A Really Warm Christmas

Greetings from the days after Christmas! I'm writing to you from that wonderful time between Christmas and New Year when our office is still closed and we are mandated to stay at home and RELAX. Which is okay by me. We have just dropped off the last of our Holiday visitors off at the airport and the house has mostly contracted to its previous size.

I had a really great time.

The best part was being a host. I don't know if Dad was all swelling with pride for me, but I was pretty chuffed for myself. I own a house that can contain my entire family, and can construct and serve enough food to feed our whole Preecs Army, which I did on several occasions. Pizza Night, Krub, and the wonderful pseudo-thanksgiving of Christmas Eve were all fantastic hits, and we managed to balance that out on the other end with a couple of solid days of eating nothing but leftovers, allowing our fridge to mostly return to its normal state. We still have a little turkey left over, if anyone wants some.

Christmas itself was a hoot, especially now that Tyler is old enough to actually participate, mostly. He opened presents and got really excited when he got cool new things. The top three, clearly, are the Big Spider-man Tent, the Elmo Counting Toy, and the packing peanuts that came with his new G-Diapers. We may have to go buy those in bulk for next year. There was a lot of squealing and stomping with delight.

I also came off pretty well, especially as Jessie wrapped all my new, fancy Paint Brushes individually. And I got a really cool backpack. I'm excited to take that one out on the road. Jess got a laptop and Kelsey got a Surface. Sandlin and Matt got a ticket from Seattle to Austin, which, since it covers several thousand miles, clearly wins the 'biggest present' award. GW also came by with Kelsey and got a really cool rubber band gun. He was a very gracious guest, totally up for everything. Very hipster, too, so I think his favorite present may just have been 'Austin'. :)

Tyler's cute new thing is 'head bonks'. I am hopefully teaching him to bonk gently, or at least he has figured it out for himself, but it's a really cute thing for him to do. He has also started using 'Thank You' mostly appropriately.

The cats, too, would like to extend their thanks to everyone for coming by and giving them so much nice attention. They really appreciate it.

And, finally, a little story. I was out yesterday taking down the Xmas lights in front of the house when a couple of dogs that I recognized as having been walked by the house before came trotting down the street, owners nowhere to be seen. I managed to call one of them over, pick him up, and then store him in our backyard. The other one, larger, was clearly just too excited to be kept still, and so he trotted off down the street. I followed him, hoping to corral him toward my backyard, when from a couple of streets over I heard someone calling dogs. I gave Jessie a call to let her know what the deal was. She had just woken up from a nap and her brain hadn't quite completed its startup sequence.

“Hey, Jess.”

“Yeah?”

“There's a Dog in our backyard. Don't let him out.”

“What?”

“There is a Dog in our backyard. Don't let him out.”

“Don't let who out, Tyler? Why is there a dog in our backyard?”

“I saw some escaped dogs going down the street, I managed to get one in our backyard, and I'm trying to heard the other one. Don't let the dog out of the backyard.”

“Oooh...hey, Tyler, look. A Doggy!”

Luckily, the owners made their way closer to me, and I signaled to them when they came around a corner. Then the dog heard familiar voices and ran back to the owners. I asked if they were missing another dog, and they were, lucky me. I brought them to my house and returned the final dog to his rightful place. Evidently their backyard was small-dog proof. But not quite big-dog proof. Time to get a new fence.

-N

So... we bought a house

Funny story, actually.  Remember how a couple months ago I mentioned Matt and I were warming up to the idea of home ownership?  Turns out, it is pretty easy to just take the plunge.  Some friends here had been talking about it, so we had been comparing notes as we were both shopping for mortgages.  That really got the momentum started.  Then we thought, well, the easiest way to learn about the next step is to talk to an agent.  You know, learn a little more about the community, get a feel for what our price range would get us.  We just wanted to more the conversation forward. We ended up working with Mom and Dad's agent, because she was great with them and really knows the area well.  And we've known her since college.

This was the end of October.  The summer peak was well past, and there is certainly some evidence that the Seattle housing market is regaining strength.  There weren't many homes in the locations and price range we were looking at, and those that were there tended to move quickly.  We warmed up pretty quickly to the idea that we weren't going to have a lot of time to think about the choice to make an offer.  "Sleeping on it" was just not in the cards.  That's fine.  We weren't in a rush to buy a place, so if we missed a few good ideas, that's ok.  It might even give us a chance to learn about the next steps in the whole process before we really get beholden to a home.

On maybe our second weekend looking at homes, we saw a place that seemed like it could work.  I mean, we have no idea what we are doing, but this place seemed like the right size and it's near our current place, so the location didn't feel like a gamble.  Why not roll the dice and put in an offer?  It'll give us a chance to learn what that is like, right?  That would be good, right, since we are going to have to do this a whole bunch of time. There were three offers on this house, so we pretty much wouldn't have to go through with this. WRONG.  Offer accepted.  Oh.  Now we get to learn about all the other stuff you do when you are buying a house.  Like call your mortgage guy in a panic to explain you'd like to close in 6 weeks that have 12 holidays in between. And second guess why you've been living in this neighborhood in the first place. Or suddenly learn everything about home interiors when you go for an inspection.

And this is when it started getting messy (as if blithely putting an offer in on a house your first week at a new job doesn't seem dicey enough).  The inspection... wasn't that good.  It wasn't terrible mind, but the home wasn't worth what we had offered to pay for it.  And the seller didn't feel that this was something they needed to help us with- they did have other offers.  While I was battling with this uncomfortable decision (Keep the house and be up to our eyebrows in debt and home repairs?  Will we ever find anything better? Maybe this is just what buying a home is like), Matt was being strategic.  He identified a nearby home that seemed similar, but less likely to have the issues of the first home (which needs new roof, water heater and furnace).  He and the agent went to look at it, and, even though it cost more, they both felt like the price was justified because it was in better condition.  By this time, Matt knew how to look for the service record on a water heater, right?

So, with a week to make up our mind on the first home, I was convinced to go look at the new place.  It is... in the same cul-de-sac as the first one.  That felt a little weird.  And it is really huge- and I wanted a tiny house (low foot-print, utilities, maintenance etc).  But... it was really nice.  And affordable.  And had the location benefits of the first place.  (We can walk to Trader Joe's!) Sure, that seems good and all, but the first house looked nice too, when we went there.  An inspection will probably reveal $20,000 of imminant repairs.  Our agent- who I must trust implicitly- said there is only one was to know for sure.

We took a deep breath and put an offer in on the second house.

My heart aches when I think there were a couple days when we were talking out of both sides of our mouths about owing some three quarters of a MILLION DOLLARS in Totem Lake real estate.  I trusted out agent to find a way where we wouldn't end up paying anyone all that money.  The second offer was accepted. We had an inspection performed immediately.  And the results were... fine.  Really.  The house needs CO monitors.  And the fan in the bathroom is janky.  We had been told about the age of the water heater, and that was negotiated in.  There was nothing in this house was could even come close to $20,000 in repairs.  Matt rejected the negotiations on the first house at the inspection- even if we opted not to take the second house, it confirmed the hypothesis that not all houses are expensive disasters in progress.

We decided to move ahead. We are buying house #2- the bigger house, the nicer house, the house with the good roof.  Yeah, that's gonna be our house. Our closing date is currently January 24.  This is a much longer time frame, as well, which is giving us time to think about being home owners.  What are we gonna do with all those rooms?  And space?  And the hot tub.  Will we ever do anything but sit in the hot tub?

From the Internet

This doesn't count as a full update- but my Google alert just notified me that my STEMinest profile just posted.  Probably nothing you didn't already know about me there- but we can all boggle at the idea that future scientists have people like ME to look up to.  Hm.

Much to be Thankful for

This week we host the much anticipated visit of the Texas family, AND a return of the parents to our new abode.  Those of us who regularly hang around in WA were pretty pumped about these events, if you can image.  Nana and I would just site round ringing our hands in anticipation of those cute baby cheeks to pinch and the mountains of food that we would be eating.  And this visit did not disappoint.

Noel's family got in on Saturday night.  So I got to host a newly arrived Mom and Nana for dinner before the airport run that delivered the Texans to my house.  Tyler valiantly tolerated us hauling him all around Pike Place Market, and Seattle was in full spectrum grey on Sunday.  At least it was an honest representation of the city.  We also somehow talked Mom into hosting all the cousins for a potluck dinner in Sunday, which was a great excuse to get a ton of adults together to just watch a baby.  It's pretty funny how one little kid can completely steal the show at a dinner party. 

Even though I had to WORK at my awesome JOB, I think Noel and Jessie managed to enjoy themselves while they were here.  I know Tyler got to spend some super bonus Nana time with his Nana and Great-Nana, which would be the Nana Highlight of the whole holiday season if they weren't going to see him in Texas in a couple weeks.  And this was just the build up to the main event- TURKEY DAY. 

Even my mother-in-law came down to dive into the family food frenzy of Thanksgiving.  When you've got that many balls in the air, it seems safe to assume at list one thing is going to come out charred and inedible, but we managed to time every single thing perfectly- steaming hot dishes stuffing, green beans, Brussels sprouts (lovingly friend with bacon), stood next to a tower of mashed potatoes, creamy pools of gravy and the glow of a sweet potatoe pie (a pre-dessert tradition from Jessie's family).  I suppose if you were going to be nit-picky (and I'm not), the one casualty of the kitchen was the bird.  Don't get me wrong, after a day in the roaster, this bird was as tender and juicy as any bird you could dream of.  But to get that 18 pound monster of fall-off the bone good-ness onto the platter, well, it lost just a little in the presentation.  As they inevitably moved/dropped/exploded the bird onto the target platter, Jessie and Noel stood giggling over the "Norman Rockewell Perfect Turkey" in a way that reminded me of the Disaster of The Wedding Cake.  They are so cute.

My mother-in-law lead the charge to bake 3 universally awesome pies on Wednesday night.  I always assume that part of the motivation for cooking so many is that at least one should be ok.  Well, we felt like we won the pie lottery, because all of them were fantastic: sweet-meat squash/pumpkin, brown bag apple and West Virginia Pecan alike.  As Noel said, "I believe this pie is a triumph of human ingenuity and civilization." Wash it all down with a couple gallons of Martinelli's and it was a Thanksgiving for the record books.

Betty revived the old family tradition of going around the table to share something we can be thankful for- and man, I felt like we could go around the table a few times.  Great family, near and far, good health (especially those who just got out of their back braces), meaningful work that PAID us to spend the day cooking and eating, the means to live a comfortable life and share it with those precious people around the table... and this was before we tried the pie. 

Everyone is back on the road again, which leaves Matt and I to conquer the lion's share of the leftovers.  It's just one more thing to be grateful for.

More thoughts on working

The job is still pretty good.  Weirdly, the two people that are supervising me have been out of town, so I continue to correspond with my editors who work off-site by email.  It feels much like the off site version of the job, except that I dress up nice and commute to do it.  This first week has been slow- on boarding, orientation etc are mostly next week, and the project kick off is next week.  This week has been more.... prepare generally for the possibility of writing this course.  The course will be for HS students to prepare to take certification exam for a health sciences career.  This week was so slow I considered whether or not I should get certified in preparation.  I haven't completely ruled out this possibility.

But I work just minutes from Shaoshu!  We had lunch today- how cool! 

I still can't shake this feeling that... it should be harder?  Or I'm not working hard enough?  I think these are the guilty echoes of a science career ignored.  It's hard to let go of this idea that if I really cared, if I'd really tried, I would have found a drug and be too busy saving lives for this stuff.  Objectively, I know it's not about effort, it's about luck.  So now I am at this job picking up on the vibes that my editors are slightly annoyed with my constant demand  for MORE WORK.  Heh, I'm sure we'll all settle into a decent habit once the project kicks off.  Until then, I've been memorizing Rx shorthand and trying to memorize the top 100 most prescribed drugs. 

Matt has been totally picking up the slack on the home font.  My commute takes enough time that he can have a bike ride and make dinner all before I get home - and he does!  I'm still adjusting to this early morning routine, and trying to figure out what to do with my evenings now.  After all the business of getting to and from work, I'd like to enjoy myself, but there isn't that much time left... not that I have anything that MUST get done most days.  I guess this is what it's like for people who work.

We are trying to gear up for Noel-boo, Jessie-boo and Tyler-boo.  It figures I would get a job just in time for them to come- I'm not even sure how much time I can blow off for lunch yet!  Fun will be had though- no doubt!

Fall in Austin

For those of you returning after the last blog entry, yes, Jess did make it back just fine. Tyler seemed quite happy to see her, though he wasn't as deliriously beside himself as Jessie would have liked. Perhaps because it was the middle of the night for him. She picked him up to rock in the chair a little bit, then Tyler got out of the chair, walked over to his crib, and pointed at it. He's a really good sleeper.

Last weekend we went camping. It was a little bit spur-of-the-moment, we got invited out by Jessie's boss to spend a camping weekend out with a bunch of people from work and a whole lot of food. Don't get me wrong. We weren't rouging it by any stretch of the imagination. We drove right up to the campsite. There was no way I was carrying Tyler's travel-crib any appreciable distance, to say nothing of all the other stuff we needed to bring.

Early in the week was pretty cold, so we packed for cold nights. We even got a couple of hand warmers to put in the bed with Tyler in case it got really cold. Of course, this turned out not to be a problem, as it was very temperate most of the time, and occasionally even a little too warm. The main downside of the whole trip was that Tyler woke up on Friday night a little after midnight and didn't get back to sleep until about 3:00 AM. He wasn't fussy or anything, just chattery, and we didn't want to wake up nearby campers. After that frustrating spell, though, the rest of the weekend was great.

We were camping with about 8 or so other families, most of whom had kids in high school, though there was a second strata of a few kids still too young for school, so Tyler had some playmates, though he mostly stayed with us and explored. They had some hammocks set up that spent time between getting napped on by grown-ups and getting swung on by pre-teen boys. There were several different full-sized grills in attendance, including a smoker, and someone brought a flat-screen TV and a portable satellite dish to watch the important College Football games on Saturday. I'm just saying we weren't wanting for much. We joined in the food fest in our own small way. I brought hobo pouches for us to eat on Friday that were delish! Saturday we tossed in our hot dogs along with a lot of hamburgers, side dishes, and other random goodies provided by everyone else. It turned into a buffet.

Tyler liked exploring, as you could imagine. He was very interested in us setting up the tent, and then trilled by being allowed to run around inside it. He ran around with some of the younger kids, but his stubby legs couldn't quite keep up. There was a little playground nearby with a see-saw that we got to ride on with Tyler, he really liked that. And we even went on a short hike on Saturday morning, though we did mostly have to carry Tyler around with us. He still liked looking around, and it was great exercise for us. He also needed some alone time, because there's a lot to take in when you're that young, so we spent some time in the tent with him just reading old familiar books before bedtime.

We decided to head home Saturday night, reasoning that it would be better sleeping for both Tyler and us, and we were just going to pack up and head home in the morning anyway, so we wouldn't be missing a whole lot of campitude. So we put Tyler to bed in his little travel-crib like everything was perfectly normal, then picked his crib up, carried it out of the tent, and packed everything while he slept in his crib next to the car with a blanket tossed over the top. Then we said our goodbyes, woke Tyler up enough to get him in the car seat (and he was an absolute gentleman for the whole ride home) and made our escape back home. Only one night in a sleeping bag and already the bed felt more comfy than I remembered it being before.

I'm super-excited about Seattle. Jess and I have a few things we want to make sure we get to do, though we're keeping the schedule kind-of light so that we don't overwhelm the little one, though he's certain to spend at least a few days in the tender care of Nana and Great-Nana while Jess and I are off doing crazy things like...I dunno...probably learning about history or something.

Oh, and we voted. Got in on the Early voting which was great, because no lines. :) I got to hold Tyler while I made my selections and he watched. He was equally entranced by the touch screen I was using and by all the grandmothers staffing the polling place who kept giving him smiling faces. I think he liked the attention. When we were done, we gave him both of our 'I Voted' stickers and hung out for a while at the playground outside the voting area. He liked that. Yay for Democracy!

-N

First Day on the Job!

Today was my very first day at my NEW job.  It is different than any job I could have imagined myself in a year ago, but I really think I am going to like it there. 

 Although the job isn't what I could have imagined for myself- it is exactly what I figured working in a Seattle office building would be like.  The big big boss has a golden retriever named Cody who loyally follows him around.  Our conference room looks out onto Elliot Bay, the important people's offices look back at the Space Needle.  Seriously, I am down the hall from the Associate Press of Seattle. 

There are about 10 people in our office, with desks and computers and stuff in the office.  Now I am one of these people with a desk, two monitors and even a phone. We've got a break room that is stocked with tea and coffee and leftover Halloween candy.  My manager suggested I might enjoy eating my lunch on the patio (with the unreal view of the bay).  I actually can enjoy part of that vista from my sorta cubicle.  Not exactly 4 walled cubicles, we have long, stair shaped desks that probably could accommodate a dozen extra people.  I don't really feel like I "share" this with anyone, but there are two other people in my bay, I suppose you would call it.Tragically, I have no walls to call my own to hang any time of commemorative anything more substantial that a postcard.  I'm totally willing to give this up for the view.

And the work just picked up where we left off on Friday, which was cool.  I'm diving into some newer stuff (very superficial xml), and being able to call upon the people around me to help out is a real boon.  We are at the very early stages of a product cycle (starting a new class), so I can get the feel for my coworkers before things really heat up.  I've never worked in an office setting before, and I was struck that everyone talked like librarians, very hush hush (I am sure this is magnified by a factor of Seattle).

The downside.... oh, the downside... was the commute.  It took me about an hour to get in this morning.  I left around the time Matt did and easily made it in before 8 am.  But, I wasn't supposed to meet anyone there until 8:45, so I went and sat in a coffee shop full of vintage furniture and sipped tea in the grey Seattle morning light and listened to my podcasts.  I felt very urban.  On the way home, I left just after dark, waited for buses a bit longer than I should have and ended up getting home just before 7.  This is a long day, but really the only part that is stressful is the transfer.  Otherwise I was checking my email, listening to podcasts, playing on my phone... the bus ride was easy.  If I can get an elegant bus route lined up I don't think I will mind so much.  By the time I got home I felt.... excited.  And energized.  I don't think grad school ever made me feel like that, I'm hoping I can hang on to that momentum through the roughness of the winter commutes and/or still enjoy it during the long summer days.

End of an Era

I am sitting at my computer in my PJs, with a big cup of tea and enjoying the rain filtered light this morning.  What I am doing today that is different then most days is that I am not working.  I might get some revisions to handle in the next couple days, but really the days of working quietly from home are about to come to a end.  The "at home" contract is wrapped up, and my REAL JOB starts Monday morning. 

I've already been adapting to the changes.  In the evening, there is not a flicker of guilt that I am not retooling my resume, or prowling job boards.  This has left me with a shocking amount of free time- I'm not really sure what to do with myself, honestly.  I'm on the hunt for hobbies that will adapt well to long bus rides (podcasts?  embroidery? suggestions welcome).  And I'm trying to wrap my brain around the idea of this new life, the new habits, the new trajectory... it's a lot to take in.

I'm going to miss having my "work clothes" be sweat pants.  I'm going to miss being hourly, so I can stop working when I'm done.  I'm going to miss the quick transition form working to being at home where my life is.  But having a job, with benefits, and set hours, in a cool location, with interesting people and projects is totally worth giving that up for. 

Anyway, I have a couple days to myself before this all gets started, so I am trying to wrap up as many loose ends (and finish as much laundry) as possible before then. 

The Adventures of Temporarily-Single Father

Yikes, it's been too long. What have we been up to?

Well we got our windows in a while ago, and it has already made a huge difference in the comfort level of the home. The Weather has started to cool off to pretty chilly at night, and we haven't even had to turn on the heater yet. Just ambient heat and good windows is good enough to keep us going through the night. The other major boon is that the neighbors' barking dogs are much quieter now. It's subtle, but pleasant.

We had our pseudo-annual neighborhood grill-out on Saturday. Not a lot of turnout, but a few families did show up, and everyone was really pleased that we were taking the time to do this, so it's worth it just to foster a sense of community around here. Also, Tyler learned to share toys. Sorta. He still needs some practice on that.

Also this weekend, the silver car had its battery die, so I got to be all manly and get that fixed. I considered just taking it in somewhere, but I've messed around in the electrical system of enough vehicles for work at this point that I felt it wouldn't be a insurmountable task, especially with the internet and friendly auto-parts people to help me through. Anyway, I went out and bought a battery (getting a jump to get home after I discovered the battery wasn't low...it was dead. Got some tips from the guy that sold me the battery (as well as some goop to help ease corrosion) and read up on the process on the internet, then took out some wrenches and went to work. As those of you that have ever done it before know, it's not a particularly difficult process, once you know how. But I got to surprise Jessie when she woke up from her nap and the car was totally fixed before she knew it. Still have to take the old battery back for recycling, though.

And this week, Jess is off on travel, so I'm single-fathering it again. It's not so bad, of course. Tyler gets to see mommy on Skype fairly often, and as long as he has lots of things to play with at home he's pretty easy to manage. Went to sleep just fine a little while ago and shows no signs of waking up in the middle of the night with “where's mommy” sweats.

Speaking of Tyler, the baby dictionary has completely fallen off the rails at this point. I couldn't even guess at how many words or word-like utterances Tyler knows at this point. I was always impressed by the ability of parents to understand the babbling of their children, but what I didn't know was that usually the parents don't have any idea what the kid means the first time he tries out a new word either. We just have more practice at it.

Those are the highlights of the last few weeks. I'd write more, but I have a few more e-mails to write and some research to do on how to 'base' miniature figurines. (Look it up, it's pretty cool). And then I have to hit the hay. A temporarily-single father needs plenty of rest.

-N

Good Party, Good Race

I didn't really give Mom and Dad a choice about this party. I was of the impression that they should make some time to see some of the far flung family and friends who have been peppering me with questions about their move, and I thought it would be a high note of the trip.  So, I scheduled the party, invited all the local friends and family.  And then they changed their tickets so they could attend as well.  Heh.

After a scant two weeks to unpack- which is just enough time to realize you don't have enough forks, but not quite enough time to invest in stocking the kitchen fully- the house is in good (enough) shape and Mom and Dad graciously entertained a heap of friends and family at the new place.  It was a good turnout, including Great-Uncle Bob, my mother-in-law, their real estate agent and lots of our friends.  Mom gave house tours, and everyone happily mingled (not just in the kitchen!), taking in the views from the dining room, the library and even the yard.  We made everyone take home leftovers and the remaining cookies were frozen.  It made us excited for Thanksgiving get-togethers and to see Mom's new furniture.

Matt had his first cyclocross race this morning.  For reasons that don't resonate with him, people don't do mountain bike events in the fall, but there is this odd tradition of riding road bikes on grass and mud in the fall.  He was skeptical for many reasons.  The traditions of road riding don't seem like they would translate well to a trail: a peloton, drafting, the sprint.  Spandex seems like idiodic gear for mud, and frankly a mountain bike is already set up for these conditions.  So we went to Magnusun Park in Seattle to join a giant sea of cyclocross riders.  I've never been to such a big race event.  In typical fashion, Matt took a bike better suited to his view of the condition (ie- had suspension and nobby tires) and gear (baggy shorts, hair on legs).  He did very well- he'll find out his place tomorrow.  He hadn't seen the entire course until after the start gun, so it was a bit of an adventure.  He might do a few more races as the season continues, since it's nice to have events to participate in, especially through the winter.

New tech and Bambi...

I have to make one tasteless entry before we get back to work. Connie and I returned to the new house one evening this week. Drove in, opened the garage, decided to walk around behind the house to check out something, talking all the time, and came upon a 4-point Buck resting in the little pocket garden just off our rear deck not 20 feet from us. He stands, eyes us majestically, and slips down the hillside the way we had just come. We continue around the house and find him now slowly strolling away from the opposite corner in the front. I desperately tried to figure out catching him on I-phone video. Just when I got it recording, he stopped, assumed a very unbecoming squat, and gave me 15 seconds of deer droppings. Not going on you-Tube.....

Sunsets to Sunrises

I am sitting in my new, fully paid for and owned home, looking down on a mystically fog filled Snoqualamie River valley and watching a beautiful sunrise over my part of the Cascades. We used to watch our Sunsets over Lynn Canal but this is going to be a fine trade-off. No Snow to speak of, family we can drive to, a Spring and Fall that we can actually watch happen as opposed to jumping in and out of Winter. I'm still not retired, so its back to work and the Juneau apartment in a few days. We did have a serious inquiry about the practice from a Glaucoma specialist working for Kaiser in San Jose. She is tired of 5 1/2 day work weeks and wants to experience "real weather". Do I have a job for her, eh? She plans to visit in December, so no one can say she wasn't warned. We have been settling in a bit, trying to mesh old possessions to new house, planning new purchases, exploring new driving patterns, just getting a feel for the new neighborhood. Found an Internet provider, filled the Propane Tank (for 20% of an Oil fill-up in Juneau), and have become friendly with the local St Vinnie's Donation staff. We smugly watch the weather reports that Southeast Alaska is getting dusted with early snow while we watch a stately procession of fall colors across the Valley. I remember that Ernest Hemingway built his final retirement home in Sun Valley famously oriented to the Sunrise compared to his Ski-dilletante neighbors aligned with Sunset. I can understand him this beautiful morning.

I'm official! I have a job!

The rumors have been swirling for ages, but all the pieces FINALLY came together.  I've accepted an offer with my favorite client as a full time curriculum writer.  I "start" Nov 5, which is funny, because I work for them already on contract.  That will be more like, "I get a desk in the office."  And meet my coworkers.  And get benefits.  Yeah, I'm pretty pumped about it. 

I'll probably write up more about the job and how I finally landed it on the other blog, but for now, I'm busy joyfully dancing in the kitchen!  Woohoo!

Farmers Market Problems

Mom and Dad are here!  And they have a new house!  Since I am their closest child, it is clearly my responsibility to be sure that they have as much fun as possible so that they remember to move down here quickly.  I started their social calender with dinner at cousin Lisa's wine and cheese bar/restaurant super yumminess.  It's right down the street from Nana, which is handy.  It is crazy delicious, fresh source locavore food, which is stellar.  The social highlight of dinner was Lisa running out of the restaurant when her daughter's contractions progressed to "Having A Baby Time." (The food highlight was the fresh corn chowder, obviously.)  How exciting!

Since Mom and Dad are actually waiting for their stuff to arrive Monday, they've been not too busy running errands and getting to know their way around.  So I insisted they join us at the Redmond Farmer's Market for lunch and grocery shopping.  Lunch was a brilliant idea- how can you pick between tamales and crepes? And by then we were all sensitized to the fresh looking foods of the market.  Mom really wanted some heritage apples (Macintosh, Gravenstein etc.), so we had to peruse all the apple options.  And obviously, at farmer's market in Washington  EVERYONE has apples.  I ended up picking up some Italian plums and honeycrips and carrots and beans before Mom picked her apples.  The tipping point for our trip probably came when I was eyeing a basket of tiny-cute, sweet, homeless strawberries, and the guy (hoping to go home early), gave me a deal on a flat of the poor little orphan berries.  The little dears were within hours of peak juiciness, and would need to be used quick. We were supposed to join Nana for dinner, and in the back of my mind I thought 'I'll just bring dessert, no big.'  But then we bought a lump of fresh mozzerella (soft and sweet!), which we clearly had to pair with some of those beautiful Heirloom tomatoes we'd seen.  And of course, we found a pair of giant sunset hued tomatoes that were in the magical hour of peak perfection.  These magical fruits were not going to survive to be eaten another day... could I bring a salad to Nana's too?

Now that we had stocked up on WAY too much food that wouldn't survive the weekend, I insisted we have everyone over for dinner to help me eat my way through this produce.  Nana came to join us, and we talked about Jamie Oliver was plowing our way through roasted farm fresh veggies and didn't stop until we polished off half the flat of berries.

First Ever Zumba Class

Recently, I joined a gym.  I'm not really a 'gym person,' but the gap between the fit an unfit in the household has been getting unbearable lately.  With my current work, I don't need to move around much, or even put on shoes every day.  I've noticed that takes a toll on a lot when we go hiking, I'm the slowest, and I get absurd blisters. In the past, I was never able to justify the cost of a membership to somewhere close to home, given that I could go to the student gym across campus for free; I usually compromised by not working out at all. But even then I had to walk places sometimes. Anyway, this new fancy LA Fitness opened up in our neighborhood, and I joined at a discount thinking with my schedule the way it is, I may as well get the perk of being able to work out where there isn't another soul around.

I decided I should try to get to some different fitness classes and just generally shop the place around for a while.  This morning, despite the autumn crisp, I jumped in the car and run down for my first ever Zumba class.  I knew Zumba is some kind of loud music, energetic dance thing.  I've been told by everyone who has tried it you can't take yourself too seriously, and just have fun.  This is a good attitude for someone who doesn't learn choreography well, and is not in peak condition.

The girl teaching was super glad to see me, since I was the only student. So much for hiding in the back; looks like there is a downside to daytime workouts. I opted to stand to the right of the instructor so I could watch her in the mirror without tripping myself, but this also put me in front of the door, with its giant windows into the weight room.  I tried not to notice that we were clearly "on the tour" as trainers introduced new members to gym.  I like to imagine they would breeze past, saying, "And if showing off your lack of coordination is the easiest way for you to work out, it looks like we've got a friend for you."  Strangely, no one joined us for a dose of bad latin dance moves.

The instructor gamely showed me the 4 basic steps (salsa, cha-cha, reggaeton and bouncing around like a Sounders fan) and then we got started.  The music was turned up loud enough she couldn't hear my chorus of mumbling "1 2 double 4... no... one two cha cha ...3 ?"  That turned out to be a real advantage.  And as the class went on, and we were warmed up, or getting the feel of it, or whatever you call it, the class started to seem a lot less like dancing, and a lot more like bouncing around with my arms up like a crazy person. I'm not going to say I was good at it, but it was a really good workout.  Sometimes those classes aren't so good if you can't keep up, but as long as I kept cheerfully bouncing around the instructor was encouraging.  I actually wonder if it would be as good a workout if I could follow along better, and didn't substitute High Knees or something exhausting for every merengue step I couldn't keep track of. By the end, I was plumb tuckered and ready to get back to my mercifully sedentary job.

On my way to the gym, I briefly pondered that I might lift some weights or something if the class was short or easy, but fortunately, I just turned around and headed home instantly.  Thanks Zumba Instructor, I'm gonna go melt at my house now.  Now, I live about 5 min from this big gym, and like I said, I'm not in great shape, or generally familiar with what that might be like.  In fact, when I was about 2 minutes down the road, all my skin started to feel VERY HOT.  Unnaturally so.  Is this heat stroke?  Don't you usually pass out from too much exercise while you are doing it?  Omigosh, I only thought I ironically felt like I could die, am I ok? Should I be driving right now??  And then I noticed that the vents in the car were finally pumping in hot air.  Just past the nick of time.

Clearly, I survived my drive home, and even my first Zumba class.  There are some spin classes, and yoga and pilates and stuff that I'm hoping to go back to the gym and try.  Maybe once I am not too stiff to leave my office chair again.

NW Adventures

When we left Nana's house on Sunday afternoon, she loaded us down with chocolate bars and homemade cupcakes.  Why? Presumably this is payment for spending the day being such good grandkids.  What did we do that was so special?  Well, we took Nana up to see Anne Cox's beautiful boat and go for a ride in the San Juan Islands.  Yeah, we take really good care of Nana.

It was a pretty perfect expedition, in fact.  We've had unseasonable clear October weather, so Matt and I feel like it's the summer that never ends.  Going to spend a few hours toodling around the San Juans is a pretty fantastic way to pass the day.  We had amazing view of Mount Baker, of the for rolling in around Anacortes and the islands themselves.  Couldn't have been a better day, really.

We paired this Sunday activity with a good Saturday as well.  Our friends wanted to hike up Mt Pilchuk, a well loved nearby peak.  The bulk of the hike is skree and epic granite, which makes for some truly stunning vistas.  The very peak is covered in a jumble granite boulders, as if the whole mountain is just a pile of oversized gravel.  There is a lookout tower strapped across some of these boulders.  On a clear day, you can probably see into Canada from there.  We managed to see mysterious views of the inside of a cloud.  This did make the hike seem quite dramatic though.  After a nice hike, we went to play 19 holes of disc golf in Lake Stevens. Have I mentioned I am terrible at disc golf?  Typically, a sport that requires eye-hand coordination, throwing and trees was not going to go well for me.  Fortunately, there were enough trees that we all had a good laugh at each other.  There is something really hysterical about watching some one hurl a frisbee at a million miles and hour into a tree 10 feet in front of them (pro tip: this is not a good technique to "win" at disc golf either).  Or maybe we were just worn out.  Anyway, we wrapped up the day by meeting Shaoshu for Taiwanese food.

Taiwanese food has become the new concession to my new eating habits, since Szechuan cuisine is right out.  As far as the eating goes, I'm back on most food groups, but still avoiding citrus, spicy and alcohol, since these all appear to be solvents for the lining of my stomach.  Ouch.  Back to taiwanese food, it turned out to be auspicious since the Moon Festival was starting over the weekend.  We got to have some fresh moon cakes for dessert in addition to the already delicious foods.

In other news, we are starting to think more seriously about the possibility of someday preparing to shop for a house, you know, as a preliminary exercise to owning one.  There still seem too many other unknowns up in the air to make any actual decisions (will we be able to afford much of a house? where might this house be? Are there things we need a house to do in the future?  This last one is a thinly veiled way of saying "three car garage?" which leads to a lot of other talking that isn't much about a house, but a lot about a budget).  This is fine with me.  It seems like a big decision that a person should not make while being as remarkably ignorant as I am about all things on the spectrum of mortgages and property taxes to home ownership and maintenance.  Lots of learning to do.  As I told Mom, we'll probably be financially ready to buy a house before we are emotionally ready, and both are in the future yet.

Busy Getting Stuff done

Just in case you're wondering why I don't blog more, its because I'm still spending all my time doing awesome stuff. I am, yes, still practicing the piano. I got myself a couple of songbooks for myself for my birthday. So I'm currently learning how to play the theme music from Super Mario Brothers. Yes, you should be impressed, it is very impressive. I can physically play about half of it, for now, but a little less than that with both hands at the same time, and essentially just the intro at the proper speed. So there's still work to do, but I'm really enjoying working on this song. I also got a book of radiohead songs, and I just have to figure out which one I want to learn to play first. And another book of exercise and basic songs to learn, to further expand my skills at a basic level. I'm still just playing on my keyboard, which is just wide enough for Super Mario brothers, though It doesn't use the lowest octave. Of course, I can just push a button and then it won't use the highest octave if I want. Electronics are great like that.

Also, paining miniatures. I've showed off a few of them to some of you over Skype, but I have yet to put up any pictures. They're pretty cool looking, if a little basic, but the process is very time consuming and cannot be rushed, which is part of what I like about it. You have to take your time, consider the process, decide what you want to paint on what surface...you know, ART. I find the whole thing pretty relaxing, and so I decided to invest a little more into our painting gear. I went out yesterday and picked up a bunch of random paint brushes (different kinds, so I can see what I like) some porcelain paint palettes (much easier to clean), and a few other odds-and-ends like slo-dry (for easier paint blending) and some finishing spray to keep the paint well set on the mini's when I'm done. I really like just going out and considering all the options and making decisions and...I don't know even going out to buy brushes yesterday was fun. Maybe because Jess was at home taking care of Tyler for me and, as it turns out, taking down all our blinds.

We're getting new windows put in in the near future. The nice fancy ones that the guy came to our house and punched through for us. Jess got down all the blinds, but we'll wait for a little bit before doing the curtains. We do need some privacy.

And then, of course, there's Judo. I've been doing more Shiai (sparring) recently, which still isn't a lot, but it's more than the 'none' that I've done before. I'm getting a little better, bit by bit, which is encouraging, though I'm still pretty far below most of my peers. I is encouraging, however, that whenever we get new students in that Sensei usually has them work with me. I like to think I'm a pretty patient teacher.

Anything else? Any other activities taking up my time? OH, that's right, my son.

Last weekend we went to Houston for Jessie's great-uncle-in-law's 90^th birthday. We learned that 1) Driving during Tyler's nap is a great idea. 2) Driving while he's supposed to be asleep is not. I also managed to pick up whatever upper-resperitory cough-fest Tyler happened to pick up from day care last, which is still making my voice a little croupy. But other than that, the trip was a pretty great success. Everyone was all excited to see Jess, and Tyler got to play with a couple of twin girls a little younger than he was. He was a little scared of them. I'll tease him about that when he gets older. We also brought back Jessie's Grandmother to stay with us for a while. Tyler eventually got used to her and even gave her some kisses on the last day she was here.

The comprehensive Tyler-dictionary is going to have to come to a close. He's learning a new word or two every day now. It would be difficult to keep up. He's using his words a lot more often now. Here are some highlights.

Nana: What he says every time we tell him we are going to Skype. He knows about grandmothers.

Areyou?: What he says when he is looking for things. Either Waldo in the waldo books or Daddy.

Doo-Doo!: This is the sound a train makes, and a lot of things are enough like trains (cars, rocks, pretty much anything he can push around) that they also make this sound too.

Yikes!: Luckly, this was what Jessie said when her antibiotic ointments took hold on her latest road rash. He's also picked up “Whoah” and “Oh no!” Nothing R-rated yet.

TeeBee: We let him watch TV when he's feeling bad and needs to relax, but he's also figured out that you can watch it at other times as well. He'll ask for it a lot. We generally just tell him no.

Ninite: Certain kinds of clothes are ninite clothes. They are the kinds you put on before it is bedtime.

We took Tyler out to a neighborhood festival this weekend where they had some pancakes, a hot air balloon, and plenty of booths selling arts and crafts. They also had a bounce house that Tyler was really into, even though he was the smallest one there. He was having fun getting bounced around by all the kids...and then the fan kicked off and the whole thing deflated. Which is scary, if you are small and don't know what's going on, and also potentially dangerous. Jess got to work pulling out some kids while other people (myself included) did their best to try and keep the thing from falling over too much. Tyler wasn't at the exit, though, so eventually Jess just dove in after him. She found him in a very unhappy mood, but having mama nearby definitely helped. Still spooky. He's been in two bounce houses in his life. Both deflated while he was inside. I'm not sure if he'll want to go into any more.

Tyler also got a haircut yesterday. His third. The second went just fine. The third was NOT fun. He didn't want the little cape thing on, and he did not like the clippers one little bit. There were many tears, but eventually we got through it with bubbles and patience. There's been a lot of trauma in his life this weekend. I'm surprised he's still this well adjusted.

Other Micro-news:

-Jess has had to go through her polygraph test. It was a horrible experience and she has to go back.

-Jess also is traveling in October for work. I'll have Tyler for the week. Planning to get him a tattoo.

-With all these activities, I barely have any time at all for Video games. Crazy, I know.

-Tyler, for those keeping track, will be 18 months old (1.5 years) at the end of this month.

-Also, Tyler sits in a Big-boy car seat now.

I'll probably write again in another two months when I have some time. :)

-N

P.S.: I have some pictures to share, too.  But photo upload seems to be wonky, so I'll try again later.  

The Story of the Bat-Eating Spider

WARNING: If graphic stories about spiders freak you out, stop reading now.  Seriously, Dad.

Our house is by the woods.  I presume this is why we cohabitate with SO many spiders.  The backyard is basically uninhabitable, and you shouldn't approach our front door without something in front of your face.  There are so many spiders here, I am surprised there are bugs.  And not only the small garden spiders, but really colorful spiders, long spindly, and Spock spiders (you know, that make you think they only have 4 legs?), and really BIG spiders.  Perhaps not Texas big, but certainly too big to even entertain the idea of finding one in the bathtub.  Ehhh....

It's no secret that I have a pretty irrational phobia of spiders.  While I recognize that there have been many occasions that I have NOT been killed gruesomely by spiders, it's hard to remember that when one sneaks up on you, or does that creepy spider walk think, or hides somewhere just out of squishing. Ick.  Matt thinks I am prone to hyperbole about this.  I have no idea what he is talking about.  Really, I have come to accept that in the out doors, spiders will be plentiful, and I try not to bug them.  They get shooed away from the BBQ and the doorway, but they are basically an unstoppable force I know I am powerless against, and they are begrudgingly tolerated welcome to be in the yard.

In evidence of my willingness to share the planet with spiders, sitting in our living room while the sunrises highlights half a dozen occupied webs, with the residents patiently licking their evil lips and sharpening their poison darts or whatever.  Every morning at sunrise I resolutely DON'T burn them to pieces.  See how tolerant I am?

This is in part because I spend most of my day in the upstairs office, which is not a popular spot to be a spider.  Until a new guy moved in.  I went back to my text messages over the last month or so to Matt while he was at work, which basically chronicles the horrors.

Ack- Spider moved in up here. Totally ruining the view

Err... its hard to focus with this many heebie jeebies.  What about a second story window is such a good spot for a web?

I had accepted that this was not a small spider, and it actually wasn't at the window all the time.  On the one hand, not so bad, I don't have to look at it all the time.  On the other hand, WHERE DID IT GO?  Worse though, it was getting bigger.

Evil Giant Spider is back.  I'm using your monitor to block it from my view.  Barely.

OMG, How do spiders even get this big? What does it eat? Bats?

I thought there was a bat caught in a web up here. NO! IT WAS THAT GIANT BAT EATING SPIDER!
There is no emoticon to contain my horror.

And really, this things had moved beyond NW spider size.  It was verging on foreign exotic spider with some engorged, freaky abdomen and shockingly angular legs.  I was pretty sure when it wasn't handing out in the window, it was just strolling around the neighborhood, kicking puppies and stealing from old ladies.  I'm telling you, this was a viscous, evil spider.  And again, it wasn't around all the time.  Don't for one second consider where else it might go, because the obvious answer is INSIDE THE HOUSE. Ack.

Matt had suggested that I could turn the hose on it when I saw it.  Again, he thinks I am prone to hyperbole, so he was surely picturing some itsy bitsy spider route.  But hello?  Remember how that rhyme ends? The itsy bitsy spider goes up the spout again.  Oh no.  It the hosing is going to work, a person (I can't type "I" in this context) would have to be prepared for armed combat when you brought the beast on level.  I'm not running outside in my work clothes (read:PJs) to go to fisticuffs with the spawn of evil on EIGHT LEGS.

And this is how things went for a while.  I would move Matt's monitor around to avoid seeing it, and he never once encountered the thing.

Until last night.

We went for a late run.  We let ourselves out the back and leave the door unlocked, and came back a few minutes later.  My office light was still on, which made the window look like a homing beacon, except instead of the bat signal up there, the light was all but blocked by this viscous monster.  Even Matt was impressed by its gruesomeness.  We sprinted through the door (what if it drops, thinking my shrieking is the sound of its favorite prey, vampire bats?) and made a game plan.  Matt would go outside, hose the thing off the window, and maybe squish it.  I would bravely watch from inside, to bear witness to what might might be Matt's final minutes on early before he is brutally murdered by a spider in the dark- because everything about this was starting to go all horror show.

The hose got it off the window, but Horror of Horrors, in the dark, Matt couldn't see it.  He gestured that he wanted to come in a get a flashlight, but I had our home barricaded at this point.  I passed him a flashlight through a crack in the door, knowing full well that the monster had to be sneaking up behind him already.  With a flashlight in hand, he was able to see the spider, which was faking an injury curled up in a ball the size of a kumquat.  Seriously, it really was big enough to found in the dark.  He washed it down onto the porch, here he picked up a box to deal the deathblow.

He said it popped like a grape.  I think he was underestimated the size of produce involved, I am sure it much have been a small melon.  He was confident that his task was done and gestured for me to unblockade the house.  Ha!  You can't leave a spider carcass out like that!?  Too many spiders get non-squished enough, then reappear as an undead version of themselves minutes later.  You have to destroy the body to be sure.  The carcass was thrown into the yard, where I am sure a raccoon, or another hoard of spiders ate it overnight.

Ack, ack, blehhh.

Choose Your Own Adventure

This is TERRIBLE, and I promise I will do everything in my power to be sure that Tyler doesn't miss out on this important cultural and imaginative experience.  Or a few things at least.

I was looking for a metaphor for a non-linear presentation (for work- so to use with imaginary high school students), and I thought "Obvs, Choose Your Own Adventure Books."  Because this is such a touchstone for me I use the phrase regularly in conversation, I am not even going to bother to explain the glory of navigating your own way through a book, I'll just assume you know how stellar that is.  And then I thought, I wonder if kids these days have even heard of that?  I was really thinking, "I bet my parents were more in-tuned to kid lit than most parents, I wonder if these were widely distributed?"  I was not even entertaining the possibility that these books might be out of print.

Google affirms that this series went out of print in 1990!  So anyone under the age of 22 (probably older) actually has no idea what I am talking about when I say Choose Your Own Adventure.  The horror!

--UPDATE-- STOP PANICKING---

I misread that article, and the books have been wildly popular through the late 90s, and as far as I can tell are still in sporadic print.  All is right with the World.

Blackberries

Washington is overrun with the most noxious and awesome of weeds, the Himalayan blackberry.  In the summer, the thorny vines encroach on any and every untended space.  We pulled runners away from over and under our fence, as well as crawling back down the tree in our yard.  The thorns (or jaggers, as Pittsburghers have made me fond of saying) are a wicked surprise in the woods and make clean up a hassle.  But then, for several delightful weeks at the end of summer, every abandoned thicket and hedge is transformed into a fragrant, fruit bearing orchard.  Matt's house in college had a big thicket in the back that allowed us to make gallons of jam, and stacks of crisps and cobblers and pies.  You hardly need to buy fruit if you have a good spot to harvet these things.

And blackberry season is finally here again.  It seemed delayed for weeks due to the dry summer, but the air is full of that sweet fruity smell again.  On Sunday we floated along the Slough (a term meaning a 'river' so slow it's unclear which direction it might run.  Rhymes with Phew, it wasn't hard to paddle!), where the major hazard of falling in is not drowning, but be pieced to death by blackberries if you had to swim out.  And although the berries at our house are sweet and flavorful- the berries on the slough were monsterously juicy from gorging themselves on water all summer.  Himalayan Blackberries are not known for moderation.

In the spirit of summer, I've been having black berry smoothies and and have another blackberry cobbler in the oven (or possibly a mess of berries with a sweet biscuit in the middle, we'll see what comes out).

Talking to my idols

The coolest thing just happened!  I decided I wanted to talk to this Famous Blogger (in my neck of the internet) about the kinds of things this pseudonymous person is famous for (which is reporting on the state of jobs in chemistry, and generally advocating for jobs policy).  There is not a voice quite like this in biology, and the blog covers of lot of really policy centric stuff.  Like, Chemjobber gets up super early to read and report on the jobs report.

The point is, I realize this person is passionate and engaged in something that is clearly beyond the scope of their actually paid position, and I wanted to know how that works.  And if it is something that I would care to try/ fit into my own version of myself as a professional.   So even though I think of this person as incredibly important, and busy, and thoughtful and frankly, kinda famous... I sent an email saying I like what you do and I'd love to talk about how you do it.  Because, you gotta try, even if you get caught in a spam filter or weeded out by an all important secretary.

Ha.  Chemjobber wrote back in 10 minutes and was like "Sure!  You wanna Skype?"  WOW.

Moral of the story: Don't be intimidated by your heroes.

The Exciting Conclusion of the Waffle-Off

You'll need a bit of backstory to get to the thrilling conclusion of this post, and I'm afraid the story goes much farther back than the story is thrilling.  A fine Juneau institution is the Waffle Co., and after enjoying some of their Ham and Cheese waffles while on a visit home from grad school, Matt and I thought we should try to make savory waffles at home. We acquired a little waffle-maker for the project, and some busy school night decided to give this a go.  In my memory, it took a long time.  You add cold ham and cheese to waffles, they take a long time to cook.  If you ask Matt, you would think the waffle-maker destroyed our breakfast-for-dinner optimism, that it ruined more that just one part of an evening, but perhaps our entire faith in waffles.  I actually believed for a long time that Matt didn't like waffles.  Any Sunday morning where waffles might suit me, he would snarl at the waffle-maker, or sigh in disgust, and we would usually skip to pancakes, which he says "are faster." Really, the sting of slow waffles had stung too deep, and that trust was irreparably broken, never to heal.

So imagine my surprise, when for my birthday, Matt gave me a waffle-maker.  A very nice waffle maker, the kind that flips over (I don't understand this, but the one at the dorms did this).  Tragically, it was dented, so it was returned to a store that was SOLD OUT of such nice waffle-makers, presumably to people who hadn't been betrayed by them before.  But this started the conversation again.  Didn't we love waffles?  Was it too painful to invite them back into our lives, or could we try to see past the failure of the waffle-makers to the joy that waffles bring?  Matt held firm that the first waffle-maker was "too slow," that better waffle-makers could do the job faster, possibly fluffier and toastier (sins I don't recall from the original waffle incident, but like I said, we seemed to have experienced this differently). Maybe he could love waffles again, but surely there was a better way??

At my second birthday party, at Betty's, I got another new waffle maker.  This was good, because the first present came with 30 lbs of waffle mix (see? he wants to love waffles again).  The new waffle-maker didn't have flipping capacity, but it did have George Foreman on the front, and I instinctively trust his judgement on waffles.  And now we have two waffle-makers.  Not that I am picking favorites, but we thought we should settle the score, once and for all.  Was the old waffle-maker too slow?  Would a new one be faster? Fluffier? Toastier?  We mixed up a batch of waffle-mix, and turned on both waffle-makers for a Waffle-Off- a side-by-side duel of breakfast food.

That brings us up to speed. Are you ready for this? The results of the first official Waffle-Off?

It turns out BOTH waffle-makers take about 3-5 minutes to cook a waffle. BOTH waffle-makers make waffles that are about right for one plate.  However, the key breakthrough of the experiment was making waffles in parallel- you get twice as many waffles in the same amount of time.  Oh joy! The wait was over!  We compared the relative merits of each (the old being slightly toastier, the new being slightly fluffier, both making a fine waffle), and sought the perfect combination of toppings.  There was so much TIME to indulge in peanut butter and applesauce, or applesauce and Strawberry Rhubarb Quince Jam, or plain syrup, or peanut butter and jam... so much TIME to linger on the toasty, fluffy waffles. And it was good to linger, I had missed waffles- their strange geometry being vastly superior to pancakes for capturing toppings. But it was really momentous to see Matt finally taking joy in waffles again, letting go of that old burden and setting aside his grievances to just enjoy breakfast again.

Dad is going to be staying with me this weekend.  Perhaps, if there is time, we will have waffles.

He prepares for a business trip

Matt is leaving for his first real business trip tomorrow.  He's been asked to go help at the plant in Ohio as they start making a new build of truck: his job now is to interface with the manufacturing side to (among other things) make sure that all the correct parts get on the truck in the right order, which often means finding a way to make things fit, or providing insight for the design team as the guys in the plant say, "Yeah, there is no way this part can fit in that spot with all the other stuff in the way."  I like that his job is so literal.  As I said, this big plant in Ohio is going to start making a new build of truck, and they get a bit of supervision in the form of a three man team that includes Matt.  He has to pack his steel-toed boots, and I anticipate some serious stain treating of his slacks when he gets home Friday.

(For those wondering, his job is technically 5% travel, so this trip should just about do it for the year.)

So how does Matt prepare for a trip?  Well, let's contrast this to how I get ready for work trips.  I usually work like a maniac in the weeks leading up. This ensure on the day of preparation my domestic situation is in crisis so that I can either stay up all night washing the appropriate clothes, or decide to take the trip without clean socks.  I usually pick "stay up all night" because I've been an a straight coffee and chocolate diet for 2 days and I have to get my files in order/printed to maximize the time I'll "study on the plane" (ha!), which, after a late night pack-up, has never worked once yet in the history of ever.  However, I like to know that I have spent all my energy getting ready for the trip because in my world (ie, at meetings), when you are on the trip, it is hard to carve out time for actual working because you have to appear bright-eyed, bushy tailed and very, very smart.

Ok, back to Matt.  Matt mentioned a few times that things were a little busy at work last week, mostly because this trip is taking him away from other duties at work.  He had to find a way to leave them in a position for other people to help out with.  His new bike arrived Friday, which is primarily how he dealt with that stress: long rides.  There was talk of going into to work today, which I figured would be when things got really maniacal.  He rode his bike to work, set his auto reply on his email and sent some files along to coworkers.  He was there less than an hour.  He folded all his laundry into neat piles in the living room, and has been weighing the needs to the week against his carry on for a few minutes.  It's after dinner, but I wouldn't say after the witching hour.  He has no intention of working on the plane, and in fact, just flying counts as work.  He doesn't go to the site until Tuesday, and possibly they might not be building the trucks until Wednesday.  I'd like to contrast this to the type of trip- a professional meeting is basically how you develop a professional reputation, and his business trip is just to do his job in a different place- but it's probably more fair to recognize that Matt tends to have a much cooler head than I do.  At work or home, or even when the two come together, he doesn't usually get flustered.

It'll be weird without him here. I've traveled tons without him, but he rarely goes places without me.  He has been super handy helping get a new bookcase into Nana's and installing a couple lights (since we've all been sitting around the apartment a lot lately, it's time to just fix some of those things).  Fortunately, I'm sure I'll get to see a bit of both Mom and Nana this week, and Dad is coming in Thursday night (house hunting!). 

Other Finger Exercises

One of the main reasons I haven't been blogging as much is that whenever I get a free 15 minutes or so, I've actually been indulging in a new, different hobby. I'm learning the piano. Again.

I don't have much of a recollection of playing the piano before. I can't have been that good at it, but my body clearly remembers a few of the tricks. I still remember 'doggy D', and whenever I put my hands on the keyboard, my first, third, and fifth fingers are always ready to hit the C Major chord. So far my strategy of 'make sure you practice every day, preferably before you play videogames' has been paying off. I picked up a book of instructional songs for adults to teach themselves, and it's been a great help in just lining up songs that push my dexterity a little bit at a time. I should put up some video (or maybe just audio?) later, but Jessie says she likes listening to me, so that's pretty good to hear. I keep thinking that if I still am doing this after a year I'll reward myself by getting a real piano. Probably an electric piano, or just a better keyboard. An upright at best. We technically could fit a grand somewhere in the house, but I'll save that until after I become a world-famous performer.

The idea that we should have Thanksgiving in Seattle catalyzed yesterday, and has quickly run away as a fantastic idea. It'll be neat to see the family again, of course, but I haven't really gotten to see much of the city, and I'm told it's a pretty cool place in spots. Also, Tyler did quite well on his last flight, so we're up to trying it again. Getting him his own seat is a real boon to his comfort, as well as ours and all those around us. It's an investment, but it's been a good one so far.

Jess played hookey today to go riding down the river on inner tubes with work-mates, drinking and generally having a relaxing time. I took over baby-caring-for duty, and Jess has been taking every opportunity to tell people how nice I am being to her, which is a kindness that I definitely appreciate.

Tyler's latest trick is that he really likes noticing when things are the same. If you're reading a book, and the picture on the front of the book is the same as the picture on one of the pages, he'll get really excited (if he remembers) and make you flip back to the cover to make sure they are the same. He also got really excited when he noticed that the cat on my 'darth vader kitty' t-shirt was the same as the cats running around the house. Both dee-dees.

My sparring (they call it shi-ai) in judo has never been very good. I'd mostly quantify it as 'really bad', and I've decided I have to face my fear of sucking at judo and just practice it more. After all, that's pretty much how you get better at anything. I get myself pumped up by listening to energetic music on the way in, and I'm trying to convince myself that, much like the piano, I just have to do it every day. Not a lot, necessarily, but every time needs a little more practice. I'll get there eventually if I put in the time.

-N

Things change

By now you've all heard that Nana had a little spill and will be wearing a brace until her back heals.  For a couple hours on Tuesday, this was really scary, and I am glad I got to be with her while we figured out what was going on.  Now though, now it seems like an inconvenience.  But that's Nana for you- no wallowing, just determined to do what she needs to get better.  If that is wearing a kind of inconvenient brace right now, so be it. I think she's gotten most of you on the phone, so you can hear that she isn't suffering unduly.

The rest of us are striving to take good care of her in anyway she will let us.  I say "the rest of us" because my Mom did that cool, retired person thing of just showing up where the action is.  She came in Tuesday night and is going to be staying with Nana for a bit.  (Someone has to remind her to use her walker, ahem.)  This is good, because someone is going to have to help manage the steady stream of visitors while Matt and I are working.  It sounds as if there is going to be quite a parade of visitors today and possibly through the weekend.  I mention this in case you try to call and she puts you off- Nothing personal, but Queen Martha (as we've taken to calling her with this princess perfect posture the brace forces) has many duties to attend to.

There are lots of reasons that this doesn't really seem like a major life changing event in the same way you might expect.  Partly, being close at hand makes it easy. Being at the Chateau has been awesome.  For one, they just trip over themselves to be accommodating (I imagine they are like this for everyone, but they all really like Nana). It's a huge relief to me, and everyone else I am sure.

In related news, I've been seeing my Mom everyday, which is cool.  It's been good to have a little help with some of my database questions.  And we've been starting to gel around some ideas for the holidays (spoiler: they will be awesome). One of these days, she is going to get me to help her with her Portuguese lessons.  Matt and I might be able to rope the two of them into judging our Waffle-Off, a completely objective comparison between our two waffle makers. 

Another weekend of visitors!

The other day Shaoshu actually asked if it is "Parent's Season."  Well, we are taking a lot of visitors these days.  My in-laws came up from California to partake in one of these magically beautiful Seattle weekends before going to visit Victoria and BC.  It was so nice to get to have them around- I love an excuse to play tourist, and being with your parents is good for the soul.  We mostly took them across the lake to real Seattle, but Matt's Dad got to watch him take second in a 5K Saturday morning (we all hung out for the awards), and we got to have dinner with Jeffery's family.  They have known Jeffery since he was a toddler- which makes those discussions about parenting and careers so much more family like. 

Even though we feel crazy busy all the time (how have we not had time to see the Batman movie yet??), I am really digging this family-being-around-ness we are working on.

The strange diet is still in effect.  I am trying not to be in the habit of eating only melons and cheeze-its, but those are both gentle on my tummy.  Unlike green tea, or strawberry ice cream, which are both things I have regretted recently.

Minor movement on the professional front, I am going to meet the rest of the people at the company where I intern tomorrow.  It's a testament to my blank-faced confidence that I convinced them I could take this role while working at home, but obviously, the benefit of interning is getting to meet people.  I am going to their group meeting (all 4 of them will be there!) to talk about the business development stuff I have been working on, and work on my good reputation with them.

Salesmanship

Jess and I have been thinking about replacing the windows in our house...essentially since we bought the house. We loved the house itself, but the windows are all single-pane, aluminum frame and a little hard to open and close in some places. We played around with a contractor before Tyler was born, but then decided to put it on hold until, you know, the whole baby situation got more stable.

Well since then I've noticed a couple of drips sneaking in around the windows, so we hit up consumer reports again to get some window recommendations and decided to go with Anderson windows. They do pretty darn high-end windows, but you do often get what you pay for, and they convinced us of the quality of their windows...mostly.

So when you call the Anderson guys up, they send out a guy to your house who does some rough measurements, computes a quote, and then, and this is properly obnoxious, gives you an HOUR LONG explanation on how awesome their windows are in your house. It's really over the top, and a little off-putting, but they do have really nice windows.

All of this is background so I can tell you this story:

The guy was out late, and Tyler was already in bed, and the demo had reached the point where he brought in little sample windows and proceeded to explain (in stupidly excruciating detail) every neat aspect of the windows. He had reached the part where he wanted to talk about how secure the windows were. He said: “One of the main reasons people buy Anderson windows is for security...” and then he reached down and with a single punch shattered one of the windows with his bare hands.

For an instant, I was incredibly impressed. “They are so confident of the safety of their glass, that they will break it with their bare hands, and so confident that you will buy their windows that they will replace that pane of glass after each demonstration. Astounding!” Then I looked at the guys face and realized that this wasn't really part of the demo, and he had just shattered a window in our library. And his hand was bleeding.

After we had sorted out that, no, that wasn't actually supposed to happen, Jess ran off with the sales guy to the bathroom to patch his hand up. We had just gotten some really festive band-aids for Tyler, and Jess was rather keen to use them. I vacuumed very thorougly and then walked around in my bare feet. If I missed a shard, I wanted it under my toes, not Tylers.

Anyway, we went with their windows, but if anyone who reads this ever feels like doing the same, you may want to stand back when they get to that part of the presentation.

I also got to travel to Charleston last week. It all went startlingly well, except for some paperwork shenanigans that nearly got me sent back home early. We got it all sorted out, though, and the tasks that we set out to do went off without a hitch. Which meant that there wasn't a lot of drama or excitement, at least not at work, but that's a pretty good tradeoff for success.

As for the rest of the city, it was pretty nice, in places. I got to have some fried chicken and grits several times. You know, like they do in the south. Also lots of fish, because Jessie wasn't there to help us pick restaurants. Charleston is really pretty and old in the places where it has been well maintained, and a condemnable bio hazard in the places where it hasn't. Stick to the nice places and you'll have a great time. We took some walks to go get some food a couple of times, and the City really looks nice, on foot. I'm sad we left before Saturday, there was a farmers market right across from our hotel, evidently. That would have been fun to see and eat my way through.

Tyler is getting better and better at being a toddler. He can run now, and get up to a fair clip for a guy whose legs are so short. He's becoming less and less fussy every time we drop him off at school, and he always seems fully engaged whenever we come to pick him up. He's becoming a little more of a picky eater, but that was bound to happen eventually. I'm sure we weren't going to just be able to feed him broccoli for dinner until he turned 18. He's also working a lot on copying our words, and rather a lot of them, though it's rare that these early attempts at language make repeat performances. We often quiz him on “who that is”, and he's pretty good at Mama and Dada at this point, but the real comedy comes in when he confuses the two. “Who is that?” “Mama—Dada!” He even shakes his head like, 'Wait, no, that's not right. It's the other one...Dada! That's right.” Those of you that have been lucky enough to skype with us may have seen him working on the splits. We'll make a martial artist out of him yet. He has also decided that the best use of the letter and number flash cards we got him is to take them out of our hands and throw them through the air and laugh uproariously, which is more interaction that he has done with those cards before, so I consider it progress.

-N  

Mom and Dad visit!

Like a good retired person, Mom had gotten right to the business of visiting her family.  Mom and Dad came down this weekend for a "retirement kickoff/house hunting vacation."  I'll let them comment more on the second part of the trip (spoiler alert: they haven't bought a house yet), but we had a nice time having them around.  They had Nana with them almost every minute, so it was great to see her even more (we were hardly around in July, so I was missing her!). 

We ate out a lot- which was as much an indulgence as in deference to my new "diet" prescribed to deal with major tummy pain.  Basically, I can only eat sweets and salty food (not fatty, spicy or tart food)(or coffee or chocolate or Italian food or mojitos, so I am basically losing my mind), and given Mom's limitations on salt, it was a LOT easier to just let someone else handle the cooking.  Or I guess we could have all eaten bananas and rock candy all weekend.  Anyway, this served as a nice excuse to see cousin Lisa at her restaurant.  (See what happens when you live in WA? you just run into family, all the time!)  And I never had to do dishes.  Come back and visit anytime, Mom and Dad!

AND Matt and I celebrated our wedding anniversary (6 years!) on Sunday by going to play frisbee golf in the beautifully hot weather and wading in some river.  I was thinking that thanks to a Juneau wedding, we ALWAYS have better weather on our anniversary than we did for our wedding day.  It was nice to have some time together just playing in the woods, since we've been oppositely busy a lot lately.  Once those ironpants house shoppers were done with their marathon visitations, we all got to enjoy a sunset dinner on the bay. Even though I am supposed to be very strict with this stupid diet, Matt heroically ordered a cheesecake that I shared a forbidden (few) bites to remember our wedding day. How romantic!

And then I'm back to work.  I supposed if I had planned my time better, I would have been contracting while the parent were house hunting (over the weekend), and not working when they were free to dink around.  After this last trip, I'm having a hard time keeping my focus up, and the prospect of alternate scheduling seemed like a bad idea all around.  This is the weird thing I've found about contracting.  Sure, I can work anytime or anywhere I feel like, but I mostly want to work about 8 hours straight from my own office during the middle of the week.  Yes, I could take an afternoon off and finish my work after dinner- but who wants to be working before going to bed?  And isn't it a joy to string two (mostly) non-work days together?  For all that flexibility, the main way I take advantage is by working the first half the day in my PJs and showering at lunch time. 

Getting Ready to Travel

So tomorrow I get to travel for work. Nothing as exotic as England, but Charleston, SC isn't a bad place if you gotta do some work. It's supposed to be pretty rainy there all week, so I'm glad I have a raincoat to bring. Thanks, Switzerland! Jess is going to be a dear and watch Tyler for the week, which actually means that he will have to have is first babysitter this week, as Jess has a couple of hockey games to go play. Fortunately, they're after Tyler goes to sleep, so it'll be an easy job, but it's still worth noting. First babysitting job, yowza. We got a recommendation from someone at work (a neice) and she will be coming over Monday evening to...well, essentially just make sure the house doesn't catch fire. A neighbor will be coming by for the Wednesday evening game. But in both cases, Tyler should sleep right through the event. Well, at least that's the hope. If he doesn't...well, that's what babysitters are for.

I, on the other hand, am doing important work stuff. The transition from the R&D group to the Test group has been a pretty fantastic one. I've already gotten a spot award and am sitting in on interviews and getting commended for doing good stuff. I even get to travel for test already. Neat, eh? We've been testing our software re: its interface with some other software, and are pretty confident in our ability to go out there and demonstrate our stuff working as intended. We have, in fact, been mostly finding bugs with their software. And also with the hardware we're using to test everything. I'm getting pretty good at reading debug logs and am slowly improving at Linux at the same time. People appreciate what I'm doing, and I've got interesting stuff to do. Exactly what I was looking for.

I got a new toy for myself a few weeks ago. An Ipad! I thought it was way too expensive, but most high-end tablets sell for around the same $$$, and the smooth, pretty display really sold me. So now I finally get to play a lot of those Ipad-only games that I've been reading about for so long. It's nice. I'm also going to attempt to travel without a laptop for the first time in quite a while, just bringing the new tablet with me. Considering I'm pretty much only going to be using it for goofing-off purposes, I think it will handle just fine.

Speaking of games, I've been spending less and less time playing games on the TV, and more time playing them on my laptop or on the tablet. The game that's been taking up residence in the Xbox is actually our exercise game. Good for a workout, but in addition to my usual Judo, I've actually been taking out my bike for a spin in the evenings (I wear one of those glowy vests and have lights and stuff, so I'm safe.) I definitely need to hit up Uncle Matt for biking tips.

Did you guys catch the Olympics? We watched the opening ceremony (until we got tired and went to bed) and have been having it on and off as the mood strikes us. It's probably the most TV Tyler has ever seen. I'm not sure he has any idea what it is showing, unless he's been watching Water Polo at day care.

Additions to Tyler's Dictionary:

Bapple: Apple

Wa-Wa: Water

Moo: Answer to “What does a cow say?”

Baa: Answer to “What does a a sheep say?”

Bee-Bee-Bee-Bee: This is actually the sound Daddy makes when tickling Tyler with his face.

Tuck: Stuck. For things that don't move.

He doesn't always remember the right word for any given situation: you often have to remind him what word to use, but the words are all in there. Very cute.

We also went to watch mommy play ice hockey yesterday. Tyler was very intrigued by the game, though he kept losing track of which one Mommy was. Whenever she skated over to give him a smile in between plays, though, he would get really excited. The rest of the time was spent running around the outside of the rink, watching the Zamboni and doing his other new favorite activity: spinning around in a circle until he falls over. He nearly had to sub in for their center: they were short a lot of players, but they managed to scrape together enough players to form a couple of lines and won their game. Yay!

I'll try to write updates from Charleston if I have time.

-N

The house is empty....

22 years ago we bought the Glacier Highway House from a family that had a second home in Arizona which they were planning to make their full-time residence. The mother had MS, Dad was well retired in his 70's, and their family gone. They decided to leave everything behind as part of the sale. We were a young, just out of the military family and could use lots of help filling the big space. None of our furnishings were much to speak of, so we were delighted to settle into their shadow and slowly convert the place to our own. We still have some of the things they left behind, never having completely removed their presence from the home. The point is, the house has never been empty in our memory. It is now. The crew of locust-like movers and packers stripped the place to the walls, wrapped it, boxed it, and packed it away, a relatively modest 10,000 pounds that now sits in storage at the World Wide Movers warehouse near the Empire Building. The house looks both bigger and smaller to me. Empty and a bit forlorn actually. You see all the little dings I always meant to fix up but really didn't notice in the background of daily living. It echoes a bit. I know I sound a bit maudlin in leaving it but I'm actually quite relieved. Selling the house was a big step in being able to move on. We are more than ready to say goodbye to snow removal, excited to begin a visit to family without a thousand dollar minimum plane ticket to start, thrilled to think we will be in perhaps the same area code with many of our most beloved family. But just for a bit, there is the twinge of memory for all that made our family life special on the water, in Alaska, in that house, now all put away for the next step in our lives.

Week in Pittsburgh

Quick update from the road.  Wade and Jessi had a beautiful wedding in Farmville, VI, with close friends and family coming in from all corners.  I've been in Pittsburgh for the following week, working and catching up with old friends.  It's been a little hard to keep up the pace of work that I have at home with fun distractions like meeting friends for lunch, but I'm glad I chose to make this a working trip because it means I can spend more time here.

My manuscript (the bulk of my graduate work has been unpublished so far) was submitted, and FINALLY accepted.  This is the last thing that needed to be finished out from my time in graduate school.  There is still some discussion of other brilliant ideas we might toy with later, but getting that paper published will actually make by CV look like I am a scientist again. 

But the real reason I opted to come at this time was for my labmate and classmate Karen's defense.  That happened yesterday.  She was very poised, and gave a very thoughtful, scholarly seminar.  Her defense took hours, but was very friendly.  She emerged as a doctor, and the lab swept into action to make a big departmental party.  It was perhaps not quite as amazing as the party I had, but we are all holding back since she is hosting a party this afternoon.  There is going to be inflatable jousting.  It should be fantastic.