It is a miracle! The family and I made a quick trip to the Windy City yesterday to see a friend. We had a blast! Frankie loved it. Got back, powered up, reloaded XP on the home base and we're up and running. Couple funny messages regarding the BIOS but I think we're ok. Thought the lightning had fried the motherboard, but maybe we were spared.

And, dig this . . . with priceline.com, Trish scored us at the Michigan Ave Marriott for $70! It was very cool.

Dave, the most vigilant neighbor in all of Bolton Hill (our old neighborhood), turns the big 4-0 today. He not only gave us an infinite amount of home improvement information and assistance, he's also a darn good parent. He was the one that warned me not to feed an infant raisins until they were 12 years old. You just can't get parenting advice like that just anywhere. We are grateful Dave's our friend and wish him the best darn birthday.

Happy Birthday Dave!

(ps Our home computer is still in a state of repair after the lightning strike, no updates for a while. Sorry Dave, I meant to post an emabarrasing picture of you but couldn't due to technical difficulties.)

That thing to the right is a piece of slate from our roof that fell off and stuck in the ground beside my house. Kind of looks like a tombstone.

We got our roof repaired perfectly. Our phone service is working (a small miracle from the whining SBC employees who finally decided to go back to work after their long weekend "on strike"). After replacing the cable modem, the NIC card and power supply, the home computer works and is connected. Still wounded from the hit: cross-cut shredder (it's totally dead), washing machine, oven, ... I think that's it!

Lightning Strike!

What are the chances? Friday night, about 5:30, we sit down to some killer turkey tacos. Outside our door is a viscious thunderstorm brewing. As we're heating up the kid's peas, we hear a crash of thunder and observe a flash of lightning. It sounded as if the microwave exploded. It didn't. Then the power went out. We continued eating our tacos. Frankie was unfazed, Suze was relentless. She was barking wildly. We then noticed on the porch, a gang of kind neighbors furiously pounding on our door yelling to us that our house was on fire. Smoke was billowing out the roof they cried. We were horrified.

Trish grabbed the dog and I grabbed Frankie and we ran to the front porch. It was pouring rain outside and our house indeed smelled like it was on fire. Trish and the dog ran next door. I tossed Frankie to our dear neighbor Donna for safe keeping, called 911, posted another neighbor on the porch to direct the firefighters, ran into the house, consumed another taco (they were really good) and then ran quickly to the attic to find the fire. Couldn't find any.

The fire department quickly showed up and ran to the attic with me. I couldn't believe how much they wiped their feet on the welcome mat. Using their nifty thermal imaging cameras (after replacing a dead battery) they isolated the strike. Lightning hit and obliterated about twenty slate shingles from our roof. Just beneath the roof line lay an electrical circuit that was the target. Fortunately, the downpour prevented any fire from developing.

This past weekend, we've been dealing with the consequences. Appliances don't work, the phones don't work, the washing machine is dead, the computer speakers don't work, our cable modem got zapped, etc.

Inconvenient but hardly tragic. We had help from nearly every neighbor on the street (one even did our laundry last night!) and the roof may even get repaired today. We're shaken but lucky.

...and Vlad, he was just hanging out in the basement waiting for everyone to leave his home. He was fine too.

Just to recap, we're fine, we have plenty of kind offers for help and don't really need anything, but thanks for your concern.

More than you may ever want to know about the beasts that will consume us all at cicada mania. Thanks Trish.

Ah, Columbus in the spring. Not to mention, anyday we'll be eaten by cicadas.

Last night a classic midwest thunderstorm swept through Columbus. As usual, it knocked the power off, made our dog even more anxious (if that's possible) and when we went to power-up, the comforting smell of searing meat on the bbq could be smelled. Unfortunately, that smell was coming from the back of the computer. Savor the current images of Frankie, it maybe sometime before new ones are posted.

An awesome bbq Friday, a perfect dinner on Saturday (thanks Mario and Amy), a fun dinner with the neighborhood group and lots of toddling for Frankie. It was a busy weekend.

... and from the black table, this curiously long url.

How's Suze? It's taken a long time to warm up to Frankie. But she has done well. The first day we brought Frankie home and plopped her down in her car seat in the living room, Suzi started barking and lurching at her. Much like the way she treats squirrels. Now, although Suzi misses the amount of quality time she was used to, she and Frankie are often inseperable when in the same room. Suze is here relaxing on a warm day.

Check out this pizza guy! It's nuts. I look forward to reading Bill's site daily.

And, this, I'll now stop whining about sleep issues.

One mistake leads to another. Frankie slept real late today. I should've woken her up earlier. Then she didn't nap today. Now, it's about 3 hours beyond her normal bedtime and she's not even close to going to bed. Seems she's in the process of reversing her days and nights. It's been a long, long week.

Seen the lion today? I've actually been asked that twice in the past week. First the I-270 sniper and now there's a lion on the loose just east of Columbus. Or maybe it's just a coyote. Maybe just a great dane. What a way to get on the national news.

Having just finished half of my new baby sleep book, I'm tempted to pitch it in the trash. Frankie has decided that playing is much more fun in the middle of the night. No fever, no problems, it just seems that Timex Indiglo feature is infinitely more fascinating at 3 am than during the waking hours. We start the week a tad bit comatose.

Currently reading: The No-Cry Sleep Solution. I've never read a parenting book. However, sleep is a pretty important lifelong habit. I think Frankie will eventually get the hang of it, but maybe this will help her (or us) along just a tad faster.

And, that Bailey's . . . it's pretty good.

'86 Honda Civic, rip

Not fast. Not furious. My wife's 1986 Honda Civic is finding a life with a different owner tonight. She's known this thing longer than she's known me. I think it was about 2 years old when we met. It's got at least 32 horsepower and has never failed to start. Not even on a rainy and cold Monday morning. I thought she should have traded it about a decade ago but she adamantly refused and I eventually adopted it. I began to appreciate it as much as Trish did. I especially liked taking it to the Starbucks parking lot and seeing the Lexus and Infinity owners condescendingly leer at it. Then I'd park next to them, open the door quickly and they immediately realized, they had much more to lose than I. And, we hadn't made a payment on the thing in over 10 years.

My only regret is that each and every ding and bump on it was caused by me. While we lived in Evanston, one Winter it got stuck in 6 inches of ice. Trying to free the little car, I wedged myself between it and someone else's bumper and successfully dented the hood (and did not budge the car). On our way from Evanston to Baltimore, we didn't make it out of Skokie and I had rammed my gargantuan, rented Ford Econoline E-350 cargo van into the Honda's bumper. And some bang on the rear, the origin of which I forget. Sorry little car. When we came to Columbus, it was elderly and we transported it via the bed of a moving van. It will be sold to a mechanic tonight. Around 7. We hope he treats it well. We can only hope the new car lasts as long and sees us through as many fun and challenging times.

Several years ago my dentist inexplicably died (I was living in Baltimore then). In Columbus, my more recent dentist suddenly vanished. My current dentist looked at me with some concern when I told him of my past dental history. I just hope he shows up today for my filling replacement.

I thought I was a bit over the top with the Frankster, check out trixie (from Trish).

As if the whole beginning of the week work-induced mind-numbing haze weren't bad enough, my favorite Starbucks, adjacent to the daycare center, was zapped by lightning and burned down over the weekend. arrrgh.

Frankie and I hung out in the Mazda showroom today while Mom took test drives. In fact, the showroom had video driving games, coffee and this internet terminal. Pretty cool. Publishing anywhere, anytime.

Today we romped all morning at the Park of Roses with friends and had a nice picnic. After Frankie's nap, we're going to a movie!!!!!!!! Home by 7:30, but a real non-G rated movie!