premidlife

Wha???

2009-10-02T16:35:00.001-05:00

Hey, I still have a blog! WTF? Wonder if it still works... heh heh heh.

Crime stories

2009-08-23T15:19:00.002-05:00

Yeah, so I got mugged. Robbed at gun "point". I put scare quotes around "point" because, luckily, the gun was not pointed at me, just shown to me. But it was scary. Apparently, despite any macho fantasies one may have had previously, my brain was ready very quick to react as soon as it recognized the weapon. Wallet dropped, and feet engaged. Unfortunately, my eyes were not quite as with the program. I think I shut my eyes but my body went into action to escape. So I ran head first, or tripped into, or maybe I got hit, I don't know. I like to believe the "tripped while running" story, but anyway, I hit a short sign and gashed my head open during my escape.

blogless

2009-07-12T16:00:00.001-05:00

between facebook and twitter, I'm finding no room to really blog. Or maybe its because those avenues are so much better at being instantly accessible...

I have the intent of using el blog for longer, more thought out things, but as you can see...I don't think so much these days!

so it would seem.
or maybe I just think too fast.

Rain

2009-06-18T12:17:00.002-05:00

It actually didn't rain yesterday. This situation has been rectified but the steady "light" downpour today, and if the rumors are true, tomorrow also.

Picked up dad at the airport. I spent as much time on various subways and trains as dad spent in the air. So now he's here, we've eaten some lunch, and he's going to finally try and get some sleep while I do our last load of laundry, finish packing, make other preparations.

I hear the snoring (no cpap) so I guess that means he's sleeping already.

Comeback kiddo

2009-06-17T22:59:00.002-05:00

They arrived healthy and happy (and 20 minutes early!). Felix was once again the model airplane passenger for his age group and below. They should give some sort of frequently flier bonus points for that or something. Anyway, they got there safe and sound, went grocery shopping, and went to Gramoms and Poppas house. Felix gets on fabulously with his cousin Colin who is one or two years older than him. Its good to have cousins close to your age. Makes family gatherings more fun, I think.

I am in the midst of chaos. I have unpacked everything from its rightful place so that it can be put back away but into boxes instead of into closets and drawers. Andrea did lots before she left, but there's still lots of nitty and gritty to go. Tids and bits, as they say. Come up to the point where I have to guage, "Is it too early to pack this away yet? Mightn't I need some of that in the next few days?" But then its hard to not pack absolutely everything and live like squatters amid the boxes when you consider the type of schedule we have set up.

Ah...the chaos. Well planned chaos. Wish I was on the relaxing end like Andrea and Felix. Sure enough, I'll get there, sure enough. So it goes.

d-week

2009-06-16T08:33:00.003-05:00

So here it is. A and Felix fly off tomorrow. In a week or two we will be back in the lower-upper-mid-center of the country. Seems fairly spatially accurate. Anyway, we won't be east coasters anymore, though it's hard to really feel like you are on the coast when you are constantly surrounded by buildings and people. No nice sandy shore lines (yes, we made it out to Jones Beach once and Coney Island, but living in Brooklyn does NOT come with that "island" feel).

Anyway, days are strictly numbered. Midwest, here we come...back. In a way is with the taste of defeat, but in others it is with the taste of victory. So it goes. So it goes.

blogette

2009-06-09T09:00:00.000-05:00

just a quick post: it seems incredible that the move is coming up so quickly. It went from months to weeks in what seems like no time at all. I guess this is the way of things. Sort of the same for any big event like a wedding, home purchase, or birth. You get ready for a long time and then suddenly, bam, the moment is upon you. That's sort of how it feels right now.

Modern convenience

2009-05-31T00:31:00.003-05:00

I cannot WAIT to have a dishwasher, clothes washer, and dryer...not to mention a laundry room, real kitchen, and non-wood paneled bathroom (or other rooms, either).

mouthes of babes

2009-05-26T22:49:00.002-05:00

During dinner Felix climbed into my lap. Andrea and I had finished and Felix was still toying with his dinner. He pulled his plate over in front of us and was fiddling with his fork. Suddenly, he looks back and up at me and lifts his plastic utensil and says, "I'm going to fork you up!"

Andrea and I could not hold back the laughter. If he was from New York it would have been something else perfectly.

Moved to Seattle?

2009-04-11T12:31:00.004-05:00

So, since April 1 we have had 1 whole day of sunshine. Every other single day has been either partly cloudy, overcast, or rainy, with the majority of the days being rainy. I recall last year there being some rain in the spring, but nothing like this. It's starting to feel an awful lot like we've been transported to Seattle, minus all the greenery, and plus (I expect) about 9000 times the amount of dogshit on the sidewalks. I am only speculating on this last point because I imagine Seattlites to be wholly more conscientious about picking up after their dogs. No basis for that. I've only been there once, the weather was great, and I did not encounter any dog doo (and I walked everywhere on that trip, except for one brief and harrowing car ride from the airport).

So, yeah, been gray and cold and rainy (actually snowed yesterday). And I might add, it really sucks. So, not to be a gloomy gus, but it has been nothing but gloomy here, on top of everything else that goes on in this borough. It is coming up on a very active time of year, however, and it would be nice to be feeling all warm and sunshiny. I mean, seriously, with the amount of things we have up in the air, you'd think we were a family of sky-diving jugglers. Sigh.

Our family fortune cookie would read, "Major change is coming, but not in the weather. Button up!"

Tomorrow is Easter Sunday, or just Easter. My mother asked me if Felix was going to get an "Easter Bunny Basket" which I guess is her way of trying to unreligiousify the idea of Easter in my mind. But the answer is yes, we are going to set him up with a little Easter basket with a couple treats. The odd thing is, since Easter is not nearly as commercial a holiday, it has not had much traction in our secular, non-TV influenced day to day living. You don't even get a day off from work, so there has been almost no reason for us to even think about Easter. But right now it would be nice to have a excuse to have a little change in the weekend, have a little extra treat like an Easter basket. Mom asked if Felix had been talking about Easter, to which I replied, "Uh...no. He doesn't know anything about it. We haven't been talking about it at all...hasn't really been on our radar." So, not only will Easter be a nice treat, it will also be mostly a surprise. And Felix likes surprises if they are good ones that involve little treats. So we'll outfit a little basket with some fake grass and some goodies. I suppose I might tell him some sort of story about the easter bunny or the origins of the holiday. Trying to explain the Jesus stuff would be way too complicated, so I'll probably stick to the historic rites of spring type stuff. We might color Easter eggs, too. Who knows. I'm sure Felix would love that.

One nice thing about celebrating Easter is that even in its fully celebrated form, it is not a majorly commercial holiday (beyond the confectioner market). There's no pressure to drop a lot of money on Easter presents or even, really, to have some fancy meal. A nice meal is good if you are having a big gathering, or if you want to just get out for a treat, but in general...Easter basket with some goodies, a couply little trinketty toys and plastic eggs, an easter egg hunt, and voila! Low impact holiday! Of course, you just have to deal with some places being closed. We don't usually go anywhere on Sundays except for the park and whatever shopping chores are leftover from Saturday.

At least the forecast for tomorrow is sunny, even though it will be cold. So there is that. Weather forecasts here seem to be more accurate than we used to see in the midwest. Not sure why. Maybe being on a island gives us more predictable forces than the anything goes climatology of the middle west. And not sure why it would even be considered the midwest since it is really just the middle. Minnesota should be called the upper middle, not the midwest, since it is, technically, at the topside of the middle, not the middle of the left side. And then the middle east isn't even in this hemisphere...wtf is that about? The middle west is Ohio to Nebraska and the middle east is Libya to Iran. Maybe that makes more sense...does being the midwest really mean that America's heartland is actually the very center of western civilization? Sounds nice, but not likely. Then you have to get into the semantic argument about whether "middle" equals "center" and if "center" refers to geographical, cultural, ideological, etc... Of course, New York and its New Yorkers would immediately take issue with that since everyone here knows that NYC is in fact the center of EVERYTHING. I mean, really, where would our economic crisis be without New York and Wall Street? Flounding, looking for its center...or maybe not even existing. Which is optimistic. i do believe that given the chance, American masters of finance would have come up with the same crap regardless of where they were based.

I guess I should read more history. I know Japan had their big bust and never fully recovered. But did anyone have a "Great Depression" like we did? And did they recover? Or is that what happened to all those hundreds of countries and societies whose names have faded into the dust. They couldn't have all disappeared due to being conquered by their neighbors. I bet thats what happened to the Incas and Mayans. High finance. Sub-prime mortgages and complex securitized financial instruments. Human sacrifice, basically.

Sigh.
Enough for one laundry-day.

Guts

2009-03-27T16:02:00.003-05:00

as in, mine have been wiggly jiggly for the past couple days. See, we've been looking at life a lot lately and trying to make some big decisions. When you are/have a family it seems like there are no little decisions, but some decisions are a lot bigger than others.

Anyway, life is full of dependencies. You cannot do A until you have done B, cannot do B until you have done C and/or D. Etc. Or you don't know if A is an option until you know the state/status of B, C, and D situations/conditions. You get the picture. And of course, every item has its own dependencies and due dates and everything. Trying to keep them all straight, or just trying to get them to line up in the right order (or be able to stand waiting on one thing so you can tackle the next) can be a gut wrenching experience. Hence, my guts. And their wrenchiness.

It is no easier because of my seemingly innate desire to buffer the spaces between these things with some sort of comfort. Try to celebrate A before having to deal with B. My other half is the other way around, preferring to charge on to B at the very moment A is resolved and maybe grabbing a moment's respite somewhere along the way? Or perhaps at the end? Where/Whenever that might be?

As you can tell, I'm not going to go into great detail here, but just state that its really kinda crappy to have your isides so mixed up. On the one had, hooray! on the other hand, I wish I didn't have to think/deal with things.

in other super sappy parental emotional news, Spike Jonez is making a movie of Where the Wild Things Are and for some reason the trailer makes me feel like bursting into tears. Not becaus I'm sad but because watching it makes me feel like I'm getting a look into Felix's future, a look at a possible future Felix. I can totally see him as that little boy. Even today he was being a little wildthing. He so totally IS the boy from Where The Wild Things Are. It's bizarre. Watched the trailer twice, at different times, just to make sure I wasn't getting swept up in some sort of strange empathy/nostalgia wave or something. Nope. Same effect at different times, in different settings.

When does kid-stuff stop tugging at your heart strings? Ever?

Laundry Post

2009-03-21T14:04:00.002-05:00

I'm doing laundry right now. Everything seems to be ok with the house and boiler. My father in law and brother in law (not related) went to the house last night and we verified that nothing horrendous is/was about to happen, so they went home. Today FIL went back to get the boiler started. He tapped some relays and maybe unplugged and re-plugged the master relay and foosh, everything jumped back to life. He'll check back in a couple days to make sure the house is still standing. So, that's a load off our minds, but also gives us more reason to think and consider and plan for some other things in the near future, maybe. Thinking back on this, two years ago (our first spring in our new house) this same type of thing happened to us. There's even a post in the archives about it. I think it was in April of 2007 when one spring morning the furnace mysteriously was not on. I ended up calling the boiler guy at 6am and he walked me through getting it restarted (it was the flue damper switch that time...apparently we don't have one of those anymore???). About the same time of year, about the same type of situation. Maybe this sort of thing is common amongst 1 year old boilers. Maybe they build in a little 1 year timed defect to make sure you get your boiler checked out a year after it is installed? Naw. If they were going to do that they'd have it break something major so that you had to pay something... But still. Hmmm.

Weather here is nice, if a bit cool. Felix is amazing as ever. Still refuses to do #2 in anything except a diaper but we rarely have accidents with #1 or #2. work is going very well for me and Andrea is making adjustments and trying to figure out ways to keep her career from dying on the vine. Some weird things have happened there which I won't get into, but suffice it to say that clients are clients are clients, and as soon as you feel like you're committed to one course of action, something ALWAYS crops up to complicate things.

In general, there is not too much love lost between us and NYC anymore. When we came out here, I thought it was great to be here. All the options and all the convenience and everything. But for all of that, you eventually start to feel the hidden and not so hidden costs of such things. There are definite things I like about NYC and will probably miss regardless of where we end up in the future. But there are also a lot of not so nice things that come along with living here too. Someday I may catalog all of those things for your perusal. Not today. Right now I'm too busy trying to make lemonade.

Deja Vu

2009-03-20T23:19:00.002-05:00

First day of spring. What a day.

As it happens, we found out, again by accident, that something had gone kaflooey with our boiler in our house in Minneapolis. In this case we did NOT also find a house full of frozen pipes and radiators. No, we know quite certainly that the heat has been working up until at least last week some time. And the temps in minneapolis are predicted to be above freezing for the next week at least.

But again, it starts with someone reporting that something seems not right, then the prop. mgmt company sends someone over who comes back and says "Yeah, seems cold over there even though the thermostat is set at 60." Well, last time, over a year ago, they found everythign frozen solid and it took until I think just about this time last year for all the repairs to be completed. This time I sent my local representatives over and it seems like perhaps the damper safety relay got thrown or something. This happened on our last brand new boiler one night that it got particularly windy. So, hopefully my FIL can get it sorted out and make sure everything is in proper working order. Of course, we were alerted to all of this because the tenants were complaining of unexpectedly high heating bill. So, we were all set to hear "It's 900 degrees in the house!" but turns out no, its more like 50, which is OK for right now, but not OK in case it gets colder (which it is supposed to do by the end of next week). In anycase...had a good half day of deja vu of the worst kind.

I've been sucked into Twitter which is partly why there is so little happening here. Sorry. The problem is, Twitter is inane, yes, but its also incredibly easy. I can send txt messages from my blackberry while i ride the subway (though they get a jumbled and out of sequence). I can do it from my desk as I get ready to eat lunch. I can do it without turning on a PC, browsing to a web page, or logging on to anything. It's like the Flip video camera of blogging, but its more like micro blogging. The cross-platform nature of it is what so easily draws people in, even those of us who are not iPodites.

Day On

2009-02-16T14:13:00.002-06:00

Or weekend on. Since A has started doing full days with Felix I've been trying to do more full-time weekends with him, though that's of course nearly impossible. Unless you can physically separate a toddler from the other parent, you will always get him demanding something from the other parent while you are trying to do 100% for him. Anyway, since this is a 3day weekend for me and many people, I'm getting an extra day. We all started it off by sleeping way in (9am!!!) which has NEVER happened. Pretty crazy.

Of course, that tends to throw a monkey in the works because with toddlers you also have to be careful of upsetting the delicately balanced schedule of daily events like nap times, etc. We are not Sears method people (let the kid set his own schedule! He knows when he's tired... HAHAHAHahahahahahahahha almost makes me cry how funny THAT is).

But in other news...how about that economy? Sheesh. I could use some stimulus right about now, not sure about all you folks. Alls I can say is we still have all our balls in the air, but taking time to stop and talk about them isn't really in the cards. I have just met my mixed metaphor quota.

Hope February finds everyone in good shape. If you haven't lost your job or your home, then good on ya! Looks like Minnesota is still in competition for the best worst place to live right now. Let me know if you can figure that one out.

Here we go.

2009-01-26T22:19:00.002-06:00

Ok, silent long enough. Obama is in da house and he seems to mean business. Good. Go for it. I hope it works out ok for him and all of us. He's off to a good start.

I don't know what it is that is in Felix's food but the kid's hair grows so fast that we have to cut his bangs almost every week (it seems). He really does have a moppy head. His hair is thick, but straight, which is odd since neither one of us has straight hair.

short story

2009-01-06T14:31:00.002-06:00

just had to share this:

This morning Felix wanted to play at taking a nap (its his new favorite game in the morning...wake up and take a nap). He pointed and said he wanted me to lay down too. SO I did, and as soon as my head hit the pillow he said, "Daddy, story!" Ah ha! It was a trap.

I turned it around on him and said, "I want a nap. You tell me a story." So he thought for a second and then said:

Little boy

jump over

rainbow.

Little doggy

jump higher

over rainbow.

Fountain

jump that.

Felix jump that.

The end. (I added that part)

empathy

2009-01-04T16:38:00.002-06:00

In some ways, I feel like I've become rather cold or unempathic. When it comes to death, I'm very divided. When it comes to older people, understand and feel some remorse, or at least imagine what I think that someone who is close to that person might be feeling, and feel sympathetic. But it generally doesn't affect me directly, emotionally. When my uncle died this summer, I felt bad and sad, and really I felt bad for his daughters and wife who were part of his every day life and I felt bad for my parents and their siblings who were also very close to him. But I also felt detatched from it. I didn't burst into tears because I was overcome with grief. I wrote at length about my mixed feelings regarding his death and death in general.

However, when I hear about a relative stranger, or even a fictitious instance, of a child dying, I am tremendously emotionally affected. When Andrea and I watched Benjamin Button, at the end he dies, having finished his aging process and becoming a newborn baby. Even though we followed the story and understood that it was an old man drying, the imagery was that of a baby closing its eyes and stopping breathing (I'm starting to get a little choked just writing this sentance), and both Andrea and I were just sobbing and sobbing. Today I read about the death of John Travolta and Kelly Preston's son, Jett, and again just reading about it I had a very hard time keeping from bawling outloud. It makes SENSE to me, since one of the foremost events in my life right now is raising Felix. It just brings home the notion (not sure if I heard this somewhere and I'm paraphrasing or if I'm making this up, but I think it holds true, SHOULD hold true) that once you become a parent, every child becomes your child.

And perhaps its an evolutionary mechanism, even if it clearly does not work for everyone. After all, if evryone felt this way, things would be a lot different in a lot of ways.

don't get comfy

2008-12-26T14:22:00.002-06:00

Two posts in two days...how likely is that to happen anymore? Not very...not unless its the holiday season and I might actually be able to grab the time and have the brain power to fuel it.

Just a quick thought today:

What could you do to improve your life immediately in some way, with the stipulation that a) it can't cost anything to you personally and b) you would and could actually do it and stick with it?

And I mean actually improve your life, not just something warm and fuzzy and unimportant? I know nobody really reads this outside a small circle, but just in case, please, use the comments section.

Consider this a twist on the "If you could do anything..." question. It's more of a "What can you possibly, realistically, do?" type question.

And of course, part 2 is, if you CAN think of something, why aren't you doing it yet? How do I know you aren't doing it? Well, I don't, but if it took you more than 5 seconds to pop out the answer, you probably aren't doing it.

Here's mine, sort of. I'm losing weight, and/or keeping it off. Though my day to day life doesn't REALLY feel like it is improved as a result, and I am not actually actively doing anything to make it happen (its just a result of our lifestyle which did undergo some relatively major changes since we found out Felix was coming). So, I really need to come up with some other things.

One other thing I'm doing is going to the company well and getting out as much training, etc, as I can that they will cover. This does immediately improve my life because it actually does help me do my job better and prepares me for whatever my next steps are. It also, I hope, causes my company to value me more because they are investing in me and they should be interested in protecting their investment, getting the most out of it that they can. And self improvement is life improvement, right?

The challenge is to figure out as many of those things as you can and to do them.
Discuss.

scratch

2008-12-25T15:54:00.003-06:00

I just deleted the post I started writing yesterday. I had good intentions but somewhere around character 3 or four it all started to go pear shaped. Rants about sub-prime mortgages, mortgagee's, corporate bailouts, financial ruination, mental duress, etc etc etc...not a very happy xmas message.

So, starting again from scratch.
The only thing I will say of a negative nature, or somewhat negative nature, or hinting upon my/our/everyone's current negative nature is from "Oh, the Places You Will Go!" by Dr. Seuss. Paraphrased, of course.

Somewhere about seven pages in he talks about when you fall from your high heights and you are left in the lurch by your cohorts.

You'll come down from the Lurch
with an unpleasant bump.
And the chances are, then,
that you'll be in a Slump.

And when you're in a Slump,
you're not in for much fun.
Un-slumping yourself
is not easily done.

That's about it for me and us and etc. I am personally slumping, but only in regard to the mountain of hackenkracks looming up before me. We as a family are majorly slumping because, well, when you have big hard decisions you naturally get slumped. And of course, the whole country is in a horrible horrible slump, has been for a year or two, so that's that.

So, we're feeling the slump. Edging towards the waiting place. We're sort of in a slump/waiting place combo-hybrid.

So, nuff about that.

Merry Xmas happy holidays, hope everyone has had an enjoyable day off from regular work, if you had one, and perhaps a long weekend to come. These next two weeks are so borderline, especially what with the possibility of long and longer weekends depending on when the big days (25th, 1st) fall on. There should be some sort of quasi-leap yearish rule that says if xmas and new years are on a Thursday, everyone just automatically gets off from the 25th to the 2nd. I mean, really. But then again...if that happened, what the hell would we all do on the 26th through the 31st with houses full guests and no place to send them out to? It'd be like some sort of holiday vacation grudge match fo some. I know that for me, going to work is an important part of maintaining my sanity. Not that I'm a work-a-holic or that I don't like my family. Of course not. But I get grumpy and antsy and crabby and listless when I don't feel great about myself, and this time of year I'm generally feeling less great about myself than usual. Its a time of year when the great juggling acts I've been performing tend to wear thin, the punchlines are already old and worn out, the balls are greasy from handling and sweat. In general, it feels like an ending without a necessarily wonderful denoument and the trailers for the coming sequel don't look like lots of fun. We'll see. But in general, I tend to get less than wonderful to be around all the time right now. But I'm trying! We're all trying.

We had a nice little gathering for NYCXMAS II, or Xmas in the 3rd year of Felix (he's 2.5625 years old). Just Felix, mama, daddy, uncle Glen. I got a Flip Mino pocket digital camcorder (yay! Andrea's dad basically read my mind) which I used to film most of Felix's gift-opening shennanigans. Felix got books and toys and musical instruments (slide whistle, kazoo), and of course (yay!) clothes. Andrea got books of various shapes and sizes right from her wishlist, so she was very happy about those too. We all had a good, small, tidy xmas. Full of wonder and possibility.

If i get approval from the chief, I may see if i can post the Felix highlight reel or perhaps host it somewhere for them that should be given access.

Happy holidays. Merry Merry.
It's hot as hell in here because Glen is doing some kitchen magic. We all look forward to that!

It's Official

2008-12-01T20:32:00.003-06:00

We're in a recession, have been since last December. Funny how you can't be in a recession until you log 4 quarters of decline, but once you are in recession, the past four qualifying months are retroactively designated as recession. It almost seems superstitious, like not having a 13th floor even though it is actually impossible to not have a 13th floor if you build a building with 13 floors. Sort of like, don't tell the kids and everything will be OK. Hell no it won't. We've all been watching as the economy circles the bowl for over a year. Who on earth thought, "No, just wait, its not a recession yet...just give it one more month..."

So, uh...what's happening, then...my paycheck will stay the same. It certainly shouldn't go down. Inflation is sort of a fairy tale right now. Maybe prices falling a little bit will be a good thing in the long run. Our electric bill went fro $100 to $35 between October and November and honestly, we didn't use THAT MUCH more in October. The energy prices have been falling because, you know, not so much demand for energy since all those factories and plants and offices everywhere are closing, not so many people are going to be buying utilities for their empty properties...demand goes down, prices go down. Those of us who still need it, or at least will be continuing to pay for it, will get a slight break.

We'll see. Once again, we go into the holding pattern: Have a job? Sit tight. I waited out the IT slump of the early 2000's and then took off my career development. Right now its not an IT slump yet, but we'll see. All you IT types, just focus on two things: Keep your job and make sure everyone realizes that they NEED YOU (and somehow you are saving the company money).

Post Turkey Day

2008-11-30T13:03:00.006-06:00

We had a quiet little Thanksgiving here in the great north east, a place some consider to be the center of the universe, or perhaps at the moment, a great gaping black hole that threatens to suck everyone and everything in with its financial collapse.

Regardless, we had a bountiful thanksgiving dinner. We had purchased a 13lb turkey at the farmers market. It was the smallest one they had and I don't think a single ounce was from water-injection. It was possibly the best (and continues to be on day 3 of turkey for lunch and dinner) turkey I can remember.

And life rolls on. And on.

One of our favorite sources of entertainment, bloggingheads.tv, has had more than one diavlog (its bloggingheads lingo) comment on the notions of being thankful for atheists vs. theists. Specifically, without a god to be thankful to for everything, can atheists truly be thankful, and if so, how do they do it? Well, of course we can, and both Bob Wright and George Johnson answer that question quite well, I think. Not to mention that Bob's conversation with Joel Achenbach is really fun and entertaining. But anyway.

Which brings me to another topic, often discussed amongst studies of atheism vs. theism: happiness. Some studies have shown that American atheists tend to be less happy, at least on paper, and mostly through their own reporting. I think what is more likely is that the way atheists and theists define happiness may be very different(maybe) or that perhaps atheists tend to be a bit more honest with themselves (and questionnaires) when it comes to reporting their sense of happiness. I have always felt that one of the fundamental purposes of faith is to release oneself of responsibility for certain things. If you don't know where your next meal will come from, a situation I'm sure many atheists and religiously faithful find themselves in these days, this situation causes a lot of stress. However, the atheist most likely is considering only the reality of not knowing where the meal (or money for it) may come from and so sets about it. The theist does and feels pretty much the same, but also has some extra little boost they can use when they are feeling particularly hopeless, and that is that a) God will provide or b) everything that happens is God's will. While it doesn't seem very comforting to me to consider that I'm going hungry because God planned it that way, I can see where it may reduce my stress just an eensy bit or at least my sense of personal failure or despair to feel that I am not really at fault for my predicament or for failing to find a positive outcome. So, yes, I'm hungry, but somehow its serving a higher purpose.

And if the industrious atheist and theist do find their next meals, they will both be happier for it, but the theist is happy to have a meal and also grateful to god for having provided it and thus feels more justified or assured that there is a god. Its a positive feedback loop. The atheist, most likely, is happy to be eating but pretty unhappy about being in that situation and generally feels less than happy on the whole.

This is a topic I think about quite a bit. There has also been a lot done on this (or similar) topic in general lately. There is this Slate article which refers to this Science article and this book. And it seems that bloggingheads.tv has had many people discussing the origins of morality and the misnomer that it relies upon religious belief. Surprise, it seems like morality and religion are not actually dependent upon each other at all. Or perhaps, if you've had your eyes open for the past 10,000 years, not so much of a surprise (or 6,000 years for you YECs). Why do I think about atheism so much? Well, perhaps it comes with age and becoming more self-conscious. I would hope that as humans mature they feel compelled to examine their own inner workings. Perhaps is where the mid-life crisis comes from. Having acheived some level of contentment with their lives through hard work or other means, people come to the point where they start to examine themselves. Perhaps the mid-life crisis is the result of existential upset when the examination happens or perhaps the crisis occurs as a means of running away from the examination altogether. And does the mid-life crisis require that you attain that contentment in advance of your ability to handle the introspection? Has our crashing economy, and crashing global economies in general, removed us all (except for they that already have means to pursue introspection at leisure) from the danger of facing the dreaded midlife crisis? I mean, who has time to ditch your wife and kids and buy a sports car while the economy crashes around you? Only people who don't have to worry about economy because they have enough money, I guess. So in large part, the title of my blog becomes obsolete for 99% of us (myself included).

So, hooray! We've finally done away with the scourge of the midlife crisis. Unfortunately, the solution was to replace it with something else; whole life crisis.

Voter Disenfranchisement

2008-11-04T15:31:00.000-06:00

AND after an hour wait...no "I VOTED" stickers.

Big Day For real

2008-11-04T14:34:00.002-06:00

So, I waited in line for about an hour to vote. Andrea had gotten up early and gone to vote so she wouldn't have to stay late at work. I emailed her about the lines and seeming lack of resources at the voting place (a school). She emailed me from work while I was in line, "No doubt. Make you miss Minnesota? just wait until you get to the archaic lever machine!" to which I responded "Voting at the Iron Maiden." When I finally wound my way up to the voting booth (only one per district!!! and there were 10 districts voting at this spot! wtf?!) I entered and found that I wasn't far off. A little boy and his father were ahead of me. Right before they went in the boy commented (he couldn't have been more than 5 years old, probably 4) that it looked like a giant toilet. I had to agree. After you set your levers, the voting official has to hit a silver lever on the side of the machine that looks exactly like a toilet handle. The metaphor of this official "flushing" away the previous person's vote was somewhat chilling, but then when you consider that we live in New York City, our votes are, essentially, being pissed away. I mean, Obama is a foregone conclusion in this state. But you know, you gotta do it.

I actually have the day off. My whole company if off today. That's nice. I'm taking the opportunity to get some work done :) Yeah, lately being at work is almost more distracting because there's so much going on there. Today I'm working on some development that I really have been having a hard time getting done at work. Made a lot of progress. That will let me save some boring/nuts and bolts stuff for when I am actually in the office. It has also been difficult because we've been touring preschools for Felix and sometimes we have one or two a week, which means I've taken a lot of half-days. Having that sort of break in your usual work flow can be pretty disruptive. Wish I was cutting things up because of fabulous vacations or something, but I don't see THAT happening any time soon.

So, this is my one treat, sort of. I'm taking a quick break to put a post in here.

Having election dayy off sort of sucks. We got up and voted and now its just sit and simmer and try to distract yourself with something (in my case, work) until later this evening when the real race happens. And I think it will be even worse since we're on the east coast so the final verdict, unless its a complete landslide, won't be in until like 2am? Oh well. The joys of being first. Hurry up and wait.

Big Day

2008-10-29T21:16:00.003-05:00

No, I'm not talking about Halloween, though that is starting to be a big day again since Felix can probably enjoy it and, as such, we can start to enjoy it again too. No, what I mean is next Tuesday. Voting Day. Liberation Day. What have you. I do have one VERY IMPORTANT MESSAGE to impart to anyone who reads this blog (if anyone still does):

If you are still honestly UNDECIDED (i.e. not just saying that to avoid talking about your true feelings/leanings), you should go to work on Tuesday and work really hard and all day and then go home and go jogging or do some yoga or maybe go shooting at the gun club, whatever. But DON'T VOTE. If you can't make up your mind until you enter the voting booth, you SHOULD NOT VOTE. And I'm not just being snippy or snotty or snooty. For the good of everyone, for Democracy itself, and to be a good patriot, do whatever you can do to avoid VOTING POORLY. Voting poorly means just casting votes willy nilly without really knowing what or who you are voting for. You don't get behind the wheel of a car (hopefully!) unless you really know how to drive, so don't get behind a ballot without knowing what you are doing. Your negligence, like unskillfully driving a car, can hurt people.

And honestly, if you've made it this far without figuring out who you like better or despise least, you really aren't equipped to cast a vote. You do not get a learner's permit, you do not get to retake the test if you screw it up (not for four years, at least, and then its usually too little too late).

So, everyone who knows who to vote for, go vote. Everyone who is that mysterious demographic that has been loved by both campaigns for the past 3 months, stay home.

Hello.

2008-10-16T23:58:00.001-05:00

I am not dead.

Vacation 101

2008-08-25T21:51:00.002-05:00

Andrea flew to Latvia yesterday (Poland actually, she didn't arrive in Latvia until today) to visit her long lost friend who is now 9 months pregnant. I had entertained the idea of taking the whole week off myself and spending some hardcore quality time with Felix. Well, being as deeply involved and highly instrumental in my numero uno biggest project this year, taking a whole week off from work didn't seem like a good idea. For me or for work. Instead I'm taking today and tomorrow off. Next monday is labor day (yes, already, summer is over!) so I have that off and I'm taking the following thursday and Friday off to cover for the nanny. So, this week is 3 days at work and next week is only two, so I guess I really am getting a whole week off right in the thick of things. Just not all in one lump.

What was I saying? Oh yes. So while Andrea if "on vacation" I'm also "on vacation." What that means is that rather than just having my same old day home with Felix I'm trying to do other fun stuff with him so it is like a vacation for him too. At first, when I was actually entertaining the idea of a whole week off, there was the option of connecting with my parents and relatives in Boston. It would have been just Felix and I hitting the road and hooking up with the rents and relatives in Beantown. There was some disappointment all around when I decided we just couldn't do that trip. But really I just couldn't swing a whole week off and looking back, it would have been absolutely insane to try and set up this trip at the same time as getting Andrea set up for her trip...and even more insane to actually go on it. So, on our abbreviated vacation schedule, Felix and I went to the New Yor kaquarium at Coney Island this morning and saw the fishies. Between yesterday's trips to and from the airport and today's jaunt to Coney Island, Felix has logged around 3 hours on trains of various sorts (subway, AirTrain, LIRR). The verdict so far: AirTrain and LIRR are good, subway is not so good. At every subway stop Felix looks to me and says, "Done." Which is really his was of asking "Can we get off at this stop?" and stating, "I no longer find this amusing."

After spending all morning at the aquarium, we walked across the boardwalk and across the sand to the atlantic ocean. Felix and I got our feet wet. As the water rushes back out to the ocean, it does its best to suck the sand out from beneath our feet. I had forgotten all about that. Felix was holding my hand as usual so he didn't fall down, but he did end up dangling from my arm and saying "Up!" which means "I'm done walking, pick me up right now please."

So, on day 1 of our 2 days of vacation we saw the fishies and touched the ocean. We also skipped our nap entirely and had blueberry crumble at Dizzy's for dessert.

Tomorrow? Maybe go to the beach, but I don't know...maybe in the afternoon. I don't want to interrupt Felix's napping schedule. Today he skipped completely because we stayed out too late. I don't want to do that two dayys in a row. Felix could decide he doesn't want naps any more and that would be BAD. On a positive note, Felix demanded that he sleep in his crib. Why is this a big deal? Since we moved to New ork, Felix has rarely slept a full night in his crib alone. After a week or two of Felix waking us (and our neighbors) up with screaming fits, we just started putting him in our bed from the start to avoid the screaming fits. Last week I took down one side of his crib in hopes of avoiding the ever more inevitable head injury that Felix would sustain when he finally scales the side of his crib before figuring out what happens after he makes it over the top of the rail. So he's been napping with the crib half-converted into a big-boy bed and tonight he demanded (in a whiny sort of way) that he sleep there. It was one of my pie in the sky goals to ween him off of the mama-dada bed while Andrea was gone and boom, he's done it on his own.

What does tomorrow hold? who knows...

These are the Saturdays of our lives...

2008-08-02T13:21:00.004-05:00

Saturday, Aug 2, mid-summer, you might say.
Looking back on this time last year I find that we're in sort of a bizarro version of the same situation. Bizarro in that so many things are reversed or queered in relation to my (and our) state exactly one year ago.

For instance, I am in the dead midst of the delivery of the biggest project I've worked on at work this year, and let me tell you, I'm totally changing the way we carry out some very important aspects of our IT. Not only that, I'm putting in place a framework that will just as drastically change (and improve) how we carry out a whole other side of how we do what we do. I am on the top and everyone seems to be waiting with great anticipation to see how this young (I'm still young!) guy who showed up last year and started changing things around is going to once again totally change the game in a way that will make life better for everyone. Pretentious? Moi? No, seriously. You might think that how a computer gets from box to desk isn't all that important in the grand scheme of things, but if you're one of the people who has to move that computer from box to desk and deal with people who are getting the computer, then how easy and how fast makes all the difference in the world. Not only that, but my company is not some monstrosity like Target that has money falling out its ass. Budgets are really important and the fact that I'm probably going to bring things from A to B for way less money than it has ever cost is a pretty big deal.

So, the second side of the bizarro factor (totally heavily awesomely employed vs. unemployed) is that though I'm on a super steep climb to greatness, I'm even worse off financially now than I was last year at this time and all my hard work will not pay off in dollars and cents for almost a whole year. So I go from being unemployed with an uncertain near future and a nice big financial cushion to being well employed, amazingly bright future, and suffering from nearly crushing financial burdens. I've never made more and I've never been worse off, all at the same time. It boggles the mind.

How did we get here?
Well, since this time last year the cushion has been steadily depleted due to the house not selling. It remains not sold. It is now being rented, essentially as my favorite charity since I still have to spend hundreds and, hopefully for only the first months as a rental, thousands of dollars on the house every month. So, while I have renters to help reduce the amount of mortgage I'm paying, I am still paying a mortgage, and for the past few months it has been the full mortgage, plus bills. So, there will be no more bills, but the mortgage is still there and the renters aren't paying for all of it. After the property management company takes its cut (about $100), what we get in rent covers about 2/3 of the mortgage, which has also recently gone up to cover the increased cost of insurance due to us needing rental insurance instead of regular home owners insurance. So there's that. Any savings we may have had are gone into the house already. On top of that, as I've mentioned, there's the extra moneyy we need to pay off the city to allow us to actually convert to a rental property, which is an additional $1000. And our rent on our apartment went up. Luckily I was able to negotiate $50 increase instead of the $150 that our landlord originally proposed, so that shouldn't seem like a huge hit, but it all adds up.
Gee, that doesn't sound like we should be all THAT bad off, right? I mean, its not like we own a car and have been pouring our paychecks into the gas tank, right? Wrong. I don;t know whats going on in the rest of the country, but everything here is getting more expensive due to the gas situation or attempts to cope with it. Milk is $5 a half gallon. Most food items have gone up in price 10 to 50 cents. Doesn't sound like much, but it all adds up. When we moved here, we spent about $60 at the farmers market and then another $40-60 at the grocery store every week. Now the farmers market trips average about $100 and grocery store is more like $60-80. That adds up quick. Anyone who has their eyes open these days is getting intimately familiar with the feeling of being "nickle and dimed to death." Its for real. It sucks.

STILL, why are things seeming to get worse? Well, its all back to the house. See, the biggest bill for the first half of the year was the rent bill, which came out of one paycheck. The mortgage and house bills were being paid out of my old 401K dispersal. So the first paycheck would cover rent and necessities like child care, groceries, etc. Then the second paycheck would pay the local bills and necessities for those two weeks. And the wonderful thing was, the second paycheck would usually not be depleted by the time the next one rolled around, so that would help make life feel a bit more comfortable. Well, for several months the first paycheck goes to rent and such, then the second paycheck goes to mortgage and such. Up until maybe three months ago we'd managed to pull money out of several magical places. The tax refund paid for most of the mortgage one month, then the economic stimulus package paid for it the next, then a huge refund from the gas company (because no gas was being used all winter while my house froze and burst all my pipes) paid for more than half of a mortgage payment. Over the past year Andrea had saved up enough money to basically split rent/mortgage with me (she'd pay rent and I'd pay mortgage) I think twice, which also helped a lot. But we finally reached the point when we'd run out of places to pull money from. All along we've been doing the same sort of financial balancing act, like a shell game in some ways, that by all rights we really shouldn't have had to do had things just gone a little bit differently.

Anyone who knows the story of our whirlwind move to NY knows that the only thing that was missing from our fairy tale was this one loose thread, the house that had not sold yet. And that thread just kept getting yanked and pulled until it feels like the whole tapestry is unraveling. The job that was supposed to be the big opportunity turned out to be a frog in a prince's disguise. The assumptions that influenced our initial decisions were turned invalid and hence we find our fairy tale, though full of wonderfully bright and amazing plot points, turning more towards something of the Brothers Grimm.

The hope is that this month is the pivot. We will get our first full injection of rental income (though I'm still afraid that amount will be less than expected due to "property management" costs that are deemed too trivial to require authorization). Last month was specifically grueling due to the ways that the days fell on the calendar which had me getting my first paycheck early in the month (10th) and the second on the 28th, which enclosed a 3 week stretch between them, each of which required purchase of groceries and payments for the nanny. I've checked my calendar for the next time that the paydays fall in that sort of pattern, which is October, so that hopefully I can be better prepared. But the hope is that the mortgage will hurt less this month, so that second paycheck will stretch longer and help provide some more room to move at the beginning of the next month, and so on and so on, until we are back into a more stable cycle. We're trying to stay positive and support eachother, but we're all under a lot of stress so sometimes it can be hard. Add to that the other every day stresses and some days seem like they're not even worth getting up for. Of course, Felix doesn't let anyone sleep in much, and seeing his smiling face is more than enough to make any one of us get up and charge into the day no matter what. But I'd be lying if I said we don't discuss the pros and cons of making another big change, calling it quits and moving back to the midwest, back to our house, back to our old lives, or whatever semblance of them we can recreate there. Since we've signed our tenants up for a 1 year lease and we've just renewed our own, we're rather committed to at least one more year here. We have decided that we will give it our all and make it work, and if things haven't improved, then maybe we will come back to the middle west. Maybe we'll take it by storm, maybe we'll slink in under the cover of night. Maybe we'll be in yet a whole new place one year from now: moved to a nicer apartment or put a down payment on a brownstone, start up a design studio, gone into consultancy, making a million bucks...who knows. For the next couple weeks, it still feels like we're in the bottom of a well. But maybe we'll see the sun soon enough.
Stay tuned.

quick bit

2008-07-22T11:11:00.002-05:00

Felix's 2nd birthday party was fun. The day itself had many adventures and stories that maybe someday I'll recount here. Maybe not.
Life rolls on, sometimes rolling over you in the process.
We've definitely had our share of ups and downs this past year and they don't ever seem to stop, so just rolling rolling rolling. All this rolling has lost me another 10lbs. I know this because today I took Felix for his 2nd year checkup and in order to get his weight they had to weigh me holding him and then me alone and subtract. Felix does NOT like the doctor's office. I weighed in at something like 152lbs, which is 10 pounds less than the 162ish weight I've been around since this time last year.
that's all for now.

catching up

2008-07-05T21:05:00.002-05:00

OK. So we've rented out the house and that causes a bit of anxiety for me because, you know, someone is living in a house I own. In a way, I'm now somewhat beholden to complete strangers when it comes to the "livability" of my house. Not that the house is in any way deficient or in disrepair. Almost the entire inside was replaced in the past six months thanks to my real estate agent and insurance company. But the point being, when you own a house and you live in it, you get to prioritize things. If someone else is living in the house, they may not have the same priorities, or even the same sense of import. I have no idea if I was a typical renter. Generally, unless something was majorly wrong, I didn't bother the land lord with it. If it was something small I would do it myself or adjust. I never experienced anything big going wrong in a rental, I don't think. But I also have known, or lived near, people who seemed to be on their landlords about every little thing. I dunno. I guess I'm a little nervous about the property management company as well. I mean, I expect they are professional and do a good job, but in all honesty one of their sources of income comes from the fee that I owe them when they take care of repairs. Basically, they get 10% or $25 (whichever is more) any time they oversee repairs. This of course comes with them having their own stable of "preferred" contractors, etc... So, on the one hand it is in their interest to have work done on the house because they get paid whenever that happens. On the other hand, they don't want me to go blabbing to everyone else that once we had a contract they wrung the hell out of me and my bank account. So, like anything, its a delicate balance I'm sure. Hopefully they prefer the easy method of collecting rent and keeping the peace for everyone.

Sigh. I guess I'll need to make sure i have clear and open lines of communication with my next door neighbors.

OK. So Felix turns two this month. Amazing. And here's the standard stuff: He's a genius, he's brilliant, he's super sharp tacks, etc, etc. He's eager to use the potty and he's even managed to use the actual toilet (with the potty seat inserted) for both #1 and a tiny #2. He's not speaking in sentences yet but he does use words and he has entered the parrot phase. He quickly mimics words on the first hearing. If you can use the word in a way that he really gets, he adds it to his vocabulary. Example: Now whenever we go under some sort of structure (bridge, tunnel, scaffolding) he shouts "Echo!" He has his own idiosyncrasies, of course. He says "No" but he only nods his head up and down for "yes." Although sometimes he nods up and down for other than yes, perhaps just in agreement or to say "Whatever you think is right."
He tumbles, is working on his first unassisted headstand (actually, he's done headstands already but they tend to turn into somersaults). He balances on the curb of the walking paths in the park. He's a star at soccer. yes really. He loves to fly his kite though we've not done it on a good kite flying day (so we get very tired when we fly his kite).

I am deep in the middle of completely re-engineering the workstation desktop at my place of work, a project I have been looking forward to since I started there. All in all it won't be a drastic change for the users since we're staying on Windows XP and Office 2003, but the behind the scenes stuff will be very very different from what was done previously. Needless to say, I'm doing my best to drag this company into the 21st century. Looks like we might just do it, too.

Andrea still is unhappy with her job, but we've figured out that while we certainly won't be saving up for any posh retirements or vacations but we could continue to live on what I make if Andrea quit her job and stayed home with Felix. Not that she wants to do that exactly, but she definitely feels like that would be a step up from what she's leaving Felix at home with a nanny for now. So, I guess that's sort of like good news?

It's been a hell of a year since we moved out here. And the winds of change just keep ablowin'.

d-day

2008-06-15T11:27:00.002-05:00

As much as moving here has been good to us (my job, great neighborhood, Felix's classes and being near the park) or bad to us (Andrea's job, no dishwasher, bare bones laundromats, high cost of living, "the house", education system for Felix) or indifferent (death, taxes), its nice to know that there are some pleasant surprises. I had taken Felix ti the park this morning so he could practice riding his new trike ($3 from a stoop sale), Fisher Price sort of tricycle/big-wheel hybrid, and we had a good time. Felix goes down for his nap and i run out the cycle some laundry that we hadn't had done yesterday. I decide to go around the block on my way back instead of coming back the way I came. I discovered that all of 7th Ave is blocked off and there are stalls set up all along it as far as you can see in both directions. It's a fricking festival on my street and I didn't even know it!!! And try as I might, I can't see any visible signal as to what its about. Yesterday was a gay pride parade up near the park, but this doesn't seem to be related to that. Maybe its just park of "Celebrate Brooklyn" since that just started this weekend. But seriously, it has more the feel of "On June 15th, every business on 7th Ave is just going to roll out its front door and start selling on the street." Seriously. Its amazing. When Felix gets up from his nap, we're all going to have to go down there. Holy shit.

post of substance

2008-06-11T21:44:00.003-05:00

some more meaty news from our corners of the world: we may, just may, have the house rented out starting July 1. Our management company is still running their background checks but they seem pretty confident that the application will get approved and we'll be honest to goodness absentee landlords in no time. This also means that we are required to pony up the city of Minneapolis's residential-to-rental conversion protection money. They recently (March I think) enacted a policy that required single family homes being converted from residential to rental property to pay $1000 to cover "up to four inspections" with the left over going into the general fund. This is required along with $61 for your rental property license. See, they used to require rental properties to be inspected every five years and it was your standard inspection rate of about $150 to $200, just like the HUD inspection you get when you prepare to sell a house. So this thousand dollar "inspection fee" is complete and utter bullshit. Our fucking republican governor has been holding the tax rate down, peeling back taxes to the wealthy, and not allowing any new taxes so government at all levels are having some serious budgetary problems. What they are doing instead is to write bonding bills and increase "fees" on everything they possibly can. This last one just takes the cake. See, the municipal governments are stuck so they are looking for money anywhere they can find it. SOmeone comes up with a bright idea like, "Hey, because all these poor fuckers are screwed due to the housing market falling through the floor, there are a lot of people trying to rent out the houses they can't sell to cover their payments. We can just tax those poor bastards and voila! Easy free money for us!" Nice. Really fucking swell. Pardon my language, but I get this way when something is really just out of line with this system.

Its another case where the people who are really in need are the ones who are getting squeezed even more. I mean, I'm looking at taking out a loan or putting this on a credit card somehow, just so we can get the house rented. Its really fucked up. The woman who wrote this ordinance and pushed it through the committee said it was a measure to protect renters from slumlords and substandard conditions. Hey, guess what? You could still do that if you charged the regular inspection rate...its not like we're really paying for 10x better inspections by 10x better inspectors with our 10x higher inspection fee. No. Not at all.

So it just pushes the loss we're taking on the house out that little bit more. I mean, hey, what's $1000 anyway? I make more than that in a week! But then I also spend that much, or more, a week when you figure in groceries, bills, child care, my own rent AND mortgage, etc... It's just a really sickening prospect, like I'm some poor fuck who has to go to the "Checks Cashed" place to PAY someone to give me my own MONEY. I'm not used to being that guy. I have a bank account and a 401K and a college education, a credit card and a debit card and a REGULAR 30 year mortgage (not sub-prime). I relocated for work and now I'm being punished for it because it put me and my family in a situation that the state, county, and city governments has us over a barrel. I didn't vote for any of those fucking people. And yes, you can bet your ass I've already written to some of them.

In BETTER HUMORED news, Felix has taken his first pee pee in the potty chair. Last night after his bath he sat on the potty and pee pee peed, over and over. Still no poo poo in the potty, but if he is allowed to he'd sit naked on the potty all day, trying to squeeze out some more pee pee. I think we're off to a good start.

The heat wave is supposedly on its way out, which is just as well since i can't afford to buy a new AC for a little while due to the previously mentioned ass banditry by the good old city of Minneapolis.

Work is good, very busy, getting busier. I'm really rolling into some hard core stuff on the PC refresh project. We've all but signed on the dotted line with one of the vendors and I really need to start building our new image. And at the same time I'm planning on bringing our whole process into the 21st century. Just since I've arrived I've replaced the network boot floppy disks (yes, for real) with WinPE CDs and cut the reimaging time from 50 minutes to 10. You start out strong like that and people tend to expect something from you. I intend to deliver on this next project as well. But man, we only have until August to do it. Good times, here we come.

Well...after the initial ranting and raving, I don't even know what I'm in the mood for now...

I've started writing a book. Maybe a book. I'm not going to say too much about it. I'm working on writing something. Turns out that the subway can be a good place for working on story ideas and watching TV shows (due to heat wave related switching issues, I was able to watch about six episodes of Naruto Shippuden while riding in to work on Monday morning).

heatwave

2008-06-10T20:51:00.002-05:00

yep. super hot here. our AC is a sad sad sad unit. luckily there are plenty of places for Felix and the nanny to go during the day that have air conditioning (or sprinklers).

Luckily it should get down into the high sixties tonight, which is really what makes the heatwave hard to handle; unrelenting heat 24x7. When its 90s all day and then doesn't go below 78 at night, an apartment like ours doesn't exactly cool off. But with 68 temp, I think we can flush out some heat and suck in some cool. and we've finally gotten some thunder and lightening that we've been complaining about not having since we moved here. 2 nights in a row!

woo.

Vacation

2008-05-27T20:36:00.004-05:00

I took today off from work using an actual vacation day. The people I work with seem to take a lot of vacation. Not that we get more vacation time than usual, just that people seem to actually go on vacation or take days off to go other places. I mean, I work with one guy who took two weeks off (one week off at a time, a couple weeks apart) and just stayed home because he was in danger of losing those two weeks due to the carry-over limit, so obviously he isn't a vacationer, but it seems that everyone else around me is off a few days here and there, a week here, a week there...and they're always seeming to actually go places, not just stay home. Sadly, I was not one of those people. I took the day off to spend the day with Felix. Our nanny needed the day off so I stayed home. Now, I've done this several times in the past but I always did the "work from home" scenario which boils down to watching Felix and my email at the same time and then furiously responding to emails and trying to accomplish something during his nap time. Not today. Since I took it as vacation, I decided to treat it like vacation. Felix and I hit the bricks and we had a great day.

Just a warning: if you haven't guessed, this is going to be one of those posts where I extol the awesomeness of having kids. Seriously. There's a lot of stuff that sorta sucks and there's social and cultural baggage to deal with no matter where or who you are when you have kids, there's no escaping that stuff. But the kids themselves, wow, awesome, amazing. Watching them grow up is incredible.

So today we walked to Target, which is about a mile away, and on the way we stopped at Area Kids and got Felix his sneakers. When the weather turned nicer we bough him a pair of sky blue Crocs which he seems to really like, but when he starts doing soccer (or toddler soccer, really) he needs sneakers. So we got those. Then we went to Target and bought him two hats (one floppy fishing-style sun hat with a chin strap, one baseball-style hat with no unfortunate branding or product endorsements). I discovered that at Target they stock, in their grocery section, Organic Valley brand milk. This is the brand of milk I usually get for Felix. This is the milk that he drinks a half gallon of approximately every three days, give or take. And I've been buying it from our local groceries for $4.99 a half-gallon (sometimes its on sale for $3.99). Some stores don't even bother to put pricetags on the milk anymore because of the way things are increasing. Anyway, at Target they have gallon jugs of Organic Valley milk for $3.99. Of course the shelves were bare and it was a vendor stocked item so the Target people had no way of knowing when they would actually be resupplied. Oh well...something to look for each time I go to Target. Two years ago the idea of purchasing milk by the gallon jug was synonymous with throwing money down the kitchen sink drain. In fact, other than for cooking, we almost never bought milk until Felix was old enough to start drinking it. Now its a staple.

I had promised Felix we would stop and play choochoos on the way back from Target but just two blocks away from BN Felix passed out so we went home and he napped for about 50 minutes in his stroller. That was the only down side today, Felix only taking a very short nap. Ah well, it was a vacation day so I suppose I shouldn't have had any aspirations for my "free time" anyway. I did manage to take a shower and make a simple lunch. After he woke up and ate lunch we did go to Barnes and Noble and played with the Thomas trains they have there (brough Felix's own train, a Gordon I believe) and read some books. Then we went up to one of the playgrounds in the park and played for about an hour. Finally, we walked home taking the long way through the park. Felix did not walk to or from Target or BN but when we left the playground Felix was on foot. In the park I felt relatively safe letting Felix do some free walking. You don't walk anywhere with a toddler unless you have LOTS of time and no specific plans on actually arriving. So we walked through the park and picked up sticks and rocks and whatnot. Felix is prone to suddenly just plop down and sit for a short spell, all the while grinning and laughing at the fact that he has sat down and made you stop for a second. He also has a hard time resisting the urge to sit on flat surface that seems to have been intended to be sat upon by anyone with legs of his specific dimensions. This means he loves to sit on curbs, rocks, steps, mounds of grass and/or dirt, etc. Pretty much anything that is between five and ten inches high and is not covered with spikes or broken glass. Since our kite flying this past Saturday, he also has taken to laying down in grassy fields and looking up at the sky. He usually precedes this by pointing to the spot right next to where he intends to lay; this is where you should lay, this is not a suggestion but a command.

He didn't make it all the way home on foot. We were almost about to leave the park when Felix decided that he didn't want to follow me anymore. He walked about 30 feet into a grassy area and waved, shouting "Bye!" then turned to try and join the outfield of a local softball crew. He had a meltdown as I swooped him up and took him back to the stroller. But he had done a LOT of walking and running up to this point and it was pretty warm and very humid, so he was pretty well exercised by our day together. We stopped at a grocery store and got some things for dinner. Upon arriving home we found Glen in the kitchen cooking dinner already. Luckily I had only gotten a few things that didn't require much prep and would easily keep until tomorrow. After dinner Andrea gave Felix his bath and then brushed his teeth and put him to bed. She came out of the room and said, "He was super tired. It was so easy to put him down. You must have worn him out. I don't think [the nanny] wears him out like that." Which makes a certain kind of sense.

It is days like today that make me think I could maybe handle being a stay at home dad. But then this would not have been my vacation day, it would have been my work day, and whats to say that I would feel differently if I was doing this every day of every week. But it's definitely a wonderful way to spend a day here and a day there. I do think I could stand doing it full time...I may have the mentality for it. Of course...start adding in housework and such and who knows...

good news

2008-05-13T20:57:00.003-05:00

well, sorta good. after sitting in the pediatrician's waiting room for almost 2 hours we found out that A) Felix totally healthy except for a little seasonal allergy that's causing his runny nose (rose fever?) and B) strep throat almost never cultures in the throats of children younger than 4. So, the one time I could have WebMD'd...scratch that, WebMD says nothing about toddlers and strep throat (other than that strep can be a cause of vomitting, yay). Anyway, so he's healthy, for once, and Andrea and I have started antibiotics, which apparently (according to WebMD) is something you do mostly to stop being contagious. Yes, thats what it says. You get better in about a week no matter what, but if you take antibiotics you stop being contagious in 24-48 hrs. No antibiotics means you can continue infecting people with strep for about 3 weeks, even after you are "all better". Isn't that wonderful?

Ill

2008-05-12T20:18:00.003-05:00

Last night was not pleasant. I woke up with the chills and couldn't get warm enough. Also, my whole body ached, so no matter what position I shifted into it it felt like I was laying on round rocks. And, the crown jewel, a super inflamed tonsil. I felt like utter shit. Stayed home from work and tried to sleep all day. Eventually went to walk-in at the dr. office (3 blocks away) and the dr. says, "Looks like strep, smells like strep. I think its strep. Your test came up negative but these quick read things aren't 100%." Yep. I seem to recall having similar "non-strep" strep throat when I was younger. It was like a walk down memory lane. That same feeling that something had glommed onto the back of your throat, slowly oozing something. So, here I am, already started my 5-day cycle of antibiotics... I think Andrea is going to go to the doc tomorrow and I'm thinking that since I just started antibiotics, I should work from hom tomorrow. Maybe I should bring Felix in to the peeds and have him tested.

Posting

2008-04-20T13:49:00.003-05:00

I know its been a long time between posts, but such is life. Work continues to go well for me. I had a meeting with my HR rep which was nice. It was not a special meeting, just her annual face to face to keep in touch with her IT people. I came out of the meeting with a good feeling about working there and the possibility of advancing myself. It's nice to feel like people are looking out for you and interested in your development. Oddly, I seem to get along pretty well with HR and a certain type of management. I think it is obvious pretty quickly that I am pretty ambitious and motivated. I'm something of a "low hanging fruit" for people who's job it is to get their employees/clients advanced. When your advancement reflects well on other people and other people's ratings on how they are doing their jobs, it is a good thing to be an easy win for them. They are more inclined to give you help because they know it will come back to them more easily than a "tough case" type of person (which I also used to be and, not surprisingly, had little or no relationship with my HR and management). So that;s good.

In less great news, my uncle was killed in a car accident on the way home from my parents' house a little over a week ago. I had done Skype with them and Felix just two days before and seen him and my aunt talking and hanging out at my mom and dad's dinner table. Then on Friday I got the phone call from my brother. There's a way that someone says your name that you know they are about to give you bad news. I could tell that Dave was going to tell me something tragic even though he sounded calm and even keeled. When you get that call, you immediately assume the worst. I remember that as he said my name the second time (the kicker in the "I have bad news" greeting) my brain started to anesthetize, preparing for a really really bad piece of info. But I think my brain also picked out things that it used to remain calm and pre-judge the severity of the news. Even though I was intellectually gearing up for news that my mom or dad was injured or dead, something unconsciously ruled those things out. He started to tell me about my aunt and uncle leaving the house that morning and, I'll be honest, I felt terribly relieved. I knew that I could cope with that. I love my relatives, I truly do, and I'm very sad that anything bad should happen to them. But there's no denying that a child fears the death of a parent or sibling more than anything. An adult fears the death of a spouse, a child, or a close friend more than anything. I think you fall into one of those two categories automatically depending on the context of the news you receive. Since an uncle is not #1 on either of those lists, I knew that I'd be able to handle it without my life being turned upside down. Let me repeat, I love my uncle and have very fond memories of him, I mourn his loss. But I was incredibly relieved to find out that it wasn't any of my immediate family members that was the source of the bad news. After getting off the phone with Dave I sat and thought to myself, wondering quite uncomfortably why I wasn't feeling very broken up about it. Was it just that I was so relieved it wasn'ty mom or dad? Was it that I thought about how my uncle was just a really nice guy, but getting older, and luckily to not waste away? I'm sure he would have had many years ahead of him if not for the accident, but who can say? There is speculation that what killed him in the accident was quite possibly his heart giving out. Of course, if it wasn't that, it was definitely the trauma of the accident. Either way, he went quickly, which is ideal, I think.

Anyway...when someone you know dies, it causes you to think and review your own feelings and thoughts and what you believe in. It makes me wonder if I feel guilty for not being so upset BECAUSE I'm atheist or INSPITE OF being atheist? My initial reaction to the news was "Well that sucks. What can you do?" Which seems really sort of easy. No wondering and questioning and speculating about God's motives or etc...I know that accidents happen, nice people die, and there's nothing more to it than that. Do I feel bad for not feeling bad?

Buyer's market?

2008-03-31T21:18:00.002-05:00

No kidding. I am, of course, referring to the housing market. I must admit that right now would be the ideal time to get into the real estate business in the "Rich Dad Poor Dad" sense, the buy low, sell less low...

I mean, if you are in that business and you were picking up lots of properties in the past three years and now at full inventory you're probably screwed, but if you are just starting out, say you somehow have a bunch of money that you'd like to invest in real estate before the rebound starts, well, now is probably as good a time as any. People like me who are selling their homes not for profit but to remove the financial burden of owning the home, you'd be sitting pretty. I myself am looking into some options because I need to do SOMETHING in case we can't get renters placed pronto (and let me tell you, Pronto is slipping by quickly).

Anyway...if you have a bunch of cash laying around, I'd say wait about 2 more months and then buy your houses and whatnot. Then plan on owning those houses for the next seven to ten years, you know, until all of us who had our home ownership-worthy credit dashed on the rocks when we lost or short-sold our homes to you are able to start buying homes again.

I personally have no desire to own a house right now. It was a bit of a rush to own land and a home, but really I'm not in the place where a house is really a smart investment.

Whats up doc?

2008-03-26T21:14:00.002-05:00

Yes, I've been pretty quiet on here lately. Anyway, lots going on, its "that time of year" in a lot of different ways. It's spring, it's tax time, it's time to get SOMETHING figured out about the house, be it renters or arm wrestling with the bank to avoid credit record apocalypse, etc.

We all do what we must to get by and stay sane, right? Right. So, one thing I'm doing is starting up a little side project. Unfortunately, this side project requires a little bit of anonymity so I'm not going to just point you all to the website because, well, what would the point of that be? Also, its not an incredibly brilliant project, so in many cases if you were to hear the concept you'd scratch your head and say, "Wha? You're doing what? I don't get it. I mean, I don't know why you're doing this. Is anyone actually doing it? I mean...what's the point?" And the point is...its the internet, stupid. Let's see if I can take a somewhat shaky idea, throw behind it all the mighty engines of the internets and pull something out of it, be it money, fame, or just warm fuzzy satisfaction that I actually turned one of my silly 11pm "Hey, wouldn't it be funny if..." ideas and tried to make it fly, or at least tried to see how far it could be thrown before rolling to a stop. So, unfortunately I will not be telling you anything more about this project except that I'm not putting much time into it at all. But I think its fun and it gives me something to scribble ideas about on the subway. And thats all I'm saying about that.

It is somewhat spring like, more and more each day. Today it got up to 60 degrees and tomorrow it is also supposed to be warm AND rainy! Sounds like spring to me! Never mind that we got -5 inches of snow this year. It got chilly. I only HAD to wear my woolen parka maybe a handful of times, and even then only because I was going to be outside for a couple hours at a time. Today I didn't even wear a jacket. I wore a short sleeve shirt! With an undershirt, of course (I'm not completely barbaric), but short sleeves none the less! Most New Yorkers are still wearing their winter or late fall coats and jackets. What a bunch of pussies. Like even the most surprising change of weather would land you in what, 40 degree weather for a few minutes? Rain? Gimme a break.

Felix is a dancing fiend. If it were appropriate, I'd post footage. But since this blog, as niche a readership as it has, is still public and so not a place where I am supposed to be posting videos of Felix. Not to worry. Perhaps on the next family video uplink we'll get him to show off his moves a bit.

And just in case you didn't know who you were supposed to be voting for (if and when you ever have the opportunity), it's Barack Obama. Whatever it is you heard that makes you worried or unsure, forget about all that. It just means you've got some issues with your poli-sci-centers in your brain. I'll take the heat on this one, I'll take it off your worried shoulders. You vote Barack because I said so and its just like you chose not to vote except that this time you actually did the right thing, see? Don't think about it too hard. Just vote. Barack.

Do yourself a favor

2008-03-20T22:52:00.001-05:00

Watch this and pay attention.
Important dialog on Obama's recent Speech

In case you didn't get it when you heard the speech, maybe this will help.

The future

2008-03-02T20:44:00.001-06:00

Hey, Ohio, now is your chance to redeem yourself for 8 years of W. Don't fuck it up.

self-plug

2008-02-29T22:31:00.002-06:00

I'm going to post my video-blogs, however infrequent, on premidlife-video. I think it makes more sense to keep the different styles of blogging seperate.

Also, we've discovered blogging heads. I came across it on the NYTimes website. I like the concept, I just wish there was a wider variety and more frequently added content. Actually, they do pretty well considering the high quality content.

smarten up your news habit

2008-01-31T22:22:00.000-06:00

never ending story

2008-01-30T21:49:00.000-06:00

no, in this case I'm not talking about dad's medical situation. Instead, i'm talking about Felix's "medical" situation. Anyway, he's had a cough of various shapes and sizes since about October and as you know at the end of December he had a rip-roaring ear infection followed by a stomach virus a couple weeks ago, followed by instructions by our pediatrician to go ahead and take the amoxicillin we didn't use before because Felix still had fluid behind his ear drum and she was afraid it would turn into a sinus infection. So a week ago we started him on his amoxicillin. During that time his mood has greatly improved though his nose has not. In fact, he now has a cruddy hacking cough and runny nose, and some sneezing too. Clear snot, though, for the most part. Well, last night he looked like he was starting to get a rash. light pink spots all over his chest and even on his face. Hrm. Well, this morning it seemed a bit more pronounced. And when I got home from work today the kid looked painfully rashy, covered head to toe in a dark pink rash. The thing of it was, despite looking terribly rashy, he was perfectly happy, in fact in some ways seems even happier than he has been, just following the trajectory of his "recovery" I guess. So, he looks horrible...looking at him makes me feel like scratching myself all over. But he doesn't appear the be itchy at all, or even uncomfortable at all.

So it's pretty disturbing to look at. I get on webMD and look up chicken pox. Well, maybe, but it seems to be too dense of a rash for chicken pox. Then we look up measles and, holy shit, it looks just like measles! But he was vaccinated (I looked at his records, he got them at the beginning of the summer) and measles is supposed to be incredibly rare in the USA. Hrm. Andrea's freaked out because she thinks he may have an immune defficiency. Now, in most cases that seems a little nuts, but given my family's medical history (my brother had an immune problem when he was a baby...got chicken pox 3 times!) its not something you can just rule out. The nanny thought the rash was caused by the only thing that was different between yesterday and today, which is that he was eating red grapes yesterday and today. Ok, logical, rational, not unreasonable...but when you see pictures of measles and they look just like whats on Felix, its hard to shake it. I keep thinking, "Well, we know it's not bacterial because he's been on antibiotics for seven days now. If it is caused by a virus, there's nothing they can do but treat the symptoms, which he has none of. No fever, no soar throat, no aches, not vomiting or diarrhea, no pneumonia. The kid is happy as pigs in mud. So what do we do?" We of course get on the old Google-o-meter and start looking for pictures of rashes. It certainly looks like measles (you can google "looks like measles") but despite the endless pages and pictures describing and documenting measles, they all have something very much in common: they almost immediately state how rare it is for anyone in the US to contract measles IN the US. So then i get to thinking...he's been on the amoxicillin for a week, maybe its related to that? The drug info says it can cause a rash, hives, siezures, and death. Have you ever really read the list of possible side-effects on any prescription drug? Good grief.

Anyway...so I google "Amoxicillin rash" and BADA_BING. Describes a rash that shows up between day 5 and day 16 of amoxicillin cycle, is not itchy or irritating at all, and goes away in a few days. I then look for pictures and again, find amoxicillin rash that looks EXACTLY like what Felix's rash looks like. Big sigh of relief.

That's not to say that's exactly what it is, but so far it makes the most sense. Also, it lets us know that if he does start to show other symptoms we can rule in or out that or other things and take him to the doctor. But really, unless he starts acting sick or his rash turns into big hairy eyeballs all over his body, we're not going to worry too much.

Go google.

mr. mom

2008-01-24T20:48:00.000-06:00

I stayed home with Felix again today because our nanny called in sick this morning. On the one hand, its great that I can do that but on the other hand...it would be nice if we had some sort of back-up child care so that when this happens (and I'm sure it will) again it doesn't have to throw mine or Andrea's day into chaos. Despite it all, I managed to work from home for a couple hours and make some serious headway on a problem/new area of development. The wonders of virtual infrastructure...

Anyway, I also managed to record a short video blog but its not a good one so I think it will end up in the bin.

Felix had his 18 month appointment on Tuesday. The doc looked in his ears and told us that we should go ahead on use the oral antibiotic prescription that we got two weeks ago when Felix had his eardrum burst. She said she could see some fluid still back there so she advised that we run through the course of amoxicillin to keep it from turning into a sinus infection. Seems like she was just in time too, since Felix has started to get very cranky and needy like he did when he was sick. I think its mostly due to some heightened teething activity (I think his molars are doing the heave-ho or something). Poor kid. So, the results of his appt? low % weight, high % height. He's slim and tall. The doc was asking the diagnostic questions and the first one just totally threw me.
"Can he run?" I blinked at her.
"What?"
"Can he run? You know, he'll be probably a little stiff in the legs at first but..."
"OH. Right. Yeah he runs. It's all he does. Can he sit still, that's the real question!"
etc.
He runs, flips pages in a book, had 15-20 "words", he definitely seems to understand us, he feeds himself, he can drink from a cup, he can drive a car, he can vote, etc...

So, yeah. it was a bit of a rough day, had its moments. I look forward to not staying home tomorrow.

Meta Reality TV

2008-01-21T21:51:00.000-06:00

And of course, the 11th season would be people filming themselves watching the first twelve seasons with their webcams and uploading it to MySpace and YouTube.

MLK

2008-01-21T09:42:00.000-06:00

Hey, guess what holiday I'm not used to having off from work is being celebrated today, by me, at work?

Yes. I come in and the hallway is dark and there's one guy here and he seems surprised to see me.
I asked, "Are we closed?" and he says (verbatim), "It's a holiday dude!"
"Oh...well, I'm here today."
Yeah, well this threw me a little bit. See, MLK is Jan 15th and today is Jan 21. But I guess MLK is like Presidents day where it may BE on a particular date but for some reason it is recognized on a specific Monday (providing everyone with a 3-day weekend). Also, for the past seven years I've worked in a place where MLK was not specifically a day off from work. You could take it off, to be sure, (you'd get some weird looks if you are whitey, though). I don't even know if schools kids get the day off in the middle west where I'm technically from. But here in NYC, they place is rather ghosty. I got to sit down on the ride in.

Well, just was well, since i was out for the last half of last week due to illness (and covering for the ill). And after that super long "weekend" I was not going to be staying home today. No sir-ee bob. So Andrea and i might meet up later and go see a movie.

welcome to the 21st century

2008-01-18T12:56:00.000-06:00

Not sure why it got choppy at the end there. Oh well. you didn't miss anything.

effing aholes

2008-01-11T20:49:00.000-06:00

Despite having been seriously rained on earlier in the day, I was having a fairly nice Friday. However, on the elevator ride down to the street level (I'm on the 11th floor) at the 10thf floor two guys got in, a middle aged white guy and a youngish (late 20's maybe) hispanic or asian (or perhaps both) guy. They obviously worked together. It was these two guys and myself in the elevator only. The older guy says something, I don't know what, but nothing too out of the ordinary. The younger guy says, and not quietly, "That fucking bitch." The other guy says something neutral, sort of how you talk to someone you are trying not to rile up, but also not really trying to encourage them either. "God! That fat fucking...I hate that bitch." It quickly becomes clear that Mr. foul mouth is unhappy with some woman he works with, most likely his boss or someone else above him. Possibly someone on his level that he's in competition with, but I get the feeling its someone over him. But here's the thing...this asshole is just swearing left and right about this woman and here I am, complete stranger, trapped in the elevator with him and his non-confrontational schmoe co-worker. What kind of inconsiderate asshole thinks its OK to do that in an elevator? It makes me so mad, I've been having elevator revenge fantasies all night. What a fucking jerk.

weekly

2008-01-10T20:01:00.000-06:00

Odd, it feels like I've been blogging every day, yet there's nary a posty between here and a week ago. In truth, since the new year (since Dec 25th, actually) I've been journaling on paper while I wait for and ride the train to and from work. This is both helpful and a hindrance because I am more free to write my thoughts in my private journal but I also find I put a lot of content in there that would also end up here for general consumption but that never makes it here because, well, who has time (or motivation) to transcribe and edit one's handwritten personal journal for a publicly available edition for blog? Not I.

So, here's the weekly roundup:
Felix - 200% better than before.
Will & Andrea - worse, better, better.
Glen - Honestly, tonight id the first time I've seen him since my last post.

Work - great. getting busier all the time. I have to come up with some annual objectives. If nothing else, working at Target more than prepared me for the kinds of HR hoops you have to jump through in any company that actually has an HR department.
Play - what? what's that? oh, been dabbling with my webcam and that security cam from A's dad. By tomorrow I should be able to cobble together a little pirate studio. The only problem with the webcam is that it's, well, very cheap and very low quality. The few times we've done skype between NYC and the middle-west they said I looked like I was starring in one of those Al Quaeda videos that they shoot in the mountain caves of Afghanistan. That and my laptop mic-jack is somewhat unreliable. But anyway, hopefully the ATM-cam will provide much better video quality. With that in place, hopefully we can make the most of things like Skype and perhaps I'll start video blogging. Why not? everyone else is doing it.

Dad - Dad had his surgery today and though it took longer and was "more difficult" than expected, it was without complication and as far as we know, successful. No news on the actual effectiveness until Monday, or maybe Tuesday.

doh

2008-01-03T21:00:00.000-06:00

not able to update much this week. Felix has been steadily getting better but also morphing symptoms. The rest of us have been somewhere between getting worse and getting better. I feel like crap most of the time, had fever and chills last night. Felix can be happy one moment and then suddenly cranky, usually with his fist stuck all the way in his mouth. Tonight he did it again and some fluid started draining from his ear. Then he was magically a super happy old Felix. Eating and laughing and dancing and playing...but still leaking from his ear. So we called his peed office (after calling grandma first) and the doc told us the same thing that mom said. Burst ear drum, nothing more to do, treat fever with tylenol/motrin, see you in the morning. I'm sure I will be one of many people lined up outside the Dr. office at 9am, but whatever. Every day this week I've emailed my boss saying "I'm probably going to be late or out today because of Felix" and I always end up going in, usually not too much later than usual. Well, tonight I PROMISED I was going to be in late. I wouldn't be surprised if we show up at 9 and wait until 5 to be seen.

Otherwise, things seem to be ok. It is now 2008, which means I instantl,y accrused 2 weeks of vacation. Not that I'm able to go anywhere, what wit our most uncertain conditions of our real estate in MN, the health of our son and ourselves, and of course, a brimming work schedule. But hey, Suzanne is etting married so we'll have to get back to the middle west at least for that.

The house is being thawed out slowly. The disaster recovery guy said, "The good news is, there doesn't appear to be much additional damage being caused by the melted water. It all seems to be ending up in the basement." Seems odd to me that they thaw out the pipes to ALLOW damage to take place before fixing it. I guess it is easier to locate all the leaks when the melting water is allowed to do more damage...in a weird way. I mean, I guess they are going to fix everything so I shouldn't care if they tear the whole house down before building it back up, so long as it is the same or better when they are through.

plot thickens

2007-12-30T16:26:00.001-06:00

so...we didn't make it to monday. an hour after his last dose of motrin, felix's fever got worse. he was breathing fast and shaking and his armpit temp was 103.1. "ok," I said, "lets go to the ER." this was at about 11:30pm. when we checked in at the ER his rectal temp was 104.1. felix has very accurate armpits, it appears. and so they gave him tylenol I think and his temp was last recorded at 102.something. we've seen a doctor and are now just hanging out waiting to get his chest xrayed. we are up past everyones bed times. i'm supposed to go to work tomorrow but we'll see how that goes...

end in sight?

2007-12-30T16:26:00.000-06:00

with the new year upon us I find several plots hopefully coming to an end, or at least taking a mid-season break:
icehouse 2007 - insured! but what else will happen next?!
feverboy - this is hopefully a pre-new years cliffhanger subplot arc that will resolve itself before 08. basically, sometime saturday felix pitched a fever. could have started in the AM but we gave him motrin for teething so we never noticed the fever until the afternoon when he woke up from his nap. highest recorded was 102.5. we called the nurse line to find out when and where to take him. then called his peed office and the oncall doc called back. he said we can treat the fever with tylenol and motrin to get through the weekend and if he's still feverish on Monday then they will see him there. he goes up and down during the day and obviously his nap schedule is blown all to hell. Its really strange to have this child be so unlike his usual self, tired and cranky and wanting to do nothing but lie still because he's so hot and feeling sick and then two hours later he seems completely back to normal for about two hours and then he slides right back down to the previous feverish state. I was really fantasizing that he would break out of this fever cycle sometime today but the later it gets the more I'm beginning to feel like he and Andrea will be going to the doctor tomorrow. or maybe I'll take him. Nobody will care if I am in to work late tomorrow, especially with a good reason like a sick toddler.

Have I mentioned lately how amazing he is? He is. Truly amazing. He communicates fairly well, he's a super monkey ninja toddler, for real, and he's still just about the cutes thing ever ever EVER. Really.

Xtra xmas

2007-12-26T13:24:00.000-06:00

well, i got the word from our adjuster today and WE'RE COVERED! woo!
I'm sure that this process will be less than painless, but at least we're over the first (and hopefully the greatest) hurdle. At the very least, I feel a lot better today and a lot less stressed out. now if only I could get in touch with anyone to share the good news...

eve

2007-12-24T19:58:00.001-06:00

As I grow up and my family becomes larger and more geographically dispersed, I realize how arbitrary holidays are. Their primary purpose to me and my family is to server as a starting point to the conversation which results in some sort of agreement about when, where, and how to get together. This getting together is the primary purpose of the event, not the underlying mythology or story or event that originally marks the day that starts the aforementioned conversation. I guess these things are useful because without these arbitrary traditions, people wouldn't do the same sort of things.

Seriously, how many people do you know would just agree that on some specific day they would give gifts to nearly everyone they know in some form or another? Mostly gifts of "thought" but for their closest friends and families it might add up to some very significant expense. Who would do that just out of the blue? Nobody. It has to start small. But it essentailly starts the same way. SOmeone has a story about a day and someone else says, "Hey, you know what? We should give our kids a cookie on that day. And a cokkie to our friends, etc. et.c" and so on and then advertisers get involved and soon you have Santa Claus and all sorts of ridiculous expectations like fur coats and iPods.

I like the getting together part. I'm sad to not be able to have the big get together live and in person with my extended family, but we are planning to have our own first xmas tomorrow (or second, really). It will hopefully bring some respite from the possible bad mojo looming over our heads.

Merry xmas, happy holidays everyone.

how far up the hill do you live?

2007-12-22T13:00:00.000-06:00

the hill I'm referring to is the one that all the shit is constantly rolling down. As anyone firmly planted in the real world knows, this is not a nicely sloping hill either. It has some very steep drops and some very flat middle parts and I think at the foot is actually an above-ground swimming pool that is fed by the constant stream. At this point, I don't feel like I'm living at the bottom of the hill, but I do feel very much like I'm living in a bit of a valley or a wide pass where the shit tends to hit hard suddenly and circle around a bit until we manage to shovel it over the lip of the downward side. Right now I'm looking for my shovels.

train writer

2007-12-07T11:56:00.000-06:00

I have had relatively good luck with
using my transit time for scribbling down
my ideas, pieces of dialog, even whole
sections of prose in my handcrafted
notebook while riding to or from work.
The hardest part is doing it when the
train is really crowded. On those
occasions I opt to read instead, or
watch a show if I have any queued up.

easy like friday evening

2007-11-30T20:04:00.000-06:00

having a quiet night at home. Felix is down for the night. Andrea and Glen are off at an event. i'm finally getting some time to sit and collect my thoughts, have a little "me" time...and I'm wasting it all sitting here writing on my blog :(

Actually, what I'll probably do in the next hour is turn on a show I haven't had time to watch on the way to or from work (I re-encode them for playback on my pocket PC and watch on the train) while i do the dishes.

so, whats happening...I now have library cards for both the Brooklyn public library and the New York public library (see: Manhattan, The Bronx, Staten Island). I actually have two books on reserve and waiting for me to pick up at the branch three blocks from our house. The problem is, as with most libraries, they're never open during hours that normally employed people can actually visit them (hence the sense that sometimes library target demographic is truant children and the unemployed). I'll pick them up tomorrow, I hope...never know if a library is going to be open on the weekend. I know that the central (Brooklyn) branch is open on weekends, but you never know about the smaller branches. Those are the ones that have hours like 11am-2pm. What? That's not a schedule, that's a friggin nap!

I have finally finished getting the ball rolling to get the house rented out. now the property management company will be doing whatever it does to try and find a renter. I suspect that the $$ for "advertising" is bullshit since they're probably just posting a listing on their own website, but hey, you never know. maybe they do list with newspapers and real estate services, etc. they stand to make more money with people in the house than without. of course, they don't lose anythign by having it empty either. whatever. I'm just hoping that they find a/some good tenants and we can get on with it all.

actually, after I finish the dishes, I should really try to do some writing exercises. yes, it is that time of year when I start saying I'm going to try to start writing again, or wish i was writing again, or try harder to write, or mope about not being able to write...other than the visual verbal stain I leave on this blog every so often. but you know...we're in New York where everyone is a part time actor/writer/artist/something. why not me too? being realistic, I'm not going to be practicing aikido anytime soon, so I should try and find other hobbies that can more easily fit into my schedule...so basically for times like this.

anywhoo...I'm off to do some dishes and listen to a show.
happy whatever you feel like being happy about this time of year. seems like most people around me are swimming in bad news and bad mojo (not any of us, but definitely some of you). be happy for something.

i would be a little more relieved and relaxed than I usually am this time of year because of the house...if not for that i'd probably be feeling my holiday happiest this year, happier than i have been in years past.

bubble bobble

2007-11-28T21:27:00.000-06:00

so, I've gotten the paper work started to hire a property management company to try and rent out our house until the housing market turns around. it feels very weird to be handling all of this via telephone and email. anyone who tells you that the housing bubble isn't real (just like global warming, right?) should not be counted on to watch your cat while you're on vacation.

work is busy, ramping up a bit for me. again, after working in IT for a major retailer, it is a bit of a shock that the holiday season has no impact on the schedule of work (other than working around people's vacations). back at big red things supposedly slow down during the "freeze" of peak season when no changes can be made to the production environment. well, I'm not in retail anymore so i have a whole new calendar to get used to. soon I'll be assessing hardware for our upcoming refresh, teasing out the complexities of deploying Office 2007 across the enterprise and, surprise surprise, NOT having to worry about migrating to Vista any time soon.

Felix is still in the midst of his cold-season sniffles but over the weekend he got feverish for about a day and since has developed a nasty sounding cough that comes more at night. It sounds like the croup, I think. I will try to get him a dr. appt tomorrow, but it is really just a confidence building/due diligence exercise since at this point in a child's life, treatment for 95% of infant/toddler cold/illness is "fluids, fluids, rest, use a humidifier, prop up the crib for better drainage..." Basically everything you already are doing if you are halfway intelligent. But its better to see a doctor and get their co-pays-worth of advice before continuing on the board certified regimen of doing what you've been doing.

Worst case scenario is he DOES have something that falls into that 5% that is treatable by antibiotics (pneumonia...bacterial bronchitis?).
So, that's basically the short program of what's been going down. We all generally feel like crap due to the shift in weather, -50% humidity (and that WITH a humidifier running all night) and general crapuliciousness that goes with public transportation.

ta.

Holidrizzle

2007-11-19T20:14:00.000-06:00

What? Thanksgiving is THIS week? holy moses time flies in the big apple. Seems like Halloween was just last week. I have found my autumn to be pleasantly lacking holiday music, though I did see regular TV the other night while picking up dinner and all i can say is...how on earth did we ever put up with those crappy commercials?

So, I thought thanksgiving wasn't until the last thursday of the month, or at least, wasn't until next week. So suddenly I'm looking at a 3-day week, which also means a 4-day weekend (both Andrea and I get Thursday AND Friday off from work). How weird is that? Gone are my days of remembering to try and take that day off. Gone are my days in retail. Also, at work, I've been here for what, two months now? coming up on 3...now is when I'm looking like I'm going to get busy instead of ease off like in my old job. In retail, the retail side gets super busy but the support side, well, that slows down a bit since nothing major can be implemented during "peak season." I think I'm liking it in the non-retail world. I'm sure that benefits consulting has its own special calendar, probably related more to the fiscal calendar or something.

So then the question comes from all directions, "What are your holiday plans? Are you going back to Minnesota?" Of course we're not going anywhere. We'll probably stay in all day on Thursday and hang out. Friday I think we'll have the nanny come and watch Felix so Andrea and I can go out and catch a movie or something. We started to make our own traditions back in Minneapolis and I expect we'll do that here too, but I have a hard time feeling like the holiday traditions are really going to take shape and start to stick until Felix is old enough to hold on to them too. Holidays, in my mind, seem to be more for children and extended families. What's that? Has my atheism McScrooged my love of a "day off" and an excuse to sit on the couch, watch football, and drink beer before dangerously over eatingmyself into an early grave? Not at all. It's just that holidays don't seem to eclipse anything like they used to. It used to be that when life was rolling along and things were on your mind, hey, at least you could push that stuff to the background and just focus on the holiday, on the food and family and fun.

I expect that when we do finally make our way back midwest for a visit, we'll be a lot more appreciative of our surroundings and family and friends. Partly because we'll probably be mooching off of them for a place to stay and a car to borrow when we want to visit someone...and of course, the baby sitting!

It's hard for me to imagine experiencing a holiday in the same way as I used to; sitting around doing nothing, eating lots of food...just being. I don't think anyone can "just be" around a fireball like Felix. Seriously, we are the support crew for rocketship Felix. Look out!

Did I mention that he is now on to acrobatics?

I scream, you scream, we all scream for butt cream

2007-11-13T21:04:00.000-06:00

Felix has developed a very nasty looking diaper rash. My skin burns just looking at it. Poor little guy. So I've been looking into various butt soothing remedies since the (zinc based?) cream we use frequently doesn't seem to be doing the trick. I think also it is due to him not getting changed enough during the day and not having the cream applied regularly enough. I think we need to institute a strict butt drying policy as well. Sigh.

Today we toured a local, highly sought after child care center for next year. The tour is the first step in the enrollment process. Then, sometime in February we get to wait outside the place because enrollment is first come-first serve. Andrea's not too excited about the place even though it is one of the few places that offers a 5-day, 7am-6pm schedule for 2 year olds and it is a good place to get a leg up on the competition for the lower school there, which is also highly sought after.

Last night was a pretty rough one and I really felt it today. Tonight isn't looking to be much better. It's quarter past ten and I've already been in to soothe Felix twice, and just now a third time while writing this paragraph. Its more complicated by his being both teething, has a craptastic cold, AND this diaper rash from hell. And the only thing that sort of soothes him sometimes is to get to sleep in our bed, which doesn't mean sleep so much as play bumper pool all night ling with mom and dad as the bumpers.

Anyway, I'm generally feeling worse these days, my crappiness doesn't completely o away when I get up and out of here and into the world like I had been doing last week. I think its everything working together to whittle away my immune system and eventually I will succumb to the level that Andrea and Felix already have.

Now i need to go soak my foot. I have an ingrown toenail (the big toe, of course) that somehow feels like some sort of legacy. I seem to recall my dad have horrendous looking toenails. Well, now I'm falling pray to foot disease too. Hopefully soaking will be enough and we can avoid the minor surgery involved in cases that are too far gone. I just can;t imagine having my foot in bad shape around here...it'd be like having your car in the shop! Yikes.

Sunday Evening Post...er...Saturday

2007-11-10T20:21:00.000-06:00

I would have to say that a toddler is like a Ferrari. No, not red, sporty, and capable of going from 0-120mph in 90 seconds (wait, no, that DOES sound like a toddler) but that a toddler is like a very very expensive and finely tuned piece of machinery. You get one small thing out of whack and that's all she wrote. Motor oil and transmission fluid all over the highway. So, what am i talking about? Previously noted shifts in routine aside (and the perpetual state of "teethinghood"), Felix had a much too short nap today. Yep, game over man. Even if we spend time on ourselves, make plans for ourselves, and do as good a job as we can to make sure that we remain autonomous, there is just no escaping that parents really are just the pit crew for the toddler-mobiles that we brought into the world. (Sorry about all the automotive metaphor...not sure what that's all about) When his schedule gets messed up, it impacts our schedules as well. Its not like you can just say, "Oh, well, I'll just do the same stuff I normally do while he is napping and we'll get back on his scheduled when it usually happens." Uh huh. Good luck with that.

I think the problem is that as adults, we are USED to operating at various levels of restedness and we have learned (or at least how to compensate for) our limits in those cases. Toddlers, on the other hand, are fresh and expect to operate at peak efficiency all the time until they suddenly stop and pass into a short regenerative coma like a nap or a bed time. Then they wake, re-calibrate, and off they go at full speed ahead. They have not developed the levels of activity us analogs have. Toddlers are still cutting edge and digital.

Anyway, needless to say Felix has had a rough day and so have we all. The past week has been rough due to his escalated teething (actually have one or two more teeth half-way emerged) and cold symptoms (snotty nose) which are compounded by the heat coming on at night which makes this place dry as hell. Andrea's sick, I'm not the greatest (but not too bad) and Felix is cranky at night and early morning, but otherwise happy as can be. It's a lot harder to deal with now that he only has one nap. Back when he did two naps a day you had a shot at resetting him with that second nap if the first one was missed or cut short. On one nap, the only reset opportunity comes with a good night's sleep. I hear that still exists somewhere on this earth.

Also, only a parent can truly understand what "sleep like a baby" means. Really.

savings?

2007-11-05T08:31:00.000-06:00

If someone had tried to convince me that the world was somehow geared to make life easier for people who don't have children I would have said, "uh, yeah, suuuuure." But I'm starting to think that is really the case.
I don't think that there is a conspiracy or anything, just that the wants, needs, and basic physiological and psychological (mainly the latter, but directly stemming from the former) requirements are given much less attention than those of non-child-rearing lifestyles. Its more a case of global/universal neglect. It is a crime of neglect that you inevitably find yourself on one side of one day and then suddenly and unexpectedly (not that you will unexpectedly have children, just that you will suddenly realize that you are now on the OTHER side...you know, the one with all those complainers) find yourself on the other side.

Case in point:
Daylight savings time. How does this benefit the average parents? Do they get the fabled "extra hour of sleep?" Only if their children have somehow been reset to the correct time by the latest update from Microsoft. But the point is, the kids will get tired at the same time they they always do, they will wake up when they always do, and they will get hungry when they always do...except how it is an hour earlier in our adult schedules. So that extra hour of sleep turns into just and extra hour of being awake and chasing a freshly energized toddler around the apartment half naked before escaping off to work. It also means that upon arriving home, that kids wants to e fed NOW, not in 30 minutes, not when momma gets home, but right pronto now Tonto! And going to sleep "earlier" means that now we have less fun time with him unless we try to make that extra hour in the morning the fun time...which is sorta tough when you're low on sleep. More on this later.

boooooooooooone tired.

2007-10-31T20:05:00.000-05:00

Happy Halloween.
As you may know, this is one of the few times of the year when the negative aspects of the big 3 religions. Every school child over the age of eight has no doubt been taught the harrowing tale of Hallow's Evening when Jesus, Muhammad, and Rabbi Perlman held a round-robin arm-wrestling tournament to "settle this thing once and for all." No doubt, the parable of the Devil's trickery involving rusty razor blades hidden in the sweet treats of the pious trio teaches all our young ones why you should be kind to animals and always opt for the treat and not the trick. But I'm not going to go over that old saw again, its common knowledge.

Felix has a nasty cold AND he's teething like a mofo from soho, so he's been waking up a lot and guess who also wakes up with him. and of course andrea also wakes up, and if glen is home i'm sure he's being woken up as well. anyway, so i've been feeling fairly like hammered shit to some degree all week. I think it has to do with adjusting to the gradual change in season. I will NOT be ranting about the seasons (or lack thereof in the midwest), but I will comment on the hilarious reaction that my fellow New Yorkers have to a slight drop in temperature. The mean temp this week has been probably around 62F during the day and 58F during the night so, being rather tempered by the midwesternian extremes of weather I find it laughable that people are bundling their children in the most fashionable snowmobile suits and skipants in late October and they themselves ride to work in the finest JPG parkas, handcrafted by Parisian urchins for tuppence a night, etc etc. The great thing is, people are wearing drastically inappropriate clothing for the slight drop in temperature, yet the subway is still 200 degrees at any given stop (except between smith/9th and 4th ave which are outside and, oddly enough, a steady 38F all year round, don't ask me how). Considering the amount of time I have to spend outside s the amount of time I'm likely to stand on the subway platform, I don't think I'm even going to bother unpacking my winter coat. A good sweater can get me from my front step to the 7th ave station in the hairiest of winter weather. Never mind this slight change in the wind that has cooled off our avenues to a slightly brisk autumn splendor.

And yet, even New York has that lovable asshat, Mr. Comicbook T-Shirt and cargo shorts all year long...this type of guy is a universal constant and can be found in any climate.

rollup

2007-10-29T21:07:00.000-05:00

Mom and dad came to visit this weekend. All in all, a good visit, I think. It was nice to see them and really it was much sooner than I had expected to see anyone. Sure, Shawn popped in a couple weeks back, but he's so random that I wouldn't be surprised if he showed up on the moon.

I have realized something: for all of our non-going-outness, we don't really spend much time in our apartment. On Friday and Saturday the weather was mostly rainy (finally clearing up Saturday night) and though we attempted to keep up our usual routines with mom and dad in tow, it was harder than I expected, and even harder to remain at our house. Its not like we don't hang out here...but we just generally don't hang out much at all. We're running to the store for this or that, picking up or dropping off laundry, dry cleaning, groceries, taking Felix to the park, fixing Felix breakfast/lunch/dinner/snack and or same for ourselves...it was having other people around while we were doing a scaled back version of this that made me sort of see it from outside of myself. I don't know what their actual impression was, but I imagine that my parents must think we do nothing but run around the neighborhood and wash dishes all day long, pausing only to make cross-country forays into the park. But, in a sense, that IS what we do on the weekends because that's when we have time for it. All week long there is only time for one or two things and then its dinner, bath time, dishes, bed time. But when I'm not so self conscious about it the cooking and cleaning and everything just blends in with the breathing and trips to the park so it doesn't feel like we're doing so much more. I dunno...

My advice if you are going to visit us or people like us (meaning New Yorkers with small apartments and young children) and you are not going to get a hotel or motel room (or even if you do get a room somewhere) that magically provides free car-service to anywhere, is to start training early (as if you were training for a marathon, seriously...we walk a lot around here and we don't even think twice about it, another thing that became blatantly obvious to me once mom and dad got here), make sure you have comfortable shoes, appropriate rain gear, and arrive with only as much stuff as you feel comfortable carrying for a whole day (not that you'll have to, just that its a good way to judge your level of packing...and you never know, you might have to, especially if you do get a room somewhere). Also, since we have a relatively small apartment, we don't have much in the way of guest accommodations. The most luxurious thing we have is our couch which folds down into a slightly less-than full-sized bed, but only considered luxurious in so far as it is slightly less firm than the wood floor. We have a queen-sized air mattress but...well...nobody in their right mind considers that a preferable accommodation. I guess you could say that whatever you would do to pack for backpack camping would go a long way towards preparing you to visit people in New York. And besides, you won't be here long enough to have spare time to fritter away with solitaire or emails or whatnots. if you get a break, like the baby is sleeping, you take full advantage and take a shower, run to the coffee shop, or maybe just sit on the couch and take a nap because the only time you KNOW you will get to do that again is the next time you happen to put the baby down for a nap, which is a whole week away since someone else does that for you while you are at work.

What I'm saying is that to really get the mosy our of visiting new yorkers is to be like a new yorker; crafty, calculating, flexible, and relatively fit. The reason why there are double-decker buses driving all around the "sights" in Manhattan is NOT because you couldn't possibly see them all without driving from one to the next, not the case at all. Its because it would otherwise involve a lot of planning, plotting, and above all, walking. Now, we didn't do any sight seeing with my folks and from my previous paragraphs you should be able to understand why. I don't think we could have done it if we wanted to.

Andrea came to New York four years ago and has, in her heart, been a new yorker ever since. I feel like I was a closet new yorker as well. Finally, I'm somewhere that things move at a more brisk pace. Everything is faster, more rapid, go go go. And I'm not one who likes pressure, but I definitely like not getting stuck behind people who are moving slow for no apparent (or even for apparent) reasons.

Case in point: Felix lived in Minneapolis for 13 months and never learned to walk. We've been in New York for two months now and he's walking, running, skipping, jumping, and climbing all manner of things. Now, I know my math may seem a little bit republican, but a little bit flawed in its reasoning, but it's truthiness math, I know it in my heart that it is right. Don't try to confuse me with facts and logic.

Well, my time is up. I need ot get to bed so I can start tomorrow anew.

Oh, and it absolutely kills me to see people wearing down jackets in 50 degree weather. I wore a thin wool sweater over my button-down shirt but I couldn't stand to have my sleeves rolled down for more than 20 minutes. That is something I hope I don't lose, my temperature control.
g'night

Sunday Night Post

2007-10-21T20:16:00.000-05:00

TA DA. Just read last week's Sunday night post, but substitute dates and names and, i don't know, throw in some random adjectives to spice things up. I'd do it for you here but I'm too lazy.

Ok, here's something. I got a phone call today from the recruiter who got me my current job. I have not heard from this guy since the day we closed the deal, over two months ago. My boss has been back to his office a couple times in the past few weeks since he's hiring a couple more engineers. The recruiter was calling me to touch base, see how things were going, see if i was happy and if there was anything bothering me or that I was worried about, any red flags, am I doing what I was hired for or is it not what I thought it would be? Uh, no, I like the place, I seem to be fitting in well, I like my boss and co-workers, its exactly what I was hired for and I'm enjoying it, why?

Oh, he's been talking to my boss a lot lately and all he hears is high praise, they love me, hope I'm there for a long time, I seem to be really good at my job, etc etc...he just wanted to check with me and get my side, and that its good to hear it coming from me.

I get the feeling that there's some history behind this phone call, something to do with they guy who was recruited for my same job about a year ago who quit the same job after the first week. The story I heard was that the guy got a better deal somewhere else. Anyway...I dunno if he thinks he's protecting his investment because he doesn't get paid unless I make it to 90 days or something, but getting one random phone call is hardly a loyalty-making move. I'm at my new job, i like it a ton, and I'm a lot more loyal to that place than the guy who called me up and intriduced me. Not that I'm not loyal, he just hasn't had much of a presence. And besides...my benefits just kicked in so I'm not going anywhere!

Felix's 15-month appt is Tuesday. He was officially 15 months old last Friday. And he walks almost all the time now. And crouches, and picks stuff up, and constantly points at airplanes and helicopters. He seems to really like airplanes. When we hear one from the lving room, he points at the window with a big big big smile. Next he just has to start learning more english.

squeaky

2007-10-21T11:48:00.000-05:00

out of the shower, Felix still asleep, and Andrea is home so maybe I'll step out for a few errands or something.

decisions decisions...

2007-10-21T11:07:00.000-05:00

...Sunday morning, one mug of coffee consumed, one toddler completely wiped out and taking a nap...do I write in the blog or grab my one shower for the weekend?

Maybe I can do both...make it a quick shower.

yatta yatta yatta...

2007-10-18T20:45:00.000-05:00

Not much to report. Felix has had some ups and downs, starting Monday night when he decided to scream bloody murder from 12am to 5am almost non-stop, it seemed. Needless to say, I took Tuesday off because I felt horrible and I had no sleep. Felix finally slept on the couch for two hours before the nanny came. Once she showed up he was cranky for 15 minutes and then, whammo, he was back to his mostly normal self. They went to the park, per usual and I ended up working from home most of the morning, which mainly consisted of chasing around emails trying to get someone to make a decision about deploying a video driver update to a certain group of computers (and also me researching how, if at all, we could isolate this specific group and send the update only to them). Felix slept through the night Tuesday and so did I, mostly, yay! Wednesday was full "How you feelin???" from the CIO and everyone on down the line.

So Felix is 15 months old tomorrow. He has his checkup on Tuesday, which reminds me I need to call our old health provider and go through the rigamarole to get access to my account there even though I no longer know what my ID# was. Ugh... I just need to get Felix's vaccination records, which, I suppose we have in their original hardcopy form...hrm. Something to think about.

Anyway, I made dinner last night (just heating up fresh tortaloni and vodka sauce from the mozzarella and pasta shop around the corner, and steaming some green beans) and tonight (made a smoked trout salad with steamed broccoli and sliced tomatoes), so I'm starting to get a little bit of a feel for the old kitchen magic. And it is a bit easier to go shopping with Felix in the carrier instead of the stroller or just carrying him. It is a happy medium. This thing, the "Ergo Carrier", is totally for dads. It's like a utility belt for your kid. It transforms, it has options, you can do a side carry, a back carry, or even a front carry. It's nearly impossible to figure out without reading the instructions and even then you have to play with it for like a day before you can even understand how to do it by yourself. And you have to have a cooperative kid. Its the type of device that, if the kid is kicking and crying and not wanting to go in, he's not going in. But its pretty cool and it makes it very easy to carry him the 15 blocks to the store and back (though I usually have to deal with a few tantrums in the store and at least one position change).

So, Felix has been doing well at night, I'm into my job, Andrea is absolutely in love with her job, and we barely see Glen because the restaurant finally opened and he's working the dinner shift. Sigh, it starts to sound old and stale but life...is...good.

Sunday Evening Post

2007-10-14T19:59:00.000-05:00

The weather has become very pleasantly autumnal. We accomplished a lot this weekend. Foremost, we defrosted the refrigerator and freezer. Sadly, it took 2 hours to defrost the freezer and about 6 hours to defrost the fridge, and that includes using a hair dryer on high for about half an hour. See, the people who lived here before us don't seem to have actually been around much or really keep the place up much at all. When we moved in there was a punchbowl sized inverted ice dome hanging from the cooling elements at the top of the refrigerator compartment on the right side (almost perfectly round except for the indent where the fridge light meekly kept the ice at bay). So we've had this ice monster pressing down on our food and drink since we moved in, providing a higher percentage of humidity than you'd prefer in a refrigerator and definitely more water dripping all over everything. The freezer had a good inch and a half of permafrost on all five sides. A few weeks ago I mentioned to the owner that we were concerned about the refrigerator; was he stealing it's pensions and social security checks? does it ever shut up about Roosevelt and the good old days? when is it going to stop freezing the food and melting the ice cream? I said I would be willing to go halfsies on a decent used refrigerator and there seem to be many good ones on Craigslist. Well, he seems to think that a used fridge is on craiglist probably because there's something wrong with it. Might I refer you to the monstrous iceberg menacing my dairy products? If it has a door and it gets cold, it can't be worse that this one. Anyway, he said "Just defrost it and work with me and we'll see how things go." Oooookay. So now I have done battle with the depression era icebox and the fruits of its loom and we will now see just how long it takes for the iceberg to re-emerge. I suspect that the previous tenants never defrosted in the two years they lived here. Even so...dude, that's effed up.

I was considering mounting a web cam in there to monitor the progress of Titanica Two's formation. So far? Not much. But its only been a day.

I expect I'll be much happier with the refigerator now that we won't have little trickles of water dampening our produce and pooling on the tops of tupperware. yay.

Felix got a little bit under the weather. Today he had a fever of about 101. I'm hoping it is due to teething, but it just as well could be a virus or other bug he picked up from other kids. Tis the season. And he is not just a walker, but a runner, a skipper, and a jumper (and a faller downer). He now actually prefers to walk if he is going for more distance. Still prefers the old kneewalking for quick, short bursts, but if he has to go more than five feet he promptly pops up and goes for a jog.

The weather has been absolutely gorgeous the past few days. 60s-70s in the sun during the day, 50s at night, clear. This is what October is supposed to feel like. I haven't checked, but somehow I imagine Minneapolis is still hovering in the 80s and people are complaining about how horrible it is, except for the one day when it only hits 79 and then they'll all be "Oh, this is wonderful. Just wait until it's -200 degrees outside" which will not happen until mid February, shortly after the first snowfall if the past few years are any indication.

testing...

2007-10-12T22:27:00.000-05:00

is this thing on? yes? oh. I guess I'm the one who's off. What to say? busy week. got a cool carrier for Felix but I haven't really been able to try it off. had our 4th year anniversary. new rule: there are two options for getting really good food here; you either only go to a place you have good food at once or you have to go there almost every day. if you do not follow one of these scenarios, your second and/or third experiences to the originally stellar establishment will be frustrating, disappointing, and probably result in food poisoning.

my boss is off getting married this weekend. again. he'll be out for a week and so I'm under the direct supervision of the cto. woo. solved a tech problem today, so I think I scored some sort of points...but then again, that's my job. also discovering that i may be the general go-to guy since the network engineers all have actual network stuff to work on while i'm focusing mostly on research and what little packaging stuff comes up here and there. I think I'm establishing my rep as a good problem solver.

Felix is walking all over the place all the time. And the toddler tantrums have started. magically one day he has learned the whole body conniption fit (involving jumping, swinging arms up and down with little fists, thrashing of the head and body, with high pitched squeal frequently identified as "the killer"). it's quite something to see. luckily it only lasts about 2 minutes.

week in review

2007-10-07T20:37:00.001-05:00

ok, so after coming back to blogging I'm just going to say that now my life has become much more busy and so I can't promise to put frequent or even timely posts up here. but you'll get whatever i can manage to give.

this week:
work is still good. I'm enjoying my job and it really does seem like a nice place to be. I think all the hoo-hah about New York being so damn expensive comes from morons who didn't figure in the cost of living difference BEFORE they came looking for work.
Still glad we moved. Love the hood, love the park, don't even mind the subways too much. Beats the hell out of the commute I could have had. Still getting the hang of shopping and figuring out my choice shops for which products. trying to avoid having to go to Target because it is a harrowing (frustration and anger usually well up whenever i go there because of how ridiculously poorly the store is run and maintained.) Not a good shopping experience, not the Target experience people in the midwest are used to.
Can't deposit in any ATMs here so we're all doing it by mail (and consequently, not writing each other checks for anything anymore...hello wire-transfer service!). This wouldn't normally be much of an issue since we're all doing direct deposit (well, maybe Glen isn't, but I'm not so worried about transferring money from him to me or vice versa). I think Glen will be switching to a local bank. Not sure if Andrea will either. They use a regular bank so they can find pretty much the same thing out here. I'm not switching because the Credit Union (or whatever it is now) still provides me with pretty good service and doesn't seem to be charging me randomly for extra fees left and right. Hell, they've sent me postage paid envelopes to do my deposits for the next century.
Benefits started! woo. so now we have medical insurance and Felix is scheduled for his 15-month check up (more shots, ugh). Not a minute too soon, since he's picked up his first cold. Been snotty, crusty, and cranky for about a week and a half. Walks all over the place now, but still only when he feels like it. more video to be emailed around but of course, if we had a nice mini-DV cam we could keep those interested well supplied with high quality, full motion, precious moments.
As i think I mentioned before, Felix is determined to knock his little teeth out and get into whatever other danger he can manage on such a limited budget.
Our anniversary is coming up this week. big #4??? Yeah...lots has happened since #3. oddly enough, this will be our 2nd in New York, which means we've had as many in New York as we've had in Minnesota. In some ways it doesn't seem like its been that long but in other it seems like it's been much much longer.
I've finally given away my fat clothes. OK, not really mu fat clothes, but my "I can't wear these any more because I've lost 4 inches off my waist" clothes. I'm back down to 32" waist. Inseam remains the same. Apparently my feet were not very fat. But anyway, I reached the conclusion that if i did put weight back on, I wouldn't want to be wearing the same clothes as before. So they went out on the stoop around 5pm and were gone by 7pm. Just a few pairs of pants and a few shirts. I still have SOME 36" wais stuff, but not much. I also need to buy some new belts. And shoes (not related to weight loss) and a whole new wardrobe. Well, ALL of us need new wardrobes, but all in good time.

all in all life keeps on ticking ticking ticking into the future...
New York is only really expensive to visit, I think.

stages

2007-10-04T20:52:00.000-05:00

You know, it seems like we wait so long for Felix to get his baby teeth (still at 6 and holding, molars teething like a mofo) and now all he seems to want to do is engage in behavior that will result in knocking them out. This is the month of the bloody mouth, to be sure. With great teeth comes great responsibility. And much bloodshed. Teeth + walking = pain and suffering (and many a fat lip and bumpy noggin).

september to remember

2007-09-30T20:01:00.000-05:00

Here we are, closing out the first month of my life as a New Yorker with another relatively great week. Everyone is adjusting to their new roles and circumstances fairly well, I think. All the wonderful goodness of working for a benefits consulting firm kicks in tomorrow (that is, excellent medical and dental and all that other stuff) for employee + family, so we can start getting out teeth cleaned, fillings and prescriptions filled, Felix can get his 15 month checkup during his 15th month (assuming we can pick out a pediatrician in that short amount of time), and life can resume without that "without a net" feeling we've been having ever since I quit my last job, the prescriptions ran out, and Felix developed a runny nose.

Felix is walking, if you hadn't heard or seen the video. Actually, he's running now too. He still prefers to knee-walk or crawl depending on the terrain, but he is quickly shifting from crawling to knee walking to walk walking quite easily. Now it appears that he chooses his ambulatory style based on the intended altitude of his hands and face. If he's in the sand or grass, he stays on his knees to move fast and quickly goes ot crawling so he can see whatever is on the ground up close. If he's coving lots of territory he will stick to his knees, drop to all fours for sudden bursts of cheetah-like speed, or rise to his feet if he wants to get or grab on to something that is above his shoulder-level or above his head. I think he still finds walking completely upright to be something of a trick or a hobby; not something that you do all the time and not when you mean business. But that is slowly changing, too. He's also become a much more avid climber, if you can imagine that. His major development today was that he rose from kneeling to standing without pushing up with his hands at all. It was all leg. Kneeling to one-leg up to crouching to standing in a relatively (I expect unconscious) fluid motion. He wobbled a little at the top but then ran off in zig-zag fashion. When this kid learns how to lean into his turns we'll need to install speed bumps and edge-guards.

I had a good work week, accomplishing a relatively major task in the time allotted and also laying the groundwork for some pretty major future changes. I still really like my job and I like the people there a lot too. I'm quickly learning the pros and cons of working in a smaller company, but luckily not a tiny company. As far as size goes, we've got a pretty sophisticated operation going, IT wise.

Andrea comes home most nights glowing with what I can only describe as job satisfaction. It is something of an alien experience for her to really like, no, love her job. She often speaks of her job as a double-whammy, "Like getting paid to get a masters, that's how much I'm learning. I get master-level critiques almost every day!!!" And this whole weekend, a gorgeous indian-summer weekend in Brooklyn, Andrea keeps falling into a mystified mantra of, "Oh my god I love our neighborhood, I don't ever want to leave here." And I agree, it is very nice. One of my little refreshers after a day of work is to take Felix for a walk up and down 7th Avenue and just window shop ro pick up some odds and ends, and just be in the neighborhood. This area absolutely teems with life, with activity, but, I don't know how to describe it so much as just "the good kind." We are all very happy to be here. I know we've made some tremendous leaps and landed on some pretty amazing (and incredibly stable) ledges on the far side, so I don't expect that our story is anything but the exception to the rule. But you know, I really doubt there's a real rule. For our set of circumstances, we probably did exactly what should have been done and had exactly what should have happened happen. Life is good.

My 32nd birthday was a non-event, and as such was probably one of my most enjoyable birthdays of late. In a way, it's nice to not have a bunch of people get together or go through so much effort because then I don't feel like anyone was put out by it and also that no one felt pressure to attend, etc. It is just another way in which the distance between here and Minnesota is more than a little freeing. I don't have to worry about organizing any events and I don't have to even consider motives for people not being able to attend. Its win-win all around.

One of these days Andrea will be emailing or posting or maybe just describing, pictures of our apartment post-unpacking.

And the odd ting is, it feels like we just got here and as if we've been here forever, all at the same time, all after 30 days.

We're all liking, if not loving, our new jobs, we're collecting paychecks, we're paying bills, and Felix finally made it through a whole night in his own bed. Here's hoping for two in a row.

And now something from home:

Brooklyn's in the house!

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

2007-09-20T21:29:00.000-05:00

Do you want to know what's the worst thing about semi-stupid help-desk people? They do not believe that there is anything beyond the script. Well, if i can ping your cable modem, there's NO REASON you can't get on the internet. All the right lights are blinking and all of the tests that I can run come back "normal" therefore nothing is wrong. Your inability to connect to the internet must have something to do with you not being bounced around between the local and national helpdesks enough times, or not turning the damn modem and computer off and back on in just the right sequence...or something.

Grrr. I WORK with these things, been using them for a long time, and when i tell you that the modem is not working correctly, odds are, I'M RIGHT. So tomorrow I am going to bring my supposedly perfectly working cable modem into a TimeWarner location and trading it for another perfectly working cable modem, because its impossible to get these jerkoffs to come to your house.

Luckily the phantom wireless network that was in place when we moved in is still there, still unlocked, so I can connect to TimeWarner's website to find thew phone number to call up these helpless people. And of cours,e an hour later, I can post this pissed off blog.

bday

2007-09-17T22:20:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow is #32. I am firmly established in adulthood now, it seems.

Bloggersphere

2007-09-11T22:49:00.000-05:00

I got to introduce myself to the rest of the IT at today's staff meeting. Other points of note, we're looking at starting our own company "blog" and just "three years behind everyone else." (not my words) Heh, its a fun place. I like it.

Got email from our agent and the house situation is starting to sound a little better, just not better enough. Not yet, anyway.

Also got email from Mom, a internet junk mail about a little kid's school essay about why he believes in God. I responded back...twice. Hope it doesn't come off too snidely...I'm just a little worn out with it. Richard Dawkins may be an asshole when it comes to his rabid attacks on religion, but he makes a very good point. Why should people's religions be held in greater esteem than other aspects of their personal lives? You can joke around about all sorts of things, but don't mess with a person's religious beliefs, their convictions. Oh no, not that! Even if they believe a DIFFERENT religion, you should still respect that. Yeah? Then why not respect a woman's right to have an abortion? I don't mean her legal right, I mean her belief in it. That's just like religion. It's something she believes without any real factual basis, just something she knows because maybe someone told her and it seemed right to her. Or how about respecting a religion where the women are mutilated so as not to experience pleasure from the acts of sex? It's just as valid a religion as the rest of them, but somehow the fact that some part of it is so distasteful that it overrules the sacred protection that religion gets as part of the social contract. And don't get me started on the gays. You can honestly say, with a straight face, that you can respect Mohammed Jihadmiester's personal belief in Islam but somehow Adam and Steve are an abomination because they want to live together for the rest of their lives and keep each other company and happy, just like Merle and Edie have been doing for thousands of years? Gimme a break. Hate-crime laws and legalized gay marriage, that's the real war on terror.

I appreciate the crazy street preachers and the mad dog fundamentalists because at least with them you are allowed to view religion in the proper context.

Rock

2007-09-10T20:05:00.000-05:00

Well, another good day at work. For both Andrea and I. As we all knew and expected, Andrea really likes her new job, her new employers, and her new home. I feel the same way. I imagine that given the opportunity, we'd both stay at our respective jobs much longer than we're expected to stay. But Felix gives us both reason to return home. I know what you're all thinking, "Don't you want to see each other?" But we don't need to go home for that. During lunch I hopped on the six and met Andrea at her new studio. We walked a few blocks away and sat on a bench and ate our sandwiches together. When she works during the day, Andrea learns something that I've known all along; you really come to look forward to and enjoy your time with your kids when you spend most of their waking hours at work. Tonight Andrea gave Felix his bath because she wanted to get more quality time with him. I usually give him his baths (not always, but more often than not) but I know what she's talking about. We've been giving him baths almost every night since his new favorite thing to do is rub his dinner into his eyes and hair. You just can't clean that up with a paper towel or a wash cloth. Doing that only cleans the surface and makes his hair start to smell like sour milk the next day.

All in all, life is good.

Mondays

2007-09-09T19:29:00.000-05:00

Heh, not the "I hate Mondays" type of post that usually bears this type of title. In fact, I am looking forward to Monday. My first Monday at my new job. Not that Mondays are any different from any other day at the office, but for me, it is the signifier of my first complete week at work. And I hope to make some real traction on my new work load. I have ideas and I'm going to be able to work on them, for real! I asked my boss last week about current processes, etc, and he said, "My only requirement is that it works, doesn't break anything, and doesn't make it more difficult for anyone else. Otherwise, go for it...but run it by me first." Of course. But, yee-haw!

Ok ok ok. But yes, it is nice to be looking forward to going to work in the morning.

day too

2007-09-03T09:44:00.000-05:00

So here we are on our 2nd full day of NYCitizenship. Something I have noticed is that a LOT of the people who go walking or walk their dogs in the morning wear shirts that have NYC bradning or logos of some sort or another. Makes me wonder if they are tourists who converted to residents and just never gave up their souvenir shop wardrobes or maybe these shirts are their grubby-grungy-don't-care-about-it clothes. I don't know. I just always find it strange when you are at a place and you see people wearing shirts that reference that place (unless it's supposed to be ironic). Like, there's a shop just down the street that sells nothing but Brooklyn apparel. I get it, but I imagined it is for people to gear up before going abroad, not to wear Brooklyn across their chests while actually being IN Brooklyn. You know, like the line from PCU: "You're wearing the shirt of the band to the show? Don't be that guy."

Anyway, again, the morning ritual has played itself out: Felix gets up early, gets Andrea and I up, I get dressed, pack him in the stroller, go get coffee, and off we go for our walk. I decided to not go the same way I went yesterday and explore the park more. That is on damn big park. We walked along the path the went south, then cut over to the walking path on the side of the parkway. The road slopes down and to the east, eventually bottoming out at the lake at the southern end of the park. And I mean lake, like a real lake, not like the pond at Powderhorn. We looked at the ducks then headed along another path back north up into what I expect was more the middle of the park. We came across more open areas where people were letting their dogs run. Felix was getting bored and tired (I wasn't letting him out of the stroller because the grass was still wet with dew...and I'm a little paranoid about all the dogs) so we headed back west eventually. Under a tunnel and then out the other side I could hear water rushing. It was "The Ravine" where Felix and I had walked yesterday. We came out into familiar open area and went past the dog beach, through the park, and then home. Felix was revved up at home and wanted to play. I finally got him down for a nap, at which everyone else who was awake went back to bed to try and get more sleep (except me).

Last night we put a dent in the unpacking process. We didn't unpack so much as move things around to free up a lot of the space we'd been hogging with poorly situated furniture and boxes. ALso, yesterday I put together our new bed from IKEA. Today I will finish it up by assembling the drawers that go in its base. I also assembled Andrea's desk and moved all of our various shelving units around to get them out of the way. We now seem to have some living space, and I imagine it will only get better as we get things put away. Andrea and Glen are trying to get the kitchen in order, contact papering the cabinets and drawers so we can put our flatware, dishware, and food away. I can't wait till the kitchen is up and running. There's so many options for eating out, but it really does get tiresome. It will be nice to get back to some of our standard home cooking. We need to do a grocery shopping trip, for real.

Tomorrow is my first day at my new job. I'm a little nervous, as I guess is to be expected. I mean, you interview, you talk to the people, you get a job description, etc., but you never really know what its going to be like until you get there and get started. And, of course, just like in Minneapolis, going to work will be a sort of escape from home. I'll have my morning and evening commutes, but while I'm at work, I'm not thinking of home things. It will be nice to get back to the technical side of my life. For the past weeks I've been locked in non-technical mover/builder/packer/unpacker/stacker/mechanical mode.

And I'm sure I'll be sopping up the remnants of the address fiasco for a couple more days, but all in all, things are looking pretty good. We only have a short list of things for the landlord to fix/get fixed/reimburse us for fixing. I don't know that he did much of a run-through for the previous tenants. They cleared their stuff out and they did a little paint touch up here and there but it doesn't seem that they cleaned very much. Or perhaps they just assumed we'd be repainting. But there are a few doozies, like the doorknob (or lack thereof) on the bathroom door.

nycyoulater

2007-09-02T08:26:00.001-05:00

Well, we have made it. All of our stuff is up the 3 flights of narrow stairs and we officially "moved in". I expect we'll be unpacked in time for spring cleaning.

My dad and I drove the big yellow truck cross-country and met up with Andrea, Felix, and Glen who stayed behind to close up shop and then flew out here on Saturday. I think it is safe to say that they had the harder time of it, living without furniture or regular conveniences while trying to manage a baby and a full schedule of house cleaning. Felix came through it OK I think though he put some serious wear and tear on Glen and Andrea who were like zombies when we met them at the apartment. I had it much easier by far. My only difficulty was trying to keep my ass from going numb or my neck from getting sore during the bumpy bouncy ride, or trying to keep my armsa and legs from freezing solid from the arctic wind coming from the AC for 1200 miles. We had beds (or couches) to sleep in every night and wireless internet too. We stopped for meals at rather regular intervals, had a bag full of goodies to munch between meals. The sound system in the truck was fu so we attempted to listen to an audio book for ab out 5 minutes before giving up, same with the radio on the next day. All in all, the drive was not too bad. Dad drove day 1 and 3 and I drove day 2. I think the unloading was a lot harder than the driving, for sure. I wish we had chloroformed and packed up a couple of our truck-loading helpers. Hey, free trip to nyc.

So, with wireless internet at each evening stop I had high hopes of blogging the trip as a serial. We can all see how that ended up. The first night we got in at about 2am. That was in Toledo at grandma's house. The second night we arrived at the Days Inn in the Poconos at about 11pm, but the "wandering wifi" was so damn slow it was painful to use. We finally arrived in Park Slope at about 2pm. Our internet isn't getting installed until the 6th, but luckily someone nearby has left their wireless open with no encryption. I think it's OK for me to borrow it for the next couple days so long as we don't do anything bandwidth intensive like downloading shows. The Tea Lounge just down the street also has free wifi.

So, this morning Felix was ready to go at 7:30am. He was probably ready much sooner but I wasn't. Andrea is still trying to regain her sanity from three days of sleep deprivation. I packed Felix into his stroller and off we went in search of my Sunday morning cup of coffee. First we went to one of the gazillion little grocery markets near our house and bought some Felix necessities so we could easily feed him through out the day as well as a couple odds and ends for the rest of us. It's great having all these little markets but we need to find a bigger grocery store that offers better prices. There are a couple that are a little further away (haven't checked prices yet). The little places are great when you need something quick, but not what we should be using for daily or weekly shopping trips. Anywhoo, we loaded the groceries into the stroller and one bag around my wrist, walked for ab out 5 blocks back past our street and found as place thats open 24hrs (remember, its 7ish on a Sunday/holiday weekend) and got me a large coffee. I think it was $1.25. Not bad. Caffeine in hand, and Felix happily munching on a banana (then a nectarine), we headed on our real walk. We went back up our street, past our house, and on to Prospect Park, which is a block and a half away from us. Walking through the park, it looked like there had been some serious partyin there last night and a lot of the guests were still there! Seemed strange. Then I realized what was going on. This is Sunday before Labor Day. I'm sure that there were lots of people grilling out in the park yesterday and the people I was seeing this morning were staking their claims on the BBQ grills for today's grilling. See, grilling is only allowed in specific areas of the park. We walked on, further into the park.

Nearer the middle of the park is a huge open area with rolling berms and slopes. The park was covered in dogs. Ah, the Sunday morning dog people were out and their dogs were mostly running free. Coffees in hand, poop-baggie dispensers at the ready, the dog people of Brooklyn were letting the dogs out in force. Everyone was very well behaved. Those are the two things you see all over Park Slope: Babies in strollers and well behaved dogs. Back to the park. There is some water at the park, some ponds and streams. At one of the ponds there is a fence or gate the runs out into the water, creating a small dog beach and swimming area. Wet, well behaved, dogs.

We walked around a bit, saw some of the waterfalls Glen had mentioned yesterday, and headed home. Felix was asleep by the time we reached our front stoop and covered in nectarine pulp. I was tempted to leave him there so I could bring in the groceries but instead I just left the stroller. On my way back up with the stroller and Felix we ran into our downstairs neighbor, whose name just so happens to be Felix too. He has a daughter that I think is a little younger than our Felix. We said good morning and he said, "How was your first night in New York?" "Oh, it was OK, I think." "What about this little guy?" "You didn't hear him?" "Thick walls," he said with a big grin. I guess so. You probably only hear him crying if you are on our level or perhaps if you are outside and the window is open.

Back up in our apartment, the place is a disaster, but a sort of nicely controlled one. Everyone else is still in bed. I cleaned Felix up and after he played around for a while I was able to put him down for his nap. Finally, he's able to get a regular nap.

My dad seems to have taken well to the neighborhood. He said, "Some part of me envies you living here." "Yeah," I said, "the part that doesn;t have to carry furniture up 3 flights of stairs." Actually we weren't too rough on him. He mostly stayed in the back of the truck and handed stuff down to us, only being pulled in for heavy heavy lifting when he, Glen, and I carried the credenza up. It was heavy, but not nearly as difficult as we thought it would be. It turns out the most fearsome furniture we moved up was the queen mattress, which I had to use brute force to bend in unnatural ways to get it up the last flight of stairs. As I described it to my dad, we had to "taco" it. Never miss the opportunity to use the word taco as a verb.

So we are effectively moved in. All we need to do now is get our essentials unpacked and situated and then set about arranging and decorating, etc.

I think dad really likes it here, except for all of the walking. Apparently his hips give him trouble when he walks too far.

We are now New Yorkers. Even dad, who is an honorary New Yorker since he seems to enjoy sitting out on the stoop and watching people go by.

Today has started out fairly well.

big-ticket

2007-08-25T15:06:00.000-05:00

So, we got the new title for the car in record time and within 30 minutes of getting it I have started the process to donate it. One more large loose end tied up.

Just got one thing left...

its in his head

2007-08-22T10:19:00.000-05:00

Well, we have seen proof that the only thing keeping Felix from walking is his own personal/mental/intellectual reason. He has been practicing standing on his own quite a bit lately, and every time we go to the library he sees other kids who are around his age or older and sees them running, walking, standing. Every time we come home from the library, he seems to want to try out what he's seen. Last night he looked like he was really trying to walk. This morning while he was playing, he was standing by the couch, holding on with his hand for moral support, when a garbage truck pulled into the alley. Felix is fascinated by garbage trucks in the same way people are fascinated by sharks and bears and tigers: awed, amazed, curious, and a little scared. Anyway, when he heard the garbage truck's tri-tone back-up alarm, he looked up and out the window and without even hesitating walked two steps unassisted, through open air, and put his hand on the coffee table for the last few steps to the window before pressing his face to the glass and trying to see the elusive garbage truck. Andrea was laying on the couch, uncharacteristically partaking of mine and Felix's morning ritual, and i was sitting on the bottom of the stairs. We both looked at each other in astonishment. There was no warning, no wobbly baby-stepping, just, "What's that? I'm going over there NOW!" regular, confident, unconscious walking. Andrea and I immediately clobbered each other in the middle of the living room floor, saying, "Did you see that?! He walked!" and hugs and kisses and the happy random tear, all the while Felix looked out the window and then at us as if to say, "What are you guys making all that noise about? Can't you see there's a garbage truck out there?"

afterthought

2007-08-19T10:23:00.000-05:00

Oh yeah. I guess i haven't explicitly mentioned it since Monday (though I maybe mentioned it in passing the other night) but I did get the offer from the company I wanted to work for on Tuesday morning right as I got off the plane and I accepted. So, I think I said I wasn't stressed out anymore since our living arrangements have been solidified and our working arrangements have been solidified, but that's the deal. I got the offer from the company in midtown Manhattan as a "network engineer" though I'll actually be the SMS engineer and application packaging expert. Since the company is only about 1000 employees and the IT is something like 30-40 people, I'll get to get my feet wet in all kinds of other areas. It sounds like its going to be a lot of fun and a very good job for me. I turned down the higher paying consulting job on Long Island for this job. In a way, I did the same thing Andrea did: I picked the job I knew I would really enjoy and grow in, not the one that offered the most money or the shiniest carrot. It really is astonishing how quickly all of these things have fallen into place. From everything I read and hear (even from our new landlord) our experience relocating to New York is incredibly unique and definitely the exception to the rule. In the same regard, I would say, hey, look at us, we're not magical wand-waving wizards making this happen. We aren't even religious and don't attribute any of this success to any external origins like karma, kismet, god, or luck. I guess "luck" in so far as it represents favorable coincidence or circumstance allowing for a less probable positive outcome. I'm sure I'll hear from my mom because she's been praying for us this whole time and may be a bit miffed that I'm disputing the impact that might have had on our outcome...sorry mom, no offense meant. But thanks for thinking of us! It's always nice to know that people are concerned with how things are going. As a material humanist my tongue in cheek response to "I'm praying for you" would be "I'd prefer money." Of course I wouldn't say that to my mom. My parents are retired, after all...

OK, so before this spins off into a philosophical monologue, I'll just say: Got the job, got the apartment, got the nanny, got it all! Just gotta get the house sold.

obligatory

2007-08-16T23:56:00.000-05:00

yes, I'm up and its almost midnight so here's the obligatory post.

It is very very odd, this stretch of time I find myself in. Andrea and I are both home all day (meaning, not at work) but we're not fretting about finding work, finding a place to live, or anything. Andrea is focused on what to do to get ready for the move. I'm doing whatever she says she needs me to do. Sure, I have a few of my own things to do, but my major stresses are out of the picture. The house, well, the house. I'm cashing out my 401K (oh no, they all groan in chorus) which should pay for the mortgage until the house sells, or even allow us to help the house sell sooner. Once I'm looking at paying the mortgage AND rent AND bills out of my salary alone, THEN I'll get stressed about the house. But for now I'm in this weird place where I'm not on vacation, but I'm not working, and I'm not freaked out. It's really weird, but in a good sort of way.

Its like a never ending stream of saturdays and sundays, which is really weird in itself, but which also does things to your mind. I'm losing track of what day it is. The largest unit of time I can really remember is an hour. You go beyon hours and I just don't know what you're talking about. Today and tomorrow is about as concrete as I can fathom. Was today Tuesday or Wednesday? I think it was Thursday, actually. Seriously. I've been doing my Saturday schedule for several days now, and enjoying it. Will I be able to adjust to going to work? Is this what a vacation feels like?

I spend the mornings with Felix, playing in the park...he's just about to start walking. I can see he's starting to try.

I have started making breakfasts and lunches and dinners...

I don't know how to explain it...on the one hand I feel like i have tons of time, on the other hand, I don't really have any free time for leisure. This few chunks of time I've grabbed tonight are sort of fluky. I htink it seems like i had time tonight because I was doing something that didn't require much thought and i was able to double up tasks. We're manually destroying all of our old records and paperwork that we've accumulated in our filing cabinet, retaining only what we decide is actually useful.

Honestly, I don't know why you are supposed to save all your utility bills and pay stubs and bank statements. Maybe the last years worth, but all of them? We have a wooden filing cabinet that is packed full of papers...most we never even look at again but are stashing away because we think we're supposed to. So now we're going back through them all and blacking out vital info with a sharpie and then shredding the pages (by hand so far, poor andrea). I mean, seriously, why take all of that with us? Is it necessary? It hasn't been so far.

I got William Gibson's new book from the library....had it sitting on my dresser for two days now...and I'm worried I'm not even going to get to read it because I don't have all of those idle chunks of time that you have when you're in the midst of a normal life. No bus rides to work, no lazy afternoons...every moment seems to be full of something. I'm actually sort of disappointed that these few moments I have I'm writing here instead of opening that book. I guess I'll have plenty of time for stuff like that once life resumes. Subways and lunch breaks and weekends during nap time. Those things will all resume at some point in the not so distant future. Right now feels like...hang time. Slow motion. Like pollen drifting through a sunbeam.

shazaam!

2007-08-13T20:34:00.000-05:00

Somehow, I think we've actually managed to pull it off. This morning I signed a lease and put down security deposit and first month rent on a beautiful 2 bedroom in thhe heart of Park Slope. Incidentally, it was the only apartment we actually managed to see over the weekend (that's a WHOLE long tale I won't get into right now). We LUCKED OUT, big time. I think what it came down to was that the owner met all of us, saw how determined we were to move, got a good feeling for us, and decided we were the type of people he wanted as neighbors. Seriously, I'm sure other people looking at the place might have had higher paying salaries or better credit (than me, andrea and glen have good credit). Whatever the case, we made a very good impression and they liked us. So I secured the deal this morning before going out to my two interviews. The resul of those is that I am almost guaranteed a job I really think I'm going to love with people I can really get along with in a convenient place (midtown Manhattan)...they just need to pow wow tomorrow morning and contact the placement agency with their offer, which I no-doubt will accept. And that, as they say, will be that. In a matter of days we'll have tied up all of the most crusial loose ends and my world will once again be returned to a state of sanity. I think I've lost 10 lbs during this trip from all the hiking and lifting of Felix's stroller going up and down to the supways and such. No wonder new yorkers aren't fat!

pocket blog

2007-08-12T22:44:00.000-05:00

ok... i've been living on my pocket pc while in new york, which is a real bitch for writing emails and blog entries. I have several in progress and several in planning but you're going to have to wait. this entry took 3 minutes to write.

no vacation

2007-08-12T04:15:00.000-05:00

It's quarter past five in the a.m. and everybody but me is at the airport trying to get their flight home. My stay in ny has been extended for a number of reasons, not least including job interviews and apartment hunting. Needless to say, both avenues have been both reassuring and stressful. Both fronts have wonderful opportunity but also require us to just wait. And they're all timed wrong. The apartment rests solely on whether or not the financial figures work out. The jobs both hinge on my interviews on monday. It would be so much easier to land the apartment if my job was nailed down. sigh...

so the title comes from a conversation with Andrea. When telling people that we're moving to new york, a common response is, "I love visiting new york but i wouldn't want to live there." Well, when I compare my experiences in new york, including the two times I came out here to visit Andrea during her internship and now this past week, I agree with Andrea's assessment that people have it all wrong. Visiting New York would not be what we consider a vacation. The reason being that you need to put so much time and effort into planning out your trips into the city that it could hardly be relaxing. You see the droves of tourists coursing from the WTC station out and up top China town and you just think, "i would hate to spend my free time trying to pack all of that into a short trip." If you mess up one of your subways or connections, you could end up way way way off course and with tons of stress. New York would be a very stressful vacation, think, unless you are throwing a lot of money down the tube and staying at a hotel in manhattan and using taxis to get all around. Otherwise, all that walking and hauling your shit around, with no place to sit or pee...does not sound like a vacation to me! I'd rather live here an have my own relative homebases like a place of work, a home to go home to at the end of the day, maybe a frequent hangout, a place to really rest up for real. I have not been here on vacation by any stretch of the imagination, but I have had to get all over and let me tell you, I'm beat!

sleepless in minapple

2007-08-08T02:30:00.000-05:00

Yeah, when she sees this I'm sure Andrea will ill me, but what the hell. If she is asleep right now, it is only because her body has shut down. SHe said she couldn't sleep at all last night. Well, I slept fitfully last night and tonight I'm wide awake. So I'm tootling around the house, trying to do little things here and there to ease our transition. We fly out to NY tonight on a 6:55p flight, but travelling with Felix, we're going to try to get to the airport at about 4pm. We will arrive in NY around 10 something local time. No idea what shape Felix will be in. Then we hightail it over to Jersey City to crash at Ally and Mushi's. Then we have to be up at the crack of dawn. I have a round of interviews starting at 9am in midtown Manhattan, Andrea has a tour of a daycare, I have another interview at 1:30pm in midtown, Andrea wants to stop in at the studio and get her paper-work started as well as pick up her check for the freelance she did and her letter of employment, then we are camping out in a park to interview nannies. All this time, Glen will be interviewing at various restaurants. Friday we have another daycare tour and more nanny interviews. Saturday is designated as our day to go to open houses or visit apartments and try to get one secured. Sunday, Andrea, Felix, and Glen probably fly home in the early morning. I will stick around for an interview on Monday out on Long Island. Between now and then, we may all add interviews on any given day...this trip will be packed.

Somewhere in there we have to eat, let Felix stretch his legs, sleep, get Felix some naps, and try to keep from losing our minds.

So, here's the tag line for this particular NYC full length feature:

One apartment, Marry Poppins, two jobs...can you find all fo these in New York City in three days? You'll find out soon enough!

yes no maybe NOT

2007-08-04T09:40:00.000-05:00

Wow. SO now I'm like, unemployed. It feels very weird, very scary. I think its scary because I have no idea how long my hang-time is going to be. The deal with going right back to work with my previous employer is all but off the table since they discovered (rather late in the game) that they did not need our direct VP's approval (my boss's boss's boss's boss's boss) but actually the "pyramid executive" which turns out to be the CIO. So...yeah. While everyone was all confident that they'd make it happen, slam dunk, etc, now they're all "Oh, gee...I dunno if we can really make a good case to her..." Wtf? It's the same damn case, isn't it? Or maybe its just too embarrasing or something, to admit that you have a little team somewhere that relies on a small handful of people to keep things not only running from day to day, but keep things moving forward. I have no doubt that my old team can keep chugging along pushing their buttons and accomplishing their day to day work without me. But what they'll find is that not much new happens. Anything new that happens will come from outside of the team, and let me tell you, it sucks a huge load to have someone external to your team start calling the shots. But, you know, I've been saying half jokingly that once I'm gone the team will be dissolved and the functions will be dispersed to various similar type teams. I actually sort of left a proposal for just that in my last project update.

Who knows. Maybe when my old new boss gets back from vacation he'll decide he really REALLY needs me back (but I really don't think so) and I'll get that phone call.

Here's the part that I hate, though. I have my next paycheck coming up which will be a full pay period worth of pay PLUS about 6 weeks of vacation paid out. Then, somewhere from 2 to 3 weeks after that I can cash out my 401K which will be another nice lump sum (side not: everyone groans and says "Oh, you get nailed on that cash out, though, ugh, its horrible! Don't do that...") but you know, for me the 401K is a lot like a tax refund. Even though I always kept tabs on it and sometimes adjusted my contributions or the way it was "invested", that steadily growing number was more like a video game score, not like real money, because it wasn't connected directly to my day-to-day well being. On the one hand, yes, it sucks that I'm going to lose thousands of dollars by cashing it out and I will effectively have to start from scratch with my retirement savings. But those are all things that I don't really feel right now. Even at a number somwhat less than that arcade score I've been monitoring, it'll be like real net positive cash flow that will be desperately needed even if I don't start working immediately. So, in the next month or so I will actually have a lot MORE money on hand than usual specifically because I left my job. Bit it doesn't feel like that's real, either, until it happens.

And of course we also have special circumstances all around that make that infusion of cash no longer a luxury, but a necessity. So, while I'm quite used to and capable of floating through the second week between paychecks on a couple hundred bucks, it feels a lot different when in the middle of that week we're taking a trip and will need to have money at our disposal for traveling expenses. And of course we'll need to put down a hunk of cash for an apartment which could eat up all of my vacation and some of my regular pay, and then there's moving costs, which is going to be a couple grand, and of course we'll have to keep paying the mortgage until the house sells... so, even with large than usual amounts of money flowing in, we're still doing a delicate dangerous balancing act. And even if its not as bad as I'm making it out to be, the point is that it FEELS that way. This stands to be our most tense and stressful month yet.

And to make it worse, I'm now without many of the resources I'm used to having at my disposal, like decent laptop computers, access to almost any computer-related or business-related book for free (books 24x7 is one of the great untapped benefits at my preious employer. I used to tap it all the time), health insurance, dental, prescription...sigh. There are so many things we probably should have made sure we did first, like get a 3 month supply of prescriptions, any last checkups or things.

Sigh.
Felix calls. I have to go.
Good luck.
Send money.

major tom

2007-07-29T21:39:00.000-05:00

So I handed in my official resignation at work. My official last day is this coming Friday. So, what to do? Well, its sounding like I'm probably going to go right back to work in nearly the same job but as an independent contractor. This works great for me because it gives me a stead ypaycheck until I find work in new York. It also allows me to continue working on and hopefully transitioning some of my current projects rather than have them die on the vine. There's only so much you can do with documentation, after all. So, counting down... of course the contracting thing is not a done deal by any stretch of the imagination, so I can't go counting on that cash flow just yet.

On top of that, as soon as my new boss came up with the contracting as an option I got a response and subsequently had a phone interview with a game design company in New York who is looking for someone like me to be their IT infrastructure guy. I'm just afraid I scared them away with my suggested salary requirement. Have not heard from them in over a week now. We'll see what develops there. I'd like to work for them, but since its a smaller shop than I'm used to (30 full time staff vs. the bajillions of people working at my current company) they might not even be able to offer a competitive salary in my range. I mean, I can mae a super great case but if they just can't afford it, they can't afford it. I just hope they come back to the table.

Today we had our first open house and it sounds like a few people came and there is at least THAT much interest. No telling how much is just people who like going to open houses for recreation. Hopefully something will come out of it. We got out of the house and took Andrea's dad to lunch and afterwards Andrea, her brother, Felix and I all went to the beach for a couple hours. The first time Felix went to the beach he was content to stay in the very very shallow water and play in the wet sand or ty to bury our blanket. This time he had a great time being carried into the deeper water (only up to my waist) by mom and dad and splash around. I spent most of the time crouched so the water was up to my shoulders/his middle. He played around with us in the water quite a bit. As scared of water as I was as a kid, I'm very conscious of doing things that might freak him out. I'd like to avoid giving him that sort of negative experience. I don't know where my initial fears of deep water came from, but as a result I did get dunked by more than one swimming instructor. Looking back, I realize they were probably jr. high kids or high school kids working a summer job, but back then I thought they were adults, so it was a very damaging experience for me. Anyway, Felix is such a physical kid that I don't want to prematurely turn him off of any avenues for expending his energy.

And in two weeks we fly out to NY to look for apartments, nannies, jobs, etc.

birthday massacre

2007-07-23T12:37:00.000-05:00

Saturday we had Felix's birthday party and family and friends were there at the park for grilling and food and a pinata. I haven't been to aikido classes in almost a year but I pulled out my trusty jo and the kids had at the pinata with it. Unfortunately it was so solidly constructed that even after knocking the legs off it's main candy cargo compartment there was no sign of the prizes within. Finally I stepped in (the kids were getting TIRED from beating on this thing) and delivered a standard body strike (I think I executed with decent form) and the anticipated candy explosion finally happened. Suddenly the kids were no longer tired but were anxiously scrabbling around on the ground for the brightly wrapped sugar bombs.

The weather was perfect - mid 80s, breezy, no rain.

And we managed to give back almost all of the remaining baby stuff; good luck to you all planning on having another baby!

I got a little burned on the back of my neck, legs, and arms. Felix did not get burned. He does, however, have a farmer's tan, just like his dad :)

Today we took Felix for his 1-yr dr. appointment with vaccinations and blood labs. ugh. It turns out he's only 20.45lbs (only about 1 pound, or a little over 1 pound since his 6 months appt.) which puts him in the 16th percentile for weight. The doctor said, "well, we expect the weight gain to drop around this time because he's so active...what kind of milk is he drinking?" and I'm like, "Uh...breast milk...what else would he be drinking? He drinks a lot of water." "You should start him on whole cows milk now. How much water is he drinking? You can just give him whole milk from now on." I made a joke, "No skim milk for you,k kiddo!" and she said something like, "Yes, you'll have to get different milks now. Most parents are happy once they can finally giove the baby the family milk...What do you drink now?" to which I repsonded, "We don't drink milk...but I guess we'll start buying it now. He has had soymilk a few timesa and he likes that, but there's sugar in it, so he doesn't get much."

Apparently she thinks he isn't putting on weight because he's very active and because we are not giving him a steady diet of cow milk and sugary juices. He eats fruit, veggies, meats, breads, and yogurt by the ton (and poops it by the half-ton), so I don't know that he's really under weight. I was a little surprised that he only gained about a pound, but then again, he has gone from barely crawling at 6 months to full-on monkey status (crawling, rolling, hopping, climbing, swinging...just not walking upright) at 1 year. He sure seems bigger. Jus tyesterday after his bath I was holding him up in front of the full-length mirror and for the first time realized how long his legs are. You don't notice so much when he's clothed and playing because his knees are always bent and he has pants and diaper, and all his gear on, but seeing him all straightened out, the kid has looong legs. His legs are as long as his head and torso together, it seems like. But he's only in the 30 something percentile for height, I think. So who knows. I still think that these percentile scores aren't necessarily a good developmental judgement considering how obese Americans, and American children specifically, are these days. Are these global scores or just American scores? And wouldn't it make more sense to have height, weight, and head circumference correlated and maybe combined into a single score? I mean, what does it say, developmentally? If you are just looking for tracking your single child's development, what's the point in comparing it to other kids? I guess after reading/listening to Freakanomics I question the usefulness of these % scores. I mean, they never really tell us what they mean or what they are deducing from them, or even if those deductions are actually logical. What's to say that Felix isn't in the 16th percentile in weight for his age because most kids between 6 amd 12 months put on a lot of weight due to their parents starting to feed them "adult" foods like Big Macs and Coca Cola? And Juice...my god, juice...sugar water.

One of the gifts Felix got was an electronic talking nursery rhymes book, which had your standard marketing on it, pictures of a right-aged child using said toy. On this box the child was obese, I mean like puffy, drooping cheeks, porcine, obese. The kid didn't even look happy. It was shocking. That was the model that the advertising people put on this product. I wonder if that's what they thought represented the "everychild". I wonder if they did research and found that that model DID represent the everychild. What does that say about the usefulness of the growth percentiles?

Anyway, on to the massacre...pinata massacre on Saturday, Felix massacre on Monday morning. After getting his three immunizations, which was heart wrenching, we took him up to the lab where they drew blood. On children, they draw blood by pricking their finger with a lancet and then milking wound into little vials. So, Felix is sitting on my lap and I'm holding him still and the lab tech pierces his finger then starts sopping up the blood with an alcohol nap, probably to keep him from clotting, and then proceeds to squeeze his finger and scrape it with these little plastic vials. She finishes up with this first vial and then, trying to cap it with the same hand, slips and tosses the entire vial of blood on my shirt, face, and pants. I was less upset about the blood on my clothes than I was about the fact that she had just wasted a vial of Felix's blood and would now have to do it again, prolonging his agony (and it was agony, believe me). Poor little guy. We left looking like there had been a massacre. I went hime to change my shirt instead of being dropped off at work, so I was an hour later than I had planned on. Poor Felix.
Happy Birthday little guy...

sale sale sale

2007-07-16T22:42:00.000-05:00

Ok, so we survived the yard sale and came out OK. We moved a ton of stuff and still had some stuff left over. I got rid of 75% of my assorted computer gizmos and related junk. I haven't had time to tinker with any of the less than 100% complete computers in years anyway. Some people got some good goddamn deals, I tell ya.

And, to top it off, we put an add on Craigslist saying that we would have leftovers for free affter the sale. Let me tell you...it was like out of a movie. 4:30pm rolled up on us like the fuzz busting a good old whorehouse. Cars skidding to a halt and people rushing up and grabbing whatever they could get their hands on. Andrea says, "everything on that table is free." and heads inside and I stop her and ask, "Are we giving the table away for free?" "What? NO." "Well, then I think we better get it inside."

Sure enough, within about 10 minutes only the most despicable dregs of our sale were left on the boulevard. I chucked that stuff into the dumpster an hour later.

And tonight we signed on the dotted line to put our house on the market. Go baby go.

Tomorrow I think I will and in my notice at work. So much is happening in such a compressed amount of time. It is a truly bizarre space to be in. When I'm at work all i can do is look for another job. When I'm home, all i can do is think about work and all the stuff I'd like to accomplish or wrap up before I'm gone. It's weird to consider that I will possibly be unemployed for a period of time. How weird and scary is that? If things work out in a particular order, we could be homeless as well (although that would actually be a GOOD thing).

In a way, it would be really nice if we were just able to cut ties and make the leap to NY. The only real anchor is the house. If I didn't have that mortgage to worry about, we could just pull up stakes and go. Sigh. On the up side, 1 way airline tickets are pretty cheap if you buy them a couple weeks in advance. Obviously round-trip is cheaper if you know your return date and buy with similar lead time, but in the event that I have t fly out to NY early, or if I stay longer and then flay back here at a different date...

Who knows. details details. I don't like the idea of splitting the family up if its not absolutely necessary.

gar-bage sale

2007-07-14T21:36:00.000-05:00

So, day one of our yard/porch sale (since we have no garage) was pretty successful. We still have a lot of the stuff we really wanted to get rid of, but you can tell that people were coming in from the Craigslist posting. I kept wondering why everyone was asking "So, moving to New York, huh?"

We had advertised that we were going from 11am to 4pm. At about 10am Andrea and Glen we starting to get everything set up. By 10:15am there was a swarm of people sifting through our stuff. By the time 11am rolled around the surge had ebbed and we were a bit dazed. A steady stream of people, mostly looking for some of the things that had been swept up in the first mad rush, came by. It felt great, like we really stood a chance of getting rid of most of our stuff AND making a tiny little profit at the same time. But then the initial surge was over, whether they were mostly craiglist people or just passers by, and the adrenaline ebbed, and then THOSE people started showing up. You know them...garage sale assholes. They drive expensive cars and have deep dark tans and usually ponytails (on the guys) or expensive-yet-badly-done dye jobs. They haggle when haggling is not even needed, when its not even tasteful. They had no rhyme or reason to their garage sale purchases except that they got a deal. These are the people who, when looking through your collection of vintage fur coats that you are obviously selling for MUCH less than they would find in even the most bargain basement thrift shop, they still ask for more off, even if its just a dollar. They ask because they feel like they can, like they've got you over a barrel. And they know you are torn between standing firm on that one dollar but they might also be offering to buy something that you know nobody else probably will. You know, maybe it is the gall to ask for that one dollar that keeps them driving a Lexus, but I can't help but to feel that for them, it doesn't matter what they're buying, its the making a deal, the getting of someone to submit to their will that motivates the to buy the most random assortment of shit, and then haggle over it.

You know these people. They are the ones who will peruse your collection of DVDs and comment on how they can "get this stuff cheaper on ebay." Then go log on, asshole. You pay no shipping and handling here and your gratification is almost instant. Further more, we're not selling because we need the money to pay for kidney transplants, we're selling because we need to de-clutter and perhaps supplement our moving fund. Cripes. It only takes on really bad garage sale asshole to sour a day for me.

And, incidentally, it appears I have not completely forgotten how to speak spanish. A large portion of our customers have been hispanic, many of whom spoke little english. Granted, mostly just saying numbers and pointing at things, or clarifying "Para todos" or "cada uno". But still...helpful. At least I know I can still count to 100 en espanol.

Hopefully we'll do as well on day 2. I need to post to craigslist again and also set up a posting on freecycle to let people know that they can get stuff for free after we're done.

Pirate is NOT the new Ninja

2007-07-13T10:31:00.000-05:00

I discovered Ask a Ninja today.
enjoy

here's the new recruit

2007-07-12T21:53:00.000-05:00

Well, this morning I spent about 40 minutes making calls to HR and 401K and did the paycheck math and figured out my absolutely optimum "last day". Then, of course, I reported my findings to the CEO of the relocation enterprise. I won't be announcing to my employer when intend to vacate until sometime next week, when me new boss has officially started. He already knows my plans (in the elevator today he offered to link me up with a guy he knows out east who might be hiring) just, like everyone else, does not know the specifics. Originally I was going to hang on to my job until i found a new one to go to, but that's just not in the cards. There's something called money at play here, namely the large sums of it we are going to need to actually move, so while I steady paycheck is nice, what we're really going to need is some rapid infusions of lump sums like all those weeks of vacation I've never used and all that 401K (heh, if left alone, in 60 years it might be a tidy sum, but as far as 401K goes, its not exactly a retirement savings just yet) that isn't really all that much, but could mean the world in terms of securing housing, paying a mortgage (until the house sells), and allowing us to float at least until Andrea starts getting paid.

So, the title...I posted my resume online and I mentioned before frequently getting called by headhunters, recruiters, etc. Sometimes you can tell its a guy in a bullpen who has a list of search terms and is matching words from resumes to words in job postings and trying to insert himself in between them to pick up some finders fee. Ok, it goes with the territory, and in some ways it feels great, in some ways not so great. It feels great when you get called by someone who seems to think that you really are a good candidate for a particular job, especially if its one that you haven't seen, or that isn't posted, or maybe even there isn't a posting but someone saw your resume and thought, "This guy has potential, I think I might be able to get him in here...or maybe there." I've run across a couple individuals that I think are really seeing some value in my compilation of skills. I've gotten calls from people who clearly are just trying to cram a peg into a hole and pocket the cash. My response to them is short, "Sorry, that's too far away. I don't have a car." or "For a short term contract such as this I would need to earn $90/hr to make it worth my while."

But I'll just say I have some prospects. Every day is like a roller coaster though, the emotional ups and downs. I had a phone interview the other day, my first, and I keep going over in my head, "I should have said this..." and then thinking, "God, that would be a really interesting job...if only it weren't so far away from the city. Even if they offer I don't think I can take it." Grrr.

On another note, we have our housing inspection tomorrow so we can go on the market on Monday. I've been completing projects at record pace, though not many of them are really impactful on the result of our inspection, I don't think. I mean, I dug out the inspection of this place from last year and literally nothing has changed except we've put a little wear and tear on, I started insulating the attic, and our crap is still everywhere. But still, last night I used almost all of my power tools and quickly installed sort of railing/slats thing out of 2x4s to somewhat close the stairwell in the basement. It wasn't an R&R but was a "safety" thing that our own buyers inspection guy pointed out last year. You know, the more I look at this house and the initial truth in sale report from last year...we sort of wasted money on the buyers inspection. GRANTED, what we were paying for was piece of mind, but still, in a city that requires a truth in sales inspection I think the buyer inspection should cost a hell of a lot less. Its a bit of a racket, especially since those guys aren't even certified by anyone. Not anyone who matters least wise, and they offer like, no warranty, on most of the inspection. Its really a purchase agreement placebo if you ask me. Anyway...so I've been getting handy and we've been getting ready to vacate. You know, all things considered, I think we're just going to have to clean and tidy up anything that has to remain here and this place should do OK. I mean, WE bought it not so long ago, right? The two houses nearby sold in under a month on the market.

We'll see.

ahooy!

2007-07-09T19:45:00.000-05:00

So, as I suspected, at about mid-day my phone and email started filling up as all the recruiters started sifting through their in-boxes and resume search results from the past week while they were off on vacation. So, I feel better about my job prospects but I am curious about some things. For instance, I have gotten called by more than one recruiter about the exact same job posting. Does this mean that there's a limited pool of applicants coming up on the resume search for this position? Should i take it as a sign that I may have some leverage on this particular job posting? Or does it just mean that everyone is plowing through the same pile of resumes, of which mine is one of thousands? Who can say...

Family Date nite

2007-07-08T21:10:00.000-05:00

We all, Andrea, Felix, and I, were invited to have dinner with my sister and her new guy whom she is dating. He lives in the cities here, not even very far from our house. So he had decided that he was going to teach her how to eat sushi. We met them at Midori's, a family run japanese restaurant near our house. I guess we are the first family contact. When I mentioned that I would have to get a sitter, she responded without hesitation, "No no, bring Felix." Wha...? OK.

So we arrived on time and they were already there. We met the guy and he seemed very normal, very nice, respectful. We got a table and sat down and we did some small talk and he seemed to be a very good conversationalist, very comfortable in his own skin, and very comfortable in the presence of Felix in a Public place. After a few minutes Felix decided to show his true colors and became an attention hogging hambone. From that point on I was mostly distracted by Felix, stuffing my grilled salmon, rice, and veggies into his mouth with my chopsticks. I think Suzanne and Andrea and Jon talked about stuff. They seemed to all be having a fabulous time. I do recall giving Suzanne pointers on the proper use of chopsticks.

Seemed like a nice guy.

location, location, location!

2007-07-05T12:48:00.000-05:00

Have I mentioned how every day I get emails and phone calls from recruiters who want to place me in positions here, in Minneapolis? Sometimes its the same recruiter who I have already told several times that I'm only interested in positions in new York.

So, Andrea told me to remove our local contact info from my resume and resubmit it. She found that people in New York wouldn't even look at her resume when the yha a non-new york address. makes sense I guess. Nobody wants to waste time on people who are not local or who are going to want relocation assistance. Anyway, so I change my street location, etc to just plain "New York, NY" and when required (for resume posting sites) to enter a valid street address I put our friends' address in Jersey City. Voila. Posted resume last night and this morning I've gotten three phone calls and several emails for positions in New York/New Jersey area.

Now the big issue is that they positions are either "Start as soon as you can" or "When will you know you actual availability?" This morning's hour long recruiter conversation included "Would you be able to come out for interviews sooner than your current planned trip, if necessary?"

The guy I spoke to this morning inspired a lot of confidence, as it is his job, of course. I am the wheat that he must harvest and then convince someone to buy, I', the cattle, I'm the commodity. The fact that someone thinks they can sell me, make money, and also not screw me (one would ASSUME) in the deal is a nice feeling, though. Very personable guy, so I would hope that he's successful. He's going to call me back today or tomorrow with some stuff. His advice, "Ok, focus on selling your house, I'll see what I can work up here. I'd like to get your paperwork in front of some of my customers. I've got some ideas. I can get you taken care of."

So, at least it FEELS like I've got someone on my side. i know he's really on his side, but if he has any good sense, which I expect he does, he knows that its always a good idea to do right by people because it can benefit him in the future as well as the initial commission he might make off of me (from the employer) if he gets me placed.

So, sell the house, find an apartment, find childcare, actually move...figure out where all the money we are going to need to pull this off is going to come from...that's all I have to worry about now...heh...RIGHT!

And the worst part is, we're looking at apartment listing all teh time but these all seem to be similar to the job situation: Move in now, or Aug 1. Nobody is looking for renters any further down the road than that, it seems.

forgot

2007-06-30T21:12:00.000-05:00

I forgot what I was going to write about.
Felix and I went to the Man-Store to get some stuff for being handy. I intend to fix the leaky faucet on our tub. I also need a 2x2 to replace the one that was stolen (along with my bicycle). And while I was at it I got some new house numbers, since the ones we have suck and you can barely see them during the day and can't see them at all at night.

We will start our unburdening process shortly, meaning its garage sale time! One nice thing about moving way far away is that you are really forced to get rid of the stuff you've been lugging from place to place even though you never need it or even use it, or even look through it! It's the great pairing down, so to speak. My stereo receiver, 25-CD Changer, and small but excellent sounding(and heavy) Pro x77 speakers will be on the block, as well as my (Shawn's) skis, all my leftover motorcycle gear, my scuba stuff, etc.

I expect we'll be getting rid of some extra furniture (not much though, since we're sort of spare in our furniture decorating anyway) and clothes as well as anything baby-related that is no longer being used and that we did not buy ourselves (though we'll probably try to give back any baby clothes and toys and stuff that we have on loan from the greater family lending library), just in case there is a #2 some day. Dunno. I don't expect us to have much storage space in NY and I'm sure not going to rent a storage unit. Not sure I know the place for nostalgic nicknacks anyway. I know I have a bin full of crap from highschool, college, etc. The "formative years" so to speak. Stuff I really have no attachment to. All going to go, I think.

Of course, aside from not wanting to take stuff with us we don't need, we also need to declutter as much as possible in order to sell the house. Who wants to go look in a basement or an attic and just see someone else's junk all over the place? No thanks. Most people don't want to be reminded of what the house will look like once they move their crap in. Don't spoil it for them. They'll have plenty of time to do that to themselves (as anyone can tell, I've fallen out of love with this house...a while ago).

Click, BOOM

2007-06-27T21:52:00.000-05:00

So, even though Andrea will not officially accept the offer until tomorrow, I have pulled the trigger and notified family and close friends.

See, I've been telling people at work that I was only going to be around for a year or two and then its off to NY so Andrea can become the rock-star designer that Minneapolis's head is too far up its own ass to recognize.

If you read this and you did NOT get an email from me about our plans, its probably because I just forgot your email, forgot you were alive, or maybe you are just a complete stranger who reads my blog and don't realize that I do not know you, no matter how involved you feel in my life as you read about it on the interweb. Or maybe I haven't sent an email to friends yet, just family...