iohelix

so there is a species of bird that lives here that has a song like I’ve never heard before. the song is not the most amazing song I’ve ever heard (although it is really cool, and I love listening to it while I work), but what is amazing is that it sings mostly in the evenings, and I’ve heard several of the same species of bird in different areas of town, and while I can tell that it’s the same bird, the songs are vastly different (in one area, the song could have been recorded and used as 8-bit video game sound effects, it was amazing the types of noises coming out of this bird), and even from the same bird, the songs are somewhat similar (in that songs sung by the same singer are similar), but every time it sings, it’s a new song.

here are some videos of the bird…   Read the rest of this entry »

so unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that we’ve moved to Slovakia.  during the move, I was unable and unwilling to pack my computer up to bring with us. it was just too large to be feasible. the next best thing was to backup my digital life onto an external hard drive–which chelsea so conveniently gave me for christmas–and bring that with us instead. one problem with this is that, as with every other time that I had to wipe my hard drive, I would be forced to re-import my entire iTunes library into iTunes, and if you’ve ever tried to import an iTunes library, it’s better than starting from scratch, but it sucks. playlists don’t sync properly, especially if they are based on other playlists. and the add date for all your songs becomes the same date, which I use in many of my playlists (recently added, etc.) but I think I found a solution to my problems…

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We were going to go to Budapest, Hungary this weekend and visit one of their famous mineral baths/swimming areas.  But the forecast said it was going to rain, so we decided not to go. As you can see from the pics, it was sunny and 70, just like it’s been for the last several weeks.  So we went strolling around Bratislava instead.

This is Bratislava Castle.  Not the most spectacular castle, especially under construction, but it’s right down the street from our house, so we went.  It’s very old (~3500BC, prolly why it’s not very pleasing to the eye), whomever has conquered Europe, held this castle because of the strategic location, the middle of Europe.  You can see to Austria, maybe Hungary and the Danube from the vantage point on top of the hill.  After our castle visit, we went to historic old town and had some lunch followed by the park.

A few pics around Bratislava

This is a little old blue church, for St. Elizabeth

This is Horsky Park, a wooded area in our neighborhood, Stare Mesto

Panorama from our neighborhood, a hilltop kind of in the middle of the city

Please release this movie in Bratislava, in English, and send a babysitter while you’re at it.

Thank you.

Amen

Here are some pics and videos from Skye’s first Easter…

I guess since we put the pics up, I should do a text update to go with all of the pictures.

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Here are some videos of the Skyeberry on her birthday…
caution… some of these are longer than usual (for the grandparents).

More to come about her birthday celebration. Here are some recent pictures of our one-year-old.