long time

It's been a while since I posted. Minna and I have been very busy with a few things. Namely buying a house and moving 3 times and going on vacation all within about 3 weeks, as well as doing our everyday things like going to work, and taking care of the baby.

We are now living in our new apartment, that is a co-op that, that we bought, that we love, that we are still trying to unpack. It's so awesome and I want everyone to see how awesome it is.

We began our 1of3 move by moving from our old apartment. waiting to long to make a decision on whether or not to stay another month, which we should have done. Waiting until after the landlord had a new tenant and since we thought he wouldn't give us back our deposit we packed it up and moved all our stuff into our friends' garage who are very generous. This we did to keep our deposit, which we got back. Why didn't we move into our new place I hear you asking. well, because our new place wasn't ready yet. And I can hear the numbers crunching in your head... we moved three times, yes three. We thought that our place would be ready by the close date of the 12th. Which is before our friends would be moving on the 15th. But our close date turned out to be the 20th. So with our friends moving the stuff on the inside of their house we were moving our stuff on the inside of their garage to the inside of their new garage. This was so annoyingly dreadful knowing that we would be moving again, wishing our place was ready. So when we finally signed the papers and the place was ours... the floors were still sticky from the new finish put on that day, unbeknownst to us until at that moment we sealed our shoe prints in the entryway, to be reconciled to have to stay one more night not in our own home.

Our new home is so awesome not just because we waited an extra week to close, or because we lived in our friends living room, with our stuff in their basement, out of a suitcase for 3 weeks, and its actually nice to have a place to live, period. But because the space is nice and the kitchen and bathroom were redone. Yep, really it's nice to have a place to live.

I hate rent

I feel like I throw way too much money out the door and into someone else's pocket, namely Paul, our landlord. Paul is a nice guy and he fixes things that need fixing. But I don't want to give him so much money, It makes me sick to think how much money we've given this guy, no investment no returns. "here have all my money, like I need it". No more. Minna and I made an offer on a COOP. A Co-Op is a Corporation that owns a building. We are acutally buying shares of a corporation that owns the apartment we'll be living in (if all goes as planned). We're very excited about it and fall asleep at night dreaming of our own place, and how we'll make it ours. It'll be much smaller and we won't have our own washer and dryer, but I won't have to donate my hard earned money to Paul, and get no return. Here's what it looked like when I went to visit. (they are renovating and we'll have an all new kitchen and bathroom when it's all done)

so much to catch up on

We've been having so much fun!

Most recently we've had some friends over. The Truscotts came from Boston. We went to Grimaldy's Pizza, just below the Brooklyn Bridge on the Brooklyn side.

When we got there we had to wait maybe 10 minutes to get a table. While we were there I was waiting in line to change Hannah (there was only one bathroom), I overhear this guy saying that this is the best brickoven pizza in NY. Anyway, we finish up and pay the bill and walk outside and to our dismay find a line at least a hundred people long. Apparently it's pretty good pizza, I mean, I liked it.

While the Truscotts where here Minna and I took the opportunity to make use of our nice tent that we got a while back and never have had the chance to use.

It had been soooo long since I've been camping. Even in our backyard it was good to sleep out of doors. The Truscotts enjoyed our bed. We slept on a great air mattress and Hannah slept on some fluffy blankets next to us.

In other news Minna and I were trying to make the biggest bubble ever.

cool toy

I've lived in Seattle long enough to say I'm from there, but mostly I love the water that is all around and about Seattle. I would love to live by the water. And if I did. I would buy one of these. You would get some unusual attention and it would be the coolest thing ever. A hyrofoil human powered water craft, that goes pretty darn fast for being human powered. found at IDfuel.com click here

Coney Island

This weekend we went to the New York Aquarium. We filed in through the front doors behind every couple in NYC with kids and at they all had at least 2 or 3 strollers per child. They weren't the average stroller they were the SUV strollers that Mother's dream about pushing along a sunny boardwalk with few people around. Here they were in this Aquarium Saturday traffic with strollers in this underwater wonderland where no kid in their right mind would want to see live swimming clown fish from the distant comfort of their stroller. Minna Hannah and I joined our friends Greg and Erin. This aquarium was a pretty cool aquarium with lots of tanks of fish and strange creatures.



We saw everything from seahorses to Pirana, penguins, sharks and jellyfish.



We also saw a Seal training demonstration, and I think the most impressive thing thes seals did, besides eat the amazing amount of fish that the trainers provided for every good behavior, was behave exactly as the trainer had them behave. It was actually entertaining to see these seals clap their flippers on command and wave to the crowd.



The entertainment wasn't so much the trick as it was the perfect behavior. The bag of tricks wasn't that big but the performance was exact. Truely the training invloved was extensive.

The crowds were thick and next time we won't take a stroller, but it was a fun excursion.

Practice

Minna and Hannah were gone this weekend to Seattle so I borrowed the camera from work and went to Central Park to take pictures and learn how to use this camera. It was a great lesson in depth of field. I really was trying to take some photos with some out of focus and some of the photo in focus. And this is the result. These are the best that I took of that day. I took these with a FujiFilm s7000.




this one is my favorite of the day

Carrie blogs!

I showed my sister-in-law Carrie how to set up a blog and post pictures and she posted a couple of pictures and I thought that would be the end of that. Alas I have been proved wrong again. She posted, with no assistance from her husband or me, more pictures. Good for you Carrie!

previous posts

I should mention that I found all the cool stuff to see below on boingboing.net. It's a pretty good blog. They have some pretty cool stuff but I really don't like them when they use profanity. I thought the first time I when to boingboing.net that it was the coolest clean blog. It had all sorts of just wierd cool stuff then I started going there on a regular basis and they proved me wrong, oh they still had cool stuff but it's not an entirely clean blog. I wish they would not post profanity and potty humor stuff. It's so degrading on their #1 linked-to blog status. Sure they get a lot of links but it's just so lame when they swear and are vulgar. Shame on boingboing for being such and awesome blog that can't keep their nose clean.

(actually I should mention that not all the things below were posted on boingboing.net but that my web surfing was initiated there)

just cool stuff

The post below contains a link to an article from one of the coolest websites I've found in a long time. It's all about emerging technology. gizmag.com

I've always dreamed of flying

This is one really cool product. It isn't on the top of my things to get. For the most part it is at the bottom, but boy o boy I would love to try this bad boy out.

it's a pogo stick It's supposedly awesome enough to give you 5-8 feet of bounce.

lifehacks

I'm always hunting down better ways to do things. I found this great list of tips on 43folders.

Some of the comments are pretty helpful as well.

wow

I keep talking to minna and trying to convince her that living on a boat would be so awesome. she keeps bringin up the cost. well it appears I've found my solution. we just need to move to the Fuerteventuras coast (Canary Islands somewhere) There's a great boat there. Just need some paint?

politics

I don't think I'll every say much in politics on my blog. this link is about the extent of it. Oh you never know... I might say more someday.

craftyness

People are so crafty. It is amazing. You can do anything with just about nothing if you have enough time. Here is a link to a book about making something from nothing. This page gives some pretty good examples of making a whole lot of something from nothing. check it out

light

Light is so important that corn will bow to it. check out this video

the coolest cow

This is probably the coolest cow I've ever seen a picture of.
check out this cow

found on boingboing.net

our little hannahdoll

Hannah was born Feb 15th 2005. She's now over a month old. Wow. It is sooo cool to be a dad.
Minna started having regular contractions at about 3:30am. We went to the hospital at about 10-10:30. Minna started pushing at about 2pm, and little Hannah was born at 2:34pm

And we made a blog for her. http://dyerweb.com/dan/blog/hannahblog/

1 week to go!

One week to go for our new baby.



We'll have this little baby in no time at all. So we're getting ready. We have the car now and and the baby clothes and the baby bed and the baby car seat and everything baby. We even have a washing machine hooked up perfectly to the sink in the garage, performed by myself and our upstairs neighbor.

the wintertime

Minna is about to have a baby. She is only 2 weeks from her due date. We are both so very excited about our new little duplicate. We have a name all picked our for her, but we aren't sharing until she is born. In the meantime Minna is really hanging in there. She is in the very uncomfortable stage and has difficulty sleeping through the night. I, on the other hand, am like a rock in the night, sleeping next to a restless flower who blooms in the full moon light. Minna's body is slowing down but really coping well with the reproduction of the second female Dyer grandchild. Minna's foot:



This is the wintertime. It is so lovely. There has been some fun things happen to us. For example we must be very grateful to our friends who agreed to sell us their old car for a very low price. It is a 1989 Isuzu Trooper. It runs great and it is so fun to have a car in NY. Although findhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.spell.gifing someone to insure our new vehicle has been a challenge. Insurance companies want gobbs of money for insuring your car here in NY, and our less than spotless record doesn't help either. (break-ins and theft of our last cars goes against us)

We love our new car!


This weekend was the best snow I've been able to witness in a very long time. The Rego Park area of Queens, NY received about a foot of snow. I was surprised how well the city has coped with the snow, and how quickly people shoveled their walkways and driveways. I half expected the news to report shortages at the grocery stores the night before the storm hit as well as the inability of the city to deal with this amount of snowfall.