April for Team Austin

It's been a while, let's make a Catalog of life.

The last few months have been a swing down and then back up.  Tyler was having some trouble in school, in the way that kids his age usually do.  He was hitting other kids and not listening well, and so we met with the teachers to see what we could do about it.  We ended up trying a lot of things, and some combination worked.  Jess spent some time with him in his classroom, we started a chart of good behavior at home that he could use to get Ice Cream on Fridays, and one of the kids that we knew he was having trouble with ended up leaving the class.  Something in there helped him out enough that we have not been having nearly so many problems now.  He still loses control occasionally, but not too often.  And at his age, that's kinda expected.  They don't have the neurology to evaluate and hold back an impulse.  He's just not set up for it.  It would be like expecting him to run a 5k with me.  He's just not equipped for it yet.  But he's getting better day by day.

In August he heads off to PUBLIC SCHOOL.  I'm reserving judgement until I see what it's like.  I have a little bit of optimism just because he'll be starting with a few friends he knows from the street, and hopefully that will help him put it in a positive light.  But I've heard from parents that have had good experiences with public schools and parents that have had terrible experiences with public schools.  It depends a lot on the school, and the district, and especially the teacher.  We'll see how he does, and adjust accordingly.  That's right, we don't have a plan. We're winging it.  That's what parents do.  They just make it seem like it's part of the plan with their steady voice and noble bearing.  We're panicking inside.

Casey is super cute.  She's rounded the corner on Talking and is now interested in parroting a lot of words and picking up new ones as quick as she can.  She's even put together a few ideas of her own from different words she knows.  She'll probably be an author.  She likes to sing, too.  We do a pretty adorable rendition of "little boxes".  I should record it.

Oh, Mom and Dad got me an Audio Interface for Christmas which allows me to use my fancy microphones to record the kids.  I have done so to catalog how goddamn adorable their voices are.  I should post up some stuff in podcast form.  The audio quality is really nice.

This has also allowed me to start doing "Let's Play" videos with Tyler.  I edit them down a bit to just the funny parts, and I do it all in Microsoft Movie Maker (Super low-level stuff) so it's not like I'm planning to burn up the Internet with my new hilarious Content.  At least, not right away.  But it does make me pretty cool that I can record Mincraft Let's Plays with my kid.  I'm a cool dad.

Jess and I hit a rough patch for a while, but we're getting better.  I want to have a record of when it happened for to remind myself later.

Jessie's mom lives in Austin now?  I guess I don't know when I wrote the last one of these, but having her around for babysitting has been great.  Jess and I go out for a lot more dates.  We've even been going out to Adult Skate at playland Skate Center.  I'm getting pretty good.  It's great exercise, too.

On Friday I take Tyler to his first Martial Arts class.  It starts out very introductory.  Next week we can start attending classes.  We'll see how it goes.  I'm excited for the exercise as well as doing something fun with Tyler.  He tends to not want to try new stuff, though, so it will be an experiment for both of us.  Oh, and I'm taking the class too.  I'm not missing the opportunity to break stuff with my super strong hands.

Tyler had his birthday, so he's 5.  Casey will turn 2 soon.  I have been a parent for 5 years.  College didn't take this long.

I'm working on painting a big diorama for ReaperCon this year.  Which is in October, and that's good, since I'll be painting this thing for a long, long time.

And now it's late and I want to go to bed.  So good night, see everyone in another few months.

-N

Married for FIVE Years

Friday Matt and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary. When we were thinking about what to do to mark the day, I got to thinking about ways we have celebrated things in the past, which got me thinking about all the great things we've shared in the last 5 years. For some of our other anniversaries we've taken short trips (Niagara) or just eaten fancy food. We've spent birthday's on Roller Coasters and in warehouses tasting beers. When Matt got a job out here, we went and bought him work clothes. Matt's celebrated my seminars, and I've celebrated his race wins (which are more fun, because there is cash involved). The biggest party we've had was certainly for my graduation, which still pales in comparison to how happy I was on our wedding day.

It's nice to have this reminder of our "together-happiness" in what is shaping up to be a stressful month. With my pending unemployment come questions about moving and logistics and budgets and our lease and lots of other things that make taking a couple days to just be grateful that for better or worse we share our problems timely indeed.

Oh, and this year, we had a picnic on the front step, watched a baby raccoon in the backyard and took ourselves out for fancy coffee. It's nice enough I would do it again in 5 years.

Name changing and marriage

I obviously should have taken care of this a MILLION years ago, but I finally sent out my passport to get my named changed. Remember when I got married? Yeah- that's how long ago I should have dealt with this. I finally decided when we bought our tickets to Belize, that now would be an appropriate time to make this final upgrade. The passport arrived today, and my favorite bit is that the inside cover has a picture of the moon- which is now the next place I want a visa stamp from. Satisfyingly, this is the last big name change that I am going to worry about. Four years later, I guess I am really committed to this marriage. (I joke!)

I've been listening to a lot of Mumford & Sons this week (love the album), which, being Folk music is all about honorable love and honorable death and pious heartbreak. It puts one in an introspective frame of mind. This one line in particular has really gotten stuck in my head (due in part to the rockin' banjo)...

Love that will not betray you, dismay or enslave you,
It will set you free
Be more like the man you were made to be.
-Sigh No More

While I think we can argue about whether or not I am living the life I was meant to live, it does seem quite plain to me that without Matt around, I'd be living a much suckier version of this life. I'm not sure I would have been brave enough to venture to grad school, let alone so far from home. I surely wouldn't have the time, energy and leverage to pursue the other things I've done since I've been here (ceramics, WISC, teaching...). There would be no really compelling reason for me to leave work before dinner, or to ever come to the conclusion that working more doesn't mean more gets done. All the little emotional dramas of grad school would be the main emotion of my life, which would make them much harder to bear. Most details of my life are quite unlike folk music, I'll give'em the affectionate description of love.

Happy Anniversary

I'm pretty lucky.

Today was the kind of day that left me wanting to just glare at a beer in thundery solitude, but instead Matt and I went to celebrate our anniversary at a Belgian pub. Hanging out with Matt can turn me from scowly faced grump to laughing so hard people turn to look.

But that's not why I am so lucky. I am lucky because I married a guy who doesn't mind hanging out with an absentminded klutz who can't eat a Cuban grinder without getting BBQ sauce up her nose. We were made for each other.

Here's to 4 more happy years!

You need to know about Video Games

Okay, maybe you don’t, but it is becoming a more and more common medium in our society (yes, facebook games and Papa’s computer solitaire both count) and I, dear family, am the reporter for the job.

E3 happened last week. The Electronic Entertainment Expo. It’s essentially a big media event for the games that are coming out over, theoretically, the next year. Most of the games shown there are still things that won’t trickle down past people like me, but there is some more general, interesting news that you might want to hear about.

-Microsoft is putting out a new peripheral for their video game system. It’s called Kinect. It’s essentially a body scanner, it’s supposed to be able to read the position of your entire body in real time. The games associated with this new technology are still in an early development stage, but the technology is promising. If this sort of control scheme makes sense, we may be controlling computers ‘Minority Report’ style sooner than you think. Or not. It may turn out to be a huge waste of time, too. That’s what the future is for!

-3D DS. I’m guessing everyone knows about the Nintendo DS at this point, or at least you can visualize what I’m talking about when I mention it. Well Nintendo is rolling out a new version that has a 3D screen. Presumably what this means is that it knows where your face is and can send one TV image to each eye. The feedback from the people that have actually tried it is that it’s really quite good.

This is important for another reason, too. Remember how the big thing for the past several years has been ‘HD TVs’. The big, flat-panel ones that everyone was buying? Well the new wave of TV technology is 3D TV. That’s right, people, 3D is back! Or at least, major TV manufacturers are betting that it’s the next big thing. You can get 3D TVs right now if you want, but, once again, the technology is pretty new and you have to wear dorky glasses in most cases. Also it gives some people headaches. But who knows? In a few years it’ll either be like DVDs (how did we ever manage before everything was in 3D?) or like Laser Disks (Man, that was a dumb idea.)

I got a new wedding ring. I’m still hovering around between 200 and 205 pounds (trying my best to lose more) but my wedding ring keeps almost falling off, especially when my hands get wet. So I got a new ring, a half-size down. It’s made out of tungsten and it’s pretty freakin’ huge. Looks neat, though. And it’s big and obvious, which I think Jessie likes because she’s always afraid someone is going to discover how great I am and try and move in on her milkshake. She likes that I have this lady-repellent on my hand.

I’m mostly just excited that I got a cool new ring and that I’m all skinny now. Relatively. I still look pretty huge in that trapeze video.

Oh, yeah, recovery from the trapeze class has been pretty rough. Jess has been SUPER sore for the past couple of days, while I have been less achy. At least my hands have recovered pretty well. Great exercise, but not something we could do every day. I had to skip Judo on Monday (well I didn’t *have* to, but I did) and Jess wasn’t even able to go skating yesterday. We’re both back to something like normal today, though. At least now when people come to Austin and ask ‘what is there to do?’ we have another thing we can recommend.

-N

Papa stories: The proposal

I am visiting this weekend in Spokane, I did escape the weather on the east coast, and Tsunami on the West. Since I didn't have my voice recorder out at dinner, I wanted to commit this story while it is still fresh.

I was asking Papa about the UW campus when he was a student there, and we transitioned easily to this, one of our favorite stories. When Nana and Papa had been seeing each other for a while in 1941, he brought up marriage. He said to Nana, " We seem to be getting along pretty well. Do you think you might like to get married?" To which she said, oh no. She was very focused on finishing her degree and it seemed like a bad time. But they continued dating. On December 7, they were headed to have dinner with their friend Mignonette and her husband somewhere they were house sitting. They were supposed to pick up a friend, who ran out of the house saying, "The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor! It's all over the radio!" It was pretty apparent that this would force the US would engage in war, and a draft seemed inevitable.

After dinner, Mignonette suggested they walk up to UW to see the Christmas program. On this walk, Nana said quietly to Papa, "I think I've changed my mind. I think I'd like to get married." The rest is history.

***

Another bit that I heard about for the first time tonight was that Nana and Papa used to live in GI housing Kirkland. When I asked when, Papa said plainly that when Bart was born, he only trusted him not to crawl off into Lake Washington until he was about 6 months old. After he was about 6 months old, it seemed they should sell the house boat and move to the affordable housing for veterans in Kirkland. Any one know where this was in Kirkland?

I also found that the summer Papa work in herring processing, he was based out of Little Port Walter on Baranoff Island.

Valentine's meme- Nearly 8 Years

The latest meme on Facebook, which is sure to hit full stride this weekend, is for people to put as their "status" how long they've been together. This of course elicits a series, of gushy comments from all your girl friends (haven't seen a lot of guys participating in this one). I won't indulge in this one- I don't like broadcasting that info in that format, and when I tallied up the numbers, I noticed Matt and I have been together a really long time- for people our age. The people we were when we first met seem so different from who we are now, it's embarrassing to think we were ever so sophomoric, or that being that young was so long ago. And it seems unfair to take all that and make it one little number.

Nearly 8 years ago, when Matt and I starting seeing each other, I was 18 years old, I thought I might never graduate high school (in a melodramatic teen kind of way), I got my first job, and was trying to learn how to be independent while I waited to head out to college. And Matt was this sweet guy who had funny stories, a quiet but joyful sense of humor and was really into crazy adventures. Well, they seemed crazy to the 18 yr old me. I felt really lucky to get to hang out with a guy like that, for just a little while. See, I didn't want to get to invested in the whole thing, because I knew I was going to WWU in the fall. And Matt was going to be transferring away from UAS then too. It was early in that first summer when we realized we would both be at Western.

When we moved to Bellingham, I was an energetic but clueless freshman, and Matt was happy to be my knowledgeable and experienced counterpart- he never got lost on campus, he knew about all these cool hang outs on and off campus and he wanted to share all this fun with me. Could a girl get so lucky? He had a house, with a proper kitchen where I could go and cook, or just not be around 20 girls. I like to think he benefited form having me around too- I dragged him through Calc 2, we would go on suburban adventures together and a loner like him really likes to attention.

We've actually been married for 3 and a half years- which also seems like I long time. I thought by now I'd be really good at it. Matt told someone over the phone yesterday that "my wife says the streets in Oakland are still bad." And I was a little surprised to find he was talking about me! Being married in grad school is hard- there are such demands on my time, I don't get to commit as much time as I would like to it. Matt is sleeping off a cold this morning, and I am about to head in to work for the afternoon, which breaks my heart a bit. But it is clear that being married is WAY better then being single, and that we can still find ways to be important for each other in our new life together.

Yesterday morning I got an email from Matt at work that he had stopped out in the suburbs, and bought a new set of winter wheels. He threw down towels over the slush to change out the tires , and carefully covered the back seat in an old sheet before piling in the old tires and heading off to work. So yes, he still has funny stories and crazy adventures, and I still feel really lucky to get to hang out with him. I still wonder about what kind of job I'll ever get, although now I am more confident that I won't end up somewhere I can't be happy.

We don't have plans to celebrate this weekend, but will probably do something fun together this week (my vote is for Ethiopian food), to celebrate Valentine's Day. For all the rest of you- Happy Valentine's Day!

My projects

It may not have involved any 2000 degree ovens, but I've had my own weekend art projects. Less flame, more electricity. Less crazy science pictures, more tech research and signal diagrams. I'm finally building my studio!



It's been a long time coming, but since I've finished the second draft of my book, I figured it would finally be okay for me to take up music production as a serious hobby. I spent a lot of time doing gear research (after all, picking the equipment is half the fun) and put in the order right before we went off to Derek's wedding. When we got back the front room was filled with boxes (brought in by the cat-sitters) and I had a lot of presents to open.

I've gotten the basics all set up: the audio interface, two microphones, and some software. I can do recording now, which was one of the goals I had for my studio. I'd like to try and put out some simple podcasts up here for fun. Just me and Jess talking about stuff. We'll see how it goes.

The other thing I'm planning to set up is the synthesis portion of the studio: that keyboard you see there and some more software. I've been experimenting and reading up on the recording software, and just finished that book, so now I can go on exploring synthesis. It's all so exciting!

Also, this week marks our one year anniversary. Even more exciting! Being married is really fantastic, it's been a pretty amazing year for us, what with the new house and new town to explore. We continue to get along great, primarily, I think because we both believe in open and honest communication and because we both like to see the other happy so much. Here's to many more great years!

-N

Niagara Falls

Matt and I just returned from our amazing weekend in Niagara Falls. This is about 4 hours from Pittsburgh, so we got up on Saturday to head out. We had a B&B locked in, so ditched our stuff and walked into town along the river. After soaking up the view, we headed to the Maid of the Mist. This is the boat trip that takes you right up the splash zone of the falls. We were loaded with a boat load of people from ALL over the WORLD- we were the only people we could hear speaking English. Once we got out to the splash zone, a sea of people packed into blue ponchos, everyone started laughing and cheering.

We took in a Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum, and had dinner at Kelsey's. Seriously- a Applebees-esque place we HAD to stop at. By now it was raining, so we thought we might catch a ride on the People Mover. Although you are supposed to buy your tickets ahead of time, the driver who picked us up was having a slow night and took us home, complimentary. Next day, after breakfast with a nice couple from Toronto, we headed to Niagara on the Lake, a lovely historic Victoria village on Lake Ontario- my third Great Lake. As we headed into the village, the heavens opened and lightening sliced the sky... and we thought we could fine our way back to the states. A lovely weekend, and I am glad we spent our time (and $) doing something memorable rather than trying to act like we belong in a fancy restaurant. The pictures are posted here- let me know what you think.

3 years of being married- a picnic!

Yesterday Matt and I celebrated our 3 year anniversary. I mentioned yesterday, we've got plans to go to Niagara this weekend, but that seemed like no reason not to mark the day itself in some way. We've both been out of town, and so we didn't actually have plans, per say, but figured we know each other well enough to have a good time together. Matt picked me up after work and as we were discussing what we might do we drove past a farmers market in the park. Screech! Brakes were slammed on, farm fresh bread and cheese and berries were bought and we packed a little picnic into the park. The weather even co-operated by being warm but not hot, muggy or otherwise unbearable. Later we toddled into the busniess district for Ben and Jerry's ice cream, and bought each other some books at CDs. Fun!

In the long term 3 years is no big feat (most of our readership I think is well past the 25 year mark), but it is nice to reflect on the fact that even though we've been married three, we still have a lot to talk about, and a lot to share and a lot more to learn about each other. And really, the first three years were pretty easy- marriage wise. We talked about the next three years- I'll be graduated, we'll be moving, will Matt go back to school? Where should we move to? Although the particulars are still in the works, I must say I am looking forward to planning our next moves through life together.

We're an Old Married Couple now

I am reminded of this after watching Noel and Jessie's first Christmas together- so cute I pinched my own cheeks. It's not like Matt and I have so many more holidays under our belt, but we seem to have very quickly made the transition to being Old People. Let me explain.

This week Matt and I were both sick. I was managing the colorful symptoms of Corral Attack in Mexico (still)- which somehow transitioned into gastritis, how old am I?-, and Matt picked up a respiratory thing while we were flying. He actually took 3 days off work to sleep. Between the two of us, we've been eating nothing but soup and toast all week- although I managed to get back to work a bit by Thursday, mostly to avoid Matt's germs. We take turns bringing water and raiding the medicine cabinet, very romantic.

Last night at bed time, it was my turn to go to the medicine cabinet- a round of Advil for the house! Matt only ever takes one Advil at a time ("It says to take the lowest effective dose"), and he usually pours out a handful of my mixed Advil TM and Kirkland Ibuprofen so he can select one of the candy-coated pills. I don't. Crawling back into bed, I passed him his one Ibuprofen. He looked at it and, just as I had my mouth full of water and pills, says "Why do they even make these without candy coating? They taste like mud. Why would anyone want to take mud pills when they are sick?" I almost shot water and pills out my nose. And then I had to try to make him laugh while he took his pill.

It reminded me that one of my favorite parts about being married is laughing just before I fall asleep. And this made me optimistic that we'll keep laughing even when we are passing hearing aids and fiber supplements back and forth to each other.

Reflections on Being Married

Tuesday Matt and I celebrate our 2nd Wedding Anniversary. Hopefully by then we'll have plans for something awesome to celebrate, but in the meantime, I wanted to offer my reflections on being married. As a point of reference, I never really imagined myself being married until I met Matt- but I am incredibly fond of him so I am glad we decided to go through with it.

Just being married is pretty easy (since Matt is so easy going), but I still feel like I could be better at it. For example, in our picture of marriage, we are supposed to be here to support each other. I am supposed to help Matt be the best Matt he can be. He has recently gotten into designing speakers, and the obvious output of this hobby promises to be a lot of speakers. My knee-jerk reaction is that "We don't need any more speakers- we don't need half the ones we have," but as a good wife, I am trying to find friends who might appreciate this new interest. He is much better at this than I am. A big component of grad school is an unpredictable schedule. I try to keep mine reigned in as much as possible, but we share cooking duties about 50:50, and he does more laundry and dish than I do by far. Considering what a huge sacrifice he made by coming to Pittsburgh with me in the first place, I ought to be pulling my own weight a bit more, right?

Fortunately, neither of us is ready to act like settled people - although adopting Raoul (the cat) really felt like we increased our maturity a lot- we still manage to pack our time with lots of fun. After having to rebuild our lives out here, I appreciate that we are both more interesting people if we don't do everything together. This does mean consciously planning time together and respecting the separate spheres we do travel in, which is a sort of daily act. But it is very satisfying to have someone who is impressed by my cooking, who makes sure the rent gets paid and still tries to make me laugh waiting at home for me.