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Our next-door neighbor Todd is an event producer, marching-band choreographer, and parade producer. His many roles intersect, and so do the resources at his command: at the climax of last year’s Thanksgiving day parade, Santa and Mrs. Claus were escorted up the wide granite stairs of the Philadelphia Art Museum by a double file of…

Friday and Saturday were snowy (duh); Sunday dawned fine. In fact, the weather was beautiful on Sunday, and all the roads were filled with christmas trees. At the intersection of routes 100 and 113, three black minivans rolled by in line, each with a green tree lashed to the top. Kate and I spent the…

NPR: PWNED! My friend and ex-colleague Kieran Downes just emailed to say that a track from his CD is featured on NPR’s “Open Mic” program. Go listen to the track from his CD “A Movie About Drug Dealers”, and give it a high rating. Remember: Kieran is studying the history of nuclear weapons at MIT…

  The 18th Running of the Turkey Pro National   Kate’s dad had his motorcyle rally on Sunday: the 2003 Turkey Pro National. That’s the four-foot Slow Race trophy pictured at right, which is the blessing (and curse) bestowed on the lucky winner. See the whole thing here! Included: futuristic Ecomobiles! Motorcycles containing V8 automobile…

This weekend, tikaro.com reached an important bloggy milestone: getting mentioned on NPR! Alejandro and I were mentioned on Weekend Edition Saturday, albeit in a story entitled “Inane Blogs.” Host Scott Simon had this to say: “…An interesting man named Alejandro, who works on a station in Antarctica, just posted an entry about his love of…

Kate and I went to our 20-week ultrasound appointment today (Kate’s actually 21 weeks along.) The ultrasound machine looks like a cross between a Xerox copier and a dentist’s drill, with an Amiga computer and a closed-circuit camera kind of smashed together in a big, beige, plastic agglutination. The ultrasound technician uses the wand with…

I just started working with a new laptop: a Dell Inspiron 8600, which is a PowerBook clone and so has odd dimensions. To my horror, Timbuk2 did not have a laptop sleeve that fit my new machine. Googling didn’t help much: all I found were Apple Powerbook sleeves with fifties ski-lodge snowflake patterns that I…

I was reading the “What to expect when you’re expecting” book last night. Opened it at random: “LISTERIA Listeria is a bacteria that [yadda yadda] respiratory failure, convulsions [yadda yadda] common and dangerous [yadda yadda]” Precautions to take: Listeria is common in the food supply. Expectant mothers should be careful when handling and preparing food.”…

A Ballad of Adventure By Sarah Simpson Laird (my maternal grandmother) Found by my uncle Laird Baldwin in the pages of “The Dwarf”, the yearbook of the Tutoring School in Norfolk, VA, 1927 Nathaniel Munn was a brave stalwart youth, Adventurous, ready with quip �       And so in the year of sixteen-two,       With a very…

Corner of 4th avenue and Pacific street, 11:25 am: my phone rings, and Francesco lets me know that Genevieve is about half a mile away, heading towards us on the left side of the street. A little less than five minutes later, she runs by looking strong and confident. We yell her name and get…