new bus driver in the family

Hey!  Now Laura is a bus driver too!!

Well, it's official now, we really are American suburban parents.  I believe that owning a vehicle like this legally obligates us to go on road trips, play soccer, and (hopefully) go wine tasting (that last bit is with friends, not with the kids).

feeling burdened

Overwhelmed with work right now.  I have been asked to assist on two more projects, biringing my total project involvent to at least five projects, any one of which can easily comsume all of my available time.  What can I do about it?  At the moment, I feel like I can fail.  Time to push back, and manage everyone's expectations so they expect very little of me.  I am actually having a hard time breathing right now, I think I'd better take a walk and get some air.

In other news, my training for a half marathon next month was going great, and last weekend I had run my farthest distance ever by going 9.1 miles.  This weekend (yesterday) I was suppoed to run 10 miles, but last Friday my hip started hurting (the same hip I dislocated 5 years ago), and I've decived to stop running altogether this week to give things a chance to settle down.  Hopefully it's a temporary setback and I can get back to running next weekend or next week with no trouble.  I won't be running too many marathon-type events in my life, I'd like to be able to do this half and then maybe settle back into some shorter runs (maybe as far as 6 miles) here and there just for fitness.

Laura takes the kids to her parent's place three days a week, which means a lot of time in the car for all of them, back and forth.  Lately we've really been wishing we lived closer to her parents so that all this time in the car would not be necessary.  Not sure we can afford to sell our current house right now, but I think we'll start educating ourselves on our options.  It's tough to love my kids as much as I do and know that I can't see them but for a few hours any day.

Ok, time for that little fresh air walk.

berries too big

I'm tired of oversized strawberries.  All that seems to be available in stores (at least in the one store I go to) are excessively large strawberries with no flavor.  There are some things in life that should be big, but strawberries are not among them.  What's with our obsession for large stuff?  In how many ways can this opinion be taken out of context?

All I'm saying is I don't want to pay $6 for a tiny plastic box of organic (and ymuuy and right-sized) strawberries, so instead I pay $3 or $4 for the same size tiny plastic box of oversized (mostly water) strawberries, and I am typically let down.  Blah, this last one had negative flavor.  It actually sucked flavour out of my mouth.

new year, new yogurt

Of all the things I could possibly talk about, today I come to you with yogurt.  Apparently this "protien" stuff is an important part of a "complete" meal, and even more so if one expects to be able to run a half marathon (which I am, the Shamrock'n, some time in March).  So, as of yesterday, I have started (trying) to consume "Greek" yogurt.  My first attempt was honey flavor and was rather blah since the flavor was more plain, yucky un-flavored yogurt (all those cultures don't have very much flavor culture by themselves) and less delicious, pooh bear favored honey.  Luckily today's contestant (blueberry) is posting some great results so far, and I expect to continue this grand experiment.

By experiment I mean, of course, that I expect the consumption of Greek yogurt alone to make me fit, trim, and fast.  (Note that I have consumed yogurt off and on for years, but this is my first foray into the world of "Greek" products.  Note also that I like to put "Greek" in "quotes" because it is presently striking me as "funny", and because as far as I can tell, "Greek" is a style, and no Greek people were harmed in the making of this yogurt.  Note also lastly that I am reading a book by Ellen Degeneres right now, and I find it amusing the way she draws topics out much farther than they need to be drawn.)

So on that whole topic of running, I had long wanted to run a marathon, but in 2007 when I dislocated my hip, my running future looked very bleak.  Fast forward 5 years, and really, honestly, I should not be doing a whole lot of running, but I (more or less) enjoy it, it's easy to put on shoes and just go, and one of my co-workers has peer-pressured me into doing a half after he completed his first full marathon.  So I look at it this way, I may still never run a full marathon, but this, at least, is an attempt at redeeming what I long wanted to do (the full marathon) way back when.

The problem now, of course, is that the best time to do this was back in 2000 (was in great shape from having rowed a little in college) or 2004 (was in great shape from rowing in Boston) or 2009 (was in great shape from rowing at River City in West Sac), but of course I had "other things" going on which prevented me from training for a run.  Over the last 2-3 years I've become a father twice, worked more hours, exercised less, and like many people with best interests in mind, have actually gotten less muscular-strong.

So bring on the yogurt.  And the jogging.  And the sit ups.  We'll see what we (and by we I mean me) can accomplish this year.

Mary Poppins

A couple months ago we happened to pull up a You Tube video that was a sing-along segment from the Disney movie Mary Poppins for Tyler to watch.  It was the segment of the chalk painting sequence where Bert (Dick van Dyke) dances with the penquins.  Tyler was enthralled, and wanted to watch it over and over again.  Soon enough we were pulling up other sing-along segments from Poppins, and his interest incresed each time.  About three weeks ago Laura purchased the DVD so that we could watch it any time, and over the course of these last three weeks, Mary Poppins has ruled our house.  This has caused me to realize several things:

1. My son is awesome.  Ok, wait, he was already awesome, and I already knew that, but this just reaffirms the fact.  He literally bounces off the couch and starts dancing to this movie, especially to Step In Time.  It's kind of like XBOX Kinect or Wii Fit where you attempt to copy the motions of the characters on your TV.  Can you image that?  This is what Tyler does; he studies what the dancers are doing and tries to do it as well, the sommersaults, the high knees, the birdie arm flaps.  It is hilarious and energizing and so much fun to do with him.
2. I wish I could dance.  Did I mention that it is so much fun to try and copy the dances with Tyler?  I find it invigorating!  And it just looks so cool!  Plus, if I could do the stunts they do, I'd clearly be in better shape than I am.
3. Julie Andrews is pretty attractive.  I never noticed this before, probably because I was like 10 or 15 the last time I watched this movie, but watching it now I realize she is good looking.  And she can sing and dance, so she's got that going for her.
4. This is a really wholesome, refreshing movie.  This statement makes me sound 85, conservative, and churchy, but I mean it.  Solid plot, no raunch, no nauseating camera shakes or edits, everybody is honest and understandable, there is singing, there is dancing, there is unexplained magic; the film is entertaining and enjoyable without any hint of being fake or gimicky.  It's just good fun.
5. I want to become a writer.  I want to write the prequel story of how Mary Poppins becomes who she is.  But there is a problem with this.  My interest in doing this stems from having seen Batman Begins.  The hell I say?  I'll explain below ...

Batman Begins, at least for me, gave a legitimate, probable, honest start to Bruce Wayne and Batman.  His utility belt and Bat-suit weren't cheesy science fiction anymore, they were products of his Wayne Industries' military / defense production line that Bruce turned into tools for crime fighting.  The characters became real and the back stories started to make sense.

After watching Mary Poppins a million times over the last few weeks, I find myself wishing I could lend a Batman Begins-style backstory to the origins of Mary Poppins.  How did she become a nanny?  Is she really magic?  Why does she hang out on a cloud waiting for the wind to take her to her next job?  How does she already know Bert and Uncle Albert?  How is it she understands the dog?  (Baxter, you know I don't speak Spanish!)  Has she had similar experiences with other children whose parents were ignoring them?

But I imagine you can see the disconnect here.  Anything a writer could do to make the backstory / prequel interesting might detract from all of it being happy-go-lucky Disney style.  Apparently the P.L. Travers book that created the Poppins character painted her as somewhat more mean (I should probably read those books, maybe all of this has already been done?), so who knows, maybe she had a terrible past and became a nany to escape all of it?  See, I'm not a writer, so I don't know where to go with it.  I dream in orthoganal and isometric views, hydraulics, circuits, and mechanisms, not character backstory development.  But that hasn't stopped me from lately feeling like it would be a fun thing to do.

Anyway, there you go.

Rex Babin

It saddens me to no end to say that a friend of mine, Rex Babin, editorial cartoonist for the Sacramento Bee and fantastic rower, died today of cancer after battling it for over a year. I met him through rowing and quickly found him to be passionate, entertaining, insightful, comedic, welcoming and wonderful person. I admired him in so many ways, and his family was ever welcoming and warm to mine. This is one of those cases where a person who rails against the system to make the world a better place has left the earth way, way to goddamn soon. I can't describe how much the rowing community (at least our little corner of it in West Sacramento) will miss him, and I can't even imagine the scope of the loss in the eyes of his wife and son.

Farewell Rex.

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/sacbee/obituary.aspx?page=lifestory&pid=156775426

http://dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2012/03/30/sac-bee-cartoonist-rex-babin-dies-of-cancer/?tw_p=twt

pants

I have no butt (because I am a white male and I don't lift weights), but I have reasonably big thighs (because I am a rower and occasionally pretend to be a runner or cyclist). These two facts combined mean that no regular pair of jeans will everywhere fit correctly. Most of my pants are baggy and look silly on me, as is the typical requirement for non-movie star men (not than I am really concerned with appearance). But lately I've been really disliking the bagginess, and since I have only purchased one or two pairs of jeans in the last, oh, four or five years, I decided it was time to pants up.

So here I sit at work in a new pair of Levi's 501s, and as I should have expected, they don't fit right. The butt fit is snug (I'm now exemplifying to the world the fact that I have no butt), but the thighs are WAY TOO TIGHT, and I really should take my phone our of my pocket so that my pants don't break it in half. What is the right solution? Why don't pants fit me?

On the other hand, in a world where unemployment is high, people are dying while fighting for democracy, two friends are waging war with cancer, another fighting CF, and starvation happens at all, pants that don't fit right really doesn't even qualify as something to bitch about. I guess everything is relative. Oh well, it sounded like a funny topic in my mind.

Laura gets tech savvy

I've long wanted to get myself an iPhone, but regularly decided against it because (1) it wasn't available on Verizon (my provider, not wonderful, but I've been happy with it), and (2) the wife and I decided it wasn't affordable. At the beginning of this year when it did finally come to Verizon, I got all excited and was ready to go get one for myself, but reason number (2) kicked in and I hung onto my five year old Razor.

Fast forward to this summer, and our kid is regularly doing things that are "cute" and "funny" and "awesome", and suddenly the interest in always having a camera and video recorder on hand and having the ability to share said items with friends and family increases greatly. Magically reason (2) no longer matters, and it's time to get new phones. I actually went to a Verizon store and waited in line to get phones, but the guy being helped was ... taking along time, and I had to get back to work. My technical self-gratification was further delayed.

Soon therafter I began reading on-line rumors about the release of the iPhone 5, and I made the decision that if I had waited this damn long to get an iPhone, I could wait another two months for September to roll around. Then Tyler dropped Laura's phone in the water. So now Laura has an iPhone, and I still don't. But that's ok, because I'm waiting (patiently!!!!!!) for version 5. Anyway, the point is that now Laura AND my dad are more technically savvy than me what with their fancy phones. My time will come.

Energy versus Trinity

My first job out of grad school was designing highway safety hardware at a place called Energy Absorption Systems. I developed a convertible, portable crash cushion that went into production before I changed jobs, and to date I have never actually seen one in use on the road, although I did once (finally) see several parked in a maintenance lot along the side of the road in Delaware, but never any on the road and in use.

It was designed in response to a product our competitor Traffix was making called the Scorpion. Though elegant and relatively simple in design, it was a total ripoff of another similar Energy product, and it was probably that way because one of the leads at Traffix was a former Energy designer. Anyway, that's not the point of this email. We designed this new crash cushion to be mostly reusable and very durable (rated for 65 mph impacts), and as a result it was a little heavy and expensive. Before I left the company I was excited to see it go into production, but kept hearing that I would likely never see it used in California because of its cost.


For years Caltrans would only ever use portable crash cushions rated for 45 mph impacts basically because the 45 mph devices were far less expensive and throw-away. This always irked me because, come on, let's be honest, how many people "only" drive 45 mph on California freeways? It seemed irresponsible to me to be using a product not rated for realistic highway speeds.

Anyway, money always wins and I got over it, resigning myself to not ever see my hard work in action in my home state. Over the last couple weeks, it got worse! I keep seeing the damn Scorpion out on the roads in construction zones! I'm not positive they are Caltrans devices, but some of them sure look like it. WTF?? Why did that one win out?


There was a sneaky (but altogether not suprising) tendency for some companies to "work" with the government to get regulations (contracts) written with specific requirements that in the end would limit the purchasing authority to choosing from only one product. My guess, and this is TOTALLY SPECULATION, would be that whomever is buying these now was limited by some agreement that said only the Scorpion would fill the need. Great. Oh well, at least my vacuum garbage truck is out there somewhere, maybe, cleaning up freeways.

tech savvy ... parents?

In the last two weeks my parents have managed to out-tech me. Keep in mind I am not on the cutting edge of technology, so out-teching me requires no great effort of any sort. But one day I'm talking to my mom, and I discover that both she and my father have acquired iPad 2s for themselves. Wha-what? Hey that's cool.

Then last night I'm talking to my father, and the conversation goes something like this:
Rick: "I finally got myself a gift for christmas and my birthday."
Andy: "Seems a little late for those. What did you get?"
Rick: "A battery for my truck."
Andy: (underwhelmed, hesitates) "Hey, that's great!"
Rick: "The old one has been in there since 2003, so I figure I got my money's worth."
Andy: (choke) "For as often as it sits around unused, I'd say yes, you got a great value."
Rick: "Then I went to the to the AT&T store. Do you know what they sell there?"
Andy: (feeling like a sneak attack just occurred, hesitates again) "You got an iPhone?"
Rick: "No it's a 4G."
Andy: "Huh? Yeah, of course, an iPhone?"
Rick: "What? Oh, yeah. I'm all set up for email and using it for work."
Andy: "Wow, that's cool. How do you like it?"
Rick: "It took these guys 10 emails going back and forth yesterday just to decice whether they wanted to fly to Larime or Denver. 10 emails. Seems like kind of a waste to me."
Andy: "Maybe your limited computer use over the last ... oh ... 15 years or so has insulated you from the way people communicate these days. Why bother talking to anyone when you can text or email them and never face them?"
Rick: "Yeah but 10 emails?"

Anyway, you get the point, and now my father has a iPhone before I do. Here I've been waiting patiently for Verizon to get the thing, and once they did I waited paitently again to convince myself that I really want to spend a couple hundred dollars to buy into this life changing technology that will fix everything for me. And literally as I am on the verge of pulling the trigger and going with a Verizon iPhone, Laura says "Oh, hey, I can get a discount though work with AT&T.", so I hesitated.

Ok, this blog is falling apart quickly. Anyway, my parents are savvier than me.

Anniersary the 8th

Happy Anniversary to my lovely wife of 8 years! I wish I could afford to sweep you off to Hawaii or maybe even Paris, but for now I'll just give you a big hug and kiss and tell you how much I love you.

negatives to digital

I mailed an envelope full of film negatives to Utah yesterday where they will be scanned into digital format, far faster and more effectively than I could ever do. When I receive the data DVD back in about a month, I will have roughly 350 photos from my time at Unitrans all nicely digitized for upload to my flickr account, for sharing, etc. I'm fearful that many of then won't be as crisp as I hope (scanning doesn't make a bad picture better), but this professional service will yield better results than my scanner can produce with the positive images.

Film negatives? What the hell are those?

I'd been thinking about doing this for years, and was finally inspried to do it because (1) the new Unitrans shop manager was asking me for copies of my RT Sunset and Solano Field photos, (2) my father-in-law has previously used and been happy with the place I am using, and (3) they were having a sale.

So someday soon I may have a lot more photo content to share.

related to Hollywood star

I couldn't pass up posting this. Apparently I am related to a famous Hollywood star.
Check out this guy's middle name!

Or it's just a coincidence.

Post Surgery

My hernia surgery went great, mostly because I don't remember a thing, and when I woke up it was all repaired. Main problem was needing to throw up a couple times afterwards because (1) having not eaten in over a day apparently makes you build up a lot of bile, and (2) the narcotics they used to provide general anesthesia have a tendency to make one nauseous. So throwing up was fun.

I was and still am fairly sore, though there are pain free moments, and there are moments involving a lot of pain. I am glad it's over, and I am looking forward to getting all healed up very quickly so that I can get back to picking up my son and tossing him around while we play airplane. Oh, and I want to be able to work in the yard, and row, and go on hikes with Tyler in the backpack, and do all that sort of stuff instead of making Laura do all if it. It's funny just how much I've realized how busy I typically am now that I am not supposed to do any "heavy lifting". In an odd sense, it's kind of a nice break, but the guilt of not being able to do any of it is way worse than any sort of feeling of relief.

back

No, I have not posted in quite some time, not since Thanksgiving of last year, which means that almost five months have passed since I last typed anything into this web site. No particular reason for that, other than I just haven't done it. Haven't been particularly avoiding it; guess I could say "I didn't have time". I think I reached a point where I realized everyone else's blog that I read was either about family adventures or fun times (Tara, Nicole, Laura's grad school friends) or satirical / political / insightful / computer or food related (Paul). That's not to say I don't want to post ... I just feel that maybe my tone was too depressing or downbeat, maybe not the sort of thing you guys ("all" of my readers) were really looking for.

So here's a heads up. I may start posting more often. And the content may be depressing, or strange, or Too Much Information. And if I do start posting again, I may say things like, "hey, I've got an inguinal hernia, and I have to have surgery to repair it on April 28th", which, by the way is true as of yesterday.

Good times! And it means that I have to not lift any "heavy weight" for 4-6 weeks. By the way, my doctor defines "heavy weight" as anything over 15 pounds. My lunchbox weights more than that! My son weights twice that!

Life.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone

So I'm late with my well-wishes, so what. Had a nice Turkey day with my parents, sister and her family, and my aunt and uncle. While we were there we attempted to take some family photos since we've never done such a thing with my side of the family. Suprisingly, despite my limited abilities with a SLR, most of the photos actually turned out all right. Below is my new favoriate photo of all time, including the two most important people in my whole world.

That's all for today.

Old MacDonald

One quick story ... after giving Tyler a bath, Laura and I move him to the counter in the bathroom to dry him off. He often dislikes being put back down after having been pulled from the bathtub, so we will start singing to him to keep him calm. Usually, for whatever reason, we start singing "Old MacDonald", pick animals at random, and invent noises for them to make. This one time I sang

"And on this farm he had a ... Tyler
Eee I Eee I Ohh"

To which Laura responded, "A Tyler? On a Farm? I hope he is a Free Range Tyer".

Ok, it was silly, but it made me bust out laughing. The whole idea of a Tyler on a farm in a cage or ranging freely; it was a silly image to me. If it was my Tyler, he would certainly have to be a Free Range Tyler considering how much this little guy wants to move around.

tiny hotel soap

Good Morning from the Whale's Vagina. (How's that for a blog opening?) Yes, I am submitting a blog from beautiful San Diego, where my employer has sent me to oversee a hydrostatic pressure test on my hardware (my design, my eqipment, my "other kid"). The stuff I designed is too large to fit into either of the two pressure test chambers that we have back in Davis, and there is a company here in SD with whom we have a pretty good relationship, so every so often we package up our hardware, spend too much on next-day freight, then lower the equipmet into the big water tank and squeeze away to see whether the thing can stand the pressure.

Me personally, althought the testing is interesting, I'd rather be hanging out on the beach. I am in San Diego after all! But this trip is too short; arrived yesterday morning, prepped to test all day long, test today, and hopefully have time to pull the equipment out of the chamber and package it back up for shipment before I hop on a plane back home tonight. One night away from my wife and kid is too much already.

What is the deal with the tiny hotel soaps anyway? Even if I were staying here for a couple days, there's no way I'd ever use much of the small bar they provide. Where does all that soap go? Seriously? Either there is a LOT of soap in landfills, or some couple of families somewhere have a lot of soap furniture.

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I did have just enough time last night to drive around and (very) briefly see the regular sights that Laura and I like; the UCSD campus, the Torey Pines Gliderport, La Jolla and La Valencia (where we were married), Mission Bay. I felt really guilty for visiting the Gliderport without Laura (it was one of her favoriate, and most relaxing places to visit when she was in school here); the cool sea breaze is suprisingly refreshing and relaxing; both Laura and I could really use a lot of that. I had time for only a few deep breaths before I had to move on.

Anyway, back to it now, time to eat and get to the test facility again.

Good Morning, and Stay Classy San Diego.

drool boy

Tyler has had a cold the last few days, and at the same time he is or has got to be close to cutting anywhere from one to 26 teeth. Subsequently he has been drooling constantly lately. Wait, did I say drooling? I meant he has been waterfalling lately. I realize this is not a new thing for a parent to experience, but I'll play my "first time" card and say that it's just amazing that he hasn't become totally dehydrated.

Also over the weekend he kept his tongue stuck out. For the whole weekend. No, really. It was odd.

Going to work this morning sucked because Tyler was really wanting to play. Like, I'd leave the room for half a second to put on my shoes, and he'd cry out to me. That guy is trying to break my heart! Stupid work! Can't you see that I've got a son at home and I need to play with him? Can't you see that in just a few minutes he'll be leaving for college! Ahh!

Neil Patrick

It happened again over the weekend. It hasn't happened for a while, but this was perhaps the most random, most unique occurance of this odd trend in my life.

Moments after leaving my old friend's house in Riverbank**, CA, we realized that Tyler needed food if he was going to be happy during the hour drive to our next destination. We pulled over mere blocks from my friend's house and proceeded to feed the kid in the car.

At this point it's dark outside, and the only light around other than a couple street lights is the dome light in our car. I'm feeding Tyler while sitting in the driver's seat, and Laura is getting stuff moved so that she can sit in the rear with him as we drive.

Just then a group of perhaps high school aged kids walks by the car along the sidewalk. As he passes our car, one of them says, I kid you not "that guy looks like Neil Patrick Harris".

What is it? Do I really? No! The only thing interesting about it happening this time is that this is the first time anyone has gone straight to Neil Patrick and not said Doogie Houser. That could easily be rationalized away because Mr. Harris is back in popularity what with "How I Met Your Mother", but the fact that this keeps happening is just plain odd. Typically it's been in face-to-face interactions with someone like a cashier or similar, so this occurrance is definately a unique one.

But really? Dark, late, outside, random walker-by, guy in a car feeding his kid, yeah sure, that must be Neil Patrick Harris.

Maybe the universe is trying to tell me that I should contact Mr. Harris and offer to be his body double, stunt double, or whatever you call a person who helps distract the papparazzi so that you can go about your normal business. Maybe that is my true calling, waiting to be answered.

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** Where in the hell is Riverbank, you might ask? East of Salida I answer. And where is that? Why it's just north of Modesto, of course. Geez.