My brother Mike and his wife Chickee welcomed their second child last night, little Luke Allan Friedl (8 lbs, 21.5 inches; pics). He arrived after a difficult 12+ hour labor. Mommy is exhausted but doing well, as are Mike and Luke. Waiting at home is Luke's big sister, two-year-old Grace.

(Luke's middle name, Allan, is a name from Chickee's side of the family; her Grandpa and Uncle's).

Congrats, Mike and Chickee!

I've still got to pay the bills while traveling, so spent the day on some programming projects. We had a nice storm blow through, so I sat on the veranda with my laptop, enjoying the rain, wind, thunder, and lightning while I worked.

When you sit on the veranda of my folks' place, the birds generally accost you for waxworms and peanuts, which we keep on hand for them. There were more birds than normal, perhaps due to a lack of flying insects during the heavy rain; at times, there were eight or nine at once. Some of the chickadees [...]

The other day, after visiting a farm with Anthony, we stopped by a house where Grandpa was binking. "Binking" is our family's term for using a metal detector. For many years my dad's had the hobby of hunting for old stuff at area parks and old houses (always with the owner's permission, of course).

This part of Ohio was settled as early as the 1790s, so one can often find old coins and jewelry if one knows where (and how) to look.

We arrived just as Grandpa was about to dig on a target....

Dad does this for the fun, [...]

From the "Too Much Information!" file...

I'd been a bit under the weather lately because, er, my plumbing had been stopped up (more bluntly: constipation), until Mom thought of something she'd used 40+ years ago: magnesium citrate.

An adult my size takes a dose of one bottle (10 ounces). We picked one up yesterday afternoon for just $0.99 plus tax, but it was worth its weight in gold.

I drank the whole bottle of the sour lemony stuff, then a large glass of water, and waited. Four hours later, it made itself known during a short but entirely effective trip [...]

One of the nice things about visiting with Grandma and Grandpa is visiting with Grandma and Grandpa. Here, Grandma shows Anthony some old family photos....

Here, Grandpa writes a story with Anthony...