Two Happy 2nd's Trent!

Trent had two birthday parties this year. Both were small because we're down to just two weeks left before the move. So, our house is almost all packed up. One party was hosted by Wayne and Bonnie. The second was hosted by Trent's Godparents Mike and Wendy. A good time was had by all!

A Three Syllable Word

Trent has added a three syllable word to his vocabulary. It is "screwdriver". He has a plastic Mega Blok screwdriver that he enjoys. This toy formed the motivation for his expanded vocabulary.

Another xkcd Favorite

I really love xkcd. It falls squarely in the obscure eclectic zone that is my sense of humor. Here's another good one. If you don't get it, you'll just have to read the books.

Ted & Lori's Wedding

Ted & Lori got married today. It was a great event. Everyone had a fun time. I took 153 pictures. Of those, 19 seemed worth posting. They're available here. The ceremony and reception was held outside. Ted and Lori wrote their own vows. I heard could hear Ted's pretty clearly. Low frequency sound carries pretty well. I liked his vows. I thought he hit all the right points. Kahlil Gibran would have approved. I had some difficulty hearing Lori's vows. But I think D&D made it in there. Ted's a lucky guy to find a woman who, in her wedding vows, promises to let him play D&D. That's commitment.

Some New Pictures

We went to do the home inspection today. On the whole everything was in fantastic shape. There was some standing water in the crawl space. We'll need to get someone to look into that, but hopefully it can be addressed relatively easily. I added some pictures to the flickr set that covers some of the rooms I missed the first time through.

Blue

I mentioned earlier that Trent's favorite color is green. Really it is a more a turquoise color, but on the greener side. He refers to the color green as "blue". He used to identify both objects that were green and object that were blue as "blue". More recently I think he has learned that there is a difference. He also appears to able to point to red and yellow objects. I've heard him say "yellow" before, but I've never gotten him to point to something and say "yellow". If I ask him to point to something yellow, he can point something out. He can do the same thing with red.

House on the Eastern Shore

We made an offer on this house earlier today. In the afternoon, the sellers accepted our offer. Here's more pictures.

Trent Goes To School

With Tina's imminent return to work, Trent has begun going to preschool. Here are some pictures from his first day. He's going through an adjustment period. The reports from the teachers are relatively good. Once he gets past being left there in the morning he apparently does reasonably well. Since his birthday is in September, he's one of the oldest children in his class. This will be the case for his whole life given the way that school entry ages are structured. Trent is in the same class as one of my work colleague's son who was also born in September. So, there's at least one friend there for him who is his age.

The Shop

My first responsibility in move preparation was to get the shop ship shape. I began by building a lumber rack. It was based on plans from Wood Magazine It has two unconnected parts. Long narrow pieces of wood span the two pieces by lying across the arms. Large pieces of sheet stock slip into the large slot in the middle. Here are a couple of pictures of the rack installed in the shed with the wood from the shop stored in it [1][2]. Here's the shop all cleaned up.

The Eastern Shore

I haven't posted in a while. That's mostly because I've spent all of my discretionary time preparing to move the household to the Eastern Shore. Tina has successfully located a new job as a hospitalist working at Memorial Hospital at Easton and Dorchester General. Since the commute from Columbia to these locations is over an hour and my commute is also in the same direction, it makes a lot of sense to move. This Wednesday we're going house hunting. I've use Google's my maps application to create a map of our hunt. The green markers are the critical commute locations. The blue dots are potential houses. The red dots are houses that were originally part of our Internet search but which have subsequently been disqualified due to commute times. If you click on the markers you can see a thumbnail of the house and a quick summary of the commute times.