theparkerfamily.org

Naebody in Particular podcast cover: a collage of old family photographs, handwritten letters, a magnifying glass and a fountain pen

Naebody in Particular

You won't find them on a shortbread tin, but our ancestors live on so long as we keep telling their stories. Scots, Yanks, Canucks and the Auld Enemy. Newest posts are the ancestors, but scroll for the living.

  • found: braids

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  • fraggled

    after a week of saying it was just your average adverse (non-contageous) reactions to some recent vaccinations, our pediatrician announced today that sparklet could (?!?) have a virus.

    … which would have been really useful to know a week ago before we played typhoid mary with a half dozen of our friends kids.

    (fwiw, i’m still not convinced it’s anything other than the vaccines — this is completely unlike anything she’s ever had before, and she’s done the virus “thing” a couple times already.)

    she has been feeling pretty crappy since Friday, so we preemptively canceled all non-essential activities this past weekend — including jon stewart’s rally to restore sanity, unfortunately — to give sparklet the max chance of enjoying halloween Sunday night.

    so, the traditional role of a sick kid’s parent distracting the patient — especially if doing so will get them eating and drinking. but, after a couple of days worth of efforts that yielded no distraction, the lady sparkler and i finally pulled out the big guns:

    fraggle rock.

    and for a few brief minutes sparklet has found happiness, boucing up and down, moving her head like she was a heavy-metal headbanger. (i’m still working getting video, but she stops whenever she sees the camera.)

    it wasn’t much — twice, each time barely enough to get a couple of ounces of bottle in her — but it’s enough.

  • i’m pretty sure …

    … that i’m the only prog in D.C. who’s jumping for joy on his couch right now.

    and that’s because instead of watching the Democratic Party getting swept from the U.S. House of Representatives, i’m watching Tottenham Hotspur beat the crap out of reigning european champions Inter Milan in the champions league.

    nancy pelosi? tottenham hotspur? i’ll take the younger one, with the fewer surgeries — zing!

  • vote

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    i was thiiiiiiiis close to skipping voting this year — it’s the off year for the presidentials, all of the local contests were decided back in the September primaries (which d.c. conveniently screwed up my ballot for) and our representative in Congress can’t vote anyway.

    however, someone at work suggested it was sparklet’s civic duty to vote today, and who was i to get in the way a toddler executing her civic duty.

    so we voted.

    her picks were pretty reasonably across the board, until we had a bit of a disagreement over her choice for D.C.’s Shadow Representative.

    Sparklet was drooling towards Republican Nelson Rimensynder and i was going to object — but he’s never going to actually win (with 75% of D.C. voters registered as Democrats) and the position has no power anyway (technically, he would be seated if the District ever got the right to vote in Congress but that’s never going to happen).

    with that in mind, who am i to object?

    besides, as a resident of D.C., sparklet needs to get used the the idea of throwing her vote away.

  • video: fighting for control

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VjZG94fzn8

  • halloween in mount pleasant

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    our neighborhood takes halloween very seriously.

    kids flock in from all around the city. streets are shut down to make room for the hordes. there is even a certifiable street-to-street rivalry to see who’s going to throw the biggest block party.

    sparklet spent her first real Halloween — last year didn’t count for obvious reasons — over on hobart street where every house was open for trick-or-treaters, at least one in every three houses was decorated, and one house even had a fully scripted halloween performance (“haunted hobart street has talent!”) with scheduled showings at 7 and 9pm.

    unfortunately, sparklet’s wasn’t doing so well.

    it’s officially 7 to 10 days after her first year vaccinations, which is when all the nasty side effects are supposed to kick in — and boy are they kicking in. she made a good run at trick or treating, but just didn’t make it very far before the crankiness consumed her.

    she did, however, get her first real lick of candy — eg. not through a wrapper or cardboard box — a cherry dum-dum lollipop which mommy dutifully unwrapped for her.

    she made it through three of four licks before she took it out of her mouth … by the wrong end … got her hands all sticky … got the lollipop stuck to her hands … and spent 30 seconds trying to toss it on the ground, to absolutely no avail.

    priceless.

  • photos: halloween

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    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    photos: halloween with the talimos, mt. pleasant, washington, dc
    picasa: photos from the talimos

  • found: october

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    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    camera dump: october

  • jalapeno-cheddar scones

    we’ve always been a biscuit family, but we just cribbed a jalapeno-cheddar scones recipe from the talimo’s and i’m not sure we’ll ever go back. full recipe after the jump.

    (more…)

  • shovel

    ECPA20101030_7075 by [ecpark] ECPA20101030_7077 by [ecpark]
    ECPA20101030_7078 by [ecpark] ECPA20101030_7085 by [ecpark]
    ECPA20101030_7088 by [ecpark] ECPA20101030_7093 by [ecpark]
    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    shovel