cat update

Max likes to watch the olympics, but once in a while she prefers to watch us. In a somewhat creepy way from the bookshelf.


When she tires of us, she goes back to watching the olympics. This is somewhat dangerous, as Entropy has found a new spot to stalk her from.


I am rather impressed by Entropy's athleticism, personally. She jumps all the way up there from the TV stand and manages not to knock the whole thing over. Maybe she's actually part squirrel.

The big news in the life of our cats, though, is the newly installed screen door. They were definitely scared of it at first, but now they seem to really like hanging out in front of it. It's the next best thing to being outside!


Perhaps once the baby is born we will have more interesting things to post about than our cats. I'm not making any promises.

Its a boy

Well, this may come as a surprised to you if you haven't heard the news yet, as we've neglected to post it here, but Rachel is pregnant! On Thursday we had an ultrasound and found out that it's going to be a boy!


Here's a nice picture showing the current state of Rachel plus baby. Stay tuned for continuing coverage of Bumpwatch 2008.

Out of control

This is what I picked from our garden this afternoon. Notice the other junk intentionally left on the table for context. These suckers are HUGE!!! We picked a zucchini as big as the large one less than a week ago (last Tuesday, to be exact). We had two friends over for dinner, had grilled zucchini AND zucchini bread, and only used half of the giant. Clearly our garden is out of control.

Anyone need some Zucchini?

July 4th at the camp

So posting once a month is better than nothing, right? Right?

We had a great time at camp no class over 4th of July.


We did a lot of paddling, and basically just enjoyed the beauty of the beaver river.


It was great to hang out with Mom, Sue, Sarah and Al all at the same time. Also, I had no idea Sarah was so good at darts.


This place is just so beautiful and peaceful.

Can you find Sarah and Al in the picture above?

Back to Neutronworld

Sorry about the light posting lately - suffice it to say that life has gotten a bit exhausting. More on that later, but for example, the past three weekends have involved Rachel traveling to Atlanta for USAV nationals, Chad going to Portland for Railscon*, and then Rachel heading to Gaithersburg MD to shoot some neutrons and Chad heading to Boston.

At any rate, I'm back at NIST, and was informed when I arrived at the gate this morning that there is a bear on site.

A BEAR.

NIST is a totally fenced in, guarded, federal lab. Apparently one that is now inhabited by a bear. You know scientists, not satisfied with working in close proximity to a nuclear reactor, might like having a bear around for extra excitement.

I guess the story is that bear was in someone's back yard, and when animal control came after it it jumped the fence into NIST. Apparently the plan is to just wait for it to leave on its own accord. Which is fine with me (I don't think I'm in any bear danger as I walk the short distance from my car to the building), but funny. The gatehouse has a big "bear warning" sign up. Such silliness.

*Did you see the first picture on the railscon website? I guess there are places with a more narrow demographic than WPI. And I thought physics conferences were bad!

First Harvest from the Garden

I picked the first vegetables from our garden today:

Radishes! They looked great, and I soon had them cleaned up.


We had one radish casualty - This radish was slightly above ground and it looks like an animal or bugs got into it.


Otherwise, we had 8 great looking radishes, one of which ended up on tonight's salad.

catfight

Chad caught the furry aliens that live in our house fighting over the blanket by the door. We keep this blanket there, by the way, to keep the drafts from coming through the door. You can see how effective this is when the cats pull it out of the way.