Danny coasted in Saturday from Athens after an overnight stay at Nicole’s. He got to hang out with Morgan, see the Psychic Hearts, and hang out with Anders and some of his old high school buddies. It was a fun way for him to end his exile from Spring Hill. I just moved the Wrangler, and noticed it had 99,999 miles. I wonder if Danny noticed that on his drive back.

A Sunday morning 4:30 a.m. wake up call from his ride got him up for the drive back to Mobile. Kathy and I were concerned about them leaving so early in the dark and possibly being sleepy. Danny called us an hour into the trip to report not to worry about anyone falling sleep. The two girls had not stopped talking since they left our driveway. They arrived safe and sound to try restarting their college careers, a minor disruption compared to the thousands tragically struck by Katrina.

Sunday night, Kathy, Kelly, Claire and I drove up to Athens to attend mass and get some dinner. One of the church members was loading a truck up with supplies to take south to victims Monday morning. The Catholic Center was already filled up with goods, but Father welcomed more. The five us went out shopping and picked up mosquito spray, playing cards, and baby formula. Something to pass the time and keep the bugs away while you are passing it.

Two little brown sparrows built a small nest on our screened in porch last year, but they never used it. They found an opening into the porch where the porch roof line crossed the house roof line. The nest has been sitting in the upper corner over the back door for a year.

This year they (or two others) decided to use it. Friday, the three babies decided to fly the coop. The problem was they flew into our screen porch, and the parents could not figure out how to get them on their way.

Clyde and Stout were very excited to see little critters on the porch. Kathy used a net to catch and release each one on the deck. Later that day, we spotted the parents working with the babies who were able to fly up into bushes far out of Clyde or Stout’s reach.

I was in Las Vegas Friday morning to give a presentation to our operations group when there was a stir because flights were being cancelled to Atlanta. The word was any flight arriving after 8 pm was cancelled. I was scheduled to land at 10:55 pm connecting through Dallas. I pictured myself sleeping in the Dallas airport over the weekend.

I went ahead and gave the presentation then headed for the airport. While many flights were cancelled, Delta and our travel department told me that it did not appear my flight was cancelled. Sure enough, I landed in Atlanta about 11 pm.

My car was covered with a sheet of ice. I had to warm it up for 15 minutes before I could scrape it off. The radio said several sections of 285, 75, and 20 were already closed. I drove slowly on 285, I-20 east, and then north on Scenic Highway to Snellville. The farther east I got, the less icy the roads were. It took me an hour and half to get home.

On Saturday the girls had a great time throwing snowballs, eating icicles, and sledding. Photos: Claire, Kelly, and Clyde with the Icy Jeep. Kelly, Claire, and some neighbor friends sliding down the BIG HILL. They went so fast, they shot all the way across the cul-de-sac to the Pink’s driveway.

Kathy does almost all the work for Christmas, but the job of getting the Christmas cards out the door falls on me. There is a creative process and a production process. It seems like every year there is more technology involved than the year before.

A few weeks before Christmas we all start talking about what might be on the card. Once we get an idea narrowed down, everyone is invited to offer creative input. This year, Kelly and Claire helped finalize the content with Kathy and Danny offering a critical eye. Alas, Nicole was trapped in Athens working at the UPS store.

Stout is the newest (and smallest) member of the family, so he got the focus.

Tools & Materials:

AppleWorks Database. Holds names and addresses. It has a list view for auditing and an Avery label view. I incorporate a graphic from the card into the label view.

Office Depot Labels: 1″ x 2 5/8″. OD2100. ((Avery 8160.)

HP 930C printer.

HP 45 (Black) and 78 (tri-color) ink. The process typically involves a reload somewhere in the middle. We were near 0% on ink when we started.

AppleWorks Drawing. Holds the card template. 2 pages, one for front and one for back.

iPhoto (Mac). Holds our library of photos. We exported the photo of Clyde and Stout.

Graphics Converter (Mac). Used for resizing graphics and doing light touch up.

PaintShop Pro (Windows.) Used for more complex graphics manipulation. A poor man’s Photoshop.

Microtek ScanMaker X6. Used to scan in hand sketches and the family photo that Mom gave us. This is the professional photo hanging on Mom’s wall that she took a picture of with her Canon digital and had printed at Sam’s.

The new range is in, and Kathy has had more fun using the new features than I have getting a new Macintosh. One of the features is a digital probe. The probe has a large stereo plug (as in headphones) on one end and a pointy metal probe on the other end. One end goes in the top of the oven at the front. The other end is inserted into the unroasted beast.

We had a little mini-Thanksgiving dinner last night, featuring a probed and then roasted beast. Kathy set the desired target temperature, and the oven cooked until the temperature was achieved. The advantage is that you neither overcook or undercook using the digital probe.

I’m amazed the rubber coated probe cable didn’t melt. Stout was amazed at the large window where he could watch the cooking process.

Stout has watched every step of installing the range. I think it all appeals to his instincts as a terrier to go under ground looking for critters. His favorite part was helping me reach under the installed stove to hook up the electricity and gas lines. I spent much more time doing this than I wanted because we had a leak. Turns out the instructions that said “apply teflon tape or putty to all male threads” left out the key phrase: “except flared threads.” The flared connections rely on the pressure created by the flare to make the seal, and the putty actually worked against this pressure, allowing a leak.

Kathy, Claire, and I are now professional tile cutters and installers, too. We had to cut 2 1/2″ tiles to go along the back of what is a deeper range than the one we had before.

I’m also now a hack carpenter, because the cabinets had to be cut 1″ wider, and because this is a slide-in range (vs drop-in), I had to cut out the bottom parts.

The other crisis was that the gas pipe Danny and I installed had to be moved over three inches because the back leg of the stove wanted to go where the pipe was. I had failed to see the allow 3″ gap in the install instructions we had copied off the internet. Fortunately the way we put the pipes together, it was pretty easy to drill a new hole and swing the pipe into the new position.

I have mentioned Kathy’s Foodstack before. This is her recipe database that started life as a Hypercard stack and later became a Lotus Domino database available on the web. I’ve added a link on mac.fiveforks.com if you want to find it in the future. Look for recipes with a 4 or 5 fork rating!

This is one of the first web databases I ever built, so I only had limited experience. Kathy reported a few months ago that it wasn’t working correctly. It turns out I broke it when upgrading the server. Some old commands no longer work, but new ones make it all work better. I’ve added some CSS for style and a “search” command that lets you find out their are 81 entries that contain “chocolate”.

I wore a suit and tie this morning because I would be attending Mr. Franklin’s funeral. Mary Claire was standing with Kathy as I was coming through the kitchen heading out the door. “Doesn’t dad look nice,” said Kathy.

Mary Claire looked me over and was impressed. “You should dress like that more often.”

“Why?” I asked.

“It looks like you want to work more.”

Don’t tell Tim Tuff.

Tonight I’m working on copy/pasting journal entries from our old Hypercard family diary into the Stonegate blog. I copied over Michael Fletcher’s Big Nose, which is about the first night of bombing in the Gulf War and has little Danny asking questions about gas masks. As I read the posting, in the background I had iTunes playing Stevie Wonder’s Songs from the Key of Life. I heard a teacher shout out the question “Who invented the gas mask?”, and the kids yelled in response “Garrett Morgan, A Black Man.” Strange coincidence.

See: Inventor Garrett Morgan

See: Lyrics to Black Man

Hear: The song Black Man

Two signs of aging:

1. Your oldest daughter buys you beer for Father’s Day. (8 pack of Guinness Stout.)

2. The barber, without asking, trims your eyebrows for the first time.

There may be others, but I noticed these two recently.

This is some background to Mary Claire’s Small Miracles story. Claire did a good job of expressing how scary all this was.

When a baby is born, their stomach looks large because of their liver. At birth, the liver has to suddenly take on the duty of filtering the blood of a rapidly growing body, and sometimes it gets behind. This can lead to a jaundice condition as impurities (dead blood cells called biliruben) accumulate in the blood. The skin can take on the yellow tint of these impurities.

Putting the baby under ultraviolet lights can help break down these impurities and reverse the jaundice. This is what happened to Danny at birth. His condition was severe enough that the doctors were afraid he would have to have a blood transfusion. After a few days in the hospital, the lights worked, and the jaundice reversed.

Even more serious, though, was a kidney infection that developed at the same time. An immature valve allows urine to back up from his bladder to his kidney, leading to infection and a high fever. The infection was high enough that he was in danger of having it spread to his spinal cord. The doctors had to perform spinal taps to draw spinal fluid and make sure it was not infected. He also had to have antibiotics administered intravenously.

All of this was a nightmare for Kathy and me, although the Irish nurse encouraged us saying how lucky we were to have all of these treatments available in America. Ten babies in Ireland have to share one set of biliruben lights, and Danny had his own.

Danny recovered, but had to be on antibiotics for two years as a precaution against further kidney infection. At his two year check up, the doctors found his valves working fine and he was cured.

Mary Claire had low blood sugar levels at birth, but they quickly became normal. I did not realize she equated this condition with Danny’s. Now I know why she tries to eat so much sugar.

All of our babies were small miracles.