My new car: A saga

In my current job, I have a pretty long commute that is mostly through traffic. I do what I can to avoid the worst of the traffic, but the fact of the matter is I usually spend a couple hours every week inching my way home on a ribbon of pavement with thousands of other commuters. My Prism gets decent fuel economy, but it does not have AC, so in the summer I was acutely aware of how much exhaust all these cars are dumping into the air. Bleck.

I had basically made up my mind to get an electric car next, and over the holidays we had enough time to make those shopping decisions (and by we, I mean Matt). He had settled on a Chevy Spark EV- a small hatchback electric. One little wrinkle, it isn't sold in WA. But it is sold in Oregon. After a bit more research we learn we cant just go down there and buy a new one, but we can buy a used one.

I want to tell this story, but its a bit complicated and quite drawn out, so I will try to fit it to a timeline for you. Its a little more fun if you try to imagine a laugh track being played along with it.

Dec 25: We celebrate Xmas with Betty. We tell her we might spend a few days in Portland car shopping.
Dec 26: Return home.
Dec 27: Water pressure drops- main line is leaking int he yard. We turn off water, and dig a hole to find the leak.
Dec 28: We schedule a plumber. They fail to show up. Matt watches some YouTube videos and fixes it himself.
Dec 29: Plumber comes and tells us to fill in the hole. Not to worry about the line until it gives us serious problems. (This is foreshadowing.)
Dec 31: Matt finds a used Spark online, contacts a dealer and agrees to buy it if they will ship it. They agree to overnight us the papers to make the sale final.

Jan 2: No papers in sight, but we go to Mt Rainier for the weekend. We go snowshoeing and stay at a lodge in the park. It is wonderful. The lodge has a shared shower facility; we opt to shower when we get home.
Jan 3: We go snowshoeing, and head home, fantasizing about warm showers. At home, there is a note from the city on our door: We shut of your water, it was leaking and freezing in the street. Please call the utility. (For the record, no papers from the auto dealer. Also, different leak than the one Matt fixed.)
Jan 4: Plumbers come to give us estimates on replacing the mainline. We connect a hose to the neighbors house to run water. The plumber is scheduled for a week out
Jan 6: Matt calls dealer to ask about missing paper work. They agree to over night it right away.
Jan 7: I get a ticket for expired tabs on the Prism. Which I would not be driving if my new car had arrived.

Jan 9: Paper work arrives, post marked Jan 8. We sign and return it, expecting it to arrive Jan 11.
Jan 10: Matt calls dealer. Loan goes through (Matt will call the dealer every day this week to ask various versions of whats the hold up?) The plumber comes to start the replacement process. He goes home sick
Jan 11: Replacement plumber comes to finish the job. Water is turned back on. Faucets no longer smell like hose.

Jan 14: Shipment of the car is scheduled.

Jan 16: I fly to Austin for a week. Later that afternoon, the car arrives. The dealer has not included temporary plates. Matt calls the dealer. Again.

Jan 20: Temporary plates arrive. Real plates should arrive in ~3 weeks if the dealer has done this properly. (Not real confident that this is the case.) Matt can legally test drive the car. The car we agreed to buy Dec 29.

Jan 25: I take the car for its first commute. I get rear ended on the way home. *rimshot*

Now at this point, the claim on the accident AND the actual permanent  plates are still outstanding, but we are hoping the worst is behind us. A friend suggested I needed to make amends to the old car, to clean up my car Karma and maybe make things right there.

Home ownership

Matt and I have been working on some next level adulthood lately. My commute is bad enough to motivate me to get into the office at 6:30 most mornings, which means we have a habit of early bedtimes and quiet evenings. Today I decided to try to ride my bike (and bus), which took a little longer than usual. I was trying to tell Matt the tragicomic story of my commute...
...So when the bus finally DID show up, I got my bike wedged the wrong way into the bike rack and the bus driver had to get out to help me...
But there are all these bugs flying around. Ick. Big, fat, stupid bugs. That sorta look like termites. Im still committed to this story, ...
...When I finally got the garage door open, I realized that the bike cave has a number combo lock, which I dont remember...
But Matt has moved into responsible homeowner mode, and he is walking around the porch, killing bugs, and trying to guess where they are coming from. It was hard to end on a triumphant note, but I forged ahead.
...So I realized there is another bus I can take from the freeway stop I am at, to the freeway stop close to the house, so I just got on the next bus to show up, and pedaled another mile home...
During my lame story about how I can ride a bike, Matt uncovered a burgeoning hornet next, and a Raccoon Latrine. One of two latrines he found, in fact.

Matt was feeling domestic, and wanted to deal with these things right away, and I was feeling skeeved out, so I did the research (and boiled the water), and he did the action. You can picture me shouting out the window to him: Honey, its round worm you have to be careful of. Put on some boots and a mask.

The good news is that the first bugs are not termites, but flying ants. Yes, that passes for good news here.

Tiny Little Home Projects

This weekend was a pretty abysmal downpour, and since none of our friends were up for much adventure, we somehow found ourselves making a list of things to get from the hardware store. I should have known that "stuff we got at the hardware store" would quickly convert into "projects that Matt finished." Nothing major, nothing you could get a bid for, or would go to a homeshow about, or would even register at Mom and Dad's house as an update. But it's kinda a big deal at our house.

Here, I present the finished products. (Note, I did help a bit, but some of this stuff really only needs one motivated pair of hands.)

Project 1: Our bathroom sink is crowded.

 We have nice enough bathroom in the master bedroom, the lights and mirrors (both over the sink and on the closet door behind) make it bright in there. But the big mirror behind the sink is just that. Just a mirror, no medicine cabinet.

Fig 1. Bathroom Before picture. Notice the stuff on the counter, and the lame two handled sink.

Sure, there is places for bathroom stuff in the closet behind there, but I don't like digging in the closet everytime I put lotion on my face. Or brush my teeth. Or need an antacid. Or most anything, according to figure 1, since I leave all that stuff out on the counter.

Ever the engineer, Matt suggested we install a medicine cabinet. We went back and forth on what that might require, and finally landed on a  small cabinet that would mount above the outlets (fig 2). It was pretty easy to install, and even easier to fill up.

Project 2: Two handled sinks make temperature control annoying.

We actually have two major needs for our bathroom sink.
1) Typical hand/face/teeth washing behavoir.
2) Leaving a slow drip for the cat to drink from.

Our two handle sink was lame at both. It's a major event to get the temprature right with the two handles. And the handles were wobbly, which made adjusting to a drip a hassle, both for the human adjusting and the feline anxiously waiting a drink.

Fig 2. Sitting beneath a glamorous medicine cabinet, the cat waits impatiently for a drink from the new faucet.

The solution was a new, single handled faucet. In brushed nickel, since that shows fewer smudges. The cat is reasonably impressed.

Project 3: This kitchen outlet is hideous.

We had rationalized that this outlet, and the GIANT security box that sat next to it, were part of the home security system, which necessitated some rewiring (fig 3). However, that has been removed, and let's be honest, what it left is pretty shoddy. I was never going to think much of it, but that's because I don't relish making things tidy (especially if that thing is the kitchen, apparently. I can't change who I am.)

Fig 3. Probably not live wires sticking out of this kitchen outlet. Right?

And let's just discuss that motion detector switch- it should turn on the light (Project 4) in the kitchen. When left on auto, it sometimes turns on the middle of the night to notify us that the cat is on the counter, but otherwise fails to turn on when we are flailing in the dark trying to walk across the kitchen without tripping on the above cat. Instead, Matt installed a new switch, a new outlet, and safely tucked away the remaining electrical mysteries. He also covered the gaping hole that was left by the security system.

Fig 4. A tidy outlet and switch combo with hardly any possibility of electrocution.

Project 4: This kitchen light is so terrible we never use it.

Partly because of the weirdness of the outlet, partly because the other lights in the kitchen are sufficient, and mostly because this canister light just was sucky, we never used it. Matt managed to get it arranged to direct light in relevant places, but it didn't hold that position well, so the canisters would sometimes focus beams of light in the cabinet.

Fig 5. The terrible canister light balanced so that it projects light two directions. Not quite the directions you'd want, but near as it gets. Also note the gaping hole below the counter, resolved in Project 3.

It's also pretty dated looking. It took a little time to find a light arrangement that we thought would improve this space. We ended up with a track-ish light (each bulb can be redirected, but the distance between them is set). These lights highlight the one workspace that isn't adequately illuminated by the other box fluorescent. And it doesn't look dated. And with the new switch, I will probably actually use it.

Fig 6. Vastly superior kitchen light, in a well lit kitchen.

 Matt has once again proven himself to be a handy guy around the house. The faucet install included a new drain plunger, which escalated to replacing other janky looking gaskets to prevent future leaks. When I asked him where he learned about plumbing, he said, "Learned about plumbing? It's not rocket science..." Putting tubes together so they don't leak seems pretty magical to me. You can assume his attitude about electrics is similar.

The bonus of these projects (to him) is that he got a new set of drill bits, and revealed that he needs a new electric drill. (His chuck is maybe bent?) I (or Dad) can get this for his next gift exchange holiday. I'm confident leaving this note here, since he never reads the blog.

Also, we got our first postcard from Japan! Remember back when Dad didn't get to see the Seahwaks win the Superbowl? That's when he sent us a card from Mt Fuji.

Home Projects

When you move into a house, people seem super interested in "what you are going to do to the place?" We are pretty pumped about the fact that the house doesn't really need anything.  We painted some walls for esthetic reasons.  But nothing is breaking.

However, the out side parts of the house are going to need some help. There are some big, established plants around, which I am excited to watch transform into whatever the turn into.  Will that tree out the kitchen window blossom?  I'm starting to see some tiny buds on things, which will be exciting as the spring develops.  But, I don't see any sign of bulbs, so I am loking forward to putting those in.

I'm also looking forward to adding a raised bed to the back for veggies.  I'm not really sure how that works though, so I need to learn about it.  I also am looking forward to having a worm bin, so I should probably get that build too.  Dad doesn't seem to understand my interest in using reclaimed lumber for these projects. Sure, it is harder to find than a tree currently standing in the woods, but I like the idea of giving a second life to lumber, and garden projects can be forgiving in their dimensions.

I'm also collecting idea for brainlessly easy things to cultivate in the Seattle summer.  I'm thinking peas/beans and some herbs.  If this goes well, we can try more in the future.  This is just the first little baby step in transforming the yard though.

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

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.  

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  

Weird and great day!

Weird part first:  I had an "informational interview" today at a small biopharma place.  That's in quotes because I intended to find out more about this company, but ended up answering a tirade of really weird questions that started with "Tell me your life story." Moved to, "Are you smart?  How do you know, is it because things were always easy for you, or because you have done hard things?" well past, "Are you good in the lab?  Do you love it?  Did you love grad school?" and ended abruptly at, "Well, I wouldn't give you a job.  You don't have any experience.  But you've got something.  I like that."  Nifty.  A story perhaps best left for the other blog- but it is always nice to confirm that I have more personality than "the walking dead," as this CSO put it. However, I still have lots of questions about that company.

Great part: Nana's house sold!  And closed!  And it's done.  Nice!  We celebrated by going to Tandem- which would be my new favorite restaurant even if it weren't run by my cousins.  Seriously, that food is crazy good, and Nana's niece is the hostess.  It's technically a wine and cheese bar, but you'd be a fool not to eat the halibut or the crab cakes or cheesecake.  They get as much local and organic as possible, grow at lot at their own Bothell home(!), and send your to-go box home on a plate from the kitchen.  So you have to come back.  Like you'd protest. 

And by way of announcement, we are going to Concrete to visit Betty for the weekend.  We are taking Nana.  We are told that there are even MORE hummingbirds, if that is possible.  We are also going to try to drive across the pass to Winthrop, which was the home-base of the Froggy 5*, Nana's life long college and camping friends.  None of them live there now, but it's cool to visit old stomping grounds.  The trip is to celebrate Matt getting a day off from truck driving, and the approximate anniversary of our being together for TEN YEARS.  Or a VERY LONG TIME.  I think we must be old because our best idea for how to celebrate was to spend time with our family.  Heh.

*Nana story.  Heard it?

More reasons it's awesome Nana lives here

1) Since Nana lives here, sometimes Mom and Dad wanna 'just come by for the weekend.'  They never did this when I lived in Pittsburgh.
2) Since I get to see her all the time, I get to hear Nana stories.  It's refreshing to be reminded that I come from a long line of women who work really hard, and manage to be successful even while juggling many needs.  Last night Nana was telling me about how her Mom had made her and her sister a little play house, complete with furniture, at their home in Wyoming.  And that she always made all the cabinets, clothes and food for the house.  Yeah, my people are handy and industrious!
3) Nana provides great excuses to see other people I want to see.  Party with the family next weekend!
4) Nana does stuff I only imagine doing, so it's like a preview to adulthood.  She is selling her house.  "Buying/selling a home" is no no longer on the list of things I know nothing about.  I've been a privileged observer to the proceedings of offers, negotiation, financing factors etc.  I'm looking forward to seeing how the various inspection/assessments play out, but the theme seems to be "Lots of Paperwork."  Who knew?  (oh, and in case you didn't know, Nana has accepted an offer on her house from a young family, and everyone feels good about it.)

I expect to be adding to this list quite a lot in the near future.  In other news, I am spending the day catching up on PM homework.  I've got like a hundred pages of reading to do before Monday, but considering how... um,... not dense it is, this will be no big.  It's weird to go into a field that is meant to describe an abstraction, I keep skimming past the 'vague stuff' only to realize that's the entire discipline.  It makes me wish I were taking the class in combination with having some big project.  Perhaps I'll convert my job hunt to a Project- and then manage the heck out of it.

NON-STOP ACTION

I like to be busy.  Well, not busy, but I'd rather have my time accounted for then to have nothing to do- and that sometimes means I overfill by time, but I'm happier that way.  I may have gotten ahead of myself this week, but I'd rather hardly have time to sit down then to be stuck at home.

I got a project at my internship with an imminent deadline, which gave me something to work towards.  I've been trying to stay on top of the job hunt, and have had some more phone calls and meetings crammed in between other things.  I started taking a project management course at the community college, it probably won't be hard, but there is a lot of reading I ought to do to get my money's worth. 

And then I got sucked into some extra hours at the bank as a result of something we aren't supposed to talk about, but we are calling "the Russian mobster incident."  I used to think that there were some jobs where there was so little responsibility that you could NEVER have a bad day.  I take it back.  Also, I don't think banking is my calling.

And Nana got an offer on her house!  This is great news for her, and a sweet primer for me a on the paper-work involved in buying/selling a house.  (hint: a lot).  Someday, when we are DINKs, we'll get to put all this practical knowledge to use.  Actually, this was double awesome because having Nana over to talk about counter-offers provided me the motivation to actually cook something for the first time in ages. 

Both of the professional societies I am a board member for had meetings this week, and I got a new writing contract that will take a couple weeks.  Busy-ness is just part of my future.

Matt's CDL class is keeping him very busy, but hopefully this weekend they'll get to shift gears (literally, they've driven miles in the parking lot in first gear).  We are hoping to go see Tulips again this weekend, so I'm going to be mad productive until then so I can enjoy a few unhectic hours with my family.

I am visiting Nana=Awesome

Boohoo, woe is me.  I don't have a job so the only thing I have to fill my time with is visiting my family and fantastic adventures.  Pity me.

This week, the pity party is in Spokane, where Nana and I are gearing up for the Christmas season, for her visit to Seattle and her pending move out of the house.  She is in really good spirits about a move (although having a Christmas tree up has that affect on most of us).  We've been talking about it a lot, what the possibilities are, what she hopes for, how it all might work. It's actually kind of exciting, although there is a lot of legwork remaining to be done.  But I keep trying to tell Nana I want her to move across the mountains for selfish reasons: because I want to hang out with her more.  I might escalate this argument to saying aggregation the family will have a more magnetic draw on great-grandbabies from TX, if you catch my drift.

And Nana has been working very consistently on paring down the house.  I am taking a suitcase full of stuff back to my house this weekend.  I mention this because I know my siblings/cousins feel a little squeamish about vulturing over Nana's stuff.  But people, this is Nana- she is utterly unattached to her "mortal possessions."  This means, Noel, that if she happens to mention a book, or a table cloth, or a set of  candlesticks that you might like, that is basically it's last stop before goodwill.  There isn't a phone tree in action over these things,  and most of the the things that she thinks of as "her things" (ie: not from her Mom, or sister or grandmother), she is very happy to part with.  You can all expect, after the holidays, a box with your Christmas ornaments, and possibly childhood portraits which she is ready to part with.  But otherwise, if you wanted to help her get stuff out of her house, I think she would be grateful.  She is getting rid of it in one way or another.  My luggage from this trip has some gardening books, a wooly blanket from Wales, and the "kid's toys" that Nana has had on hand for when kids come to her house (you may remember some of these children.  I was once one of them).

Nana and I went to see a fantastic performance of a Christmas Carol last night at the Civic Theatre, which prompted us to think about the season tickets we would buy together for a West side theatre.  And we made oodles of Candy, some of which will go with us to the Raku firing later today, which is a potluck event at this studio.  We are also going in for pedicures a little later, and Saturday we are headed to My House in Kirkland for continued adventuring.

Things my Son Can Do

When last I reported to you, I mentioned that Tyler was really getting into squealing. Well he's moved past that and onto the 'raspberry' or 'zerbert', if you're a Preecs. The funny thing now is that he's doing it very deliberately now. He'll be sitting there and you'll see him get his concentrating face on, take in a deep breath, and then zerbert for a good 5 or 10 seconds, a whole sentence made out of rapidly vibrating lips. It's very impressive, and he seems to really get a kick out of it. It's definitely less haphazard than previous audio attempts. Vocals level up!

He might be teething? It's hard to say until we see a first tooth and can, therefore, attribute whatever fussiness happened over the past few days to that. He's certainly not too fussy and hasn't been losing any sleep, though he does drool a lot and likes munching on inanimate objects, especially the cloth diapers we have reserved for burp cloths. We might be seeing the early signs of something coming through the lower jaw, but as much as we are learning about Tyler, we still don't know what teething gums look like yet, and he's squirmy enough that he doesn't often let us really get a good look at his mouth. He's usually too busy trying to get it clamped around something. Oh, and yesterday when he was fussing before being put down for bed, I walked up and put my finger in his mouth for him to munch on. It fills up his mouth, so he just makes a 'mmm-mmm' sound while he's doing it, but I've discovered that if I open up his mouth with my finger a bit, he goes from 'mmm' to 'aaah'. So I've given Jessie a preview of what it's going to sound like when Tyler starts saying 'Mama.' She was quite enchanted.

In sports news, He's definitely gotten stronger. He gets a lot of tummy time and can push his head up and his chest clear off the ground. Tiny baby pushups! So cute. He's clearly trying to figure out how this whole 'crawling' thing is supposed to work, but at the moment, all he can do is push himself up, and then lift his arms and head and legs off the ground and balance on his tummy. It looks like hard work even to me! He doesn't get too far, but it lets him turn a little bit, and it's gotta be fantastic exercise. It's much more deliberate, too. It's not the random flailing of a newborn anymore, he's trying things out and attempting to get things done. Movement level up!

I know proper crawling doesn't happen for a while yet (month 9, reportedly), but any excuse to get things done. This past weekend we had a massive to-do list that Jess and I tackled as a team. We went to Ikea to get some doors for the entertainment center to keep inquisitive hands off the flashing lights, then went to Costco and got a bunch of food and the baby store and got some baby-proofing gear. So far I've just put baby locks on the area below the sink and the liquor cabinet (mostly due to glass, not alcoholism). We also put some foam on the stone trim of the fireplace (low, hard, and jaggy, a rough combination) and also on the coffee table by his play place. I also fixed a broken cabinet drawer (that was a pain), did the laundry and the dishes, vacuumed, mopped, moved the changing station downstairs, and any number of other odds and ends. Jess cooked several frozen dinners, cooked up cookies, refilled the hummingbird feeder, and took care of Tyler. We destroyed that to-do list, let me tell you.

And even with all of that, we managed to go out to a party on Saturday, and we even brought Tyler along. Some of Jessie's hockey team was meeting up for food and fun times. We brought Tyler along to show him off. He was a perfect gentleman the whole time, being cute and quiet and letting strangers hold him and even flashing several of his winning smiles for the ladies. We let him stay up past his bedtime, which meant it was a little harder getting him to sleep that night, but on the plus side, his morning nap was three hours long the next morning, so he caught up.

We see Tyler in the morning before we leave, getting him ready for the morning wake-up he'll have to do when he goes off to day care, and it lets Jessie see him in the morning which puts her in a much better mood for the day. Grandma has been doing a fine job taking care of him, and she's even been writing down his schedule so we can better train the Preecs Family Day Care Squad when they come to visit. I'm planning to take off Mondays when new people are in town just to help people get used to Tyler and help Tyler get used to people. We know all the tricks, but that's mostly because we where there when the tricks got invented.

We read to Tyler a lot, and we have A-B-C flash cards we show to him, even though it's way to early for him to worry about learning most of that stuff. I kind of like the idea that we teach him stuff too early. It gives us more to do with him and who knows, maybe he'll be the earliest-reading baby of all time. It can't hurt to try.

-N

Tyler Growing Up, still

The benchmarks keep coming. Tyler has started rolling from his back onto his stomach, though it's pretty rare. The most common place to see this phenomenon is actually when he is in bed. We put him down in some random position and he kicks and squirms and shakes so much that when we come by to pick him up he's usually facing a completely different way and is occasionally on his stomach. We got him from a nap this afternoon and watched him scrabble and grab all over the bed. I wonder what he was dreaming of. He was in a bad mood afterwards, though, so it might have been a bad dream. We picked him up and calmed him down, though, which always makes you feel like something of a superhero.

We've also started to get a lot more sounds out of him. I've had entire conversations with him that consist of nothing but squeals. I'm not sure what information he thinks he's conveying, but hey definitely enjoys the interaction. There's often a subtle but critical transitions between squeals of delight and the early signs of crying, though, so it pays to pay attention.

Tyler is starting to interact with the cats, too. We mostly just supervise and let Tyler feel their soft fur, which he really seems to enjoy, even if it is clear that what he really wants to do it grab them and stuff them in his mouth. Anyway, the cats are starting to like it too. When they're nice to Tyler, they get treats; an arrangement they're quite happy to support.

We had a gaggle of family visiting this weekend. Still do, actually. Jessie's grandmother is here with us for most of a week. She's been as entranced as anyone by his charms and cuteness, even though he is great grandson number 10. And she also has number 11 already. Clearly he is the cutest one, though. So since she was here, some near-ish-by family dropped by and spent the night last night. Good thing we have a big house. I'd have to bust out the family tree to be absolutely sure how they are related, but let's just call them an Aunt, a Cousin, and a Second-Cousin and just call it done. The second-cousin was 10, and it was nice to see her interacting with Tyler. She and he got along really well, and she even went out running with us, which was really nice. Made me feel like a nice, supporting influence. Getting ready for when I get to do stuff like that with Tyler. Anyway, we went out to dinner with everyone, chatted a lot, and generally had a really nice time.

Then I've been playing video games all day today. And if you haven't noticed, and you care about video games, today is the final day of the steam summer sale. You can pick up a bevy of games for very, very low prices. Jump on that if you like. And then add me to your friend list. Considering all the people I know, I have a surprisingly small number of actual friends to play video games with. Come on, Nana, let's go play some Grand Theft Auto!

July 4 came and went with little fanfare, not the least of which because we've been seriously drought-cursed for a while and everything is far to dry for amateurs to be setting off fireworks. Probably not a bad call. It's looking like a short but intense bout of rain might be on the horizon, which would be great for checking to make sure our roof is fixed. Last time we got a burst of rain we discovered a leak over our breakfast nook. We had someone come by earlier this week to try and repair it, and they re-did the layout of some of the tiles and got rid of some rusty nails and improved the sealant. I would like some good rain just to see if it worked. It's been dry enough, though, that whatever water got in there has almost certainly dried out completely.

Man, pictures. I need to sort through some, but we had the four-generations come through on Jessie's side of the family and so we had a photographer drop by last Saturday and get some great photos. We'll share them soon, I hope. Our new, sexy camera has been getting an occasional workout as well. It takes a whole lot of pictures, though, and I don't always sort through them. Good way to use up a hard drive.

-N

Man, I'm tired

Yesterday I went to Judo and had a really great class. I worked with one of the black belts all class and he kept saying how good I was to work with. He was training for a big tournament he was going to in Miami and so we practiced resisting throws and then did Shiai (sparring) for a half hour straight. Heck of a workout, but I just feel burned out today. I'm not sure I can blame it all on the exercise, but I've been tired and lacking focus all day. I even took a nap this afternoon after I got home from work. I never take naps!

We've been doing battle against the bugs in our yard for the past few weeks. I picked up some ant poison that seems to do pretty well, though in investigating my yard for red ants I stepped on a couple of nests while wearing flip-flops. No permanent damage or severe pain, but you do tend to hop pretty quickly when you discover you've made that mistake.

I've killed of a good half-dozen mounds, but now that Tyler is spending so much time on the floor playing, Jess is extra worried about keeping whatever bugs we can out of the house. I picked up some stuff that's supposed to get sprayed around the perimeter of the house and keep the bugs out, we'll see if it works. Jess gets spooked even more than usual when she sees bugs now.

Tyler has started to laugh! He likes it when you much on his belly, and he gets especially excited when mom and dad come home from work. We always get big, toothless, gummy smiles. He's still entranced by colors and faces, we went shopping today and he spent the the entire time just looking at all the stuff. Very well behaved, though. The best baby in the world.

Good news for Adventure Baby (He's #1 for adventure!) he has discovered that the white monkey has but one weakness...baby drool! He's getting increasingly good at using his hands to get stuff. Mostly it's just waving and grasping, but he's become exceptional at grabbing whatever cloth is on his chest, be it burp cloth or just shirt, with both hands and stuffing it into his mouth. We even spied him delicately reaching for Mr. Toucan today on his play yard. Progress!

He's doing great, also, at being baby-sat, behaving quite well with Grandma Swanson even though she complains all the time about how he spits up on her. I'm not sure why, though. I've had a much better track record by simply deciding that baby vomit isn't worth worrying about and just ignoring it when it gets on my shirt. Those with aversions to body fluids may want to think long and hard about this baby thing.

And finally, of course, a hearty congratulations to Dr. Seguin, the smartest new doctor in the country. Kudos and a hearty hurrah! Can't wait to catch you tomorrow on Skype!

-N

Killing all the bugs

Man, what a day! We spent much of yesterday and the day before getting ready to have the house fumigated. This meant a lot of placing food items in gas-proof bags, double-bagging them, and then putting them back in the freezer. Those things get *heavy* when full. Lots of lifting. Then Jess decided that *despite* all the assurances offered by the exterminators, that all the baby stuff needed to get out of the house, too, so that’s another many, many, boxes of stuff for me to haul around. Both cars are currently full of stuff, both food-and-baby related.

And who did all the heavy lifting? The post-pregnancy lady with a whole in her abdomen, or the big, manly dude with huge arms. Yep. Lots of lifting and carrying and packing and taking care of a baby, too.

So we spent last night at the house, and in the morning I got the last few things packed up, watered around the house, got some baby supplies together, and then Jess went off to the hotel with Tyler while I waited for the exterminators to show up (and played video games).

So right before the exterminators showed up, I got a call from Jessie. She had found bugs in the hotel room. Bugs! Two of them! One of them was in the bed. Using her degree in entomology she determined that they were deadly ticks (that is a joke Jessie doesn’t have a degree in entomology) and asked to be moved to another room. I got a call a few minutes later that despite the fact that she couldn’t find any more bugs, she was sure they were there. So right when the exterminators showed up, I gave them the go-ahead to start tenting the house and then hoofed it off to meet up with Jessie.

Using her super-mother powers and her adorable face, she convinced me to move everything out of the hotel room and back into the cars so we could go to a nicer hotel. I allowed her ridiculous paranoia *this time*, but I maintain that getting all that worked up about unidentified bugs in a room we aren’t even *in* anymore is silly, especially when I was going to have to do all the lifting again, but she has a new baby, so she has the trump card.

So we moved down the street to a more expensive but much nicer hotel, which probably still has bugs in it because bugs are everywhere but whatever, the room is nice and they gave us free dinner and breakfast, which might actually pay for itself, considering we were going to have to eat out, otherwise. Most of our stuff is still in the car (including our chocolate...oops, it’s hot out there) and I took the rest of the day off after doing all the moving and running around and general baby-wrangling. (It wasn’t that much moving, but it felt like more.)

Tomorrow I’m planning to go into work, unless we find any more bugs in this room, though I’ll have to leave early in order to help Jess move out of the hotel in the afternoon. We’re supposed to be able to go back into the house around 3:00, so we’ll see how it all works out. DIE, TERMITES, DIE!

Also, here are some pictures of my house covered with tarps and my adorable son.







-N

Damn Bugs

Just in case you haven’t heard, we got bugs. The bad kind. Here’s a primer. You got yer common wet-wood termites. They live underground, they eat wood quickly, and they are relatively easy to treat. Those are the kind you *want* to have. We don’t have those.

We have dry-wood termites. They eat wood slowly, but they are nearly impossible to treat without tenting your house. Tenting your house sucks. It’s expensive, disruptive, and expensive, as well as being expensive. We got the first quote back from some guys we’ve had to call in from out of town, because evidently the bugs we have are *so rare* that no one it town deals with them. Lucky us. Their quote is on the order of $10,000. I’m not happy.

We could rush this and try and get everything cleaned up before Tyler gets here, but it would be a real rush job, and at $10,000, I'm thinking we should get a few more quotes. Further, it's not *likely* that Jessie would go into labor *while* our house was being tented, but do you really want to take that chance?

On the plus side, it looks like the bugs have actually been nesting in our house for about five years, which means that there is some chance that the previous owners actually knew about this before they sold us the house. Oh, wait, I’m sorry, that’s not good news, that’s more bad news.

It’s been a rough few weeks.

-N

Adventures in Home Ownership: Cold Weather Edition

It’s still cold. It’s been below freezing here for three or four days, without ever getting above. And today, we even got snow. A good inch of it, and it’s still on the ground, even. It’s started to melt off the roof, and it’s thinning on the grass, but it’s definitely there. Our work even closed for the day. That’s right! Snow day in Austin! Who would have thought? It does happen, though it’s quite rare, clearly. Though with more and more climate change, I suppose I should be keeping an eye out for this craziness more and more.

Regardless, it’s been cold. Slightly warmer now, but for a while we were talking in the low teens of temperature, and a few days ago when I came back from Judo (by the way: stepping outside into freezing weather with a sweaty undershirt still clinging to your back? That’s cold) Jess told me the hot water had stopped. A little bit of research said that three things needed to happen for the hot water heater to work: electricity, gas, and water. Well the electricity was working because the display was still on, the gas was working because the heater was still going, so that just left the water. Hmm...

I went out to the water heater and played around with the valves that opened and closed the hot and cold water pipes at the inlet and outlet of the water heater. They seemed...suspiciously stiff. I couldn’t even turn them. I suspect frozen pipes, and frozen pipes aren’t good, not good at all. So I get our hair dryer (thank goodness Jessie has hair) and start warming up the brass valves until I can turn the handles. After a little coaxing, the valves turn, and I open up one of the auxiliary valves and expect to see water gushing out of it. After I get it all the way open and still no water flows through, I begin to suspect we may have more cold here than I originally expected.

It was then that I noticed that the inflow vent, the one that lets air in so that the water heater can burn the gas and then vent it out, is right next to the pipes, and the air that it has been letting in is beyond freezingly cold. They are insulated, but the air outside is down around 17 degrees, and has been blowing in this vent for a few hours. I quickly get to work ripping off the insulation and hitting the pipes with the hair drier. Before long, opening the cold water valve reveals a blast of water that kinda made a mess of everything, but wasn’t bad, other than that. I even managed to get the heater working by pulling on the pressure release valve and having it dump hot water to the outside of the house. Hooray! But still no hot water inside? Yep, turns out the hot water outflow was frozen too. We hadn’t been running our water and everything got all gunked up. It’s a good thing the new pipes were plastic, or we may have been looking at a proper set of burst pipes. Yikes.

So that was my Wednesday evening adventure, and I did feel like something of a superhero after fixing the water problem so that we didn’t have to call the plumber in the morning and also so that we didn’t have exploding pipes. I just left a little space heater in the closet with the water heater to make sure it didn’t re-freeze overnight. And yes, I woke up and checked it at 1 in the morning just to be sure that no insulation was catching on fire or anything.

Which brings us to the *friday* adventure. Thursday had been pretty cold, and the weather was calling for a chance of some snow with proper accumulation and everything. So Jess and I went to sleep at our regular hour, assuming that if it was just a light dusting we’d still be going to work in the morning. Well we woke up at 7 and I checked outside and sure enough, we had snow. And not just a light dusting, either. A full inch, which is just enough, when combined with the very, very cold weather, to turn the roads into skating rinks. Snow day! I checked my work e-mail and discovered that, yes, the office was closed for the day. If I was a little bit more clever I would have remembered to enable remote login on my computer so that I could have gotten some work done today, but there’s no changing the past. I’m doing my best, therefore, to enjoy my impromptu three day weekend. We’ve stared by making some morning waffles, which were great, even though the experimental banana filling made kind of a mess of everything.

And after our breakfast, Jess decided...she wanted to go back to sleep. She’s been out for the last two hours. I tell you, she is a *trooper* when it comes to work. I’m sure she could have easily slept an extra two or three hours for the past week, but barring a couple of times where she had to take a break from work to take a 1.5 hour nap in the car (she was *tired*) she’s been up and at work every day without complaint. I give it 33% odds Jess goes into labor *at work*.

Oh, and in the few minutes I’ve been typing this, the temperature has climbed above 32 degrees, and everything is already starting to melt. We did take some pictures, though, and I’ll put some up later.

-N

Further Adventures in Home Ownership: Hot Water Edition

Check this thing out.



We got a tankless water heater a few days ago. I was worried it was going to be a big project that involved a lot of work and changing of pipes. Turns out you can get the darn things installed the next day if you time it right. We called up some plumbers who sell and install them (lets face it, there’s no way I am *ever* messing with the gas lines in my house) and by the next day we were all set up. Jess is totally in love with having as much hot water as she wants, and it’s supposed to be more efficient, too.

We’ve run the numbers, and as it turns out it’s not *quite* a slam dunk as far as cost goes. We save gas, but not enough to offset the cost difference between tanked and tankless, especially when installation costs are added. At least, not at current rates, but it was time to replace the hot water heater anyway (either that or just wait for it to fail and then be bereft of hot water until we got it replaced) and we decided to give it a try.

We’re also gearing up to paint the baby room. In fact, we’ve done most of the work already. We’ve decided on some color schemes, went out and bought all the gear (there is rather a lot of it) and then did the tedious work of sanding, cleaning, and taping the room. So all of the important work, but none of the cool looking work. We have the primer we're going to use, and once we get the color finalized we'll be painting like pros...hopefully. We’re going to go with some sort of dark blue with a mahogany stripe around the room. Then we’re going to get an array of random paints and paint t-rexes and video game characters in silhouette. That should be fun.

-N

My least favorite thing about houses

I like my house. It’s a place of safety, of support, of investment in my present and in my future. I want to trust it. I want to believe that it will always be there, solid as a rock, and unchanging.

But inevitably, things break. I hate that.

I’ve always hated that. Even when it wasn’t my house, or when it was just an apartment. If it’s my space, I want it to be solid and safe. When things go wrong in my house it drives me crazy. I remember a few times back in Alaska, even. When I saw that something was going wrong with the house itself it made me really, really nervous. Bugs would get in the house. Not even a lot of them! Just a couple of ants, and I’d start to get worried about bug invasions and walls coming down. Or those drips from the ceiling that we, now, know were the result of really bad insulation in the roof. Or water stains on the ceiling. *Where did they come from?* It puts me on edge.

So now I own my very own house, my very own walls, my very own foundation, and so I have to start worrying about things going wrong in a space that isn’t just my home, but my *property*. And when things go wrong in the house? Rrrrr.

A few weeks ago there was a big tropical storm here in Austin. The winds weren’t that bad, but it rained for about 24 hours straight. Heavy rain the whole time. I heard reports of > 6 inches of rain in a lot of places. And just like I get really tweaked when things go wrong in the house, when things go right? It’s fantastic. Blissfull. 24 hours of rain just bouncing off our new roof. Streaming down our stone walls. Incapable of penetrating, impotent! Behold my mighty house! Capable of keeping me dry. When it rains, I feel good.

Until I discovered the wet carpet.

Arr! Tweaking out instantly. It was the carpet by the TV in the living room. Not just a little wet: the entire corner was pretty moist. I immediately pulled up the rug and set some fans to start drying it off, but the betrayal! This is my house! Why isn’t it working right? It’s broken. And it needs to get FIXED.
Later I went out with a hose and started watering down the outside of the house to see where the water went, and it didn’t take long to find the leak: a big crack between the window and the stone façade that the water was just pouring into. A hole. In *my house*. This will not stand.

I went out, I got some caulk, I got a caulk gun, I did some reading, and I *filled that hole*. And several others beside. And let me tell you something. Fixing that hole? It felt good. I felt accomplished and manly and dad-ish and everything. Problem with the house? My house? I will fix it. And the next time a storm comes by that carpet had better be bone dry or I’m going to go out there and fix it again. Now I know how dad felt when standing on his massive, stone sea wall and watching the waves crash, impotent, against his efforts. It feels good.

The kitchen sink is dripping. You’re on my list, buddy.

-N

Totally Grown-up Blogging

You would not believe how mature and grown up I am now. Seriously.

We’re doing all sorts of grown-up stuff. Last weekend we went to babies-r-us to look at things for our BABY that we will be having soon, and having a child is pretty much the most grown-up thing in the world. We didn’t get anything in particular, but we did take the opportunity to look at all the stuff that it is possible to acquire for a baby and think about which of those things we would buy. We didn’t make any solid decisions, save for one. Jess sat in one of their nursing chairs, one of the gentle sliding ones with the sliding ottoman and pretty much melted on the spot. I decided we needed to get two. One for upstairs and one for down.

We’re also looking into life insurance and refinancing our mortgage. Grown up stuff, with paperwork and everything. Over the life of the loan, we could save enough money to pay for college for the kid. Um...well, maybe just a few years, but it’s something, eh? Life insurance is important too, if I could only decide how much I want to get it for. Lots of numbers to consider.

And the other thing that grown-ups do is travel for work, and next month I ‘get’ to do just that. It’s nothing as glamorous as England, it’s actually out in the desert, and it’s for three weeks straight, no breaks or anything. Rough! The one upside is that we have to fly into Vegas to get there, so I get to go visit the Vegas family, hoorah! I’ll miss Jess, but at least I can use the fact that I did this as an excuse to not go one some ridiculous trip next time the need someone to go (and when I’ll be a dad) and I do have skype with webcams and everything to keep in touch with Jessie.

I did shave my beard back down to the goatee, though. No need to be *too* mature all at once.

-N