Pirate is NOT the new Ninja

I discovered Ask a Ninja today.
enjoy

here's the new recruit

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!

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

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!

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

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

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...

Hello? Mr. Pickles, hello?

So I've got my resume on Monster and a couple other sites...and nobody reads your resume, they just scan for keywords. SO I've been called and emailed at least twice a day by recruiters who want to hook me up with a sweet contractor job at...my current employer. Not only that, but its for the team on the other side of the cubewall from me. Funny. It's like, did you read the email? Did you see my profile? Looking for NY, not MN. Ugh.

Weight

Feeling much better today. Focusing on work.

It's funny...hey wait that's my bike.

Yeah, well, its still sorta funny. This morning while getting ready for work, I was standing half dressed talking about, of course, impending relocation or something related to it when there was a commotion outside. From the bedroom window we heard someon yell, "Put that back!" and then Andrea saw a white haired guy run across the street and I saw him running behind a black guy in a bike, holding onto the bike rider's shirt, yelling "Stop! Stop!" AH, I thought, never a dull moment in this craphole neighborhood. Then a minute later our doorbell rang. Huh?

It was the white haired guy. I noticed that something was missing from my front porch. Specifically, one of the wooden spindles on the railing, even more specifically, the cheapo $60 bike I bought from Target a couple years ago that had been locked to the railing all last fall, winter, and this spring. "A guy just sto9le you bike!"
"Oh." I said. The older guy was dripping with sweat.
"I tried to stop him but short of coming to blows he wasn't going to stop."
"Thanks." I said.
"You can get in your car and chase him down! He went down that way. A bald guy!"
"No, that's ok," I said, still covered in shocked amusement, "It was a cheap bike. It wasn't in great shape anyway."
"I think the tires were flat." he said.
"Yeah. Hey, sorry for the trouble."

So, that's how my day began.

I don't really care about the bike at all, but the feeling of personal invasion is hard to escape. I mean, he damaged my house a little bit and he took something that was mine. It wasn't his. What made him think it was OK to just take something like that? That little bit of psychic disturbance has had me off-kilter all day. That on top of the stress of the impending decision about where Andrea will work (definitely New York now) as me feeling like I'm on the verge of a breakdown. Literally.

But I think I just need to focus on the stable, on the known, and things will be ok.

oh, my head, my back...

So, Andrea's trip to NY was nowhere near the dramedy of her trip to Chicago. Got to the plane on time, etc. Taking care of Felix all by myself (well, I had a short break on Thursday when Kim, the nanny, came and took him to the park) definitely took its toll. But mostly we're all feeling a bit shell shocked because of the sudden multiplication of hard choices. So, now Andrea is being pursued, in some cases very aggressively, by firms in Chicago AND New York and all of them have their own time frames and offers...and we have to both decide between them AND I need to find a job, AND we need to get rid of this house, AND we need to find somewhere to live, AND we need to figure out who is going to take care of Felix while mom and dad are working full time, AND we need to pay for that...

...so, anyone who has advice or experience, or who would like to move to New York to be a live-in nanny for cheap, let me know.

updates

Ok, so here's the updates:
Andrea's trip to Chicago - A+
Turns out that after all her missed flights and whatnots, she arrived in Chitown around 2:50pm and had a great afternoon meeting with the people at the studio. They really liked her, she really liked them, and they said the would need to know if she will take the job shortly after she comes back from her interviews in new York (which she leaves for tonight). If she will commit to the position, they can wait until September for her to relocate. So, that's basically a sure thing if the offer is accepted in time. And at the end of her time there, she felt like she had spent just the right amount of time, not too little and not too much. So the whole airport drama was sort of not a complete loss (though wasting half a day at the Humphrey terminal is a special sort of hell, I know). At the very worst, it did not affect her chances at this job. So...basically we're almost guaranteed to be relocating to Chicago (or she is at least and me to follow as soon as possible...and who the hell knows what happens to Felix...ugh!) by September unless she actually gets an offer from the place in New York. And that's a whole other ball of sticky wax, because who knows what that offer will be or if it will even be as good (in timing, salary, etc.) as the Chicago offer. So, Chicago stuff all worked out well, so far.

Father's Day/Weekend - B+/A-
Well, despite my comments on being somewhat ambivalent about Father's day and my prediction that the airport fiasco would invalidate any honoring of thine babydaddy, we actually had a weekend packed chock full-o-father's day stuff.
Saturday was a hodge-podge if (ina/a)ctivity. We were all feeling wasted, warped, hung-up, and hungover from Friday's emotional rollercoaster. Felix was all crank-a-tank early in the morning (5:30am). We all took naps from about 9:45am to 1:30pm, which is a a LONG nap for Felix. After we all eventually woke up we gathered some supplies and went to the beach! It took us a while to get there since we were trying to stay off the highway. At about 4:45pm we got to the beach and Felix conquered the sand and surf. It was fun. The only part that was not so fun was that 15 minutes after we got there they had their "safety check" where everyone gets out of the water. This takes about 15 minutes to complete, I guess...15 minutes spent trying to keep Felix from going back into the water or dumping as much sand as he can onto the blanket. We had a great time, though Felix started getting cranky again as we were leaving, probably because he was hungry.
As a nod to father's day, Andrea went and got us dinner at Chatter box, so I was not required to make dinner. Felix went down at what seemed like a mostly normal bed t-

LATE BREAKING NEWS FLASH!!!!!
Hard decisions just made even harder!
So, despite all of Andrea's naysaying, what I had predicted has come to pass. In New York, EVERYONE wants to hire her. Both places she interviewed at today said, "Yes, please, come work for us, PLEASE!" And to make matters even worse, the studio she specifically went to NY to interview at even said, "Hey, no hurry, we won't need you to start until fall..." which, until we see some numbers, basically makes it a tie with the Chicago offer. Well, not REALLY, but it makes choosing between the two that much harder. In a way, Andrea was sort of hoping that her NY trip would be fruitless because that would make the decision for her. Oh no. That would be toooooo easy. Not one, but two studios in NY want her. She's 100% on her interviews-to-offers percentage. That's damn good.
That also says something, again, pretty clearly about Minneapolis. Here, she can barely get a call back. She was called an anachronism during an informational. She was told by one local studio during an informational, that design isn't even about design in Minneapolis, that it isn't even about advertising either.
It points the way pretty clearly: For Andrea to get the chance to do the work she wants to do and get the recognition it deserves, she's gotta leave this area. No joke. When internationally known, award winning design firms and studios in chicago and new york spend their time trying to sell HER on their projects and telling her "Please, if you are serious, let us know and we would totally hire you like yesterday." She's being wooed by studios in two different cities! Minneapolis can only be bothered to fart in her face and steal her lunch money.

SO, from this point on it only gets tougher.

I ave started hsopping my resume online and submitting to positions in both areas. I've also started getting calls from recruiters. Unfortunately none of them have been for jobs in the areas I'm interested in. But it is nice to know that my resume is coming up when people say "I need someone who is X". I'm feeling more marketable already!

I've submitted for a couple positions that actually sound like they would flow really well from what I'm doing now. Mostly change management/SCM type stuff, but a couple software deployment and a release engineer position. So, I'm starting to feel pretty good. I think, really, the only anchor around our necks is going to be this house. I'm wondering if we might just let it burn down. I know it sounds horrible, but I'd welcome a natural disaster right now, provided my family and important stuff is safe and secure when it happens.

Seriously. If the roof blew off and the walls fell down and the car got pelted with hail damage...that would be effing perfect.

oh father!

so, Sunday is father's day. On this day I am minutely conflicted. Father's day and Mother's day are similar to Valentine's day, secretary's day, grandparent's day, etc... in that they are largely Hallmark Holidays. But nearly so much as Valentine's day, which I view as just sort of plain stupid and evil. Mothers and Fathers days are good holidays, I think, in that they (should) promote introspection about your relationship with your respective parents. It is good to occasionally say, "Hey, thanks a lot. I appreciate you being there for me all the time." or "Thanks for sending me to college, I wish I hadn't been such a bonehead back then." or even "I respect that you didn't give in." Honoring your parents is something that should get some airtime in your day at least once a year. According to "everyone", the minimum offering should be a card and flowers. If you are able to, you take said honoerd parent to dinner, or something. A token that says, "Hey...thanks. I didn't forget this time."

That said...and I say this as a father myself (though this is my first anniversary), I wish retailers would shut up about it and stop trying to make me feel inadequate for not sending my parents on a cruise or buying them a flat screen TV during any of the special deals or sales. Now, granted, I encounter this pressure much less (not because I'm heartless) because I don't watch commercial TV, so I don't see the ads. I do see them online, hear them on the radio, and see the in-store displays. Maybe because I don't have the TV stream of adblather I am more conscious of the other marketing avenues. Anyway. I'm not some grinch who just doesn't want to give presents to my parents for all the pain and suffering I've put them through. (and I should come clean and say, yes, I know, I'm a horrible gift giver even when I DO want to give them, I'm sorry for that) As a new father, I'm experiencing all sorts of things for the first time. For Mother's day, I took my mom out to dinner because she was actually in town (the day before actually), otherwise I would have just given her a phone call. If times are good and we have money just laying around getting dusty, I might send her a gift certificate to Amazon or JoAnns. I also made Andrea breakfast in bed since she definitely needs to be recognized for her mothering (this year Felix got her a card too). And I gave her the day off and took care of Felix all day. On weekends, I usually try to take as much Felix time as possible anyway, since Andrea usually needs a recharge (though the weekends have morphed a bit since she started working), but a guaranteed 100% day off is a pretty good gift, I think.

Anyway, so Andrea asks me what *I* want to do for father's day. Do I want to do something special? Do I want to do something special as a family, with just Felix, by myself?

Huh. Something to think about. I think its safe to say, after this morning's performance I shouldn't expect (or really even deserve) a chunk of "me time", but perhaps we will do a nice family event that might give Andrea some release from the tension of today....I think we might take Felix to a beach or something. But I certainly wouldn't expect either Andrea or Felix to go shop the special sales for some thing I was hoping to get from someone.

Now, be it known that my parents have never demanded gifts on any of these days. Wouldn't turn them down, but they like to know their children are at least thinking of them.

Aw hell, I'm too scattered to finish this...
and I need to finish grilling the lamb while Felix is still asleep.

chitown

Well, for those of you playing along at home, Andrea did get to Chicago at 2:15pm, and I imagine that right now she's probably just meeting the whole crew at the studio and wowing them with her portfolio. And I hope that they take her to a nice place for dinner, and maybe a late lunch.

Hallmark does not yet carry a "Sorry for possibly crushing your dreams, yet again - Wife" card yet. I know, I looked.

fubar

well, I did it again.
The past week or so have been spent preparing for A's trip out to Chicago for an interview. The studio she's interviewing at is interested enough in her that they want to fly her too Chicago for the day, have a car pick her up at the airport, show her around town, etc, and then send her back to the minneapple in time for a late night tuck-in for Felix.

SO...after my previous airport experience, I felt pretty confident that she could catch the light rail 45 minutes before her flight and have no problems. Well, being OVER confident, I didn't get her to the light rail until right at 6:30, for her 7:00 flight. And we just saw the train pull away so we knew it would be maybe 10 minutes before the next one arrived. OK, so we drove to the airport and got there just in time to get on her plane....but AirTran moved from the main airport terminal to the Humphrey terminal last month. So then we SPEED to the Humphry terminal and arrive there 5 minutes too late and she missed her flight. So get on the next one, right? Well...yeah, ok...so they TRY to get her on the next flight but its already overbooked (WTF?). That flight leaves at 10:25 which gets her to Chicago at noonish, which sucks, but hey, spend the afternoon in CHicago and come home at night. Ok, so they try for that. Nope, they load up the plane and fly off, no Andrea on board. Her confirmed, guaranteed flight leaves at 12:52 and gets to Chicago at around 2:15. So, her day of being wined and dined by a prospective employer has turned into a nightmare morning followed by a late morning of drama and boredom at the Humphrey terminal, which is like being stuck in a small airport in nowhere midwest with no shops or food places, followed by a flight and just enough time to meet the studio, show her portfolio, maybe grab a light dinner, and then back onto the plane at 7:50 and home by 9:30.

If this were a vacation or a trip that spanned several days, this change in schedule would be a huge hassle, but not too much more than that. For a one-day visit with an prospective employer, who is interested enough to fly you out...well, it takes on a whole different flavor entirely. Andrea, understandably, is beside herself. She hates being late for things and even more hates for someone to think she's not on the ball, especially when an opportunity like this is in play. Obviously, she's very unhappy with me. My stupid confidence turned hitting a tight deadline into utter disaster. And of course, I was the one riding her ass for the past week to make sure she had everything lined up, all her stuff in order, her clothing picked out, everything because, "I'm just not looking forward to the morning-of drama if you forget something." Yeah, serves me right, but it does not serve her right at all.
She hates me, understandibly, and I'm not too proud of myself either.
I feel sick. I hope they are very understanding, but even more I hope that once she gets on that plane her day gets better, not worse. I've robbed her of a little bit of RnR, even though it is around a business trip, and I've possibly tarnished the impression they have of her. I wish I could call them and say it was all my fault.

Of course, this also means that next week when she flies out to New York we'll all be riding MY ass pretty damn hard to make sure I don't mess it up again.

And of course, Felix misses his momma. It doesn't help that I got him up early so we could all go to the airport. He should be finishing up his morning nap soon...its been a good long one.

It's supposed to be in the 90's today. Ugh.
I feel like crap for what I've done to Andrea, Felix is off because of the heat and his lack of sleep, and not to mention he's used to spending the mornings with mama. We'll see...this will be a test run for next week when I've got him for 2 days and 3 nights on my own.

And we've got a handful of important errands to run once he wakes up.
sigh...
You've done it again, bonehead.

no seasons

and now I shall rant a bit about our lack of proper seasons. This is Minnesota, we should have four distinct seasons. Cool and wet, hot and moist, cool and dry, and frozen. And those four distinct sensation-based seasons are roughly the same length, or at the very least, not drastically different lengths. Those of you playing along at home may have noticed that this year we've gone from frozen to hot and moist in a record 4 weeks, and that's not even a proper four weeks, I just mean that it has been roughly a month between the last substantial "cold spell" and the first substantial "heat wave". During that month there have been mostly moderate days, lots of overcast, lots of rain, a couple "cold" days and several unexpectedly warm days. Before that it was basically just cold all the time and from here on out I expect it will just be plain hot and humid. Basically, I'm still paying off my heating bill from the winter and already I've had to install one of the AC units so that Felix can sleep at night and his nanny doesn't quit during the day. WTF? If anyone with half a brain out there still doesn't believe in global warming, wake up. It's real. And even if its not, don't be such a bitch. Pollution is bad, gas guzzlers are bad, SUVs = bad, and it goes without saying that your asshat "Who gives a fuck about global warming, I'll be gone when the rapture comes anyway?" attitude is pretty much the big bad.

house

Everyone talks about how you should buy a house, a house is the biggest and best investment you'll ever make, etc etc... Of course, there's caveats and asterix and footnotes and exceptions to every one of those "house" cliches. Like, how you should buy a house...if you plan on staying in the same neighborhood, city, or state for the next 10 years, or if you plan on having the same job with regular pay increases or advancement, or guarantee that you will have a series of consecutively higher paying jobs, etc. Yes, a house is more like a marriage than a purchase; don't do it if you only plan on being around a couple years. Or maybe a house is more like a dog; if you do get one, make sure that the amount of time you have for it is more than the amount of time it actually needs. And of course, just as with a marriage or a dog, make sure you are getting a house for the right reason! (and that everyone who is getting the house agrees on what that reason is, same as married and getting a dog).

Well, last week I actually started a finished my first real house project since Felix was born, I think. I'm not counting fixing the kitchen sink because my dad did that. Last week I replaced the seal around our tub which was poorly done in the first place and was pretty much coming off in all the places where you'd wish it wouldn't. In finally pulling out the old nasty (and wrong sized) caulk-strip, I discovered that water was not seeping under the tiles and into the void between the walls and int othe drywall of my kitchen ceiling. No, the edge of the tub behind the tile actually has a lip. Instead the water that pools on the tub's ledge (due probably to a combination of the half-assery of the "remodel" job they did putting the tub in crooked and the fact that this 100 year old house is probably shifting on its foundation and what may have been kinda sorta level before is now just outta whack)and just soaks into the caulk and makes it mushy. And nasty funky stuff likes to grow there. So, in pulling out the bad, I discovered a little good. AND I replaced it all with a double-strength application of extra wide caulk strips that are also bright and shiny white and will rewmain so if we are methodical about trying to squeegy the water off of them after showers or baths (Felix likes to splash).

more than meets the eye

My weekly flyer-email from eReader.com spotlights a special on the new Transformers book based on the movie. Normally I wouldn't look twice at something like this, as books based on movies don't tend to be all the good and if you don't even know how good the movie will be outside of the whizzbang special effects you have seen in the trailers, well, what's the point? But in this case I was aroused by something unexpected. The book, based on the movie, is written none other than Alan Dean Foster. While in the greater scheme of literature Alan Dean Foster may be considered more of a Sci-Fi/Fantasy pulp artist and film novelization powerhouse (alien, Starwars, etc...) I fondly recall reading many of his books as an adolescent. The Flinx series, which apparently is still receiving new installments, and other Humanx Commonwealth novels, the Spellsinger series, as well as just stand alone novels he'd written like Quozl and The Vanishing Point. The thing about Foster is that while he is very prolific, he is also incredibly readable. His prose does not seem to suffer from the sheer volume he puts out. This is just a tidbit. Maybe I'll look up some of his newer novels and see if they spark my interest. Check out his wikipedia entry or visit his homepage if you are interested in seeing what I'm talking about.

breakfast of champions

I am referring, of course, to snot. Phlegm, specifically, with a smattering of post-nasal drip.

Now I'm not so sure I'm dealing with allergies. Leaning towards sinus infection. After all, is is quite common for me to get some bug and be sick and then Andrea catches it and what made me feel a little crappy for a few days will lay her up seriously. I tend to have a bit sturdier constitution than she has, which maybe you would expect from the youngest of five siblings. I catch a cold and it give me a runny nose and a headache, she catches my cold and she gets sore throat, body ache, fever, and can barely get out of bed.

My only current symptoms are the post-nasal drip, the cough (both phlegmy in the morning or after long periods of inactivity and dry itch cough throughout the day), and off and on congestion w/runny nose (haven't seen that one too much in the past couple days).

Andrea is still coughing her brains out, blowing her nose off, seriously fatigued, and generally feeling like shit in no uncertain terms.

Felix has congestion, runny nose, and occasionally a cough, but usually from all the drooling. He's still teething pretty hard core.

genesis

In circumspect, I can see now how belief in a god can happen. This tapping happens and I have no way of determining what is causing it, or even, in fact, exactly where it is coming from. And I've TRIED oh so many things to figure this out. And the fact that it keeps happening, and I keep not being able to figure it out, drives me to the point of distraction. How much easier it would be for me to tell myself, "TOD is making the noise. I think TOD is an invisible spirit that created everything and that tapping noise is just TOD's way of talking to the house-spirit."

And if I believe that TOD is making the noise, I'll soon believe that he is probably the unseeable cause for most of the previously unexplainable effects I've ever experienced. If I think about all those things TOD does, I can probably piece together some sort of picture of him based on why I think TOD is doing all those things. Pretty soon I've got a very complicated and detailed description of the whats and whys and wherefores of the all powerful TOD. And if someday a plumber or carpenter tears up my floor or ceiling and finds that the cause of the tapping noise was caused by the pipes shifting and rubbing a floor joint every time the hydrostatic pressure in the neighborhood pipeline changed more than 1 millibar (? making this up as I go, obviously). Every time someone on my block turns on the tap or flushes the toilet, my dining room ceiling goes "TAP!". When I discover that and someone says, "See, it wasn't TOD at all!" I'll just smile knowingly and say, "Oh really? Perhaps TOD made the plumbing in this house, in this block, in this city, like that so that I would discover him and his awesome works. It has been revealed to me that I might better understand the shear awesomeness of the TOD. For this to be a coincidence is just way too far out...this is a complicated scheme, a plan, a series of cause and effect that could only have happened by the design of some superior being, of TOD."

And besides, if I'm not being driven nuts trying to figure out why everything is the way it is, I'm able to be more productive at other things like making bricks out of shit or hunting for food, which makes a belief in TOD something of a beneficial trait that evolution will select.

So, being an atheist, I have to relax and get comfortable just not knowing why my dining room ceiling goes TAP and just not worry about it until it actually does cave in (which is no longer covered by my policy).

So, I guess you could say that TOD exists BECAUSE of evolution, not despite it.

tell-tale tap

As I mentioned before, I've been sleeping on the couch until my coughing goes away. Well, tonight all is quiet, the dishwasher is done, Andrea and Felix are sleeping peacefully upstairs, and I'm sitting at the dining room table relishing the few spare moments I may get this weekend to indulge in whatever I feel like. So of course I'm tinkering on my computer in the basement from my laptop in the dining room. No music is playing, no background noise but the slight whisper hum or the refrigerator and whatever vehicles happen to roll by outside. And then I hear it. Sort of a dry, distinct TAP...................TAP..........TAP......................TAP. At first I thought, "Oh, its probably just something outside, blowing against the window or something..." but there it was again. I pause and wait and sometimes it doesn't seem to come for a while...but eventually, it always comes! It sounds like it is actually coming from the ceiling. It sounds like a drop of water smacking onto a linoleum floor tile after a very long fall or a pebble bouncing off of a windshield at 60 mph. Your basic quick tick/tap/bump in the night. House settling/shifting, etc... It's just so unnerving to here it because of my existing neuroses about ants and water damage and just about this ancient house intending to collapse around us at any moment. For all I know, there's a midget in a timewarp trapped between Felix's floor and the dining room ceiling and he's been working on this time dilated Morse Code emergency communique for the past 10 years. Most likely Felix is rolling around in his crib and that motion is translating down through the floor and seems to find itself released through the same creaky joint in the ceiling. Who knows. It's driving me mad, though.

And of course my homeowners insurance premium just went up a few dollars a month because they are now using credit score to determine your rate? WTF??? My HO insurance is paid out of the escrow for the house...if I stop paying my mortgage, I lose the house, and its not like I can make a claim then, can I? I fail to see how my credit score in any way logically should have an impact on my insurance premium. It's just plain fucked. And on top of that I also get the statement which says, "Oh by the way, now that we're coming up on your one year anniversary in your new home, we're going to make some changes to your policy. Here's two pages of greek. Good luck.

It's getting so it may just be easier for them to send you a list of exactly what they do cover, since it is a much sorter list than what they don't cover...which now appears to include mold, rust, dryrot, bacteria, and water damage that may have been caused by the shitty plumbing job done by the assholes who sold you this dump in the first place. You've lived with it for a year (or it is taking longer than a year to surface as an issue) so now it's not our problem, its your problem.

Sigh... I'm not cut out for owning old, used, expensive things. If we had to live hear longer than another year or so, I'd say tear down the house and drop one of those nice new modular homes on the lot.

Really, my only real fear, the one that all of my other fears are just grubby little children of, is that we will lose our shirts over this house, that we will never get back even what we put into it, that it will crumble around us and ultimately cost us even more to move out of than it did to move in.

It appears that in selling a house you simply need to cover up any problems long enough that they become the next owner's problem.

And did I mention that I saw a wingless female carpenter ant today? She was wandering around by the side door to the house, looking for a good place to start up a new nest. I have never seen such a big ant in my whole life. At first I thought I was seeing things, like it was some sort of special effect. The ant was black and looked like it was almost an inch long. I chased it outside and sprayed it wit the Orth Home Defense MAX I had gotten a few weeks ago. It didn't seem to like it much, but it also didn't seem to slow it down any. It just headed into the grass to get away from me. Andrea asked me why I didn't just step on it. Ok, this was a HUGE ant....and actually I was hoping it would die from the spray and then I could show it to the pest control guy when I finally do make the appointment, to verify for sure that if we don't have carpenter ants IN the house, we sure have them looking around the area. I have not seen a single ant inside the house since I sprayed outside the backdoor, back steps, and the back wall around the foundation with the Home Defense...but that doesn't mean they aren't hiding between the walls and ceilings...methodically, but arrhythmically, chewing through my house with an uncharacteristic TAP............TAP..................................TAP....

It's probably just the wind or accumulation of ambient motion expressing through this one focal carpentry joint. Yes, I will spend the next few days convincing myself of that.

spring schludge

Well, for about 10 days I've been suffering from somewhat polymorphic allergy/sinusitis symptoms. Andrea has succumbed to something similar but different, the usual 3-6 day lag behind/before me(this case behind) and Felix has two bottom teeth, so he's been wearing his crankypants pretty much off an on all day and definitely all night for the past week or so. And along with the super drool, he's also got some nose crusties and he's been doing this super cute (but I'm wondering if it is due to congestion or him possibly feeling some other sort of sinus irritation) thing where he scrunches up his nose and cheeks and blows through his nose in short bursts. It looks funny, like he's happy, but maybe he's just trying to blow his nose? And we're also worried he might be harboring an ear ache too, since when things start to go cranky for any reason, the first thing he does is starts going for the ears.

For me, I started out dealing with hard-core post-nasal drip and the occasional (sometimes frequent) uncontrollable spastic coughing. In the morning this coughing brings up a good deal of crud, but during the day it seems mostly to be a dry cough. I can't control it because what triggers the cough is a dry tickle/itch that feels like having a hair stuck in your throat and it only gets worse as you breathe and try NOT to cough. And the coughing causes headaches and is generally irritating to everyone around me. Starting this past monday the coughing has lessend a LITTLE, the post-nasal has tapered off a bit (but I still cough crud up in the morning, just less), but now I've started with come and go congestion and runny nose with the occasional sneezing. So it SOUNDS a lot like allergies...of course the OTC loratadine (10mg) doesn't seem to do diddly. Also, now it feels like my jaw NEAR one of my lymph nodes is tender... so who knows. We're at about day 10 or 11 so I'm wondering if it was viral it would be on its way out by now. I hope so. I've been sleeping on the couch so my coughing won't keep Andrea up more than she has to be (due to Felix's teething).

Andrea is congested, sore throat, body aches, fatigue, and in general out of commission due to her already grueling regiment of being Felix's milk maid. So, add to that the lack of sleep due to my coughing and Felix's frequent wakeups at night... This morning she hit the wall and I'm staying home to take care of Felix while she tries to rest up and regain.

Felix, with his super drooly mouth and little nubby teeth, has become very clingy in the past week. Sometimes he doesn't want to be put down. He actually seems to be giving us hugs sometimes and not just hanging on for dear life. He's almost completely mastered the stairs (he goes up and down but still has trouble getting starting going down) and his favorite thing is to crawl UNDER the furniture now, including going after toys that have rolled into hard to reach spaces. We've also seen him trying to climb into his pack-n-play, which is impressive and frightening at the same time...once he is able to master climbing up and over something like that, we're screwed.

So, it's the sick tending the sicker and minding the young here at casa de premidlife.

mr. tooth

Felix's first tooth has come in. It's just a rough spot just breaching the bottom gum, but it is a tooth for sure. That helps explain why he has been so cranky in the evenings and frequently wakes throughout the night. Sure hasn't hurt his appetite any, though. He eats as much avocado, banana, mango, pear, lamb, yam, cereal, carrots, etc. as we can toss at him. And of course, he loves the teething biscuits. Whoever came up with those things was an evil genius. On the one hand, they are just the perfect thing for a baby to chew on, on the other hand, they convert from rock-hard biscuit to barley flavored slime in minutes and from barley slime to organic super concrete in seconds, adhering to any and all surfaces, including skin, that it comes into contact with.
good stuff. and the kids love it.

a-day

For those who don't remember, today is Andrea's birthday.
I'm taking the day off from work so I can give HER the day off from work.

antics

OK, let me get some things straight out there. I have very little issue with insects in their proper context. Take proper context to mean: not in my home, not in large volumes, not in any way which I could perceive as threatening to myself or my family.

I can look at a giant mound of an anthill teaming with millions of ants without even flinching, so long as this is happening, say, in a desert or some other remote location. But when I see ants in my house in numbers greater than, oh, five, and for periods of longer than, oh, as long as it takes to smash them all, then yes, I tend to develop an "issue" with said insects. The same goes for any type on insect (except for roaches...there is no acceptable quantity or duration for roaches). One spider is no problem. Fifty spiders, yes, i think I'd have a problem with that. One ant, no problem. Fifty ants of all different sizes, especially in a localized area, yeah, I have a problem with that.

My weekend was all but ruined by the ant invasion which started early last week. Why was it not until the weekend that I got really out of sorts? Well, that's when I did a little research and found out that we most likely are being visited by carpenter ants who are most likely interested in living in the walls of our house, if they are not already doing so (which I think they are). So, I develop what my wife considers irrational obsessive behavior regarding our uninvited guests.
"Why don't you get this worked up about any of our several OTHER more pressing issues, like getting the car an oil change or finding a nanny, instead of worrying about some stupid ants?"

I tried to explain it, but I think I failed. She got that it had a lot to do with control and unknowns. Mainly i got super panicked because I did some research and found out that carpenter ants like to move right in and set up shop and that to really effectively deal with them, you should probably hire professionals.

Here's where the big fear comes in for me:
A - This will require money. Possibly MONEY. It's difficult to find anything on the web about how much it costs to really deal with this problem.
B - This is something that will only get worse over time if not dealt with correctly.
C - From what I observe, there is quite a lot of room for ambiguity (are they already living in the walls? How much damage have they caused? How bad could it possibly be at this rate? Is this going to be an ongoing battle against nature? Is this going to make it harder to sell the house? How big of a mistake was it to buy this house in the first place? Did we get a sub-prime mortgage? Do we need to disclose that we had the house treated for carpenter ants when we try to sell the place? Did we get screwed by the people who sold us this house? Is this ant problem just and indicator of a larger issue with the house, like leaky pipes pipes somewhere that will slowly cause more and more water damage until one day the kitchen ceiling caves in and leaves us with thousands of dollars of repair work to do before we can even think of selling? Does my homeowners insurance cover ANY of this? etc...) and not too many places to turn to get those ambiguities resolved.

So I called Orkin to get a "free inspection/estimate" but I was able to get their customer service person to fess up to their standard treatment plan, which is a 1 year deal that comes with visits costing $275(first treatment), $80(30 days), $80(60 days), $80(90 days), $80(180 days). Well, I don't like the sound of that, but at least its something tangible.

Then I came across the website for a local pest control place that said, "Don't panic! Carpenter ants are a pest and they can cause damage but most likely they will not compromise your home's structural integrity if dealt with. Do NOT feel pressured to sign up for an annual treatment plan that costs you hundreds of dollars. We can provide you with treatment options that are much more affordable for homeowners." Basically, this is what I needed to see. A website that stated, in so many words, "Don't worry, you're going to be OK. Here's why..."

So I called them up and spoke to a guy there and he was also very reassuring. He explained how the big name places will require monthly visits, which used to be necessary, but that current technology (for killing bugs, I assume) doesn't need that anymore. Now they use a material that the ants don't detect and so they walk through it and carry back to the nest. Then, as they groom each other they end up poisoning and killing the entire colony. Sounds great, right? Well, yes, they do recommend follow up visits, but basically just twice a year, one at the beginning of the season (spring) and one in late summer/early fall. the reason being that even though you kill the colony or the satellite colony (like the one they are trying to set up in my kitchen walls, I imagine) you still need to prevent ants from re-infesting, which they are want to do unless you are able to seal up all avenues of access AND replace any of the attractants that drew them in in the first place (previously water damaged wood). In our case i think that's sort of unrealistic since this is like a one thousand year old house. So, I was straight with the guy and told him I panicked and called Orkin first and then later found his website. He said, "No problem. Definitely get their inspection." I told him that unless they told me something drastically different after the inspection than what their customer service rep quoted me, I'd be calling him back to have his guys do the treatment. his quote was basically half the price of what Orkin said, and required far fewer visits. So, really when you consider Orkin was saying that it would be about...$600 for one year's worth of ant treatment and about $400 each additional year, and this guy was saying it would only cost $250 for the whole year and then only $200 for each year after that...well, seems like a no-brainer.

Which is why I have regained my sanity, for the most part.
So that begs the question A asked me earlier. Why is this ant thing totally bugging me out when there are other pressing issues like the possibility of the car breaking down or us needing a baby sitter or some other such "unknown"?
Well, see, those are already sort of known unknowns.
I *know* that when it comes right down to it, i can take time off to watch Felix if absolutely necessary.
I also know that, if the car does break down in some way, I'm not necessarily at the mercy of the "professionals" or their ridiculous pricing schemes. I've owned cars for like, ten years. In this past year I have done what I consider to be a relatively major repair on my own at greatly reduced cost. And if the car is our of commission for a few days, a week, well, I know we can get around that too.

But when it comes to the house...I know very little about home-owning so whenever something comes up that is of direct or indirect impact to the house, our ability to live in it or at least extract out of it what we put in, I get VERY VERY nervous. I don't know if ants are a nuisance or a major major deal, if they will cost me $100 or $1000 or $10,000 (when we try to sell). And more to the point, I don't feel comfortable trying to do it myself when its not necessarily something that can be done effectively by the individual home owner.
So, pretty much anything that happens involving the house gets top billing in the anxiety show unless it is one of the few things that I already know about, like restarting the boiler, installing a new dryer, etc...

Lets just hope that the seam in the kitchen ceiling is due to the house expanding and contracting from the changes in season. Hope against hope.

latest low

Reason 151 of why I'm regretting buying a house:
Carpenter Ants (probably).

frigration

Today was a bonafide success at work. Everything was essentially all lined up and falling down right in a row by 10:30am so the rest of the day seemed like a formailty. Like a real Friday. We were migrating a major development group to our new source control tool using the process I had worked out two months ago. Yesterday the DBA didn't seem to know it was going on which was bad since they had to do most of the actual work (follow my documentation). Why was this migration a big deal? Because they had their source control environment set up in a very specific way in the old tool and I was able to move their existing settings, database (of metadata), and actual data to the new tool without them losing anything. Most of the other teams are not nearly as mature or complex as this team, so they were just taking a snapshot of their current state and uploading it into the new tool. Not this team. They basically pulled out of the old tool on Wednesday and when they log on the new tool on Monday it will be like nothing has changed (except increased stability and some improved functionality). This is a major win for my team because these guys are the last ones to go to the new tool (as far as we're keeping score...after we are "finished" the stragglers will be coming out of the woodwork...the old source tool goes down about 10 times a day, for real) and we delivered exactly what they wanted, when they wanted, and with as little impact as possible to their development. (we think). We'll know more Monday, but today felt like summer Friday afternoon.

damn!

I just got hit with an idea that is soooooo freaking awesome that I'm afraid to even talk about it...but I alkso am in no position to make any single part of it happen, so whats the use of keeping quiet?

sigh...ever wonder if you accidentally got hit with someone else's inspiration?

teething

It seems that Felix is teething...for real. He's been waking up a lot more frequently at night, has his drool on 24x7, and he gets super cranky pretty quickly, especially at night.
Poor kiddo.

sprung?

As in, has it become spring? have we become sprung? Yesterday turned into a nice day, weather wise, and its just supposed to get better over the weekend and into monday. Which is why A turned down the thermostat yesterday (the babysitter was sweating, it was so hot in the house) and then turned it back up before we went to bed. Well, Felix woke up lots last night, most likely because he was a little cold. I couldn;t tell because when you are only in your skivvies and it's o'dark-thirty in the morning/night you don't really notice the difference between 60 degrees and 70 degrees, you just know that under blankets is toasty and out of blankets is not. So anyway, finally around 5 thirty and Felix's umpteenth wake-up, which we'd been asssuming was for feeding since his diaper was not wet, I felt his icy little hands. OK, the kid is a lot like me, so it isn;t unusual for him to seem perfectly happy even though his hands and/or feet are icy cold. His hands are covered in drool half the time, which makes them extra icy. Anyway, as I hovered about at 5:30 in the AM and noticed that it seemed a bit cooler than I expected, and Andrea's complaints of "It is sooooooooo cooooooooooold!" finally started to get some traction. I went down and looked at the readout on the thermostat. 60 degrees. While this was the type of temps we've been dying for outside, its not exactly what we were hoping for inside (or some of us, anyway). WTF? I punch the temp setting and its sitting up at 74. Hrm. That's not good. I go down to the basement and check the furnace. Not running, not a peep, and the boiler is cold. It had been hot the day before, I remember because i had dried one of Felix's diaper wraps on a radiator. Hrm. I whip out the manual and start the process of restarting the boiler. Nada. I do it again. Nada. Crap.
I check out the thermostat, do the little reset thingy on it, put it back on the wall. Nothing. Crap.
So then turn it all off...no point risking gassing or blowing us up. I go up and try the stove and oven. They both work fine, so we still have gas. I even went down to check the meter while the oven was on and heard the reassuring (or frightening, depending on what month it is and how big that gas bill is) tchink tchink tchink or the little dials on the meter spinning.
I go back up to the bedroom where Felix and A are now sleeping (or at least A is trying to sleep while Felix is out like a drunken sailor) and pull out the space heater and turn it on. At least I can heat up the bedroom and finish out the night and tackle the boiler issues at a more reasonable hour.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm getting out the heater. The boiler isn't lighting."
"Well, call someone. It is f-f-freezing in here."
"It's Saturday morning, I doubt anyone is around..."
"Well you better call someone, now."
Sigh...
So I go into the closet and get the business card of the guy who installed the boiler just under a year ago and call him. It's about 6am now. I get his machine so I leave a message. 2 minutes later I get a call back. I think I woke this guy up. I think the boiler company he is the president of, he is also the everything else of. So, with him on the phone and Felix in hand (he decided that he needed to wake up and not go back to sleep...) we went to the basement to troubleshoot the boiler. After about 15 minutes of "Does it have one of these?" "Yes." "Push the button on it." "What button?" "There should be a button." "Oh, there it is. It's a switch." "Yeah, whatever, push it. Did you hear the relay throw?" "No." "Hrm. Ok...look for the..." we did this a couple times and finally I went back up to the thermostat and to calm Felix down (I had parked him in the dining room in the pack-n-play while i was fiddling with the boiler's electrical bits) and switched the thermostat's switch to cool then back to heat. Suddenly I heard a loud familiar "Cli-THUNK" of the boiler kicking on. I called the guy back (the call got dropped probably 3 times during this whole process) and said, "Hey, its working now. Thanks." And now we have heat, again. Which hopefully we'll get to turn off again...but anyway...the sky is clear, it's hovering around 30-40 degrees outside, maybe warmer. Supposed to get into the 50s today and 60s tomorrow. Felix and I walked to the coffee shop on the other side of the park and got coffee and breakfast burrito to share with the babymama (just me, not Felix). And all is relatively right with the world. Well, with that specific part of it at least.

whiteout

Welcome to spring, this wonderful snowy morning seems to say to me.
We finished version 1 of A's portfolio website and let me tell you, I seriously hate Internet Explorer and this process has just reaffirmed that sentiment. Needless to say, her website whic his chock full of javascripty ajaxy XHTMLy goodness does NOT look as it should on IE (any version). Hell, I don't even think it will show up on anything older than IEv6.x.

And I'm sorry, I know its supposed to be a usability best practice to bend over backwards to accommodate every ancient browser under the sun, but you know what? Do you REALLY want to get a job working for someone who uses that kind of crap? No. In Graphic Design you judge and are judged not only by your work but also by your ability to stay current. You do not do tomorrow's design for yesterday's browser, or client, or anything.

But mostly, I just don't want to have to remake the same site like 5 times just so some schmoe who can't keep up with what's current can look at a website.


Of course, next step it to add Flash to bridge the gaps if possible.

My dad, who used to work in interface design/usability gave the website a failing grade because it lacked user feedback. Of course...he only viewed it in IE. HA. But whatever. Mozilla provides plenty of feedback. Apparently IE doesn't even treat CSS the same as everyone else.

walkabout

It's funny. I signed up for the "all-in-one" package for this thing, which included the hotel that they had special booking in that is "attached" to the convention center. HA! I think the convention center and the Marriott share a parking garage or maybe one exterior wall. Anyway, the convention center is LOOOONG and all of the events are happening way down at the other end, which means I (and many of my geeky brethren) make the hike between the Marriott and the convention center D section frequently. I was worried that being out here with all my meals expensed would land me on the fat wagon, but with all this walking, and the fact that I have almost no other source of food unless I go out and buy munchies or snacks or something, I don't think I need to worry about that.

Well, I need to decide whether I get breakfast here at the hotel or check out what they are doing at the convention center.

going back to cali

So I'm now in beautiful, overcast, colder than Minneapolis, San Diego, CA. I'm all checked into my room and I've registered at the conbvention center (and received a cheap feeling laptop bag full of "swag"). OK. Now I'm off to an orientation session to try and get the most out of this summit.

Ta.

mr. dad

I think maybe its is a generational thing, or maybe its a cultural thing, or maybe...who knows. But I find it funny that in the 80's a movie like Mr. Mom was, you know, a perfectly valid topic for comedy. And I'm not even talking about the PC movement or anything, I'm just talking about what I feel is a change in the overall assumptions about childrearing and who does what. I would like to think that in this day and age, the way that Andrea and I divide the work is not uncommon. Consider that in large part, girls grow up into women with the expectation that they will be working, having careers. And I don't mean that until now girls didn't have that assumption. So when it comes to kids, both parents are in the same boat. The only real difference is that for the first year the baby has biological needs that only the mother can fill (and of course, the mother is biologically impacted by the 9 months prior to birth and the several months afterwards), but other than that, there's no built-in assumptions that the mother does a,b,c and the father does d. Nope. These days, at least in my house, it goes mom and dad to a,b,c,d. In some cases, mom or dad has do do more b or d because of the current dynamics, economic forces, etc...but if all things are equal, the split is pretty close to 50-50.

These days, Mr. Mom is sort of a myth, and if he exists out there, I feel sorry for his family. Mr. Mom should be Mr. Dad.

mr. dad

I think maybe its is a generational thing, or maybe its a cultural thing, or maybe...who knows. But I find it funny that in the 80's a movie like Mr. Mom was, you know, a perfectly valid topic for comedy. And I'm not even talking about the PC movement or anything, I'm just talking about what I feel is a change in the overall assumptions about childrearing and who does what. I would like to think that in this day and age, the way that Andrea and I divide the work is not uncommon. Consider that in large part, girls grow up into women with the expectation that they will be working, having careers. And I don't mean that until now girls didn't have that assumption. So when it comes to kids, both parents are in the same boat. The only real difference is that for the first year the baby has biological needs that only the mother can fill (and of course, the mother is biologically impacted by the 9 months prior to birth and the several months afterwards), but other than that, there's no built-in assumptions that the mother does a,b,c and the father does d. Nope. These days, at least in my house, it goes mom and dad to a,b,c,d. In some cases, mom or dad has do do more b or d because of the current dynamics, economic forces, etc...but if all things are equal, the split is pretty close to 50-50.

These days, Mr. Mom is sort of a myth, and if he exists out there, I feel sorry for his family. Mr. Mom should be Mr. Dad.

Gaaah!

I never seem to find time to write here, especially be cause there is so much to write about.
The rundown:

Felix now crawls, pulls himself to standing on furniture and pants legs, can do a lap around the first floor in his walker at subsonic speeds, eats solid food, feeds himself "crackers", and maybe this week will start sleeping through the night again. He's gotten over the hump of daylight savings time change, though I don't feel that I have yet. He is a "good eater" on most days and a good pooper on the following days. I can tell that he's excited about the prospect of using the toilet, but it seems like simply a novelty to him right now.

I got promoted to Systems Engineer in January. I must have mentioned that before. Hell, I haven't read my own blog in who knows how long so I don't even know what the last thing I wrote about was.

I'm going to San Diego next week for a Microsoft conference. That's neat.

I can not wait for warm weather because the gas bill is absolutely killing me. Of course, by the time cold weather starts up again I'll probably have just finished paying off this winter's gas bill. Good grief. You'd think that with the raises and promotions I'd be doing OK but the exponential rise in heating between November and March just completely yanked the rug out from under us, financially. I mean, seriously, it would almost make more sense for us to rent a studio apartment that has utilities included for the winter months and just shut off the heat and electricity in the house. Seriously. Anyway...enough about probably the most stressful thing in my life right now. As a rule, "there's always something" to knock the wind out of our sails. Well, I just keep saying to myself, "Just make it through winter, make it through winter...". Provided I am able to use that plan where they average your gas bill out over the year...I don't think we can do another winter like this.

We've been putting a lot of time into A's new portfolio website. I think it's pretty nice and I've gotten to learn a lot of little things that I dodn't know about, like how I can write javascript and use space-age technologies like "ajax". heh.

I think I learned from my dad that the sure way to get to work on your hobbies, or to at least do stuff that you consider to be fun is to make it something that the wife is asking for. You can spend an evening fiddling with websites and learning script languages if she requests your help on making a website. You can buy that new table saw if she asks you to build her a bookshelf...

...
..agg, and here i am coming back to this post like a day and a half later...

I/O

Sometimes it feels like I'm living in binary. At work on any given day I'm either swamped with work or bored. On any given day I'm either happy or crappy.

alive

Yeah, I've been a little lax in the bloggering. I'm alive, Andrea and Felix are mostly recovered from their bouts of cold, and life is sort of back to normal.

I'm busy as all get out at work, Andrea's super busy at home taking care of Felix and working on keeping the vestiges of her career alive until she can revert back to full-time focus on it, and Felix is, of course, super busy learning and developing, and being an all-around genius baby. He cruises around in his walker, fowards and backwards, and he's loving being able to stand by holding on the sides of his crib or pack-n-play. When placed on the floor, he can slither forwards but currently he only has reverse gear when crawling. He's eating solids pretty muchy every day, and a wide range from rice cereal, pureed veggies, and now pureed lamb, which seems boring and gross at first (think of a watery pate) but after the first spoonful he goes absolutely nuts for it. And now I know where the really really bad smelling poop comes from. He now has almost regular mini adult turds. GREAT.

We interviewed babysitters over the past two nights and had some superstar applicants, all of whom we plan to use. Oddly enough, one of them was a girl I went to highschool with (she was one year behind me). In sort of happy/sad news, 3 out of 4 babysitters seem to be very successful and on track to be way more successful than either Andrea or myself feel right now (they were all grad students in medicine or Law, etc...).

But hey, whats important is now we have a stable of stars we can call on to take some of the heat off of us in case we want to go out or Andrea just needs a rest, and luckily none of them are demanding the $$$ that our last round of "Nanny" ads got us. This time we just said "Looking for occasional babysitters, great for college student" and thus got responses from all of these uber-high-quality grad students. sigh.

good...grief.

Felix and Andrea have come down with various versions of a "cold." He has a runny nose and nasty mucusy cough, she has a head ache, body ache, dried-out sore throat. I seem to have escaped the worst of it myself with just a slight headache one day last week and your usual winter craptacular nasal crud. Anyway, on top of staying up with Felix a lot at night because of his coughing, i was also on-call last week (ended at 10am today) and Sunday and Monday nights had stupid idiots calling me up between 1 and 2 am.

I stayed home monday to take care of Andrea and Felix. My dad is there today to help out, (Thanks dad!) which lets me go to work in good conscience. And holy howdy doody! Yesterday, while i was at home, but working (during their naps) my boss drops it on me that, hey, there's this Microsoft thing in San Diego in March and wouldn't I be interested in going? Hell yes. SO I spent a good chunk of today jumping through hoops to get my stuff lined up and wham bam thankya ma'am, I'm going on a business trip. I feel like I've finally grown up. And this will be my first time to California (though not my first time out west. I did go to Seattle over Memorial Day Weekend a some years back, but that's a different blog). So, wowzers. So much to happen all at once.

All this time we've been pretty lucky that Felix has been pretty healthy. This cold is enough to make me understand why people get so wigged out sometimes when their kids get sick. I'm just so worried that one of these times he's not going to be able to move all that crud and then we're in for a really wild ride...Hopefully he'll be turning the corner on this thing and start getting better because he sure seems to get at least a little bit worse each day, if at least not any better.

solids

As I mentioned, Felix is about a week or two into eating solid foods. So far he has eaten rice cereal, squash, potato, sweet potato, and carrot. his attitude towards these foods ranges from grudgingly tolerating to totally loving it. And with solid food comes....dun dun DUN, solid poop. I go away to work during the day and come back at night. Felix generally does most of his pooping during the day so there are times when I may go for several days without coming face to face with a Felix fece. As he has been eating more and more solid foods, his frequency of pooping has gone down, so for me the shift from the innocent, sickly sweet smelling yellowy poopums to the nasty, brown, solid, shitty smelling shit has been rather abrupt. The honeymoon is over.

And I wouldn't mind it as much, since he poops so much less frequently, but also his pee now smells like...well...piss, and he does that even more now. Not more frequently, but more voluminously. Sigh... my baby boy is growing up.

And it is another one of those wake-up calls that you realize you really are a parent when you find yourself wiping a poopy butt (or in Felix's case, prying that nasty brown mass out of his crack). Up til now it has been all rosy and runny and not at all like what you do for yourself in the bathroom. Well surprise, you are really doing the thankless job now. Now we're really in the shit.

Next week we're going to start in on the fruits. Bananas, mangoes (if we can find any), etc. No citrus, no raw apples either, but applesauce is supposed to be ok.

amature oden

I was informed on Sunday that I would be in charge of dinner all week due to A's busy evening schedule. And on top of that, I was going to be going grocery shopping by myself("I don't care if we just eat sandwiches every night." -A). OK. So I needed to come up with a game plan because when I try to shop and cook according to what normally does in the kitchen six types of hell break loose and it's never pretty. So I decide I'll go into uncharted territory. I had read about the asian "hotpot" (every asian country seems to have their own variation) meal. Basically, you have a pot of broth that you get simmering and you throw in all kinds of everything. The differences between regional hotpots seems to be the specific types of ingredients and how you eat it. In some you add everything and then you simmer for a looooong time, in others you get your basic broth a bubblin with just a few key flavoring ingredients and then you have all of your other ingredients chopped and ready in bowls. You then toss in whichever ingredients you like and they cook up quickly. This usually means things like fish, pork, chicken, tofu, veggies, etc. You throw it in, was a minute, and pull it out. You then eat your cooked items with various dipping sauces. That's the chinese style, as I understand it.

Well, I decided to try Oden, which is the Japanese variation. This is the kind where you add your ingredients early on and simmer for hours. Traditionally you make oden using your basic dashi (broth of either konbu, shiitake, niboshi [sardine], or bonito flakes) and then adding your ingredients, all of them, and then just let that puppy simmer, adding water and shoyu as necessary. Also, you can keep adding ingredients as necessary. So I made my shopping list and picked up several basic items for making an oden. If it worked out well, we would have a new easy to make dish in our repertoire, and if it was a flop, hey, I took a risk. Oh, and also oden is considered a "winter dish" that is warming and filling.

So last night I made a double batch of konbu dashi (8 cups water, 2 pieces of konbu[plankton/seaweed/sea vegetable]) which gives somewhere between 6 and 7 cups of broth. Tonight I had A start the broth simmering as I was leaving from work. I only had her use 5 cups because I didn't want to use all of it and I didn't want it to be 8 cups of flop if it flopped. Well, I get home to the smell of...mmmmm...simmering seaweed. It actually smells nice for a while because it gives the feel of being near the ocean. It is only after an hour of simmering without adding anything else that it starts to smell too much like low tide. Well, the co-op we shop at has a semi-respectable ethnic/gourmet selection so I was able to get certain things like konbu, dried shiitake, and of course produce. Unfortunately they didn't have daikon raddish but I substituted black raddish. And they didn't have yam starch cakes or fish cakes or any of those truly "oriental" ingredients, which is fine, I didn't want to try this with seafood the first time...too much risk of things going wrong and being inedible. I picked up some produce that I thought would compliment the black raddish and broth, like green onion, leaks, potatoes. The recipe I was following also included boiled eggs. Well, I can do that.

So tonight I got home from work to the simmering broth. After it had been simmering for almost a hour and getting quite strong, I chopped the raddish, leaks, shalots, carrots, potatoes, and beef (I had picked up a pack of stirfry-ready beef strips). Keep in mind, when you do an oden with meat, you really should try to get the best cut of meat available and you should have it very thinly sliced. Since I was putting together the first-time low-budget oden, and since the butcher at the co-op did not have a deli slicer, I opted for pre-cut meat of relatively low quality. No biggie. Worst case scenario is I end up firing up the wok. Ok, so I've added all my ingredients and walked away. The idea is to let it simmer for at least 2 hours, making sure to add more broth, water, and shoyu to keep it liquid and from getting too heavy.

And, as i chopped stuff and added stuff I did a very cheffly thing and kept taking little tastes of everything before putting it in (not potato, of course, but everything else) and kept tasting the oden as is simmered along. Now, remember, I wasn't using any seafood or fish, but mostly pretty standard ingredients for your basic stew. I started to get a little disappointed when my japanese experiment started to taste like "basic beef and vegetable stew". Hrm. Well, after a couple hours of adding water and shoyu, I decided it was time to actually dig in and have myself a bowl.

DELICIOUS. Granted, the ingredients I used were not traditional japanese, but more traditional american, but damn....good stuff. The first bowl I had was just straight up stew. YUM. Half-way through it I added buckwheat soba noodles and more stew. WOW, even better! The second bowl was more noodles, more stew. DELISH! Now I decided that I wanted to dress it up a bit before Andrea had her first bowl, so I rehydrated a handful of shiitake, added the resulting shiitake broth (only about a teaspoon work, unfortunately) and the rinsed and chopped mushrooms.

Ok, keep in mind also that I'd been sampling and eating this stew all night for a couple hours now, and each time you just add more water, more soy sauce, and if you get low on other stuff, add more of it! I started out with a lot of veggies and stuff so I've not really had to add any more, just more liquid. It is nice and warming. Now, next time I'll try to go the extra steps to use some more authentic ingredients, and of course, the traditional way of eating it is to put karashi (hot mustard) on each bit before you eat it...but all in all, while not the most authentic, it is certainly a delicious tasting, hearty, homey, warming meal. I think I'll have this stuff for lunch tomorrow too. It'll go great with a sandwich. I can hardly wait! Finally, a meal that is better the longer you cook it!!!! no more over-cooking!

work work work

With my team's "creative year-in-review presentation" out of the way (I did a 9 minute animated video based on LOST and using southpark-esque 2d animation, featuring my team) and one of my team mates having moved on to greener pastures, I am now full swing into the new year with several new tasks and projects on my plate. I have been BUSY as hell.

fast food

Felix had his first "solid food" yesterday night in the form of rice cereal in breast milk. And, of course, he was a natural and didn't spit any of it out. A little bit dribbled out the side of his mouth while he was chewing, but otherwise he took it all right from the spoon and gobbled it down. He's really been chomping at the bit to start eating anyway, so I think he's been waiting for this.

Also, his 6 month appointment was on Friday. He's 18lbs, 4 1/4 oz, 27 inches tall. He's in the 70 something percentile for height, 60-something for weight, and high-fifty-something for head circumference. He's a growing boy. It was also the first doctor appt that he didn't have a major poop during.

pop goes the weasel

What a week. Work is super super busy. I've just been told that my promotion went through, so I'm now a Systems Engineer (no longer "Associate"), whatever that means. Winter heating bills suck, which is part of why I hate winter so much these days. Next year I think we'll hop on one of those set-billing-rate plans where they estimate your annual gas cost and then distribute it across 12 months, so you end up paying more per month in the spring, summer, and fall, but less in winter (this last gas bill was $300 and I expect January, February, and March to be even worse, even if I am able to get some heating holes patched). So, if I had been smart last summer when they gave me the option to start paying like $168 a month for gas I would have taken it. At the time, comparing $168 to an average gas bill of something like $30-$60, I went for the regular monthly billing because we had the baby and all and, as usual, when iopt for the "mo'money now" it always bites me in the ass later. You wonder how come you've gotten promotions and raises five times in the last two years and still its the beginning of winter and you're scratching out an existence from paycheck to paycheck? Oh, well, while your annual pay has gone up almost 30%, you've also lost the second family income, your monthly housing cost has gone up $1000 a month, and your monthly bills have gone up because you are now paying gas, sewage, water, garbage on top of electric, internet, and phonebill. So, apparently while it LOOKS like I've done a great job of increasing my net worth/earning power I have also increased my cost of living at the same rate. So...its sort of a sad statement.

On the one hand, it helps me rally look forward to warmer weather when we'll have a couple hundred bucks left over after paying bills, and on top of that we'll hopefully have those habits that allowed us to live through the winter, so maybe that extra money will add up somewheres and we can really start planning for our future. So far, we've really just been planning for now, doing for now. We have "plans", but they are really just goals that we're not able to put much substance behind as of yet. I'm still hoping that I'll get an increase at annual review time, which is in the next couple months. The way I see it, the promotion is a reflection of my over-all worth to the company and the expectation of what I will accomplish and an annual review increase is a combination of cost-of-living increase and merit for performance over the previous 12 months.

flipped the switch

Who turned off the global warming? Suddenly it's 5 degrees. Suddenly, the house is really really cold. When the temp was hovering around 20-35 degrees the radiators were doing a good job of keeping the house around 70-72 degrees all over. Now that the temp has drastically dropped and stayed down, upstairs is hovering around 70 and most of downstairs is too...but there's a drastic thermal layer at knee level where the temperature seems to drop to, oh, 40 degrees? Yeah, and I can actually feel the cold air flowing in through my swiss cheese 100 year old windows. Looks like I'm gonna have to really figure out what to do. Some windows we can shrink wrap, but others we'd like to be able to open and close the shade, so we need to figure out another way to seal them up.

I don't know why, possibly because its just a major change, but not having a dog anymore makes me feel like I'll somehow have more time to do things around the house. We are still feeling the reverberations of Ash's absence in major ways and I'm trying to keep positive about it. I do believe he stands a good chance of finding a home. I try not to think of the alternative. His absence is felt here in many subtle ways. Lack of constance activity, no clackety-clack of his nails on the floors, no loud baby-waking racket from his controlled falling up or down the stairs, and the kitchen and dining room floors are no longer magically free of dropped food bits. Andrea was cooking dinner the other night and I head, "Ahhh! What's all this?!" as she stepped on a dropped piece of mushroom or carrot or shredded cheese. Now she understands why Ash was always hovering around her legs while she cooked.

I find myself reflexively chastising Ash when I hear random house-settling noises, only to realize that there is no real noise and no dog causing it. Just a passing car or a rattling pipe. I think I'll slowly be cleaning up the remaining evidence of his presence, storing what's in good condition or memory worthy, and throwing out or donating everything else.

On the other hand, there are as many times every day when I feel liberated or relieved. It was a poor choice on my part to adopt Ash when I did, or even at all. My responsibility to care for him has influenced and even directed many of my past decisions and I shudder to think how my life may have been different had i not adopted him. We both benefitted, for sure, but we both also suffered as well. To not have that one additional, very large, responsibility looming over everything else is amazing. Andrea and Felix and Ash were not the only ones who were being held captive in our house. All of my travel decisions, living arangements, etc, have all been somewhat dictated by how Ash could be fit into the equation. Finding someone to house/dog sit, finding a place that ALLOWS dogs, and has a place he can be safely kept when I'm away, finding a place to kennel him, paying fines for barking complaints, losing damage deposit due to property damage, strained relations with neighbors, roommates, spouses, and family. Even as recent as Felix's birth, we had to work around Ash's special needs. We actually took Ash to the hospital and he stayed in our car while Felix was born. I brough him back home when my parents were able to come up and watch him, and obviously on the day of the birth of their baby's baby, the last thing they really wanted to do was stay at home to take care of the dog.

Anyway...I think it is due in large part to the drastic change in our family that everyone is feeling like we're in a new stage, like a new family paradigm is arising...

My last living grandparent, my grandmother, is having some medical difficulties. Should something happen that requires me, or me and my family, to make a trip somewhere, I can now do it. Arranging time off from work is easy, not much of an impediment. Now the only thing keeping us from going somewhere is our own resources and time, not the added difficulty of finding someone to be our surrogates at our house.

It feels like a new day. I hope it is like a new, better day for Ash as well. I miss him terribly, but I also feel tremendously relieved.

doggone

I took Ash to a shelter yesterday so he could hopefully get adopted by a new family. It was possibly the hardest thing I've ever done, even though it had to be done and has a good chance of providing all of use (Ash included) much happier outcomes. I bawled in the car in the parking lot for about 20 minutes afterwards. Please don't ask me about it or send emails.

sunday morning post

Felix has finally gone down for his nap, Andrea is at the Y, and I'm here at home, finishing my coffee and scribbling some thoughts here.

First- news of the weird/disturbing nature.
Yesterday I discovered a breadstick on the outside windowsill of our front picture window. This was the thick style of breadstick that you might get with a plate of spaghetti. Alone this would seem strange. This is the third known incident of pastry being left on our porch. The first time I discovered a half eaten danish on the front porch railing. The second time it was a half-eaten bagel left in the bottom most corner of porch floor, on the alley side. In both of these cases, someone could have easily walked up the the porch and left said breads on our porch without really coming onto the porch. Once from the front, once possibly from the side by the alley. At first it was kind of funny and we noticed both instances shortly after a visit from Andrea's helper. Andrea thought it sounded like something she might have done (ditching a food item right before "arriving"). Well, this last time it was on the windowsill, as if someone were standing on our porch, right by the picture window, and carefully set their leftover food right on the corner of the sill.


So...yeah, a bit creepy. Andrea is very upset that Ash has never made a peep about these visits. I expect it is because he is asleep when this happens, so of course he's not going to hear it. For christmas from Andrea's dad we got a wireless video baby monitor system and an all-weather outdoor wireless camera that I will probably get mounted pretty quickly now that we have someone we'd like to catch. I'm suspecting it's some guys from the apartment building that are hanging around in the alley waiting for someone who think its funny to leave bagels or something on someone's house.
Well, we're gonna get that guy on candid camera. Of course, all of that does depend a bit on the final piece which connects to the computer via USB and lets you monitor and record to your hard drive. We also got a camera monitoring program from the same company that will do things like time-lapse and motion detection. And it will automatically encode the archives into divx format so it won't take up loads of space.

Well, thats all for now. Only took me 2 days to get this one post out...

reading

I'm just about through reading "The Catcher in the Rye". Andrea got it from the library and read it in like a day or two (she reads fast). Immediately she started theorizing that Wes Anderson must have been heavily influenced by J.D. Salinger. One search in Wikipedia confirmed this. I've been reading it so that we can talk about it. We've found that Felix seems more interested in observing us talk about stuff during dinner than watching us watch a show (or rather, trying to watch the show himself). Also, doesn't your life feel more worthwhile when you can read, digest, and discuss a good book with someone you live with? It is important to be able to talk about things outside of your domestic conversational realm like paying bills, doing house work, baby stuff, trying to further your career, etc. It is nice to have intellectually stimulating yet relationship-neutral discussion topics.

That and its nice to have adult conversations that remind us that we are two people who are married because deep down we really do like to talk to each other and can have some great conversations.

premidlife record year comes to an end

Well, as it says in the description, 2006 was the year that it all went down.
Work
House
Baby
Stepped across the adulthood line of no return (turned 31)

How did we say goodbye to the old year? Quietly. The happenings outside were making enough noise that we didn't feel the need to add to it. That and we're all out of fireworks and/or ammunition. I love how since some fireworks are now legal in Minnesota, ALL fireworks are apparently socially acceptable in Minnesota, even in an urban area. And how people feel more free to shoot their guns in the air in the hopes that it will be masked by/mistaken for fireworks. Anyway, I'm pretty sure we heard both gunshots and fireworks last night. I wonder if the ShotSpotter system is in place in my neighborhood yet.

Anyway, we started the year with snow on the ground, a baby in the crib, and Andrea winning at Scrabble. I think this may finally be her year.

Felix is cuter than ever and more gifted and talented and advanced than any other baby on the planet. We're already interviewing recruiters from various ivy league schools. It is a little tricky because so far Felix is undecided about whether he wants to focus his extra-curricular time on intramural lacrosse, judo, chess club, or advanced robotics and industrial design. He's pretty much undecided all around. We won't know for sure until he learns English.


In 2006 Andrea started working on her own magazine, ran an entire design studio essentially by herself (due to high turn-over in all other positions and an ever increasingly insane, bitchy, and wholly unreliable boss), ditched that job for a promising new position at a small furniture design company only to find out she got the old bait-and-switcheroo there(worse position, possibly worse boss), promptly dumped that steaming pile of pucky, went freelance and cranked out a monstrous product catalog for the worst client ever, all before delivering Felix in record time (something like 6 hours, start to finish). And that just brings us to July. After July she went full speed ahead on the mommy path and scaled back her designtrix-extraordinaire efforts just a tad. She joined the local printmaking co-op so that she could screenprint her work rather than shelling out money we don't have for sub-par digital printing. She sent in a poster to a movie festival/art gallery in Cincinnati which sold, and again submitted the same poster at the MCAD artsale where it sold as well. She completed the first in a series of ironic deco-modernist posters and hopes to finish the series in 2007. And of course she has survived being cooped up in our house day-in and day-out due to a very precocious Felix and a separation anxiety ridden german shepherd (more the latter than the former). All in all, a banner year.


Felix spent Jan-July in-utero then joined us on the outsid mid-July. From that point on he's been steadily leading the pack by a several lengths. He regained his birth weight in 2 days, doubled his birth weight in 2 months, and is constantly outgrowing clothing that it one to two age-sizes away. He's a very healthy and robust lad. He is interested in the world around him and he is very keenly aware that we have a dog, though he's not sure what it is for, yet. He reads and writes at the 3rd grade level and is just finishing a series of monographs about "My Pretty Puppy".

It has been a banner year for me as well. I started 2006 with a promotion at work, which included a nifty raise and a move to new new team. Then February I received a great annual review and another happy raise. Both of these played a big part in our ability to finance a house. So we started seriously looking at houses in January, put it on hold for about 2 months, then started again. On May 31, we closed on our house. Yay. We were moved in by June 15th. A month later Felix came flying out like cannonshot. I was present as partner, coach, and clenching-post. The summer seems to have been mostly uneventful aside from googling at Felix every chance we got. Little did we know those were the easy days! As he became more aware of the world, he became more demanding of us. It was no-longer feed me, change my diaper, put me to sleep. It became feed me, change my diaper, entertain me, take me out, show me things, let me watch TV, and I don't want to go to bed yet, I'm just going to wake up in 2 hours anyway so why not cut out the middleman and just let me stay up til then. Andrea and I worked pretty well as a team and the "lack of sleep" really didn't seem to be an issue for the first four months. In September I turned 31 AND made it rain in my kitchen while attempting to DIY some plumbing on the baby room's radiator. In October I got my 3rd raise of the year during the mid-year review. This one appears to be a "industry norm" level-set by HR (i.e. based on your reviews and your current position, we feel we should start paying you what the going rate is for people being recruited into this 'same' position across the industry), but who cares, its mo'money (sorta). Then in November/December I installed a new radiator in our car, saving us hundreds of dollars and gaining 5000 experience points, split between my auto-mechanic skills and manliness attribute. I think I went up a few levels in the process.

So that's 06 in a nutshell.
07 looks to be more of the same :).