The final verdict on the animal in field was a GROUNDHOG, and I think that is right. Thanks everyone.  Click here to see the old post and the voting results.

Just a quick update on our garden. Ashlee just plucked out a 4 pound 15 ounce squash. The funny part is we thought it was a zucchini and tried to cook as such. It didn’t turn out very good, but after we figured out that it was a squash we turned it into some delicious squash soup.

Sorry for the lack of posts recently. I have a fun one for everybody and Ashlee and I really need your help identifying the animal in these photos. We spotted it in the park behind our house and only had our cell phones handy. We tried to get closer to figure out what it is but is scampered off. Please vote, we can’t figure out what this is.

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Ashlee has been working hard in a little vegetable patch this year. I picked some of the fruits of her labor. Four giant zucchini, a cucumber, and several mild peppers. The biggest zucchini weighed in at a whopping 4lbs 14oz. I put the gloves in the photo for perspective. I have yet to eat any of it, but will let you know how it tastes.

I have been thinking about photographing fireflies every since the first time I saw one (which was actually when I can out to Chicago for med school). As you can imagine it is extremely difficult. I took about 100 shots and only got streaks on these five. I did take a nice video too. It took about 2 hours on 2 different nights. I started out by capturing them in a glass and quickly realized they don’t light up if they don’t fly. I then tried to release them right in front of the camera and they all flew off in different directions. Next, I tried just firing the camera from the tripod hoping I would get lucky, which happened twice. Finally, I resorted to chancing them around using long shutter speeds.

Nadia has octuplets, here is a quick iPhone post, many more to come.

Just a reminder, as we are about to get a bunch of snow, that it is still winter in Chicago. I woke up and the weather report was all zeros. The temperature was 0, wind chill 0, wind speed 0, wind gust 0, UV index 0 (a dermatologist’s dream), and visibility 10.0. I thought that was pretty funny to see at 7am.

I have copied the weather warning for our area and pasted it below.  Currently, it is -16 and feels like it is -30.  When Aaron checked the temperature this morning the actual temp. was -20.  You can not possibly imagine what that feels like until you walk outside, unbelievable.  It literally takes your breath away.  Washington sounds so nice, thankfully we will be there next weekend.  Schools are closed here because it is so cold.  Stay warm

Here are the official temps from weather.com and weather underground.

Issued by The National Weather Service
Chicago, IL
2:47 am CST, Fri., Jan. 16, 2009

… WIND CHILL WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL NOON CST /1 PM EST/ TODAY…

WEST WINDS AROUND 10 MPH COMBINED WITH TEMPERATURES WELL BELOW ZERO WILL RESULT IN WIND CHILLS OF 25 TO 45 BELOW ZERO THIS MORNING. TEMPERATURES AND WIND CHILLS WILL SLOWLY MODERATE AFTER SUNUP AND RISE OUT OF WARNING CRITERIA BY NOONTIME.

THESE LOW WIND CHILLS ARE VERY DANGEROUS. IF YOU VENTURE OUTSIDE… MAKE SURE TO COVER ALL EXPOSED SKIN.