Snarks in a M*****F****** Text!

Via Pharyngula, a generator for Lorem Ipsum babble text in the mode of Samuel L. Jackson.  After the cut, because, after all, it sounds like Samuel L. Jackson.

Congratulations Are In Order!

I just got an email from my older son, telling me that he and his wife were both unanimously voted tenure by the members of their department at LSU.  It's not official yet, there's lots of administrivia yet to be done, but that was the most critical step in the process.  This has been one hella summer for them: first the baby and now a major step in both their careers.  We're incredibly proud of them.

More Pictures of Ellie

I've uploaded all the pictures I took last week of Ellie to Picassa.  There are two albums, "Ellie #1" and "Elllie #2". Link here.

My Grandchild ...

My grandchild is, of course, the cutest baby in the universe.  She's just shy of 4 months old, and already knows all about performing, and holding the attention of the crowd. She's a happy baby, only cranky when she gets overtired or hungry.  She's good with strangers, and strangers (or at least the grandparents she's never seen before) graduate to friends and family very quickly.  Here's one picture, to give you a sense of why she's the best baby there is :-)

That's Eva (Grandma) holding Ellie. As you might expect, I've got about 60 or 70  more pictures of her, and I'll probably take a bunch more before we go back home on Monday.  I'll start putting them up on the net, on either Flickr or Picassa most likely, in the next day or two.

Her name is Ellie, short for Ellanor (combining Ella Fitzgerald and Nora Jones, two of her parents' favorite singers.  She seems to be quite at home in the heat and humidity of the Louisiana summer (which is more than I can say for myself).  She really wants to get up and boogie, or at least crawl, and not being able to frustrates her sometimes. I think she's going to be a great kid, even discounting my prejudices.

UPDATE: There are more photos on my Flickr photo stream: Ellie at 3 1/2.

Travels and Home Maintenance

Just so you know why my posts and comments are going to be coming in sporadic bunches: we're simultaneously getting ready to go to Louisiana for a week to meet our brand-new grandchild and boxing up everything in the bottom floor of the house so we can move it all out and have the floors redone. What we have right now is really crappy grey carpet, which picks up dog smells like you wouldn't believe, and is currently several shades darker than it was when we first moved in (and cleaning it helps only temporarily). And since kids and grandchild are coming to visit us here in a month or so, we need to toss the carpet. Also, because our TV set is an old CRT model that weighs more than 150 pounds, and even together the two of us can't move it, let alone carry it upstairs, we're going to replace it with a flatpanel and let the recyclers haul it off. So there'll be lots to do in RL here for the next couple of weeks, and not much time to push electrons around. But if nothing else I'll post some pictures from Louisiana by the time I get back.