Bird's of Belize

Although I should give you a general run-down of our itinerary, I'm going to skip straight to the birds because I am so excited about them. In the many kinds of places we went, there were always amazing birds, but we specificaly stayed at 3 nature preserves (Community Baboon Sanctuary, Cockscomb Basin and Crooked Tree Preserve) that had an abundance of amazing birds.

The first morning at the "Baboon" (actually, Howler Monkey) Sanctuary, I woke up at sunrise to the sounds of wild bird calls. We snuck down to the river (the Belize River set one boundary of the Lodge) to look at the birds. We repeated this routine all over the place- for some reason we were always waking up at dawn (which is 6:30 in December), and you may as well go look at the birds.

Belize is positively lousy with colorful birds. I finally broke down and bought Jones' "The Birds of Belize" because I knew I would never remember them all. On our first day, we were seeing Snowy Egrits, 3 kinds of Herons, bright yellow fly catchers and little yellow warblers. We saw, I think, rufus tailed hummingbirds in several places- probably because there are so many flowers and flowering trees. The red spot (top wire of the fence- this is why we don't have many bird pictures) in this photo is a Vermillion Fly catcher- he's dashing!

While not birds, I'll include them because they fly, we also encountered lots of bats. There were some living in the Community Baboon Visitor center, there were some swooping through the night blooming flowers on Caye Caulker and there were some living along the river to the ruins of Lamanai. Good thing I'm not afraid of bats. In the picture, you should be able to see 4 brown spots on the burnt underside of the tree that are 4 sleeping proboscis bats.

Betty arranged for us to take several tours, and one of my favorites was the early morning bird tour at Crooked Tree. We rose at 5:30 to get (coffee and papaya, then) to a little motorboat at 6 to peer at the Early Birds. And there were tons! Spotted Sandpipers ran along the shoreline, and Northern Janaca's walked on the lily pads that scops were dabbling from. Herons and Egrits waded along the shoreline, and when out boat picked up speed we were positively blitzed by 3 kinds of swallows (mangrove, barn and northern roughwing). Overhead, Snail catcher kites drifted idly. Oh! And we saw WILD parrots! How ridiculous is that??

The video shows a bit of the terrain, but watch for the swallows to dart along the edge of the boat- Ruben, our guide, said the boat scares of bugs that they were eating. The second video is of the Northern Jacana, also known at the Jesus Christ Bird for its ability to walk on water. It's one of my favorite birds, and so Matt staked this one out so you could see it's fantastic colors.

And as fantastic as this was, we were approached by several people- especially at Crooked Tree, who seemed worried that we weren't seeing the best birds. They were sorry we hadn't come in March to see the Jabiru stork and the Roseate Spoonbill. I tried to explain to the park ranger that the dozen or so kinds of birds we saw by the hundreds that morning were all birds we'd never seen before- so really, we felt we were having a sufficiently splendid time. Really, it's the kind of place that could inspire you to start a Life List.

More adventures with Rental Baby

So I wrote the blog post from yesterday at around 8:30 or 9 PM last night, which is notable mostly because Jessie was asleep at that point. I stayed up for another few hours and then conked out next to her, and then I had to wake her up at 8:30 the next day. That’s right, Jess slept for about 12 hours. Being pregnant is *rough*.

Anyway, when we woke up Rental Baby was already here and being cute. Mom Swanson had to run off and do some errands, and we decided to babysit for her so she didn’t have to deal with all her stuff *and* keep track of a baby. I know how hard that is, now.

So we were in charge of him for quite a while. I changed his diaper successfully, Jess played with him a bunch, and I introduced him to my laptop. What is it with me and introducing florida family to technology? Anyway, rental baby thought opening and closing my mac to see the light turn on and off was a blast, and he liked hammering on the keyboard, too. Also, my mac is delicious.

After that, though, he seemed to get a little anxious, and Jess and I both successfully diagnosed this as ‘needing a nap’. Being a baby, he fought against the tendency, but I just laid him down in bed and hummed to him for a while, and when Jess came in to see if I needed any help, Rental Baby was drifting off to sleep. I feel accomplished.

Another lesson learned, however. When you put a baby to sleep in a bed, you have to hang around them so that they don’t wake up and fall off. In the future, they’ll definitely have to nap in a crib or bassinet or something. Somebody write that down!

-N

Delicious Belize!

Matt and I are back from our most awesomest vacation to Belize. It was such an amazing time, we had great adventures, saw fantastic things, met interesting people and it was all thanks to my most talented mother-in-law, who managed to find some of the most interesting and unique things to do in Belize, and fit them into a 12 day span that didn't seem hurried, but punctuated regularly with splendid-ness. I'll get to more of that later though, at her suggestion, I am going to break down the follow-up posts by theme, and I'll start with food. I'm also planning to do Birds, Animals, Maya (past and present), People and a general post of our itinerary, and more might occur to me too. But loading the photos is slow, and food seems to require the fewest.

Another reason that I wanted to start with Food is that it highlights the Language. The national Language of Belize is English, but locally people speak Kriol. The effect is like using a volume knob on the accent, they would speak to us in the gently accented (think generally Caribbean island), then turn to eachother and the accent would become impenetrable. When you see it written (as here), you can usually get the phonetics, but the spoken word flies by so fast!

Belizean (Bileezan- yeah, I was saying that wrong) Kriol has no past tense, which is why menus are always peppered with such charming dishes as Stew Chicken, and Fry Beans. These were some of the foods we ate the most of, so it made quite an impression. Stew chicken was always served, fall-off-the-bone soft, in a broth with annato and lime. It usually came next to a giant pile of rice and beans, although occasionally we would get beans and rice. I'm not trying to be funny- Rice and Beans is a Vigo-like dish with coconut milk to season it, while Stew Beans and white rice usually came in two separate vessels. I LOVED the Rice and Beans- one of my favorite souvenirs is the cook book I bought from the Woman's Group in Crooked Tree, that has recipes for all these things. When we were very lucky, there would be a couple fried plantains as well, and often a tiny salad or coleslaw. And every table always had a bottle of Maria Sharps Hot Sauce, a habanero sauce with a bit of carrot for color.


We also got to over-indulge in a lot of fresh fruit. Papaya was just coming into season, we polished off a 3 lb one for breakfast on Christmas morning. Citrus and bananas are also grown all through the country. We got to drive the Hummingbird Highway a couple times, where long stretches are lined with citrus groves and banana plantations- and let me tell you, a seriously fresh banana puts our fruits to shame. The picture is a banana plantation- the banana's hide blue pesticide bags. Another highlight, both fruit-wise and Belize-is-awesome-wise, was having our host at the Cocoa Farm knock some end of season starfruit off his tree so we could eat truly fresh starfruit, which is citrusy sweet and tart but not ascorbic.

While at the Cocoa farm, we also tried the fruits of the cocoa tree, which has a creamy mango-banana-pineapple flavor. Not sure why anyone ever decided to process the seeds, but I sure am glad they did. Our host, Juan Cho, of Cyrila's Chocolates, showed us how cocoa is grown on his organic farm, how it is processed, and even walked us through grinding it into a chocolate paste (by hand! See picture!). We tried Cocoa fruit wine he makes, and the chocolate- which is so amazing. It is more coarsely ground, and unendingly rich. These are the same beans that go into Green&Black's Maya Gold bar (one of my favorites), but when his wife makes it... let's just say I didn't bring back nearly enough, and all my luggage smells like chocolate. This was one of the best things we did in Belize, not just for the deliciousness, Juan and his wife Abelina were really charming and it was a delight to meet them.


We also sampled some other wines- not that anyone grows grapes. Cashews are fairly common, and the cashew fruit wine is considered a holiday beverage. This is raiseny and sweet, like a port almost. Although, I felt the black berry wine was very similar. Belize also has an affection for bitters, and we tried the most popular one- Kid B's Bittaz. This wasn't as bitter as Campari, and had a warm almost anise flavor, which is surprising since it is brewed from a mixture of jungle herbs. The other fairly common possibly holiday drink we had was a Rumpunch, or as it was called on Caye Caulker, a Pante Rippa. This is pineapple juice and rum, and out on the island, several places included this free with the meal, all you can drink.

And cake! One morning over a breakfast of Egg Bean and Fry Jacks (~Indian Fry Bread), our Garifuna hostess came in to cut a piece of cake for another customer, and when she caught us looking, insisted we try some (Choo, have some cayke, Eets da holidays!). She gave us Black Cake (a moist molassas cake with citron fruits) and Lite Cake (lite because it isn't black- it's actually a buttery pound cake). She also insisted we try the garifuna standby- Cassava bread. This is made by grate and straining cassava ("You get your fattest friends to sit on the strainer"), then sieved and baked into a flat, crispy tortilla shape. She said it keeps for years- Matt thinks it must be like dwarf bread- not really for eating. I think it is more like hard tack, not glamorous, but staple.

I am planning on hosting a New Year's Even party for my friends who are in town. I think I'll make a pot of Rice and Beans, and some Stew Chicken, and bowl of Rumpunch. That should commemorate the trip pretty well. I'll try and get some posts with pictures up soon- but we had a great trip and a great holiday!

Post-Christmas Sub-adventures

So other than massive holiday festivities, this break has had a few other nice highlights. Here’s a sampling of them:

-Jess knows a lot of people with Babies that are around our age. And what with our first on the way, we’re getting a lot of advice and some significant practice. In fact, I’ve gotten a lot of practice with the baby that Mom Swanson babysits most days. We’ll call him Rental Baby. Rental baby is about a year old, and very even tempered. Suspiciously so, in fact. I suspect that he’s being all nice to us so that we get over the initial fear of being parents, and so that by the time we have our own and realize it’s all totally different, it’ll be too late for us to do anything about it. Tricky baby.

Lifestyle changes notwithstanding, I have managed to get several important skills well practiced. The best is my new Baby Bjorn, one of my Christmas presents from Jessie. We put it together and looked over the instructions, but nothing beats practice with the real thing, so we loaded Rental Baby in and went out on the town for a while. After a few times, I was strapping him in and taking him out with well-practiced ease, and he really seemed to like the thing. it had plenty of support, he felt nice and safe, and I had my hands free to wander around Best Buy to make a fancy new laptop purchase for Mom Swanson.

I also got tips from Mom Swanson on changing diapers (she is a master!) and I got to practice feeding Rental Baby, too. A bottle one day, and baby food the next. The bottle went just fine, and I very nearly transitioned him neatly into napping afterwards by rocking and humming afterwards. The spoon feeding was nice, too. He definitely knows how the system works, and we got down the applesauce without effort. The veggie-food he didn’t feel like eating, and he did make the cutest face in the world to show is disapproval. We did manage to sneak some vegetables into him by feeding him fries and alternating them with green beans. He could tell there was a difference, but his body-programming just kept putting stuff into his mouth. He would have done better if he possessed more teeth, but I give him full marks for the effort.

I also got a taste, and just a taste, of what being a parent feels like. It’s just having this completely dependent person with you all the time. Clearly there are other emotions and concerns involved, but you really feel the difference when you realize that you have to add ‘and a baby’ to everything you do. Possible, but definitely different.

- Jess and i spent wednesday meandering around Ft. Lauderdale by car. We stopped off at the swap meet where we wandered around and looked at a whole bunch of stuff we didn’t want, and then we wandered by the farmers market on the way out. I got a 5 feet long piece of sugarcane. Turns out the only culinary thing you can do with them is chew on them, turn them into juice, or use them as skewers for something else. But for three bucks, it’s worth the pictures alone.

We also wandered around some shops near downtown and found a chocolatier, in much the same vein as we had found in Belgum when we went. There were definitely some flashback moments when we bought a bunch of little chocolate treats and then went out on the street to try them out. We got extras of the truffles and Spicy Aztec Chocolates. Yum.

-N

The orgy of unwrapping has finished

Aaaah...

Merry Christmas, everyone. Over on the east coast, we have finished opening our presents and are enjoying the post-gift-giving afterglow. All is well here in Florida. The flight went uneventfully and we’ve been enjoying time with our Florida-family ever since we landed. Jess even ran into one of her TXRD buddies who was going to Florida: also for christmas, also for family, also with her husband, and also while pregnant. The parallels are *eerie*.

Oh, and if I may aside for just a minute: if flying to your location involves going through a full-body scanner, I’m not flying there anymore. And that means that if Austin gets body scanners, I’m not flying anywhere anymore. Think about it this way: make a list of the activities that you would do that would offerer even a *chance* of your wife or *child* to be seen naked by strangers or actually, properly molested. If your list has more than zero entries, you should reconsider. It’s a downer, I know, but I’m just not having it. Until our country get it’s head out of the rear end of the TSA, I’m done.

On to better news: presents! All the gifts given by us were quite well received. In fact, William is playing Sonic Colors as we speak! We got an air hockey table (mini-sized) for Johnny, and as soon as Jessie wakes up from her nap, I look forward to her wiping the floor with me. Lots of presents for the boys: lots of Harry Potter stuff, and random clothing. The big ones: William got a Bike, and Johnny got a laptop, and they botch got to go to see NC State (dad’s Alma mater) at a bowl game and then go to disney world afterwards. Yay! Jess really liked her presents from me, some more Venture Brothers, card games she wanted, and some certificates to let her be lazy and have her husband take over all responsibilities for after the baby shows up and she needs a break.

Oh, and she’s getting us a *baby*, so that’s nice of her also.

I suppose the rest of the week will be some baby shower and a lot of relaxing. I’ll probably get plenty of video game time with the boys as they challenge me to various games or show off how good they are at their favorites. Also, I got a new Wii game for Christmas, and so I’ll probably shanghai their system for a while to check it out.

In other ‘being adult’ news, Jess and I are putting together a list of things to do, hopefully before the baby shows up. We want to paint the room and get a few more things, but also stuff like visit a financial planner or consolidate our bank accounts. We’ve already done some of that: I’ve officially closed by bank of america account, which means one less thing to keep track of...and also that I don’t have my credit card number memorized anymore, which was always convenient. Also starting up a college fund for Tyler. Time is the best lever for stuff like that.

Oh, and when visiting the mom/grammie house yesterday, we went across the street to visit ‘J’ and ‘J’ and their little baby ‘J’. I got to hold him and we waited until Santa came down the street with a police escort. Good practice in holding up a heavy baby, I need to do some more bicep curls. But he didn’t fuss or anything. I felt pretty sharp.

Responsibility, ahoy!

-N

I am Less Exciting

Well after the initial flurry of pregnancy related craziness, the last few weeks have been relatively sedate. Tyler is still getting his daily workouts, though, and the kicks are getting stronger and stronger. I’m hoping that when he gets large enough, he won’t have the space to really wind up before delivering swift kicks to Jessie’s insides. He’s certainly getting stronger now, but he still gets a little performance anxiety whenever I put my hand on him. I can usually get him to wake up and kick around by talking to him, though.

Judo continues: our teacher is even opening up another school. It sounds like it’s a combination of factors, including space, the fact that the rent is pretty cheap, and that we might get kicked out of our current space. It’s a little bit farther away from me, but not significantly so. Certainly not so far that I wouldn’t drive to go learn.

Jessie got her raise today. Let me reiterate. Jessie got her RAISE today. I won’t discuss specific numbers, but remember how we used to have pretty much the same income? THAT ISN’T THE CASE ANYMORE. There are some big numbers on that sheet. BIG ONES! I’m really quite proud of her, because she works hard, gets important things done and, most importantly, her bosses *recognize* her hard work. It really is a great company to work for. I am jealous, but only because I wish that I was that well regarded and rewarded. So jealous in a ‘want to work harder so I get better’ way, not a ‘wish Jessie got worse’ way.

In a real sense, this means it’s looking more and more like I’m going to start stepping down to part time. We both still make enough that having us work is worth the investment in child care and whatnot, but if we have the opportunity to take less time working and more time for family, we might as well take it. Tyler is only going to be a baby once. We’ve floated the ideas to our higher-ups, but they understand that our plans must remain somewhat fluid because we’re about to have a BABY so things can change pretty quickly.

So proud of Jessie! Applause for her!

In ‘clothing my future son’ news, we have discovered a nearby ‘used baby clothes’ store, and I have convinced Jessie that we don’t need to buy them completely out of their stock until at least after christmas. Once that’s done, though, we are going to help those people pay their *bills*. Also, mom sent me some of my old baby clothes (still adorable) including one that I recognized. Jess said I couldn’t have, because it’s baby sized, but I figured it out eventually. It’s the same ‘georgetown’ white t-shirt that I’ve seen on a lot of old pictures of dad when I was a little baby myself. So cute! Also, go georgetown! Woo! Wikipedia.com has just informed me that you are also known as the Hoyas! So go Hoyas, as well!

If anything else interesting happens, I’ll be sure to let you know.

-N

Leaving for Belize - Tomorrow!

One last check in here before we go on our trip to Belize. We've shared around the itinerary with of few people, in case we get lost. We've checked in for our flight, and now we are second guessing our choices of packing.

I am still stuck on Step 1 of the writing process. I've told my boss I am going off the grid for the next week. While this might not be absolutely true- I certainly won't be spending any time redrafting while I am in Belize. I'm sure he'll be relieved to stop hearing from me for a few days, he will be in Israel the whole time.

For the rest of you, we'll endeavor to get online when possible, and hope to have unlocked a phone to use down there. I'll probably be off the blog until we get back and I can brag about how awesome the trip was.

To all my favorite readers- Merry Christmas!

This is the year!

Every year, about this time, I get this serious yen to make Graham Cracker Candy. Well, to eat it actually, but I've been stuck on this first step for year and years now. Every year I get this craving, and I get to thinking about how all the people in my life have never experienced the joy of Graham Cracker Candy, and so I should make some to share with every person I know... Every year, something horrible happens to the recipe, and I end up with a thick syrup with soggy cracker crumbs floating in it. That is, I say that like it is bad- I usually eat this syrup with a spoon until Matt gets so overwhelmed by my bad eating habits he throws is entire gloppy mess away, even though it is stuck amorphously to wax paper. Frankly, eating poorly made graham cracker candy is the nouveau tradition at our house.

Some of you may have been on the receiving end of my tragic email last year about the gooey failure that was "fat-free evaporated milk candy." Nana gently clued me in that candy should be made with fat, and magnanimously sent me a candy thermometer, in case I was ever inclined to butcher the family recipe again.

This year, I got to thinking again about Graham Cracker Candy, and I decided this would be a great gift for a friend of mine, and then I decided I absoloutly can't get through another holiday season without some proper Graham Cracker Candy for myself. This is the trifecta of candy failure- desire for candy, desire to gift candy, and inability to make candy. True to tradition, I got all the ingredients (not all the right ones, I used pecans this year), and in the midst of a lot of other distractions, set to making it.

Picture me in my kitchen, focused on grinding nuts and measuring sugar like I am making TNT, and Matt keeps wandering through the kitchen. At first he tried to help, then he tried to help clean up, and finally he just got on to some other things- namely permethrin treating our clothes to fend off malaria in Belize on the back porch, and then trying to un-treat his hands. I've got TWO candy thermometers going in my pot of boiling sugar, and I am mentally noting every slight change in the bubbling sugar, and completely blocking him out. "Hmm...? What was that about poison control?" I was expecting this to fail, so I started to get stressed when I mixed with graham crackers in and the mixture got really stiff! Like, hard to stir! And then I mashed it all into a shallow pan and gave it a good squish to make it all stick.... and I think it worked! For the first time EVER, it came out crumbly, not gooey!

I cannot recommend a candy thermometer enough. It's the best substitute for actual confectioner skills money can buy. Either classic analog or new fancy digital- as I mentioned, I used both.

I'm including the recipe here, both for posterity and also to include my own incredibly helpful notes- in italics.

Graham Cracker Candy
I always make a 1.5X batch because I don't know what I'd do with a half can of evaporated milk. Suggestions welcome.

In a VERY large stockpot (trust me, you'll thank me later), combine:
2 c sugar
1 c evaporated milk
1/4 t salt
Turn your burner on HIGH and boil this to soft ball stage, or 235F.
As this passes ~180F, it will quadruple in size and the temp can rise quickly. You are trying to drop the liquid content of the sugar, from 220 to 235 will be much slower. The total volume will shrink to nearly half the peak.
Remove from heat and cool slightly.
Add in 1 T butter
1 t vanilla
3 c (2 packages) graham cracker crumbs
1 c chopped walnuts (apparently pecans work too)
3 c mini-marshmallows or 24 large

Stir well. Use wax paper to Pat into a a shallow pan and "store in the icebox over night" or your non-insulated pantry for 20 min. or as long as you think you can wait. Cut into indulgent little squares and share with everyone.

----
As hinted at, Matt and I leave Friday for Belize. It is TWELVE stupid degrees here right now, so I am really looking forward to some Caribbean sunshine, even if it puts us at a slight risk for contracting malaria. That's why Matt was spraying insecticides on our back porch! I was just realizing that this is going to be the longest vacation we've had since we've come here (11 days!), and just in the nick of time, too. Now that the semester is over and I don't have adrenaline to keep me up all night, I can hardly stay away until 10pm. Yes, time for some time off.

Here's how it goes down

I promised you a run down of how I expected the process from writing to publishing this manuscript to go.
Loosely, here are the steps:
1) Write Manuscript
2) Submit to co-authors for critique
3) Incorporate critique
4) Submit to co-authors for acceptance
5) Submit to journal for Review
6) Repeat steps 2-6 until step 7.
7) Acceptance from a Journal
8) Party Time!

First thing you should know, is I have 6 other co-authors- 4 PIs and two students, but I am the main author on this work. This means I will prepare the manuscript the way I think is best, and then the other 6 people will weigh in. It is in all of our best interests to send out a polished manuscript that will be accepted at the highest tier journal as possible, but my co-authors are unlikely to have to do anything about the changes they suggest. Right now I am getting this document into a form I think is acceptable to send around, and then they'll take a couple weeks with it, and send it back with all manner of suggestions- from proofreading, to re organizing to nitpicky stuff with my figures that I'll end up learning photoshop to fix. I am not good with the figures. This may take a long time, or a short time. I don't know some of my coauthors well enough to imagine how they will respond, and in fact, some aren't in my building, so if they are slow, I can't very well drop by and bother them. But before you go hating on the coauthors- I've been a coattail coauthors on several manuscripts, so really, it's my turn to do the hard work.

Once everyone agrees that we've written the best damn manuscript possible, we'll submit it to a high tiered journal in my field. I'm pessimistic that they will love the article for several reasons (what I do is anti-viral research, and this virology journal prefers to publish things about viruses, not the compounds that work on them), and if they don't reject it outright, we have to wait Some Time to get comments, which can range from Accepted, Accepted with criticism (just do a couple more experiments), Rejected (with comments that make you think you can do a couple experiments and resubmit), or Rejected (ouch). You can imagine the decision chart here, helping you decide to resubmit to the same journal, or submit to another journal one tier down, or another journal in a different sub field. We may have the opportunity to use this decision chart a lot.

You see, I know I have done solid science, and everything we are describing is true- but there are some pretty obvious critiques, and some lame political plays that may make it hard for this paper to get out in a timely fashion. Again, this is why I've been impatient to get this process started, since this is going to take a long time to deal with. And I have not interest in graduating without a primary publication in hand- it would be nearly impossible for me to get a job without one.

Dr. Boss and I are meeting this afternoon to look over all the figures to decide on a standard formatting style to get everything in to. He is also going to talk to someone who said a year ago they'd like to try and do some experiments (and we haven't heard from since), to see if that panned out. I have my doubts. I am hoping to give him my manuscript to read/ get permission to give it out to Dr. Rockstar and the other co-authors ASAP.

Finally, some good (science) news

Yesterday, Dr. Boss finally agreed that I was finished with this Most Terrible of Experiments (that tedious thing I've been working on since July, to get around a problem I've had since... last January? Ugh). We both agreed to make some conservative conclusions about the data, and leave it at that. Which is the last figure I need for my manuscript, which means we are back on track. The document is nearly written, and all the figures need to be reformatted (to 8.4cm wide and large bold fonts and some other tedious things to change on graphs), so we are on track to get this out to the collaborators soon. We haven't yet discussed a submission date- I don't really think this will be until late Jan (ergo, my interest in getting this moving ASAP).

I'll write a little more later about how I expect this process to go for my paper (spoiler: Slowly), since this is directly correlated to my ability to graduate, but for now, please join me in an Epic Happy Dance.

A brotherly response to sandlin

I enjoyed your movie so much...



-N

Bioethics- the movie

This is the video I made to show my students in class, summarizing our time together. It is laced with reference, from the total meltdown my students had about the Personal Genomics Contest that declared Migraines the "winning" disease for more research, their resentment money (and the public) interfering with science, and perhaps even the super abrupt way I tend to start and end my class. I guess what I am trying to say is if you don't think it is interesting- that's way. They giggled and then politely clapped. What darlings.

Here is the video- BIOSCI1590, as retold by robots.

Bart, amplifed

It's been three or four days since my bionic left ear was installed . . long enough to begin assessing how much difference it's made.

It's not a miracle cure . . I still ask Jane to repeat herself, but clearly that's a function of being mentally focused elsewhere (like maybe the sports page) and I can work on that without the aid of biomechanical augmentation. (with the aid of divine providence, perhaps yes)

The thing I notice most is when I'm puttering around the house by myself, actually. The sounds of day to day, getting silverware out, food from the fridge, etc. are amplified in a way that feels like the sound track of a movie. Does that make sense?

Even (maybe especially) talking to myself sounds different. Not in a bad way, just different. If you've ever had the experience of talking to a crowd with the aid of a good sound system, you get some idea of the effect.

It's too soon to tell how much difference it makes in overall interactions, but I feel far less likely to lose the thread of a conversation, or to have moments of . . . what was that? Jane thinks my body language will be more alert, less-geezer like and I certainly hope that's true.

Almost done!

You may have noticed I've been a bit distant lately. I can't promise to fix that, but I am going to run out of excuses soon. Tomorrow is my last day of class! I am currently up creating an Xtranormal video to summarize some of the highlights from class. I think I should probably have someone else look at it tomorrow before I show it to my class (in case my subtle sense of humor doesn't translate well to alien robots talking in Stephen Hawking voice. As if.) If it passes QC, I'll share it up here. It's kind of nice to have a 5 min summary of the course content, major themes and running jokes. Right now I am totally cracking myself up with this- but that may just mean it is bed time.

I managed to donate blood today. It's been a while, I was on a 1 year deferment after we went to Mexico, and then I was sick so often I was usually getting on or coming off antibiotics. Finally had success today, only to find out I'll have to wait another year after we get back from Belize. Totally worth it.

Pre X-mas Celebrations

I’ve been hacking away at my to-do list this weekend. Between getting Christmas stuff ready and doing some things with Jessie, it’s been a full couple of days. Here’s the breakdown.

Friday we went to the Ticom Holiday Awards Banquet. We had a nice time, and I got to dress up all fancy in my suit and everything. Jess looked *beautiful* AND she got to go up go stand with all the people who had received Quality Awards. She got one of those because she’s so great and fantastic. Then there was open-bar silliness and the best thing of all, the photobooths were back in effect this year. They snap four pictures of you, and then print out a couple of copies. We took a bunch, and they all came out very nice. Maybe next time I bump into a scanner I’ll get them up on the internet.

Saturday I did some shopping for some...stuff for...people. And then in the evening, we went out to a hockey game. AHL, not NFL, so something like semi-pro, but we went out with some of the derby/hockey girls so Jess got to see her friends again and we got to watch some *fast* hockey. I had a good time, but I gotta say: I really don’t like sports fans. Cheering whenever someone gets smashed up into the wall, booing at the other team, cheering whenever a fight broke out. The ‘home’ team was from Dallas, and the ‘away’ team was from Houston, so there wasn’t even any good reason to have regional attachment. It all seemed very tribal and vaguely unsettling. Good skating, though.

Sunday was put up lights day. Actually, I had something else to do first. I wanted to vacuum, because eventually I’m going to want to put a baby on these floors and I want them to be clean. So I vacuumed the whole house and even moved the cat litter to a more out-of-the-way location so as to minimize tracking litter around on my feet. After that, Jess decided she wanted to put up Christmas lights on the trees, and I didn’t *have* to help, but if you think I’m letting my pregnant wife climb ladders unassisted, you’re crazy. So we got some lights and wrapped up all the trees in front of our house. We would have done the house itself, but most of the front of our house is either stone, two stories tall, or both. So we’ll stick with the trees, for now.

-N

I JUST FELT TYLER KICK!!!!!

He's been kicking for a while (just ask Jessie) but I've never been able to feel it from here on the outside. But today when going to bed (isn't that always the way) Tyler was really active and Jess had me put my hand on her belly, as much because he seems to get shy when I put my hand there as to see if I could feel anything. It's also kinda neat because when I talk to him, sometimes he'll kick in response, which is really neat.

So Jess was laying on her side with my hand on her belly and I felt it! Just the littlest, tiniest little kick! I just stared at Jess with this wide, open-mouthed expression. "Was that a kick?" "Yeah!" "I just felt it!" "You did!" "Yeah...is that another one?" "Yeah."

I can feel his kicks! I'm going to have a baby and he's going to kick things. Woohoo!

-N