Category Archives: keegan

A gardening weekend

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I haven’t been having very productive weekends of late. Usually I am slow to wake up and quick to go back to sleep, much to the chagrin of my wife and kids ;-) This weekend, however — particularly Saturday — I got something accomplished that I’ve wanted to do for a long time: I planted an herb and vegetable garden.

Some time ago I bought 2x12s to make two raised beds, each 4′ x 8′. I tried, and failed, to put them together in a sturdy fashion. Fortunately Keegan succeeded in securing them and with help from Michele, got the frames installed in the backyard in the spot I had chosen. He also filled in part of the top soil I had bought. Saturday, with his help, I was able to complete the whole job including dumping the rest of the 50 bags of topsoil into each garden bed.

Earlier that day, we visited a couple of nearby nurseries. (One of the many nice things about where we live is that everywhere you turn, there are nurseries with tons of variety of things to buy.) We bought some nice tomato plants, and lots of herbs including basil, French tarragon, yarrow, lavender, thyme, chives, bronze fennel, and cilantro. We also bought several plants of columbine and coreopsis — the latter is a beautiful, blood red color rather than the usual bright or pale yellow. Then we planted a row of sunflowers as well.

I am really pleased with the results. The garden space is small but manageable, and I especially look forward to harvesting lots of yummy, homegrown tomatoes along with fresh basil. In a few weeks I also will plant some additional crops for a fall harvest (e.g. lettuce, beans, peas).

In the meantime, the window boxes planted about a month ago are doing extremely well and we’ve added several hanging baskets with impatiens vinca to the front deck. For my birthday, my mother bought me several nice perennials that need to be planted, too. And we bought two orandas for our small pond.

Seven years

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It is hard for me to believe that today marks our seventh wedding anniversary. Sometimes it seems like time has flown by, and at other times, it seems like we’ve been married for longer than seven years. We are really blessed. Some of the events of the past seven years include the following:

  • three more children (Keegan was eight years old when we married)
  • three household moves
  • the death of my father
  • my mother-in-law’s hospitalization and long recovery from dilated cardiomyopathy, as well as a later surgery to replace both of her knees
  • the death of both of Michele’s grandfathers
  • the death of one of Michele’s uncles as well as two uncles and an aunt of mine
  • the legal adoption of Keegan as my son
  • Michele’s extended neurological illness (which has since reoccurred)
  • my hospitalizations for meningitis and other weird ailments including a severe case of the shingles
  • purchase of two different minivans, and the sale of a car and one of those minivans
  • the adoption of three dogs, two parakeets, several kittens, and several freshwater fish
  • three job changes on my part
  • three graduate courses taught
  • more than 15 emergency room visits
  • thousands of miles traveled to/from relatives and one plane trip as a family (to Maine)
  • the purchase of two Mac computers
  • several business trips made by me, including a trip to Sweden, two trips to the UK, and trips to various parts of the U.S.
  • several other funerals and marriages of friends
  • the marriages of a niece and a nephew

I’m surely forgetting some other important milestones, but this list covers a lot as it is. Happy anniversary to us!

Wii…I like it!

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Those who know me well know that I really, really dislike video games. That’s unfortunate especially for my son Keegan, whose world seems to revolve around them most days. As a combination Christmas and birthday present, he got a Wii from his uncle Bryan. He is pretty thrilled.

The other night I played it for the first time and — shocker — I actually liked it! This may change my outlook on video games altogether (Keegan hopes so). We’ll see. Anyway, Wii gets two thumbs up.

Libraries and future students: getting personal

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Now that I have a child who is a freshman in high school, the whole debate about “what future college students will expect from libraries” has become a lot more real to me. For instance, Keegan loves video games; always has. (Unfortunately for him, I hate video games; always have and probably always will. I’ve made a few half-hearted attempts to meet him on his ground when it comes to this passion and have failed miserably.) Fortunately, he has also developed a strong love of reading and books, although he has a built-in antipathy for libraries, preferring instead to browse around at a nearby Borders. Go figure, with a father who is a librarian.

More recently it came to my attention that his school actively uses Turnitin, one of the more popular anti-plagiarism commercial services out there. Keegan is required to submit his papers to this service as part of his class work. I reacted pretty negatively to this news, quite frankly. He couldn’t understand why. He thought of it as no big deal, and generally a “good thing.” I tried to explain my reasons for not liking such a service but I don’t think it really sunk in that much with him.

One more sign of the times as far as Keegan is concerned is that he is allowed, by some teachers at least, to turn in papers from home via the Internet. This allowance in turn means that he is given more time to work on his papers if, e.g., the teacher says it has to be turned in by midnight of a certain day. Michele and I both feel somewhat negatively about this but then I realized, hey, this is exactly what I expect and allow students in my course to do — the only difference is that they are graduate students and are supposed to be more responsible and independent than the typical high school freshman.

I’m not sure what all of this means in terms of libraries and how they should plan to serve the needs of students, but I find it interesting that I get to experience some of these things first-hand.

Wild kingdom at the Obergs, redux

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The title refers to a much earlier post I wrote when we lived in Indiana. Now that we are back in Illinois and in our new house, I thought I’d write about wildlife sightings we’ve had over the course of the past few weeks.Last week Michele noticed a ground hog (or is it a woodchuck?) living underneath the neighbor’s deck. She and the children had fun watching it from a few feet away from our bedroom window. Then later that day, I saw a black squirrel coming down one of the big oak trees outside our living room window. When Keegan and I were unloading some of our furniture from a rented trailer, I happened to turn around at just the right moment to spot two immature raccoons peaking out at me from a few feet away, one on either side of the steps to our front deck. Maybe they live underneath the deck?! I sure hope not.Perhaps the most interesting wildlife experience so far occurred when I was waiting for a bus to catch in the downtown area of the small town where we live. Without warning, a hawk flew low over my head and landed in a pine tree about 20 feet away. I got a good look at it and I think it was a sharp-shinned hawk. Pretty cool! Even better, it then ambushed some sparrows right in front of me and barely missed catching one of them.I have noticed that the area where we live is distinctly different than anyplace else I’ve ever lived, mainly because there are very large trees that keep our house and property nicely shaded. The trees are a mixture of mature pines and oaks and I love the fact that they support a large variety of animals. Another difference here is that our soil is very sandy, which relates, I think, to the fact that we live on an isthmus between two large lakes and there are lakes everywhere around us.

A dream come true

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A dream came true for us earlier this week. We finalized the purchase of a new house and moved into it on Monday. Most of the essential stuff is here but a lot of our belongings have yet to be moved from the rental house we lived in for the past year. Keegan and I moved everything ourselves over the course of about 1/2 a day Monday and 1/2 a day Tuesday. We were hampered by very hot weather and didn’t get as much stuff moved as we hoped. One of the funny episodes (only in retrospect) was when Keegan and I moved the heaviest and bulkiest piece of furniture, a sleeper sofa, down a long flight of steps, out a narrow entryway and over a short fence. When angling the sofa over the fence, my knees gave way and the whole thing came crashing down on top of me, hitting me hard on the head. As my mother said, the whole episode was reminiscent of the famous Laurel and Hardy movie in which they star as movers who are hired to move a piano down a long series of stairs.

We are all very tired and somewhat grumpy because of long days, short nights, and a lot of bruises, aches, and pains. But we are very thankful that in spite of the trials, we have this wonderful house to live in. The neighbors seem very nice, the neighborhood is quiet, and the mature trees provide lots of privacy. Better still, the commute to work is shorter with less traffic than before.

Light at the end of the tunnel

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We have been going through a very difficult and uncertain time regarding purchase of a new house. We were supposed to have closed on the purchase a month ago but couldn’t because of a number of last minute snags with regard to the financing. We didn’t know for sure that we would even be able to get the house, after all, until late last week. Finally we are seeing light at the end of the tunnel. Tomorrow morning at 9a we close on the house and finally (hopefully) become homeowners again.

The house we are buying is new; I think it was completed late last year. We have never owned a truly new house before. It is larger than our house in Indiana and it is located in a very nice area that has a small town feel with many of the amenities of a big city nearby.

Finally, now, we know where we will be living, where Keegan will go to school in the fall, how I will be commuting to my job, etc. The uncertainty of the past several weeks has been very difficult to handle. Having some certainty and definition to our lives feels great!

Some beautiful weather

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Yesterday we had some beautiful weather, and today looks to be the same. We decided to explore the area around where we hope to live. There is a lot of open countryside, most of it wooded. Mature oak trees are everywhere. (Oaks are my favorite trees.) There are lakes everywhere, too, and it was fun to drive by several of them and see all of the people out in their boats enjoying the beautiful weather. One of the things we did was to drive by the elementary school that, hopefully, Tristan will attend in the fall. It is a nice place and looks like it was built recently. Tristan is quite excited about going to school but I am not sure that his parents are prepared for this major life change :-)

On Wednesday last week, I attended Keegan’s 8th grade graduation ceremony. It was great to be there except that it was held in a gym without any air conditioning. Sitting two plus hours on a bench among a couple thousand hot, sweaty people is a challenge. Keegan is pretty sad to leave behind the friends he has made and we feel sorry for him. But he is a pretty gregarious person and we are certain he will make new friends at his new school. His Uncle Bryan picked him up after the graduation ceremony and Keegan stayed with him that night and Thursday, and then they left for fishing camp this weekend at Honey Rock in northern Wisconsin.

A new house

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Thursday evening, Michele and I signed the papers necessary for purchasing a new house. This photo shows the front of the house. (More photos of the exterior and interior are available here.) It has four bedrooms and two full bathrooms and has about 2,000 sq. ft. of living space. All appliances are brand new and come with the house, which was built late last year. It is in a nice community within a short distance from a commuter rail station that I can use to commute to and from work. The schools seem to be quite good, which is really important for us since Keegan enters high school in the fall, and Tristan starts kindergarten. We couldn’t be happier with how things have worked out, and we just hope and pray that all of the necessary details will work out satisfactorily. The whole process from here on to the closing is in the hands of our lender, our real estate agent, and our lawyer. Of course, God’s hand is over it all. We hope to take possession of the house in about a month’s time. The kids are as thrilled as we are and already ask us when we will live in our new house.