Category: General News

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How do you get coins out of a tape player?

So I made a bit of a parenting judgment error this morning.  Andrew and Eli were playing in my car, and I thought they were fine.  They looked fine from out the window.  And they were fine, if fine includes putting my change in interesting cracks in the interior of the car.

by macten
by macten

I spent a while out there with a needle-nose pliers, tweezers, a thin-bladed knife, and tooth picks.  Many quarters, dimes, nickles, and pennies have been removed.  However, two batches of them are giving me trouble.  There’s five or more coins in one of the vents.  They rattle like a piggy bank.  Not sure if they’ll slip back into the fan or if they’ll just hang tight where they are…

The sad one is that a couple coins are stuck in my tape player.  I have an iPod tape in there, and it won’t play or come out.  I can’t actually see the coins, so they must have fallen down into the mechanics.  I looked online and saw some suggestions for putting duct tape on the end of a chopstick to get coins out of a tape player (good to know this happens to others!), but at this point the tape is blocking the area.

Oh well.  The boys now are clear on the concept that coins should not be put anywhere unusual and if they have questions on that, they should ask an adult!

Any suggestions for removing my extra change are welcome!

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Fairs, rain, and French toast

Home, sweet, home.  The week snuck by without me writing a post.  Oops!  I wasn’t taking pictures, and I thought about posting several times, but without beautiful pictures to insert, it seemed a little less than ideal.  Oh well.  Maybe I’ll pull other images to spice up this post.

So our week was a good one!  Tom helped watch my kids on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.  I’ve been hard at work on Althea Dotzour Photography, and having a few hours to focus on that during the day makes such a difference.  I’d had a horrible incident of photo disk corruption and had to re-shoot a session, but my clients were lovely and understanding.  Here’s a favorite picture from the re-shoot.

On Wednesday, Andrew had his four-year-old doctor’s appointment.  He now weighs 37lbs (61 percentile), and is 3′ 5.5″ tall (70 percentile).  The kid’s growing like a bean.  He had fun showing the doctor how he can snap and hop and skip.  It’s neat to watch him grow.

Continue reading “Fairs, rain, and French toast”

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Jack’s weekend 2009

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One of my favorite sights in all the world. The view from Jack's front door.

We’re back home after a wonderful weekend at Jack’s house.  My family has been going out to Jack’s house on the Wisconsin River since before I was born.  See here for pictures from past trips.  Heather, Michael, and Evelyn flew in from DC for the weekend.  Kyle came up sans Maretta (SNIFF!!) because she’s in a play with the Minnesota Fringe Festival this weekend.  Dad drove in on Saturday, which was a treat.  Bev joined us from Iowa.  Tom’s friend Asta and her kids came out too.  We had a big group – 19 people on Saturday night!

Bryan, the kids, and I camped up on the hill, which was a great experience.  We ate waaay too much good food.  We stayed up too late.  We played games and floated down the river, which was chilly this year.  We hiked in the prairie.  Both kids slept on the two-hour drive home.  Ahhh, such a great weekend.

And now we’re home.  Tonight we had our first dinner with all four of us at home since July 14.  The cats are happy to have us back.  Laundry is being washed.  I’m scheming when I can get us to a campground next.

Thanks, Jack, for hosting us.  I just love it when we’re all together!

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My kids are home!

Bryan’s mom (the saint!) flew from Texas to Madison with both my kids today.  They arrived in the Madison airport appearing happy and calm.  Sounds like the flight went very well.  Andrew came pelting across the room to me, and Sylvia (once she figured out where I was) did the same.  I can’t get over how beautiful and amazing my kids are.  It feels good to have them back!

Sylvie is taking a nap now.  She now apparently only uses Poodle and her pacifier when she’s sleeping (yay!), and she nodded a bit ago when I asked her if she wanted to lie down.

Granny stays until tomorrow afternoon, and we’ll be heading to Jack’s afterwords.  From one fun adventure to the next!  We get back from our weekend on the Wisconsin River on Sunday afternoon.  After that, we have no plans until preschool starts in September.

So if we’ve missed seeing you over the last six weeks of Dotzour family visitors and travels, let’s get together in August!

And please hope for not-rainy weather this weekend.  At least on Saturday, a sunny day is best!

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Home

I woke up in my own bed, in North America, at 3am.  I’d been having a dream that the sun was shining in my windows and I was asleep but had to squinch my eyes shut to keep out the brightness.  It would have been 10am in Sweden.  When I opened my eyes, I was startled to find that it was pitch dark.

Spooky and Bowser have been purring and rubbing and  drooling (yeah, Spook’s a drooler).  They’re both so happy to have us home.  Bowser spent hours last night curled up around my head, kneading at my scalp in some kind of kitty ecstasy.

Our flight home was completely uneventful…just the way I like it.  While I wouldn’t say that international economy plane rides are tons of fun, I kept feeling so grateful that I wasn’t trying to amuse a small child.  I got to read all of The Time Traveler’s Wife.  I edited Kaleb and Karin’s wedding pictures until my computer ran out of juice.  I watched a couple silly movies.  The airplane we were on (Scandinavian Airlines) has a little touch monitor on the back of each seat.  You could play games (sudoku, mahjong), watch moives (Monsters v. Aliens, How to Marry a Millionaire (1953)), and the coolest part, watch what was going on in front of or below the airplane.  They had a forward and a downward camera, so you could watch take-off and landing and when the clouds parted, you could see the land far below.

This was taken by someone else, but it looks similar to what we were seeing.
This was taken by someone else, but it looks similar to what we were seeing. Ours had a bit less snow (it is July now and this was taken in February!).

Even when we were super-high (36,000 feet), the clouds moved away, and we were able to get an amazing view of Greenland. Glaciers.  Mountains.  Craters.  Icebergs.  Coastline.  It was really stunning.  Those are some big glaciers.  Big, receding glaciers.

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Planes, trains, and automobiles

I guess a more accurate title would be “planes, trains, automobiles, and boats.”  We spent several hours yesterday (Tuesday, July 28) on a boat (the Stockholm) sailing out to the archipelago town of Vaxholm.  Not really sailing since it was a big triple-decker ship. You can see lovely pictures on the Stromma Kanalbolaget website.  You can see somewhat less lovely pictures (it was a drizzly day) in my photo gallery.

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The boat tour had been recommended my several people here as well as my aunt Julie, who has visited the area before.  We thought it was great!  Next time we’re in the country, I’d love to travel further out in the archipelago to see the open sea.

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My brain is only working at half speed this morning.  I woke up at (what turned out to be) 5am.  I looked at my computer, and the clock said 10pm.  I added seven hours to that and came up with 6am.  So I got up, took a shower, and when I came out, Bryan was also dressed and ready.  Then we looked at the clock again, and Bryan said, “It’s 5:40am.”  Oops.  He went back to sleep.  I’ve been editing and uploading pictures.  And right now (at 7:30am local time…12:30am CDT), I have to raise my eyebrows to keep my eyes open. I guess maybe I’ll be sleeping on the plane ride home.

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Our flight is supposed to leave at 10:15am, so we’ll be heading off to the airport in the next 15 minutes or so.

Catcha later!

~Althea

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Back home in the morning

I’m uploading pictures from the 26th to Flickr right now (see the 26th – relaxing post-wedding day or the start of the 27th – Stockholm boat trip here).  We’re packed and ready to grab breakfast and catch a train to the airport tomorrow morning.  So my next update will probably be from the States!

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We’re in love with Sweden.  It’s been an unbelievable trip, and we’ve just loved spending time with Kaleb and Karin and with Karin’s wonderful family.  Tears have been shed upon leaving.

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On the upside, our time here has proven to us how important our friends are to us, and we’re already starting to think about future trips we can take together.

Until tomorrow,

~Althea

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We’re back in Stockholm…and I’ve posted some pictures

Now that we’re back in Stockholm, I added pictures into my posts about the pre-wedding day and the morning of the wedding.  Next steps are to process the rest of the wedding day pictures and the pictures from the day after.  That might take a while!
Kaleb is taking the subway downtown, and the three of us are planning on going out to either the Absolut Ice Bar (here in our hotel) or some other evening establishment.  Should be fun!

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