Xtra xmas

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

eve

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

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

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

Merry xmas, happy holidays everyone.

how far up the hill do you live?

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

train writer

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

easy like friday evening

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

bubble bobble

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

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

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

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

ta.

Holidrizzle

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

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

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

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

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

Did I mention that he is now on to acrobatics?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday Evening Post...er...Saturday

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

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

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

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

savings?

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

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

boooooooooooone tired.

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

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

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

rollup

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday Night Post

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

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

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

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

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

squeaky

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

decisions decisions...

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

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

yatta yatta yatta...

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

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

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

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

Sunday Evening Post

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

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

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

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

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

testing...

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

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

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

week in review

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

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

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

stages

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