Daily log

Doing a little overdue workover on the sidebar... the blogrolls are explicitly called "blogroll" now and are driven by BlogRolling.com, and I have added in a couple of new widgets. The "Message me" widget is from Meebo, and lets you IM me. Let's see if I rue that decision... but for now it makes me feel l33t.

A picture worth a thousand questions...

Always wanted to know how to whistle using your fingers? Google can tell you how.

I think we have a foot of snow here, significantly better than the nine inches that we were forecast. Its perfect packing snow, wet and heavy. We took Evelyn out on the deck in her bear bunting and let her crawl around. She seemed to be interested but not terribly thrilled. Pictures to follow.

Thank goodness we have had a decent snow this winter. I was starting to get a little dispirited - it isn't a worthwhile winter without a good snow! And this winter in particular has hardly deserved the name. And it really gets me in an Olympic mood with the view outside our house looking a little more like the glorious alpine snow shots from Turin.

And here is one giant pet peeve of mine. The 1980 olympics were the Moscow olympics, not the Moskva olympics, and I am going to call these the Turin olympics. It is a little silly when the NBC talking heads talk about the various cities in Italy, and they list Rome, Florence, Venice, and Torino. It's either Rome, Florence, Venice, and Turin, or Roma, Firenze, Venezia, and Torino. Be consistent, people!

Check out the Loudoun Landscapes blog. The pictures there are quite beautiful, and really show off the best parts of Loudoun County's pastoral side. Personally, I think the neon high-rise side is pretty as well, with the juxtaposition of chrome and woods, but perhaps that reflects my upbringing in Reston.

So, I am feeling better now, after my quadrouple operation last Friday. I had a tonsillectomy, uvulectomy, septoplasty, and a bilateral turbinate reduction. I'm still not feeling 100%, but it's like a bad head cold at this point.

It is amazing how busy life can get sometimes. When I get home from work, my loving family is waiting for me, and I forget everything and love being with them.

Just a couple of evenings ago, Evie rolled over for the first time. Since then she has become quite adept at it, and it's one of her favorite activities. She amazes me at every turn.

Sometime soon life will slow down. Until then, I'll probably continue to be silent.

A gentleman doesn't reveal his lady's age. But this weekend was Heather's birthday - Friday was her actual birthday, and Saturday we had her birthday party.

For Friday, I took the day off of work, and we slept in until noon or so. Then we headed to the National Zoo. We drove through some intermittently heavy rain, and got a little lost in DC (thanks Tiffany for getting us headed in the right direction!). We arrived at around 2, in time for a "Cheetah Chat." Although we didn't see any of the cheetahs at this point, we did learn some interesting things about cheetahs. That activity was really more for a young kid, so we bugged out. It was drizzling or misting for most of the time, but we didn't care; Evie was protected in the stroller while it was wet. We saw better than half of the zoo - the giraffes, elephants being washed and having lunch, a hippopotamus, a cheetah, and a variety of apes. I went ape-poo taking pictures of Evie in the ape house because she was being extremely cute.

Yesterday we slept in until noon again, spent a large part of the day cleaning, and then folks started arriving for Heather's birthday party at around 5:30. We had all the family including Sponholzes, as well as our friends TJ and Sharon, and we had a good time. Heather got a lot of good books, some good music (two Michael Buble albums as well as the soundtrack to Spamalot), and a bunch of cool scrapbooking materials. Just about everyone got to hold Evie, and she showed off her skill at standing, holding her head straight, and smiling.

Heather had a great time, and I think a fun time was had by all.

On Saturday, I went with my dad to the Nationals game at RFK against the Houston Astros. We had given Dad a father-son set of tickets for the game for his birthday, as an experience we could share and enjoy.

We drove in, and got a parking spot that was perhaps a seven minute walk to the stadium. The lines were very reasonable - I think we waited longer to cross the street in front of the stadium than we did to gain admittance. We got a couple of bottled waters, a couple of bags of peanuts, and a couple of wieners - dad got a grilled hot dog, and I got a sausage. Both of them were terribly long, over a foot I would say. After this thoroughly tasty dinner, we settled down to watch what turned out to be a very exciting game. The Nats scored four in the first inning, and really that was just about all off of an error where the Astros second baseman failed to catch a hit because he started in the wrong direction, and that out would have closed out the inning before the Nats had scored at all.

After that it was nip and tuck, with the Astros scoring two runs, but the Nats kept them at bay. The Astros were threatening to score down to the last batter, a thrilling finish for a good game. The Nats pitchers were all quite good, and the overall level of play from the team was great.

The Post has a a good write-up of the game.

Even better than the game was the time spent with Dad. I did not realize how much knowledge he has about the game of baseball. He was telling me about how he had spent time trying to hone his game as specifically a second baseman, and the various strategies for second basemen to go through as they react to batters. We talked about a lot of things, and we had a real heart-to-heart. I feel like, in one evening, I got to know my father better, and it makes me so happy to have done that, yet sad that I hadn't done it sooner.

I know I will treasure this experience. I think Dad had a really good time as well. I know it isn't something you should do for every occasion, but I am really happy that we decided to give him this experience, because I think it was special to him, and I know it was very special to me. And it's something that will never deplete or degrade, but that we can keep forever.

Last night Heather and I had our anniversary dinner. After leaving Evelyn with Heather's sister Tiffany and her husband Jorn (who had reserved babysitting rights for this night before Evie was born), we went off to Maggiano's in Tysons Galleria Mall. We had a beautiful dinner: spinach salad with pine nuts, bacon, red peppers, and gorgonzola with a light balsamic dressing, mushroom ravioli al forno and homemade potato gnocci in a tomato vodka sauce that we shared, and for dessert some toasted poundcake with vanilla bean ice cream for Heather and a sort of hot apple pastry with vanilla ice cream and caramel on it for me. A delicious meal.

While we were eating, we talked about our dreams and aspirations. We are at an inflection point in our lives, with a new baby, Heather still promulgating her new approach to life as a professional mother, and me taking the initiative to guide my career in a different direction.

Then, I gave Heather her birthday gift. Heather's birthday is just four days after our anniversary, a conjunction I have frequently used for with malevolent glee as I subvert our "no anniversary gifts" pledge to do something truly surprising for Heather. In this case, I gave her a ring. This ring is in reality three rings: Heather's engagement ring sans diamond (the diamond had been transplanted into a more ornate ring some time ago), with a beautiful emerald (Evie's birth stone) sitting in the center, flanked by a diamond wrap that was my wedding gift to Heather, and a replica of her wedding ring, with the exact enscription inside that the original had: "HML - NMJ 7-25-97", with the enscription "7-25-05" added afterwords, to commemorate today.

For me, it is not just a beautiful piece of jewelry that has a history for us as a couple, it also symbolizes where we are right now. It is past, present, and future: the wrap with the many little diamonds for the sparkling memories from eight wonderful years of marriage, the wedding ring that symbolizes our commitment for the present, and Evelyn in the form of her birthstone crowning it all as our future. We talked about how, many years from now, we might pass this ring on to Evelyn, as a family heirloom for her to keep and carry on.

After tears were dried and dessert finished, we headed home. Evie had laughed for Tiff and Jorn - a wonderful sound, unlike anything else I have ever heard. It was a wonderful end to a wonderful day.

A shout out to WegBlog, who were interested in my note on traffic problems in front of the Dulles Wegmans. Cool blog!

I've not been able to blog because the blog I keep to keep track of my work has been migrating from a crappy old blog system built in to a content management system to a blog based on Serendipity, the software I run here.

Essentially what I do is: every Monday I start a blog entry that I postdate to Friday with the things I need to do. Then, as the week goes on, since it's postdated it stays on top (this blog optionally lets future-dated entries be visible) and I update it with the results of things as I accomplish them. It's a system that works for me, that keeps me working on the right things.

So that has taken all of the blog out of me. But now I am all done with the transition, and back in the blogging frame of mind.

I was tagged by Norman for the "Musical Q&A" chain letter.

1. Total volume of music files on my computer: 3819 mp3 files. We have an extensive CD collection, which is 100% digitized for placement on Heather's iPod and my Rio Karma
   
2. Last CD I bought: Meteora, by Linkin Park
   
3. Song Playing Right Now: Word Play, by Jason Mraz
   
4. Five Songs (or Albums) I listen to a lot or that move me: With the mp3 players, I don't listen to albums per se much anymore, but here are the three top songs recently.
   • Unwell, by Matchbox 20
     
   • Poison Well, by Insolence
     
   • Word Play, by Jason Mraz
     
5. Tag 3 others:
   • Villa Santiago
     
   • Ben, whose choice in music I will find interesting to see, 'cause he's just cool that way.
     
   • Northern Crown, who has done me the honor of including me in the ODBA
     

A little more information...

After re-reading Norman's original post, I decided to add some additional information. My influences musically are my mother, who always listened to classical or opera, and my dad, who liked classic rock, but also would pick up and enjoy new rock. My parents got me a CD player when I was in middle school (they were still pretty new then, and the stores had very small CD sections, at least in Steuben County, NY), and got two CDs, Best of Kansas (I thought a band named after a state sounded amusing, and ZZ Top's Greatest Hits, on Dad's reccomendation. I never enjoyed listening to my music in the car - Dad was pretty tolerant, but otherwise it was obviously not a popular choice. In high school, I was into Metallica and the grunge wave. When I got to college, I was exposed to speed metal bands like Pantera and Helmet, and I found them entertaining. Since leaving college, I've enjoyed the rap-metal fusion bands like Linkin Park, and have broadened my musical perspective to bands that are less heavy.

I still can't listen to my music if I think anyone might be listening. It's like pulling teeth to play a song for my wife even. I don't know why - I need to get over it.

I have a few moments tonight, so I am going to do a bit of blogging. Evelyn is currently asleep in the Pack and Play, and things are generally in order. We're in the middle of our Weekend of Rest, which has been sorely necessary after the Family Reunion trip, which I will write a wrap-up of after I finish uploading all the pictures, which will be soon. It's amazing how much energy it takes just to see someone - energy that we don't quite have yet. Also, we bought Evie a a highchair, after first buying a different one one at Burlington Coat Factory and then returning it, only to learn that BCF only does store credit. No way to get your money back! Also, we opened her savings account at the bank. The nice lady at the bank was so entranced with my photo of Evie that she just had to accompany me out to the car to meet her, since I had run in and Heather and Evie had stayed behind.

So, perhaps there has not been as much rest in today's Day of Rest. But the errands are good and necessary, because that means that Heather and Evie won't need to go out as much this coming week, and that will hopefully help Evie relax and catch up on her sleep. She took the travel like a champ, but now her level of anxiety is definitely higher, and she is much clingier and irritable. I want to keep her relaxed, and I don't think I want her doing much this coming week, not even the stress of entertaining guests. My baby girl needs her sleep.