I suppose I should write one of these, too

I had to go back to my previous entry in order to figure out what has been going on since I last wrote. I know it's been a while, but I'm busy, usually either working, taking care of a baby, or resting to recharge my battery to do one of those things again.

So the cats first. They've gotten over their fear of each other and the house is much improved. I couldn't tell you if there is one alpha cat between the two of them. I've seen them both at the top of the cat condo. I've seen them both chasing the other one around, though it does look like most of the time Nagano is the one in charge of deciding when it is 'run around like a maniac' time. They mostly eat out of their own dishes...mostly. And they have even occasionally been nice to each other.

Gizmo is a great cat. I'm really pleased with him. For starters, he seems to have, mostly, lost the habit of trying to wake me up in the middle of the night with head bonks. He mostly just finds a nice spot under my armpit and curls up there. For some reason, whenever we're in the bathroom he decides he desperately needs attention like right then, and whenever he does he's astoundingly vocal about it. He likes it when I pick him up and let him nuzzle my face, as well as being a fan of good, hearty haunch scratches and even the occasional thumping. He's very good with Tyler and a sweetie all around. I'm glad he's mine.

Anyway, Tyler. His walking progress has really taken a good turn, recently. We went to a birthday party for one of Tyler's school-mates. Her third birthday. Very mature. Anyway, there were a lot of kids there of all sorts of ages, and Tyler, evidently, got very inspired by all the kids running around and doing things with their feet. Ever since he's been really interested in walking . He can cover a lot more distance on his own, for once, walking from the living room all the way over into the library sometimes. And more than that, he seems to be using walking to cover ground, rather than crawling everywhere. He's definitely more of a toddler than a baby at this point. Still cute, though.

More teeth are coming in, too. He's been a little fussy the past few days and I daresay we figured out why this morning when Jess had me flip him over so we could check his top gums for new teeth, and there was a new one already through. The one on his left side is through, the one on the right side is on his way. He's had some fussy times but for the most part has been weathering the trials like a champ. Still sleeps all night. What a trooper.

He's also down to just one nap a day. Not on his own, we've been trying it out for him. You see, once you hit 1 year you become eligible to move up to the toddler class, but you have to be able to do certain things, they don't just toss you over the fence on your first birthday. One of the big ones is be able to sleep in a cot and only take one nap. So we had the day care try it out for us, and they've been putting him to sleep at around noon, completely exhausted, (seriously, like a wet noodle) and he's been taking good, long 2 hour naps. Course, he does tend to sleep on the drive home with us too, but that's allowed. We kept it going over the weekend, and even on a day last week when he had to stay home sick with a fever. Of course, I had to stay home sick that day too, and Jess was kind enough to relieve me at about noon from my babysitting duty so I could take, no like, a 4 hour nap in the middle of the day. I can see why he likes it so much.

Tyler's birthday is this weekend! A fairly low-key affair, all told. We'll invite a bunch of people over, have some cake and ice cream, let Tyler open some presents, if he feels like it, and then allow a bunch of other kids to play with his toys. Oh, and also Jessie's mom and sister and nephews will be coming to visit. Such fun! I'm looking forward to letting him make a gigantic mess out of some cake.

Cooking! Nothing impressive, mind, but we have managed to clear out most of our pre-made casserole dinners from our freezer, so I took it upon myself to stock us up this weekend. I made double-batches of three different casseroles on sunday and froze the lot. I'm not actually sure how any of them will fare in the freezer, but they all seemed pretty tasty when I sampled them before they went in. I can send you guys recipes, if you want.

Other than that, it's been a lot of video games and the occasional spot of music production. I am, however, considering shaving my facial hair in the interest of looking a bit younger. I'm all old and everything, and while the facial hair is nice and dignified, inceasing the perception of my age really isn't a boon anymore. I'm a dad. I'm old, you see.

-N

Dad was here!

Living in WA is great.  Other people want to come here too, so you get to see them sometimes.  It's ideal.

Dad came down for some CEUs, and although we didn't get to hang around a lot (something about work still to do at the house- who is excited for THAT to be done??), we grabbed some extra hugs and had the fanciest steak house dinner I've ever had.  I enjoyed the pants off my salmon, and all the sides where amazing.  Lobster Mashed potatoes?  Those big roasty mushrooms? Creamed Spinach, that really should have been called creamed bacon with some leaves in it? Oh yeah- we were living large.  WE had so much food that we actually got a box for the SPARE bread pudding.  Yes, you read that correctly, Dad couldn't finish his bread pudding, so now I will.  Sometimes I worry my family must think I am starving/sub-par in the kitchen.  I will work on dissuading you all of this when I feel at leisure to commit myself to some time in there.  In the meantime, yes, I will eat ALL the leftovers.

And that was really nice, because otherwise it was a kinda bad week.  I got a parking ticket at my internship, and we had a legal issue at work that required me to stay late.  Ahem.  And work Saturday.  And I still didn't get a job offer for my dream job.  So it was really nice to see my Dad and talk to him about MRI data and hear about the updates to his retirement schedule (just another year or 2, people!) and get some extra hugs.

I don't have time to be sick!

Yesterday started out a bit rough, and I realized by the time I was meeting with our regional VP to talk about how to get promoted (more on this in a moment) it wasn't just a lack of coffee and some sore muscles.  That sleepy, chilly, achey and stupid feeling was definitely a fever settling in.  Oh arg.  The weird thing about working a 4 hour shift is it hardly makes it seem worth calling off.  Esp after I'd just had this meeting and my shift was half over.

Yeah, so this meeting.  The guy who hired me is the regional VP of something... he is my manager's boss's boss.  He's a nice guy, and he is totally tickled to have brought a Ph.D. into the organization, and he is also pretty sympathetic that I didn't pursue that to be a teller.  (He is kind of in denial that I am 100% married to a career in banking.)  So we were talking about whether I should apply for the Fast Track program to take some classes to be a relationship manager, basically get some experience with sales and some of the back end stuff so that if/when a position opens up at a manager level, I could move into it.  He is pretty confident this can work for me, even though I haven't finished with my on-boarding (ie. I am not a very good teller yet).  I tried to get a feel for whether this would be useful for me if I didn't want to be in a sales position, and I got a sort of "product knowledge is useful" type of answer.  I read that as 'not a waste of time,' and I'd rather get paid to be trained then to actually do my job, if they are cool with it.  We'll see where that goes.  I'm really going to feel bad if I get a job offer to go be a scientist somewhere though.

A little more on that conflict: I'd really like to be a scientist, but I can't deny that it is out of my control.  It seems to be easy to be a banker, and at this stage, I could use some "easy" to give me confidence for the other things I've got going on.  But I can't figure out how I am going to love banking, which is why the search for a scientist job continues.  Today I found a job in Operations for a person who is called a "Scientist" but actually facilitates the development and manufacturing process.  Cool, right?

In other news, I spent today on the couch, snoozing, listening to Pandora and working on some editing contracts.  I've got 2 due Friday, one Monday.  One is for 320 yuan, and I finished that up this afternoon.  The other two are more long term (legit?) projects that have been ongoing.  But I'm impressed that just a couple hours of contract work makes my week suddenly feel slammed (I'm sick, remember). 

Scenes from Casa Seguin

Nothing specific to report, but I feel that recent blog entries have not really captured the weirdness that encompasses my life these days.  Without further ado:

I was looking for Matt, but he wasn't inside.  I opened the garage, figuring he was probably tinkering.  Instead, the garage door was wide open.  I called "Hello?" and in reply, a shadowing figure unicycled down the street in front of the garage.

A difference we noticed recently between PA and WA- in PA, liquor laws are such that most restaurants are BYOB, they don't have a wine list, but will give you a wine glass if you bring your own.  We never took much advantage of this, but living as we do now, near so many wineries, I was wishing we could.  We now have beer places (Black Raven, Malt and Vine etc.) that are BYOF- you can bring in outside food from anywhere to enjoy with your beers.

Matt got some parts for the unicycle.  They came with bumper stickers for Unicycle.com and Banjo.com.

For St. Patrick's Day, I spent the day job hunting, and in the evening we met some friends for Vietnamese food.  Pho reals.

Dad is coming to visit this weekend, because Seattle is a place where people actually go sometimes.  I'm pretty thrilled.

New life, full of stuff

I have been spending a lot of time going places this week.  I know I'm not objectively driving a lot, but as someone who used to have to invent excuses to leave the house, this is an exciting change.  I've started actually being a useful person at the bank (for a very forgiving definition of useful), and then I get to run off to the U district to my internship.  I'm not sure about my impressions of that yet, so I'll just save my comments on that til later.  But it does give me an excuse to be on the other side of the Lake, which opens up other possibilities.

Tuesday night I went to a networking event in South Lake Union.  This distance is not great, but the volume of road closures and detours gave me a full tour of the Seattle Center and surrounding areas.  Thursday I grabbed coffee with a guy at one of the research institutes in south lake Union (I found a better way to get there while there wasn't traffic).  And Shaoshu's job has relocated to Belltown, so now he is super into hanging out downtown.  We grabbed a fancy drink on Thursday after he moved.  Well, the drink wasn't that fancy, but the Belltown hoity-toity place we were was...

Friday, after my shift as an intern, then as a teller, I got a call from Matt saying he and Jeffrey had ridden into the U district and would I like to check out the pub they are in, or maybe bring them the bike rack?  By the time I got there the three of them (Shaoshu beat me there) had recovered their strength with nachos and the crazy cyclists decided to ride the 20 miles home.  It was totally worth it though, there were girl scouts preying on heartbroken huskies fans and selling Girl Scout Cookies, so I got an extra box of Samoas- which totally fills the gap left by the boxes I already ate.

I would be interested to know if the rest of you who have more experience with driving in Seattle can speak to my main navigation conundrum.  I am wondering if it is really essential, when moving from one place in Seattle to another, that you drive past the foot of the Space Needle?  A couple times I did that, and I figured "how fun."  But is it necessary to be there when moving from U district to Belltown?  It just seems,... corny.

Always looking for adventure

Just checked the score card for the weekend, my life is pretty good.  Friday night, we went to see The Capitol Steps performing in Bothell with Anne Cox- which was HILARIOUS.  I know them as an NPR radio show that mocks current events, musical style- and they were oh so good live.

Saturday, even though Matt had a bit of a cold, he decided to go buy a unicycle of craiglist.  We both spent a little time trying it out in the garage.  Before we started, Matt said, "do you think we need helmets?" After the first try, yeah, you should always wear a helmet on a unicycle.  It's like sitting on a surprise eject button.  Matt is progressing much quicker then me, he can pedal a couple strokes before he gets ejected.  Me? I just let go of the wall and fall off.  It's a work in progress.

After that hilarity, we decided to go for a Bike ride on the nice wide trail (path?  it's paved) near out house.  On bikes, we made it up past Nana's new home no problem.  Well, actually the problem was that Matt gave me the warm gloves, and it was raining and his hands got cold.  But on a NICE day, it would be an easy ride.  Afterwards we needed a warm up, and nothing suits better when you a frigid and soggy than Vietnamese Pho.  I was reflecting that it is always hot and muggy in Vietnam, so I can't imagine how they came up for such a perfect cure for the drizzles: hot and spicy noodle soup.  Matt's cold caught up with him a bit, so we had a long nap, which just set us up to stay up way too late watching TV until the time change.

On Sunday we had a really heroic grocery shopping trip since I am now keeping a working person schedule (even if I am not being paid for all those hours).  In addition to being a teller, my internship at the UW started.  I'm not being paid, and I'm not really sure how this will convert into a career opportunity for me, but I'm glad to be thinking about science again.  It's hard to fit it in with my mid-day teller schedule, so I am hoping my schedule at the bank will mellow out to make that easier in the next couple weeks.  Now I am "working" at various places about 30 hours a week, and filling the rest of my time driving to those places.  Knowing that my schedule was about to get hectic, we shared a hot pot dinner with some friends. 

Someday soon when the weather isn't so wet, I am going to try and get some garden action going.  We've got crocuses coming up already, which I think means it isn't too soon to decide where at my house should become a garden.  Wish me luck!

Its still Winter in Fairbanks!

I completed Connie's Christmas present this weekend by taking us on the Aurora Winter Special from Anchorage to Fairbanks where we saw the Ice Sculpture event sponsored by BP. Got in a dinner with Kelsey and Friends before the all-day train ride with an international group of Chineses students, Australian tourists and a selection of unidentified languages aboard.

Perfect weather with a rare opportunity to see Denali in complete clarity for a hundred miles. See if these pictures do some justice.

Growing Up

The various life forms we are in charge of continue to get older. Would you like to hear some stories?

Nagano and Gizmo are starting to get along better, though Nagano still gets hissy whenever Giz gets too close. 'Too close' is becoming a smaller and smaller distance, though. Gizmo had a busy day when we let him out of his room and into the house at large. He spent a full day just walking from room to room and smelling things, looking at stuff, and slowly memorizing the layout of our house. We took him in for a doctor checkup today, and he's doing just fine, but we are going to have to get them a stool sample at some point, something I'm not really looking forward to. Though considering how much time I spend managing poop in this house, it's not really much of an issue.

Tyler is getting a couple of new teeth. The bottom ones #3 and #4 are coming in. One has broken through and the other is on it's way. I'm sure you've seen the videos of him almost walking (and if you haven't, I have someone on facebook that you should be friends with) but little else has happened on that front. His walks are still pretty 'staggering' and he spends most of his time crawling for distance or using his walker. We are getting closer and closer to his birthday, and I'm most excited about watching him mash cupcake all over his face.

Next week is South By Southwest, (SXSW), at least, the music component is next week. That's the part most people think about. The less well known but still fun 'movie' and 'interactive' (read: video games) parts are happening as we speak. I'm planning to hit up the Screen Burn Arcade this weekend to hopefully check out some games pre-release. Should be fun.

Not much else to tell, but hopefully this will tide you over for a time until I do something more interesting.

-N

Gizmo

Here he is:



He's the cutest and most cuddly cat in the world. Seriously. He's big on nuzzles.



Here his is with Jess. They get along great. But then again, he gets along with everyone. Nagano is the one who is going to have to get used to the new cat, not the other way around.

Tyler's Haircut

So here's the first picture. This is Tyler after a few minutes of Sesame Street. For some reason, it didn't really like Elmo that much. Odd.



Here's Tyler during a rare quiet moment getting trimmed. Mom held on to him to keep him as calm as possible. I was in charge of documentation.



And here's the new haircut. Looking dapper, I dare say.



This one is the cutest, though. He was really tired after his trim, and didn't really enjoy himself that much. He is adorable when he fusses, though.

-N

We Have a New Cat

We stopped by the humane society on Friday with a cat carrier in tow. And this time, we said to ourselves, if we saw a cat we liked, we would take it home. We hopped into one of the cat rooms, much more well stocked with cats this time, and took a look around. There were a lot of good contenders. I was quickly drawn to a black cat high up on a perch that seemed really anxious to nuzzle my hand when I came in. There was another in the same room that was small and a little spooked, but very vocal. Not as friendly, though. The other room had a very playful off-orange guy who was chasing a toy mouse around the room and a skinny, long-haired black cat with smokey tufts behind his ears and very, very soft fur. Jess had her favorites, but I was deliberately the one in charge of picking the cat. I was excited, but a little anxious, too. Picking a cat is a big responsibility. There were a couple of kittens, too. Little chirpy ones who were the very picture of adorableness.

I ended up gravitating back to the first room, where I reached up and gently took the black cat down off his perch. He immediately started purring and giving me affectionate face-bumps. I stayed in there for a while, and he just wanted to purr and purr and get petted as much as he could. Tyler was along with us, and the cat was very patient with him and not spooked at all. He even gave Tyler a rub or two. I thought he was the nicest, most affectionate cat I had ever seen, and I wanted to take him home.

So we did! We signed the paperwork, put him in the carrier, and drove him home with a napping Tyler in the back seat. We discussed names on the drive. 'Death' seemed appropriate because he's mostly black and we're Pratchett fans, but it's an awkward cat name. We toyed with 'Grim' for a p inhile, but that's pretty awkward too. For the moment we're calling him Gizmo, after another cat I knew when I was volunteering at the humane society up in Juneau. He was also black and very, very nice. We may change our minds, though.

We set him up in our upstairs guest bedroom with all the kitty basics and I tried to sleep in there with him to make him feel welcome. Tried, I say, because the affection *does not stop*. He was giving me head bonks for most of the night, in between nuzzling up and sleeping in my armpit. And he does so with some serious muscle. He's about Raoul's size, and just wants nothing but love and cuddles as much as you can give. He's an absolute sweetie-pie, and I couldn't be happier that he's ours.

In other news, Jess didn't get much sleep last night either. Tyler was having some sort of coughing and heaving problem, and he spit up in his bed a couple of times. I helped out, changing sheets, but he kept going back to sleep, he just needed some assurances in between episodes. Luckily, we all slept in this morning. I got up at 9 and I was the first one up. I wasn't sure where Jess was, but it turns out she had camped out in Tyler's room for some Zs. They're both napping now.

We went out and got some random shopping done, picking up some stuff for tiny house repairs and some more clothes for Tyler. But we also took Tyler out for his first haircut. The place was pretty cool, and they let you pick what TV you want to use to distract your kid (or video games! I was jealous.) We picked Sesame street, which was briefly interesting but before too long, Tyler started putting on his scared face. Did not like! He got a little grumpy while trying to cut his hair, but we distracted him by playing a movie of me tickling him on my cell phone. Worked quite well, and he's looking much less shaggy now.

So clearly I owe you guys some pictures of the new cat and Tyler's haircut, but I have to connect a few different cameras for that. So I'll do that later. I promise both are really cute, though. Really cute.

-N

A job that isn't a career

I started working this week.  Nice.  I'm a part time teller at Key Bank, which gives me a chance to practice dressing like an adult, re-infuses a little cash into the budget and reduces that stench of unemployed desperation.  Although, if we are going to be honest, I have like 3 jobs- 5 if you count those that doesn't pay me in non-negotiable currency (see, I am learning so much at the bank!).  My coworkers are a lot less buttoned up then I was afraid of, and I'm doing a decent job at learning.  There is something deeply intimidating about taking someone's cash off their hands for them, so I am just training for the next couple weeks.  I did let someone into their safe deposit box today, though.

But, let's be for reals, I took this job so I could find a better job.  While I'm there for 20 hours, I don't mind chatting with them about training for long term promotion, but when I am not there I am doing contract work and looking for a job that suits me better.  Because my new coworkers laughed when they heard I had a Ph.D.  I met with an engineer this evening to talk about transitioning into bioengineering.  I'm trying to work my schedule around my internship at the UW.  I've got another meeting tomorrow to talk about more volunteer opportunities.  I'm not giving up on this yet.  But I do need a couple more blouses and probably a grey blazer to make this work in the long term (I like blazers- they have pockets).

Matt and I are going camping this weekend not far from Mt Vernon.  We are going with his bestie who was born on the leap year, and just celebrated his eight birthday.  We had pizza AND pie on Wednesday- much like the Olympics, waiting 4 years makes you want to get it right.