showing us all the same footage, giving us the same forecast, and showing us the same accidents hour after hour.

The media around here does this with any major weather event...they just can't tell us what's going on and shut up. They have to stay on the air constantly and give us bascially nothing to watch. If people are holed up inside their house, they don't want to watch the same thing over and over...we'd like some entertainment, please, and just keep that scrollbar going across the bottom of my screen. It does the same thing you all are doing...tells me the same thing over and over.

But as you can tell, it's nowhere near as bad as the ice store they had in St. Louis earlier in the week.


But, this is San Antonio, after all, and anything out of the ordinary here is a big deal.

Updates!

OK, so I know these probably aren't the updates you're looking for (Mom) and they're certainly not the droids you're looking for.

Yeah, that was stupid, but it just popped in my head and I had to let it out.

Anyway, I've finally gotten around to adding some photos to the old photo page at namelal.com. If you've never checked out the rest of the site, you really should. I've put a lot of work into it, so look at it, already!

Anyway, you can just take out the "blog.html" up there at the top of the page, and that will get you to the main site. From there you can click on "photos" and peruse some of the pictures I've taken.

Or, if you're lazy, you could just click on the link I've conveniently placed for you on the right side of the screen.

Don't Dream It's Over

Monica and I have two days (including today) of vacation left. Then it's back to the grind. Back to our routine. Back to getting up when it's dark out.


We had a great Christmas. The whole Laleman clan was here in sunny San Antonio. While it wasn't as warm as I would have liked, the weather was definitely more favorable than what we usually drive up north to experience at this time of year.




Rachel had a great time and totally raked in. She especially loved playing with all the wrapping paper.


Dad and I managed to play lumberjack (insert Monty Python song here) and cut down the two dead pines in our back yard, and get some rather large dead branches cut off the live oak.

It was so nice to have everyone here.

New Year's Eve with a baby in tow was quite an experience. Rachel took a late nap yesterday and decided that she really didn't want to go to sleep even though it was two hours past her normal bedtime. She fussed and fought and cried, until Monica took her for a little car ride, and she finally nodded off. Of course, at midnight, when all of the fireworks started going off, she promptly woke up. It's going to be a lot of fun trying to get her back on a routine.

Now, the Christmas decorations are down (because I knew it would never happen if I didn't do it now) and it's time to get back to our daily lives.

Why can't someone pay me to just sit around and do this all day?