Huffman Coding

Gone Twittering…

In case you hadn’t noticed, my blogging is on an arbitrary hiatus. I’ve put a few cute stories in the 2006 Holiday Letter.

Turns out Chris didn’t want to hassle with mailing cards out this year. :-(

So, if you would, print out the letter on some nice red and green stationary and sign my name on the bottom with a personal note wishing you a pleasant 2007, then tape it onto your fridge.

Unlike my previous Hondas, my current sedan has a decent audio system. The general consensus of the contributors to my car’s forum website is that this 1812 Overature DVD-Audio was the definitive recording to exercise its fidelity. Since it doesn’t play in normal CD players, it stays in my car.

My girls call the first track the “Boomer Song.” Katie giggles when she sits in the backseat, inches from the subwoofer, and the cannons go off. This afternoon while the girls were in the car with me and the Overture came on and the Kiev Symphony Chorus joined in, Claire asked me:

“Did the boomers kill the singers?”

This past weekend, I rode the bike trail at my in-laws with my three girls, including 4-year-old Claire who had just learned to ride without training wheels last week. She ran into a couple of the poles that are in the center of the trail where it intersects with roads. I suppose I should now teach her how to operate the coaster brake on her bike.

I was riding my brother-in-law’s 30-year-old Schwinn. Three sizes too big with old fashioned friction shifters on the stem. No bike cleats. No helmet. For you youngsters out there, they used make bikes with only 10 speeds!

As my 8-year-olds were girls were pedaling up a storm, I was thinking that maybe it was time for their first organized bike ride!

That thought disappeared two minutes later when Katie veered into my front tire with her 16″ bike, pushing me off the left side of the paved trail. The front wheel went left and for the first time in 15 years or so, I fell off my bike. I landed on my right hand and rolled across the trail. The left pedal had made nice little gashes in my left leg.

At the trail’s end, my father-in-law was waiting to load the bikes back onto his truck. He asked how the ride was…

“I ran into a little traffic”

I’m still pressing down on the inside corner when I open the kitchen cabinets to release the latches that are no longer there.

As I mentioned in a previous blog entry, our family was on vacation this week and last. We drove down to the Carolinas and back. It ended up about 2000 miles.

During vacation, we noticed a small crack in the windshield near the bottom of the driver’s side and, as the trip progressed, the crack grew from about 5 inches to about 20.

And so, once back from vacation, Chris scheduled to have an auto repair place come to the house and replace the windshield for yesterday morning.

Except they didn’t show up.

She had to follow up with them yesterday afternoon and, since Chris needed to use the car the following morning, she rescheduled the appointment for this afternoon.

In the meantime running those errands this morning, Chris called me on her cell. Another rock had hit her windshield, and there was now another crack on the passenger’s side.

Katie lost the second of her two front teeth on the way home from our family vacation.

My wife has served corn on the cob for dinner for the last days. I don’t know if that was intentional.

I’m watching Herbie Fully Loaded with the girls. In the climatic race scene, the car leaks oil onto the racetrack and jeopardizes its position.

As the camera cuts to a shot of the underside of the car with oil spilling from the oil pan, Claire exclaimed

“Herbie’s PEEING!!!”

We seem to have urine problem with cats. Dino, as some longtime readers may recall, was returned to humane society because he peed outside his litter box.

Cooper, our newest cat, peed on the futon in the basement a few weeks ago. We chalked it up to being locked down there away from his litter box, but weren’t sure exactly why.

Well tonight, my sister and her family are coming into town for the parade and fireworks. I offered our house for them to stay overnight and in the interest of full disclosure, I did mention that they would be welcome to use the futon, but that it had been marked by our feline, so they might want to make alternate sleeping plans.

This weekend my wife, wanting to be a good host, instructed me to get a brand new futon mattress for our relatives. We know of no way to get the smell out of the old one, so it made sense. Chris wanted me to get a nicer inner-spring one in the process.

After stopping a four stores, I found a good Sealy one yesterday and brought it home in our hollowed out minivan and lugged it down to the basement by myself. Tad more expensive than I would like, but whatever.

This morning Chris called my at work screaking into phone. The cat had peed on the new, expensive futon mattress, less than 24 hours after we bought it.

My sister’s family will be here in a few hours.

I spent the last week on the Great Ohio Bicycle Adventure. It has a little different atmosphere than my daily desk job.

I spend almost all of GOBA week outside and I usually spend time my non-vacation time indoors. I wear sandals instead of my usual sneakers. Without regular access to an AC outlet, I ditch my pda for a plain wristwatch.

The biggest change for the week is that I talk to strangers.

While can be obnoxious gregarious with people I know, I rarely strike up a 30-second conversation with someone I don’t know at, say, the grocery store.

But on Monday morning I passed a rider named Mary who proceeded to draft me for a dozen miles. I didn’t mind the ego boost, but eventually I petered out. She rode ahead and met up with a pair of riders named Dave and Dave from Buffalo. And they all met up with Jennifer and Andy from Wadsworth. They were riding with Nick whom they had met the last day of last year’s GOBA.

The Daves thought I was with Jennifer and Andy because I had a matching jersey. Jennifer and Andy thought Mary was with me because she was referring to me in surprisingly colloquial terms. I thought the Daves knew Jennifer, Andy and Nick.

All of us (aside from Mary who really was with another group) set up camp together and we soon realized that none of us really knew each other but we went to dinner and spent the rest of the week camping and riding together. Total strangers. Very bizarre entertaining conversation too.

And if my new friends are reading this: send pictures!