My darling DH got up this morning and ran off early to haul more crap home.

We now have a ’94 hot tub that doesn’t work, hasn’t worked for several years, and was allowed to freeze this winter with water in it! Yay!

The first thing we have to do is build something to set it on. (Like that’ll happen.) Then we have to put the tub on that something, replace the freeze-burst pipes, apply power, fill it with water, and then start troubleshooting whatever was wrong with it in the first place.

I’d be terribly excited (a hot tub! HOT TUB!!!) if I weren’t so terribly jaded – our outbuildings are stuffed to the rafters with ‘projects’ of exactly this nature. Snort!

But it could happen, and that’s the point yeah?

A few new pictures of our niece, Parker, emailed to me by her mommy and daddy. She’s three months old already!

And yes, she does appear to still be a redhead.

Is it weird that every time I think of her name, Parker, I think of Charlie Parker, which today for some odd reason reminds me of the Steely Dan song ‘Charlie Freak’? Will it stunt her growth if I start calling her Charlie Freak when she’s only three months old?

A few more pictures of Parker are now in the gallery.

Check out her royal red-headedness in pics from hospital and home!

Krista had her baby this morning. The baby weighed 9 lbs. 4 oz., and mother and daughter are doing fine.

There’s nothing there yet, but I imagine that in a few days our new niece will appear on the Skiff Babies on the Web! page. (Unless, of course, there’s another hospital in Newton that I don’t know about, or they decided not to post images for some reason.)

Congrats, Krista & Andy! Welcome, Parker!

Meet my cousin Paul’s new son, Justin!

Many of you may not know much about my cousin Paul, since I haven’t really hung with him in about twenty years, but he’s the cousin I took baths with when I was a toddler. So we’re close, in our own special way!

Krista’s baby shower was on Sunday. I went up with Barb and ate ice cream cake and presented my knitted baby things and took pictures.

Barb and I stopped at Walmart on the way back, and wasted quite a bit of time looking at stuff. Then we printed out a set of the pics in the gallery for Barb, and I bought some groceries. All in all, a pretty girly day.

Check out my cousin Paul’s new place in Washington state. Pretty cute, huh?

He and Jen are expecting their first, a son, in November ’04.

Blues & Brews fest pics are now available in the gallery.

What a fun festival! Even though I don’t drink beer I had a blast! Never seen so many drunk folks in my life, honestly. Other than the rain – which really wasn’t even all that bad – it was a wonderful fun weekend. Telluride is drop dead gorgeous, of course, and I took lots of dorky touristy shots to justify my Iowa plates.

More vacation pics are coming soon!

Behold!

Joe bought hisself a bona fide Brit chopper! Oh, the endless discussions I’ve been overhearing this past day about tank shape! fenders! oil bags! exhaust pipes!

Such happy, happy red heads out in my yard making big noises. Vroom! Blat-blat-blat vroom!