i drove to williamsburg this past weekend.

while i was somewhere in the vast wastelands between richmond and fredricksburg (my least favorite part of the trip) i started doing a little math to see out how many times i’ve covered the 180-odd miles in the last 15 years.

172.

that’s 21 round trips over my first three months after graduation in 1997 (where i commuted a three day a week internship from Williamsburg to DC) plus a round trip approximately every three months for the next 14 1/2 years.

this inspired me to do a little stop-motion photography on the way back to share the love.

okay, given how good she has gotten this obviously isn’t her first bike ride — but it’s the first one that involved mommy or daddy, and the first one we captured on camera.

as a pre-emptive thank you gift, i bought the lady sparkler an ipad — mainly for the near-term pain she’s going to face with me switching from a 35 hour/wk job to one that’s more like 50 hours/wk.

(she wants it to satisfy her horrible taste in tv/streaming video. the ipad is admittedly much more fun to watch on the couch than watching hulu plus on the computer at a desk.)

turns out, we had the thing for a sum-total of 72 hours before sparklet learned how to turn it on, navigate to the main menu, load up the photo application, select a photo from the index, and start flipping through the pictures.

i’m starting to wonder if we’ll ever see it again.

i’m so proud.

UPDATE: after a weekend of video production, i just uploaded videos going all the way back january — so be sure to check the archive if you’re bored/interested.

especially the shakira video.

about a month ago, our washing machine went kaput — and decided to flood the unit below ours.

oops.

the guy who lives there came up and told us, and was pretty chill about the whole thing.

“oh, the last time this happened …”

huh?

turns out the previous owners of our unit flooded his apartment … as did the owners before them. actually, one of them did it twice, apparently.

and, when we i pulled the washing machine out from the closet to see what the heck was going on, there was a half inch gap between the wall and the floor — so any time water splashed out of our machine, it went right through to the ceiling of his unit.

so, i spent last weekend patching the open space — wood, plaster, caulk — and spent this weekend painting everything up nice and spiffy.

and, while the lady sparkler was buying us new laundry equipment to complete the mini-renovation, baby sparklet was discovering the joy of automatic doors (see video, above).

priceless.