I'm back! I only managed one entry in May, apparently. Ordinarily I'd be appalled, but last month we were insanely busy. Let's hope things are a bit quieter this month!

Earlier in the month we took a roadtrip to Saugatuck, Michigan, to see the sights and catch up with family. Jack's grandma was especially pleased to see him. The Flickr photo stream is here.

Our desktop PC died of overheating, so I had to order and install a new CPU (slightly faster, 3GHz Pentium 4). That seems to help, although it still runs pretty hot. The computer is nearly 4 years old now, so it'll be time to upgrade soon. I'm hoping to postpone that as long as possible, though.

Just about every weekend for the month of May we were out in the yard gardening or at garden nurseries selecting plants. I planted more roses along the back property line and they seem to be doing pretty well. The ones in the front yard are blooming now, too. I planted veggies from seed and the seedlings we've been growing in the basement since February. I finally finished planting those yesterday. Carrie has done a great job planting flowers all over: on the side, the front yard, the wheelbarrow, and the backyard. I've taken lots of photos in the last month and uploaded those and many more older ones to Flickr.

Here's a small selection:

More at the Flickr photo stream here.

I talked about the Canon HV20 high-def camcorder in a previous entry, and after finding a good price, I took the plunge and bought one. We're very pleased with it so far. I've taken a bunch of videos of Jack and the backyard wildlife, and I'm looking forward to seeing how vacation movies will come out. The picture quality is especially impressive. It'd look absolutely fantastic on a HDTV, but for us that'll be quite awhile off yet. This seems to be one of the more popular HD camcorders of the current bunch.

We've watched a lot of movies this past month. The stand-out highlight I would have to say was Children of Men. It painted a convincingly realistic vision of a possible future, and had me on the edge of my seat. It's probably old hat to the blogging crowd now, but if you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend it :)

Alas, we couldn't make it to Wiscon this year. Instead, we went to the nearby morning Memorial Day service. Unfortunately we missed the small parade, but we got to the service just as they were starting. Photos here.

With all of the above, I haven't had much time for writing. I was pleased to get some editing done the other day, fixing an ending to a story and sending it in by the deadline. Now I just need to write more, and submit more stories. I sound like a broken record, but how to fix it? The dilemma of the busy parent ;)