Mother and child

Here is my beautiful wife with my beautiful daughter.

It's a Girl!

Meet my newborn daughter, Guinevere Cathryn:



Jan is still in the hospital and I'm just home to pick up some stuff, but you'll hear and see more soon!

My library shows look like this:

Today I performed the last of the three clown shows I was hired to do for Summer Reading at the Library.

With a few variations and room for improvisation, my basic show looked like this:

I burst into the room once the kids are all settled. I nervously start to talk, then am overcome with shyness.

Then I have an idea.

From my trunk I pull a long rope, which I tie between two chairs, as a tight rope. I stand on one chair and nervously reach one foot out onto the rope .... but I am too afraid.

Then I have an idea.

I move the chairs slightly closer to one another, so that the rope is slack enough that it touches the ground when I walk on it. And I do--wobbling appropriately. The crowd cheers.

Then I tell a simplified version of Moby Dick, complete with balloon-animal white whale.

I balance a balloon on my nose.

I make a balloon elephant and tell a few elephant jokes (what did tarzan say when he saw the elephants coming over the hill? "Here come the elephants")

Then I tell the story of the three little pigs, complete with juggling-ball pigs and balloon-animal wolf.

Take a bow, and say goodbye.

Still no Baby

In case anyone is wondering.

What's cooking?

I've been cooking lately.

For my birthday Jan gave me Nigella Lawson's How to be a Domestic Goddess (and she thought she was SOOO funny). So I made a ricotta cheesecake as my birthday cake, served with fresh strawberries:




Next we have a butter chicken pizza:

Which is essentially butter chicken in a thicker-than-usual sauce on a homemade hybrid of pizza dough and naan bread. It was an enormous success, and was inspired by our friend James, who likes to sprinkle curry powder on his pizza.

Some friends I know through the internet were having a cooking challenge themed on chocolate, so I decided to make chocolate-orange-shrimp, an idea I got from a cookbook Aaron had when he lived at CMU (and probably still has?). The chocolate is, of course, unsweetened, and goes very well with the spicy shrimp, adding a smoky, bitter, nuttyness.


Sage and squash risotto


And before that I made an almond cake iced with whipped cream and blueberries, which I brought to a going-away party for our church's pastoral associate Kirsten.

Changes

Inspired partly by Laura, partly by the vast changes that are about to come upon me, and partly by the deep state of stagnation and inactivity that has befallen this blog, I am changing things. This is stage one. There may be further stages.

I am also making an amendment to the general purpose of this blog. Although I will still post about other things from time to time, I'm going to try to make the main focus of this blog LIFE in GRAD SCHOOL. Kind of like the Furnace of Doubt.