Outer Space

Bella's best friend Jenny's grandma finally passed away this weekend. It had been a loooong haul, this woman spent five weeks bouncing between units, having surgeries, being on and off of machines, before spending 5 days in palliative care. She had amazing tenacity. I kept suggesting they bring her a pen and paper, because she's obviously waiting around to finish the great American Novel before she goes.

But go she went, and it was a peaceful passing. The wake was this evening, and it was actually quite nice.

The upshot is that Bella and Jenny have been talking about (and talked TO about) death and dying a fair amount in the past few weeks. And they're processing this information.

The other day, Bella asked Grampette "where is Heaven?". Grampette decided to keep it somewhat literal, so she said "way up in the sky". Bella replied "So, it's in outer space, then?" I can only imagine Bella has an idea of heaven as a space station of some sort. In that, she is indeed her father's daughter.

And that's the update for the evening.... zzzzzz......

Happy Cinco de Mayo

It turns out the Cinco de Mayo is a relatively minor holiday in Mexico... more of a marketing opportunity in the US really. That said, it's a good thing to pay attention to other cultures, so if we have a day when we "think" about Mexico, even if that day is less important to the actual Mexicans, I say it's a good thing.

I had my Spanish dinner tonight, and it went very well. I felt pretty comfortable and nobody could quite believe that I'd only picked up Spanish in the last year. So, a success. I am glad I had prepared so well... and I'm ready to spend time with my "other languages" again. I also had my first taste of Mezcal, which was very delicious.

Bella loves loves loves her playset. She brings all sorts of things up to the crow's nest and hangs out. She also likes to invite Pamela or me up there, and she plays pirate captain. She was a bit out of sorts today, and needed a lot of parent time, so we spent a lot of time up in that crow's nest.

She's got some new mannerisms: She seems to be channeling a 1950's diner waitress. She'll walk up, prop her arm up on whatever you're sitting on, cock her head a little, and say something like "so, if you're thirsty, I could get you a cup of water you know." or "If you're done reading that paper, I could use some help upstairs". She'll raise her eyebrows, and the delivery is very matter-of-fact, sort almost world-weary at times. It's not something she does all the time, but when she does, it's so cute I just want to scream.

Isaac's in a slightly difficult place: He's so mobile with the fast crawling, and pulling up on everything... but he's still refusing to eat solid foods for the most part - he just clamps that jaw shut and stares you down. And if you persist, he starts with the waterworks. But he also has some new cute moves - he'll actively cuddle now, and his flirty moves are to die for.

Last night we were at a playspace in a mall, and Isaac was making time with ALL the ladies. Bella, on the other hand, found a slightly challenging thing to do (jumping from one structure to another, pulling up and vaulting over it), and did it around 40 times in a row to refine her technique. In previous visits, I had seen her standing and watching other kids doing this move, but she had never attempted it. Last night, she not only attempted it, but she OWNED it.

I get the feeling that that's how it's going to be with her: She wants to see it, think about it, and then do it perfectly (even if this process takes weeks). A couple of weeks back i took her to a dance class, and she WOULD NOT DANCE: She stood there watching everything and everybody, immobile but totally attentive. But now a couple of weeks later, I have seen her doing a couple of the moves from that class when I'm playing music.

On the other hand, I can easily see Isaac seeing, trying, failing, trying, failing, trying, succeeding. It's not that he's without caution, but he seems to be a bit more straightforward. Maybe it's just the "boy" thing?

Final note for the evening: My current client did let all of the employees know that I'd be phasing out in 2 months... and the note itself was one of the nicest I've ever seen. AND I have been inundated with emails and visits from people who are sad to see me moving on. I get the feeling that if I wanted to return, there wouldn't be a problem AT ALL. That's a nice feeling, to know there are options and good will.

Building Permit

Today was the day that the climbing structure arrived. It's big, it's beautiful, and it's actually relatively size-appropriate for the yard. Bella was in a blissful state of happiness that was hard to describe - just a perma-smile as she climbed up and down, and had a snack up in the crow's nest... Isaac seemed to like his special swing.

We made a decision not to invite anyone over, to let Bella know that this is HERS. The playdates can start up tomorrow.

The day was just gorgeous for the install - mid 70's, not too hot, without a cloud in the sky. I had come home to oversee the install over lunch. Alas, I needed to get back to work JUST as the guy arrived...

I got home in time to grill up some chicken for dinner, while Pamela made some very nice green beans with lime and cilantro. Dinner was served on the deck, then I had to flee to go work out: On Wednesdays I like to do a double - BodyPump AND BodyJam.

I got there just as the warmups were starting (2 min late), and Jeannie the owner did me the "favor" of setting up my bench for me: RIGHT IN FRONT and CENTER. A good number of people probably couldn't see the instructor what with me looming up there. But it was a good workout. The bodyjam dance set was also a blast, and I find myself NOT terribly exhausted after 2 hours of working out.

I'm excited to have another meeting with the new client tomorrow: This time I meet more of the business owners and start leading meetings.

And that's about what I know right now... not TOO clever tonight.

Weary of the double cross

I watched "Lucky Number Sleven" as the family slept, and I probably should have just slept too. It's not that it wasn't a clever movie. Oh it was clever. And many strange characters running around. It was "wacky".

I think that I'm just exhausted with the double-triple-octuple-cross movie. They have such a familiar pattern: They give you everything in the first five minutes, then string you out for the rest of the movie by tactfully omitting key data from each scene until by the end, you say "oh, all those things related to that scene they showed me at the very beginning, so now it all makes sense".

Along the way, there's random violence, crazy throwaway lines, actors having fun in ridiculous outfits and overblown accents... And because we KNOW it's an octuple-cross movie, we're just waiting for the waiter who wandered into the scene randomly to hold the key to the mystery OR shoot someone.

Maybe I need to relax and enjoy things more... but I don't like being put in the position of thinking I need to outsmart a movie, and if I figure it out first, I win, otherwise the movie wins. Some people like Chris Nolan (The Prestige) make excellent puzzle movies, but the movie also has merit BEYOND the puzzle - it's the heart of the movie, not the spine. You can remove the mystery and still have a full structure to enjoy.

A movie like Sleven has the puzzle as it's skeleton, and once it's sussed, there's nothing holding the mass of skin and organs up and it's just a messy pile on the ground.

Not that I hated it... I just felt a bit tired of the whole scheme.

Night night!

Oh accursed human frailty!

So nobody's sick, it's a beautiful day, we even got a half decent night's sleep. Things were shaping up to be a good day. We had such plans: Gardening, me going to exercise, a BBQ in the evening...

Bella started with a "hunger strike", which fortunately I knew what she was holding out for: A cream cheese bagel from Brueggers. So I packed the kids in the stroller and we headed off... and took the long route home so that Pamela would have time to have a leisurely shower unperturbed by her mini shadow (who likes to help pick out EVERYTHING for mommy, from makeup to underwear to shoes).

Upon our return, I saw Pamela holding an ice bag around her finger... uh oh...

Turns out that while enthusiastically tucking the sheets into Isaac's crib, she pushed just wrong on her fingertip, and tore the tendon clean off. So now the end of her her middle finger of her right hand dangles limply. Sadly, this exact injury happened to Pamela's dad just last year - another tucking incident.

We were on our way up to the Emergency room when a brainstorm hit: There's a big orthopedic specialty clinic just up the street, and recently they put a big sign on their building advertising "Acute Injury Clinic" - an orthopedic urgent care! I pulled over, dialed 411, and got connected. Yes, they deal with EXACTLY the sort of injury Pamela has.

We got to the clinic, and it took only 5 minutes to get in to see a doctor, who had the exact treatment ready... this will take 6 weeks to recover, but should NOT require any surgery. Her finger has a stylish temporary splint, and she'll get the custom molded one on Monday. We were back home in less than an hour and a half - about the amount of time it would have taken to get REGISTERED at a regular Emergency Department, in my experience.

So now, I missed my exercise classes... and I'm doing all of the gardening while Pamela directs the work. She's got the pain, but I'm doing the projects. I'm writing this from the basement where I'm hiding, pretending to "look for something". If you get this, PLEASE SEND HELP. There's only so much beer down here.

A Friday Night

Some little bits of status for you:
1) Isaac looks quite on track to be moving directly from the "army crawl" to walking: He's pulling up on everything, standing in his crib, creeping along furniture, and squealing with delight at his cleverness. This is definitely taking precedence over his attempts to coordinate knee-hand crawling: He's back on the belly dragging himself along between vertical objects.

2) At the "old" workplace, I had been given something of an albatross: The largest cube on the floor - almost office sized... but with poor lighting and surrounded by large walls and with the worst cell reception in the area. In addition, the setup forced me to have my back to the door/hall at all times, so every single person who came to speak to me had to clear their throat or say "knock knock" to avoid startling me. But the cube, it was big.

Well, they moved me today to a smaller cube in a less "desirable" row of cubes... but it's near a window, I get great reception, and I face the right way to greet visitors. So don't cry for me argentina - I'm quite happy. But co-workers seem intent in thinking it's a demotion... Which speaks to a strange thing they do there: People move cubes quite often, and the arrangement of the cubes favors seniority: Employees who have been there the longest are closest the the coffee maker, I think. Consultants are clustered in the back room... and will often be shuffled further around in that room if an employee joins - so that the employee can sit in a cube closer to the coffee makers.

It's only my theory: I haven't figured out any other rhyme or reason to this shuffling... I think that Coffee proximity may be it. Oh, I'll survive this madness. It's only for a few months yet. Then I move to my remote windowless office next to the dialysis department at the new client. WHOOOOO!!!!

3) Poor Pamela got a stomach bug yesterday, pulling me home to take care of Isaac (Bella was belle of the ball and had playdates stacked up through the afternoon). I was still trying to get "work" done in the afternoon, with mixed degrees of success. That Isaac is so busy, but then he realizes he's just a baby and is maybe a little scared of all this independence, and needs a cuddle.... So an afternoon watching him is basically play-cry-cuddle-play-cry-feed-lollygag-play-play-play-cry-cuddle... with each phase being between 8 seconds and 3 minutes.

It is a wonder Pamela gets ANYTHING done at all. Much respect going out.

4) Watched a movie tonight: The Illusionist. It came out around the same time as "The Prestige" - I'll never know why studios can go for decades without a turn-of-the-century magician movie, then two come out in the same year and everyone confuses them. Anyway, this is the romantic one, and it was excellent.

It was written by Steven Millhauser, who wrote one of the most surreal books I've ever read "Martin Dressler - Tale of an American Dreamer", which chronicles the rise, rise, rise, and fall of a fictional department store. By the peak, the goods on display in this store defy imagination. By comparison, in the Illusionist, the tricks that Edward Norton's character does are similarly fantastic: A full orange tree blossoming from an empty basket, phantom children, etc...

Twas cool.

5) Final update: I brought Chuck from work out to get Pho today. As you may recall from previous updates, Chuck has some unique restaurant mojo, and often times having him along will cause an unexpected dining experience. I'm pleased to report that today's meal was uneventful AND delicious.

Of course, we HAD tried to go last week, and the place was closed. So perhaps that event had cleared the mojo curse on that particular restaurant.

That's enough. Good night!

Dork Alert

I just want people to know that I have so much geekiness in my head that I've started a second blog. This one is entirely focused on language and my adventures with it.

It's called Language Addict

I'll still post some language-y stuff here... but I think that you might find that the LEVEL of geekiness over there is either your cup of tea or it isn't... and for those of you who are more interested in my Bella and Isaac stories, I'd hate for you to suffer through my obsessions differentiating between two different spanish learning podcasts.

The other advantage I have is that I can share the Languageaddict address with strangers I meet in my language adventures and they won't stumble across too many personal details.

So that's the latest. We'll just have to see how this works.

Los ninos esta noche

Randy and JeMae have been spending a lot of time at my current client hospital: Randy's mom is very ill and possibly on her deathbed. I went to visit them since I'm over that direction and gave them some support - with all of the madness in the past few weeks around us, this is just one more spoke in the crazy wheel.

To help out, Pamela picked up Jenny from the bus after school, and the girls were playing this afternoon. When I got home, I was greeted with wild shrieking... the girls were beyond excited: We were going out to eat and then... TO EDENBOROUGH PARK!!!!!

Dinner was at Fuddruckers. Oh my. They messed up my order every possible way, but in the end, I did eat, so it was ok. The girls liked their food... and the place was pretty quiet. We did play one game in the game room - a totally excellent thing where ping-pong-ball bumblebees are blown aloft by a fan and you are supposed to scoop them and drop them into a bucket. It was surprisingly fun.

Afterwards, we went to the park, which was more empty than I've ever seen it: Bella and Jenny got to do everything - shoot baskets, zoom on wheeled scooter chairs, jump in the moon walk, and climb to the very top of the climbing structure. There were maybe 5 other kids there in total. They were having such a great time! Even Isaac was having fun, chasing a rolling basketball, crawling hither and yon, and working on his standing.

I should mention that Isaac's physicality is getting flat out silly. He's able to pull up to a stand on just about anything. And he's FAST with his crawling: My shame is that on Saturday I had my back turned for just a moment and he bolted past me toward the basement stairs, and pitched over and rolled down two of them. FORTUNATELY, it's just 3 steps to the flight, so there was no epic long tumble which would have been, well, unthinkable. But he got a bruise on his cheek and I feel like the worst dad in the world. I'm getting over that, but the gates are definitely going UP this week.

Anyway, now the kids are all asleep and all seems well with the world. Jenny is spending the night, and got a little sad because she misses her parents who have been at the hospital so much. So she got extra cuddles.

We're counting the days, by the way, to the installation of the new playset in the back yard. Oh, years ago we said "we don't need a playset - there's a great park just down the hill". And we didn't. But now there's Isaac. And when he's napping, Pamela can't really bring Bella down to the park to play. The baby monitor range isn't good enough for one thing.

So we decided to splurge - there was a coupon in the paper - discounts, free delivery and install. So we decided to do it. On Sunday we went to the showroom, and Bella played for over an hour while we decided on all of the details. She jumped up and grabbed the olympic rings and swung herself back and forth - she is STRONG. This will be a good thing for her.

Finally - Isaac got a bit of a cold, and has been a little snuffleubagus. Last night, his stuffy nose got him all awake AND mad, and I wound up driving for 20 minutes with him in back to chill him out. It worked, and that's the first time I've had to do that sort of thing with EITHER kid. Of course I was thinking "Earth Day and I'm burning a gallon of dinosaur mash to put a kid to sleep... " But whatchagonnado?

Ok, the triple post evening is over. Thank you all for your patience.

Language Nuttiness

This weekend was the big Auction at church. Pamela worked her tuchis off on this - she was in charge of decorations, as well as provided a lot of items for auction. Coming right on the heels of the Great Adoption Debacle of 2007, our lives were pretty hectic.

Well, the auction was a great success - over 200 people, over $25k raised for the church, and a crazy good time with good food, cerveza, lots of laughter, and way more auction items that the human mind can process. We bid of a good lot of things, and fortunately only won a few of them.

There was a heated moment during the live auction when Pamela was soundly outbid on a tour of the state capitol and luncheon with the secretary of state.... by the head minister. We really couldn't raise on that. Plus she had doubled the price just like THAT. The lady meant business, it was clear.

One thing I DID win was a Cinco de Mayo dinner party... with the condition that the conversation be all En Español por todo la noche. I'm excited but nervous, because this is just two weeks away, and I need to CRAM on vocabulary for the event. Here's my plan:

- 2 good Spanish Podcasts a day. www.notesonspanish.com has a series of 10 minute long conversations between two people - no script, just a topic... with transcriptions. They are from Madrid, so there may be some lisping that may not work if the diners are Latin American. www.spanishsense.com is the sister site to Chinesepod, and they're Argentinian, and theirs are a bit more basic, but there are good points in there.

- 1 page of translations a day: I'll write out a few key discussion points in English, and then translate them.

So if all goes to plan, in 12 days, I should be a bit more comfortable.

Now, there's actually a chance that this dinner won't happen - I was the only one who bid on it - there were 4 chairs for auction. Oh, and yes, I'd be stag - it was PER SEAT. So either I'll be sitting alone with two social justice advocates, or it might get canceled. We'll see. But I'm sticking with "The Plan." Wish me luck!

Oh how typical

As everyone here knows, Jimmy's starting a new gig. And you all know that I did try to do the right thing by my current client, and that I got everything well arranged. Boy, for transitions, I really thought I had done a good one here. Well, word finally filtered back through my consulting firm that the owners are so VERY disappointed that I have acted so unprofessionally (for working with my client on a transition rather then them, who don't know what I do) and are worried about how they could possibly recover face with the client, and certainly we won't be working together again.

Not to my face of course... but a mole inside the meeting let me know.

I'm just a little frustrated because I actually DID quit them almost 3 years ago. I've been the best not-an-actual-employee they've had. In a year when this current gig is done, you can bet won't be the first people I call for the next gig.

It was fun, but knowing that those people were not being gracious makes me realize they're not my friends. So it's time to move on.

Bella on Tragedy

Today, we went out for a Burrito for dinner. Bella spied a flag at half mast and asked why... much as she had asked back in the President Ford funeral days. I reminded her that it's at half mast because people are sad about something, though I wasn't sure what.

She said "maybe someone died? Or maybe an EAGLE died? That would be really sad."

Sensing a possible moment to ask her about her feelings, with all of the emotions of the past weeks, I asked her what she thought was very sad.

"If a bunny died, that would be the saddest thing. Oh, or a dead butterfly. OR A DEAD BUTTERFLY WITH A DEAD LADYBUG ON IT - that would be the most sad thing. Actually, the dead bunny would be sadder. I love bunnies."

And that's that, I suppose!

Work Update:
I had my orientation at the NEW client today: I'm very excited about this project. It's much smaller than my current project, but it's working with doctors and technology that I need to learn, and I was getting that geek excitement going. I'm formally declared with my current project and consulting company, and there don't seem to be any repercussions, so we're cruising along!

My new office is almost comical in a Brazil sort of way: It's on a different floor than either the IT department or the Cardiology department, in a tucked away corner. It's a big room, but no windows, holes in the walls with exposed wiring, and a locked filing cabinet that's not mine... but I think I'll be able to bring some speakers in and enjoy the privacy... and my cellphone coverage is GREAT throughout the site.

Geek Update:
Last week was Japanese week, this week is Chinese week for language, and I'm still loving it. There's a program at Chinesepod where you can get a 10 minute phone call every day to help you practice and progress.... and maybe in a month or two or three I just might do that for a little bit. I can only imagine it would be amazing practice. I only wish JapanesePod had a similar program.

On the BrainReady front: The third book is on it's way to Amazon, but can be bought anytime at The BrainReady Lulu Store. I've started work on the new 8x11 brainflex worksheets too: I have 6 done so far, and should have another full book of them in 2 weeks or so. These incorporate more of the deeper creative exercises from the BrainChallenge books, have larger fonts, and are generally more readable for tired eyes than the first BrainFlexes.

We're trying to think of really how to get these exercise books out into the hands of some people who need them: Anyone know how to get a case of books out to brain-injured Vets in the VA system without getting trapped in purchasing/requistions hell? I'd give a case away just to get some good feedback and help a few people in need... send me your ideas, ok?

Allright - that's enough update for the day.

Worst Case Scenarios

1) We have two step-cousins who are at Virginia Tech in the engineering department. Fortunately, they're both safe after todays horrible rampage, but one lives in the dorm where it started... and they both usually have classes in the building where the second phase of the shooting happened. We're very lucky there.

2) The worst came true for Cary and Laurie - the Birthmom decided not to go with them, saying she didn't feel like she knew them well enough... the sad thing is that they were here that whole week prior, and the adoption agency never managed to get a meeting together with them - they never spoke before the girl was born. The agency also never got any of the basic legalities started (the pre-birth placement agreement, the cooperative agreement), and now appear to be offering other families for her to consider. They did not do right by Cary and Laurie, who are just shellshocked.

Now, it's always the right of either party to say no - it has to work that way. But in this case, the agency did NOTHING to help prepare either party for this, and they weren't even THERE during the one meeting to help coach or mediate.

So we're very heartbroken for them. If there can be a silver lining, it has been that we have got to know Cary and Laurie very well now, and really like them: It makes this rejection even harder because we know they have such good hearts and would be such great parents.

3) Our dear friend Kari in Chicago's mom had a mild heart attack yesterday. She was discharged today with some recommended diet changes and some meds, but no angioplasty was needed thank goodness.

4) A good friend at work lost her baby last week in almost the same manner as we lost Alexander (same age, major genetic issues, needed to do live birth...). Then not a week later, her mother in law passed away, and they all needed to go to a funeral in South Dakota.

So there's some craziness swirling in the air right now - I hope it calms down soon...

In other news...

While the news of the previous post has been pretty foremost in our thoughts, I did happen to live the life of Jimmy through it as well:

Friday Night was launch night for the new workout programs... and I did two in a row: Weights and Dance. And I loved both of them: I really want/need to make time for 1-2 dance classes a week in addition to my weights class. It's good cardio, and the moves and coordination are a real challenge. Also, it's fun to wiggle my hips.

Saturday I discovered that the people who do the ChinesePod lessons that I love so much have done a SPANISH site: www.spanishsense.com And the lessons are fantastic - I'm at the intermediate level, so they're quite challenging but rewarding. So yes, I'm actively working on Japanese, Spanish, and Chinese. I just don't want the Spanish to get stale... It's the one language I could actually use daily around here, and I should really get more comfortable with it.

While the language tapes I've used (Pimsleur) have been very good, they're very focused around business language - small talk about kids, introductions, travel. All conversation forms are around the formal "you" (vous, usted, ihnen). They're not everyday conversational. And that's where the Chinesepod/Spanishsense lessons really shine - they're focused around conversations you might have with a coworker or friend. And the lessons are around 10-14 minutes, which is perfect for my commute.

Book: Yes, the second BrainChallenge book is finally in print: http://stores.lulu.com/brainready (it'll be at Amazon in a month or two - but we'll get less mo-nay for it, so go on and buy it here.) I do note that while it's available for download for a few fewer dollars, the book form really is the best package, for the Challenges at least.

Life: We spent a LOT of time this weekend enjoying the sunshine and being outside in "the big room". Bella has pink cheeks, as do I. The neighborhood came alive, with the kids starting a lemonade stand and playing tag in the front yards... Even Isaac was enjoying some outside time - he was pleased to hear how his delighted shrieks echoed in the world.

Finally, with the craziness of the weekend (and not always the good crazy), I didn't have time to make that American Idol contest entry: It had a good hook, but the lyrics... meh. I just don't do lyrics that well, and I especially can't do lyrics when I'm trying to target it toward sometone that I'm not (Joe and Jasmine America).

PS - in the NYTIMEs crossword this AM (last Sunday's for most others - we have a one week delay in our local paper), a clue was "Different World Actress" - Awwww YEAH you know I love that JASMINEGUY. I even had her single back then.

RollerCoaster

Oh what ups and downs. On Friday, that baby decided to exit the womb... at 11:59pm. Cary and Laurie drove up Saturday and visited the baby in the hospital - got to spend an hour with her, and came here beaming. We cracked open some champagne, had cheese and sausages and ice cream, and had a great party.

We started today with a big breakfast and they were off to pick up the kid and check into a hotel (until the legalities are complete, they need to keep the kid in a place that would qualify for foster care certification: Our house might qualify but it's not certified, so a hotel it will be.)

But when they got there, they learned the birthmom is having second thoughts... they waited at the hospital for an hour, then spent a few hours walking around Stillwater... but as of the late afternoon, things were still unsettled.

One possibly positive sign is that the mom and baby chose to stay in the hospital one more night, which means the baby is not formally in birthmom's custody until discharge... so if tomorrow she decides to go ahead with the adoption as planned, the kid would be discharged directly to them.

Alas, this has everyone very shaken up - from Cary and Laurie to Pamela, and the network of friend, family, and busybodies who contributed. We'd just feel terrible if this fell through... and even if it DOES go through, you know that Cary and Laurie will be on tenterhooks until the final papers are signed in a month or two. Even worse than we ever were.

We'll likely know more on Monday... and we can only hope that however this shakes out it's the best thing for the kid...

Updating from Mars

Tonight, Bella and I had a date: On our way out to the Burrito store, I caught her eyes rolling back a few times, she was dog tired. But the burrito was a magic refueler - a scooby snack extraordinaire, and she was ready steady to go to Guitar Center.

There she led the charge to all of the departments. In the drum department, she was quite timid, until some boys started playing real loud: Then she started wiggling and joined in. In the keyboard department, she finally made the connection between the knobs above the keys and the sound (thanks to a convenient Moog Little Phatty), and it was like a new store for her - she was playing with the filters on the synths and drawbars on the organs, giggling like a maniac.

We got home and she's STILL unwinding in bed - she really got herself wound up! She had wanted to go to the bookstore too, but I thought I had caught a few yawns... turns out she's got energy to spare!

Geek Story: Weeks ago when I was working that Golive (and watched all those Heroes episodes), a coworker was evangelizing about Firefly, a short lived sci-fi western. She said until I watch it, I don't know nothin' about nothin'. So this week I watched the pilot, and I gotta say, I can see why people were passionate about it. There was great writing, big themes, great effects, snappy dialogue, and some very surreal stuff. I could EASILY see getting together with friends, watching the show and dropping lines of dialogue in public places. But I'm a good 4 years too late, and I feel late to the party. I'm just not sure I have 10 episodes in me... but I'll try one more just to see.

Work: I needed to get some fancy insurance for the new gig, and finally got it arranged today. It's not a small amount of money, but in a way I've been lucky NOT to need it in the past. With this coverage, I can work just about anywhere they have lawyers who care. I was working two angles for the insurance: One was my current agency, who was flummoxed by the requirements and wanted me to wait for a week until somebody who knew better got in. The other was a pro who got it all arranged in a day, and was willing to activate all of it on a verbal promise to pay ("we need to have some level of trust here"). The guy who worked for it got my business.

Exercise: I'm excited that they're launching the new quarterly releases tomorrow, and I'll be good and tired when I get home tomorrow night: I'll be learning the new weights AND dance sets after work Friday... Pamela is graciously putting the kids to bed so that I can be an adonis at the gym (hey, I watched them last night while she got a pedicure, so we're getting even....)

Language: It was all about the Japanese this week for me. It started well, I finally learned some new words that I had heard movie villians say... and it reinvigorated me. I'll hit Chinese next week harder. The nice people at the Chinese website sent me a note: I had told them my goal was to learn Mandarin so I could go to Shanghai for my 40th birthday and have a suit hand tailored on me. They wrote me back saying that's a GREAT goal, and that suits cost less than $100, so I'll probably want to get a dozen, and they can point me to some great tailors who will even design crazy clothes I make up (I'm thinking some sci-fi wear might get made).

So that got me all excited to keep learning languages. Add to that, it's great mind exercise and is keeping me sharp (like I need the help?).

Music: I thought I had a great hook for the American Idol songwriter competition, but once I played it to tape, it was a bit limp. I may not be able to pull this one off. There are over 5000 entries already, alas, and the deadline is Tuesday. Perhaps this weekend it'll all come together? Perhaps.

Off to watch a show now! (no, not writing that great pop song - relaxing!)

(PS - Cary and Laurie are back home: The baby is stubbornly clinging to that woman's uterus and may be delivered early next week. If this is any indication, they'll eventually have a kid who won't be rushed... ;-> )

That Easter Bunny

A quick update:
Bella found her Easter Basket this morning, and methodically worked her way through it. One of the items was a small wood rabbit hutch with a wooden rabbit. She picked it up and turned it around... and said with wonder:

"That Easter Bunny sure knows what he's doing."

busy and better

Full house around here: Papabam are in town - they have our bedroom. Bella is squealing with delight at all of the Papa projects, and the two of them have been great cohorts. Only this afternoon did her attention begin to fade, and she ran off to play with a kid her (physical) age for a while... we'll see when we hear from her again!

Cary and Laurie, the couple from Chicago who Pamela and Madge (busybodies extraordinaire) may have found a baby to adopt are staying on our 3rd floor - their baby-to-be should be delivered today or tomorrow. They're sweet people and very excited to be possible parents. They're out this afternoon seeing the sights for a while.

Nick and Rich came over last night for a boy's night, which Cary joined (Papa was welcome, but he got sleepy - too much frolicking with Bella) - where we watched one episode of Heroes and Casino Royale (BEST BOND EVER). We didn't get all fetishistic with the scotch this time, but I did pull out an old favorite to share. It didn't seem right to watch Bond without SOME libation.

(and yes, that meant that last night the house was TRULY full)

If you're keeping count, that means Pamela and I are on inflatable beds on Bella's floor. But it's worth it for family and friends.

I'm feeling much better now, though the sore throat does linger a little. Quick tip for any with sore throats out there: V8 juice is NOT soothing. I found that out, thought I'd share.

In spite of the illness, I managed to finish the formatted content for the third book this week, and it's being reviewed and enhanced by my co-conspirator as he vacations with his family someplace where they have a beach and temperatures above 30f. The weather here is brutally nippy. I think I might be able to have a proof of this one by next week. I'm trying to hustle to get 3 books into a gift basket for a church auction in 2 weeks. IT CAN HAPPEN.

Finally, the other night I picked a month from the right column on the Blog to see where my head was at back in Sept 2006... boy, what a crazy month that was. I need to go back and read my previous blogs more often - it reminded me of a lot.

It's sort of like journaling, but public, so I don't say things like "Gareth is really bugging me today, as he does every day" - it keeps me focused on the positive, the amusing, and the creative... and that's not a bad place to be.

Hope everyone has a great Easter!

System Crash

Tuesday I had a pretty rough start to the day and was walking around in a bit of a fog... I attempted a "reboot" at lunch, having a big breakfast and a pot of coffee, which worked to a point, but by 4, I was stumbling out the door trying to get home before passing out.

I got home, and hit the hay for an hour, was slightly refreshed for a date out with Pamela, but got fade-y again by the time we got home just before 10. I dove straight to bed, first donning a full set of pajamas because I was getting chills.

Wednesday AM I figured out I wasn't going anywhere... called in sick to work, and slept until 1pm. I got up enough to make an appointment to get taxes done, came home for 2 more hours of sleep... helped get the kids to sleep again, and went to bed at 8... slept until 7 this morning.

(I should point out that even though I was catatonic, I still was game for mid-night Isaac feedings - I'm not a total slug, I'll care for my children)

I'm not 100% feeling great, and the symptoms were just strange: chills and sweats, a dull headache, and a total lust for sleep. Could it have been that legendary star-rehab excuse of "Exhaustion" or something more sinister? I'm still not feeling great.

Here's hoping it all comes together in time for a fun weekend - I'll be picking up Papabam from the airport in an hour for the weekend...

High Jinks

Three additional details:
1) Both our washer and our dryer decided last week that they'd had enough of us and our two kids of laundry. The dryer was demanding ever more in blood sacrifice to continue working (every single zipper, and many snaps and buttons, and more than a few bra straps all proved appetizing to this monster) The washer just gave up. So we got some new ones. LG model, cool blue, and charming in all ways. They don't beep or buzz, they chime. They don't rumble, they quietly whir. In fact, only the spin cycle may be an issue, since it's a much faster spin than the old machine, it creates some crazy vibrations in the house... we're looking into floor mats or something. But putting it on medium or low spin speed solves the problem somewhat too.

Is it possible to be in love with a washer dryer combo? Perhaps... perhaps my friends.

2) At work the other day, I heard over my cube wall two people who said "maybe we should ask Jim...". So I dove under my desk and called out "Jim's not here!" They came around the cube wall, and burst out laughing. And for the rest of the day they laughed. And the next day, more people came around and said "Oh, you're not under your desk today?" And the NEXT DAY.... Boy, you just pull one gag, and it gets people for DAYS.

The crazy thing is that was totally "normal" for my days as a director back at ValueRX - we pulled that gag all the time, to the point where it wasn't even worth mentioning. We were insane then, I guess. But it's fun to shake up the squares.

3) I'm sure everybody already knows it, but when a rabbit jumps straight up in the air, it's called "Jinking". So High Jinks brings to mind the image of rabbits leaping up in the air, which sounds both mischievous (for aren't rabbits quiet little animals?) and magical. I love it when language brings imagery to mind.

Family Weekend

Boy, suddenly it's Monday, and somehow a weekend passed without a trace! I do know we did a LOT of work on the house (the basement tool room was the victim this time - and our lucky garbage man has a 8 square feet of solid garbage to haul away), and I finally moved the ever growing "garage sale" pile out from our living room (where frankly it was starting to feel a bit like a garbage house) into the garage... and around 50 paint cans out to the front porch.... yes there was massive schlepping.

Jenny came over in the afternoon on Saturday (it was good and rainy). Midway through the afternoon, the girls ran up to me and demanded to be taken to Edenborough Park - a large indoor playground near us. As it was rainy, I warned them it would be good and busy, but they were undeterred. On the way, Bella confessed: "We were in the basement pretending we were at Edenborough, and then we said HEY let's go to the REAL Edenborough". They played for hours, and it was fun to watch Bella running all over the place, going down the big slides.

Sunday we visited with Grandma and Grandpa in the AM, then off to the Burrito store for some lunch. That afternoon, I had to move lawn furniture out of the garage (to put garage sale stuff IN) - Bella helped despite the rain... then everyone but me fell asleep, so I crept off to exercise (ooh - I am so daring).

Today I had my first meeting with the new client, and am positive this will be a fun gig! I'm a good week away from a signed contract however, so keep it under your hats still, people.

My second book is available - just not through Amazon yet. If you're curious, check it out: http://www.lulu.com/content/763322 It's very different from the Brainflexes - less busywork, more reflective content.

Finally (and I realize this is a totally scattery post today - I'm just trying to get caught up) Isaac started talking again today: While he was going through his "how do I crawl?" phase, he stopped talking more or less. Today, he was right back with the AH DAH DAH!!! But at least now, he's singing it a bit more, and not bellowing it. It's very cute. Trust me.

Allright - that's enough tonight. More later.

Finally

My second book has been uploaded to the publisher and I'm awaiting a proof copy... in a few weeks it will wend it's way to Amazon. And I will be a twice published author. HA!

It's a very nice feeling.

A glorious day

Though the weatherman said we were getting storms in the afternoon, today wound up being a gorgeous spring day - temp in the 70's with a cool wind, bright sun, blue skies with fluffy clouds... Bella was out in the communal yards up the block having fun, and we walked Isaac over to Turtle Bread for pastry treats.

Yesterday was also very nice - Mom had us over to tea and sandwiches (though thankfully the requisite cucumber and watercress sandwiches of a traditional tea were passed over - our sandwiches had lots and lots of bacon on them). Bella and Isaac interacted with Jasper, the most patient bunny rabbit on the planet, and we had a very nice time.

The devoted reader will be relieved to know that those sniffles were most likely allergies from a warm day and emerging molds and pollens. I have acquired some sudafed (again, the real stuff) to help me through, though after yesterday none has been needed... AND the rabbit did not make me sniffle. The Christmas Miracle continues.



Last night, another piece of music created, and more work on my book covers. THIS afternoon, I did more revisions on the book covers (so picky) and finally came up with a possible logo for this venture... let me know if you like it (if it shows up here... it's not showing up as I write this). It's pretty simple, but I was going for clear type, the little brain, and sort of a sunrise and/or light bulb going on feel.

Tonight, I did finally work out after another 10 day gap... and I'm a bit sore: My arms felt like rubber as I rocked Isaac to sleep tonight. I also told stories to Bella and had a long chat in bed... and it was very funny: In her running around today she spent a lot of time with an 8 year old, and Bella picked up those vocal inflections completely:

"I was all 'hey what's that' and she was like 'oh that's just a thing' and I was totally 'no way'." What's funny is that she's like a sponge with language and picks up new phrasings just like that, mimics them for a day or two, and then she's back to her own unique patois. She's a clever girl, that one.

So tonight, I don't think I'll be writing another song, or tweaking the books further (I'm waiting on Paul's opinion on my new covers and logo), and I already did a Japanese lesson, so I think... yes... I think I might actually go to bed. IMAGINE THAT.

Sniffles.

Great, either the allergies are in full bloom, or I got a real live cold and I'm not happy. Ah well.

A short note: Isaac started crawling today: It's the "Army Crawl", where he's pulling himself along on his elbows, like a wounded soldier... but it has given him forward motion, and he is impossibly pleased with himself. Adding to his rotate and flip maneuvers and he's now a force to be reckoned with.

Time for bed!

Mad for language again

I'm working two languages now... Mandarin and Japanese. Clearly I have gone completely insane, right? It's actually a cunning experiment: now that I have a facile working of French, Spanish, German, and English, and I got stalled on Japanese, I think that my ability to parse the uniqueness of a language is definitely getting pretty sharp. Also, I will say that based on my first week of this, there really is NO chance of mixing them up any more than there's a chance of mixing french and German: The sounds are totally different, the sentence structure is totally different. The only thing they share is some idiogram characters, which have similar meanings but different pronunciation between the two.

And did I mention the SOUND is different? In Japanese, it can be spoken monotone, but Chinese is almost like singing: The same syllable has four meanings based on if you say it with a high flat tone, a medium rising tone, a low "dipping" tone (hi-low-hi), or a high falling tone. An analogy would be if you're calling someone for tea: First call out, "Tea!". Not sure if anyone heard you you'd say "Tea?" rising up. A little frustrated, you'd growl "Tea..." with the falling-rising dip. Then at the end, you shout TEA! with a fall off on the tone at the end. Maybe that doesn't make any sense. But it works for me.

I've discovered two new resources to help me: Web based learning from Japanesepod101.com and Chinesepod.com. Each of these have lessons in 10-15 minute increments at various levels, and accompanying PDFs to show the written vocabulary. They both have online tools for quizzes, and for hearing individual words repeated... But their core audio lessons ARE free, which is superfantastic.

I'm afraid I'm starting to drive Pamela nuts with language now - pretty much everything I say, I repeat quietly in the other languages just to see if I can... and Pamela says "That's a lot of input coming at me." So I'll have to do it more quietly. I'm also considering making a book just for me to practice polyglot-ism: Copy a book, sentence by sentence, and on each page, have one sentence that needs translating into 4-5 languages, plus checkboxes for what learning (pimsleur, podcast, etc) I did...? I think that this idea may actually be too nerdy even for me. Please... HELP ME.

One final detail on Language: I went to a sushi bar tonight, and sat down with a cheerful "Kon ban wa!" (good evening) ready to to chat up my chef (I had a lot of comments ready in Japanese). The guy gave me a look and said "Sorry dude, I don't speak japanese. Maybe you can teach ME something". I got "dude" from a sushi chef. Then he messed up my order too. It was a bit of a letdown, and I don't think i can go there again... They also over-vinegar their rice a bit. Nuts to them.

While doing all of this, I've also been busy with BrainReady: I did a prototype cover for Book 2, which may go to printing this weekend. And the content for Book 3 is essentially complete, it just needs to be dropped into the book template, and that will be at the printers by next weekend.

We're also working on CDs of visualizations, and to support that I've been doing a lot of music - in the past 3 weeks, I've written 8 new pieces of music, which is almost as prolific as I used to be back in the early 1990s (back then, it was 1 piece every 2-3 days for a few years - over 500 tracks written from 1990-1993). I've had to get very efficient, and my new "laptop at the dinner table" studio is proving to be very effective.

Well, it's time for bed now...

Many iPods, many purposes

I have SIX iPods. It is too many, but each has a purpose. Tonight, number six serenaded us with a great mix, which got me reflective:

Number 1 is a 40gig 3rd Gen. He lives on the Bose SoundDock in the living room, and provides dinner and party music.

Number 2 is a 4gig silver Mini, and permanently by Bella's bed with speakers and plays night night music, and the occasional boom boom music during the day.

Number 3 is a first generation shuffle and sits unloved on my third floor.

Number 4 is a 4 gig Nano, and he's my running around listening to stuff iPod.

Number 5 is the 80 gig Video iPod, who has my tv shows and movies, and Bella watches shows on it during long road trips.

Number 6 is the NEW shuffle, and he's clipped to the cup holder in the Mini. I fill him up with random mixes from my music collection, and he has the soul of a DJ. Tonight, he hit us with the following five-in-a-row:
- Something Good by Utah Saints
- Mad World by Tears for Fears
- The Walk by The Cure
- One in Ten by UB40/808State
- Rescue by Echo and the Bunnymen.

At that point, I had to simply stop it from playing, since ANYTHING it played after that point would be somehow... disappointing... if it had uncorked an NSync or something, it would have been a buzzkill.

And that's my iPod story.

Quote

Bella is painting an unassembled model kit (a wooden crab of some sort), and announced:

"I'm painting this at a Scientist Level. Do you know what a Scientist Level is? It means I'm painting this like a SCIENTIST, not like a little kid."

Isaac's voice right now is vaguesly cookie-monster - he's talking at TOP VOLUME and it sounds a bit like a shriek. He sure likes the sound of his voice!

One additional Detail

Last night Bella's best friend Jenny spent the night too (yes, scotch nite and a sleepover the same night). We had a fun day at the Mall - it was sort of a different day than we usually have - lots of rides, lunch at the Rainforest cafe (the girls loved it).

But here's the detail: As Rich, Pamela, and I were waiting for Nick to arrive and for the girls to get into their PJs and brush teeth, Bella and Jenny came down and announced they wanted to give us a "show". They had the sweetest smiles. We said "Sure!".

From behind their backs, they brought out toy power tools (chainsaw and jackhammer), and proceeded to attack us with squeals and giggles. Then they ran off, and came back with "ANOTHER SHOW".

This time the stuffed dogs they were holding were snarling and went for our faces. Finally the third act involved stuffed tigers and jaguars, which were hissing and slashing at us.

Now, we don't do a lot of violence in the house, and I'm not too sure where this came from, but it probably didn't help that we were paralyzed with laughter. I'm sure that if Al Queda ever figured out that smiling 4-5 year old girls can get away with anything.... we're done for.

Developments

Last night's scotch night was one for the record books: our goal was to do vertical tasting... some 10-15 or 12-18 year tastings. And yes, we did compare a Deanston 12 to a Deanston 17, and we were stunned at the difference - at how much richer the 17 is... and when revisiting the 12, you could totally tell the family traits, how the extra 4 years of maturation allowed certain flavors to mellow and others to bloom.

But the truly mind blowing moment was that Rich uncorked a Highland Park 25 year. This is over $200 for the bottle, and we were quite intimidated. But upon tasting (and as a cask strength, we needed to add a splash of water) the complexity of character was so amazing it was if the others were all two dimensional, and this was three. Or the others were sepia and this was technicolor. It just had such a rich, multilevel flavor that we felt honored to be tasting it.

Turns out, while cleaning, Rich happened across a stash of cash he had been paid 5 years ago for some freelance work. It was by all accounts now "Free Money" and he felt like treating himself (and us). BRAVO!

Ok, on to the non-scotch moments:

Isaac has had some major developments in the past two days. First, he's tantalizingly close to crawling - he's now able to inch forward so so slowly... it'll be game over for us. But more importantly, he started talking with GUSTO this weekend. Ah-Dah-Dah is his favorite, though Ah-GAH-Yah, Ah yah, and Da-Da-Yah are all other variants. He YELLS these words constantly while playing. In between maniacal giggles, that is.

We dropped him off at the nursery at church today, and when I picked him up 80 minutes later, the sitter was in awe - she had never had such a solidly happy guy. He apparently just laughed and played and never fussed even a bit. Good boy.

Bella and Isaac participated in their first Peace march today: We walked 2+ miles with around 4000 other peaceniks from uptown to downtown. Pamela decorated the stroller with cute signs like "Iraqi Kids: Wanna Play?" It was in the 40s and a bit windy and overcast, but it did not rain, so we were fortunate. For the record, we're not "chanters", so whenever somebody would start up with the "Whadda we want? Whendowewantit?" chant, we'd either stay silent until it died down, or we'd yell things like "HAM SANDWICHES! WITH MUSTARD!!!!" Really, does chanting help anyone?

So now I'm off to "work" - doing more music for Brainready audio projects, and coming up with still more exercises for our BR Book #3. It's most excellent.

PS - Heroes

I finally got caught up on Heroes - all 18 episodes so far. It's on hiatus until late April now, so I get my life back. I am still amazed at how good every show is... still infused with wonder. Sylar is a great villain, as is the man with the horn rimmed glasses... though as time goes on, he's getting sympathetic.

One of my favorite details is that the bad guys in "The Company" all speak Japanese to eachother to keep from being overheard... and they think in Japanese too, to protect themselves from mind-readers.

Which only made me want to get better at Japanese. Of course, if the bad guys were all german, I'd want to bone up on my German, wouldn't I?

I have been doing short Japanese lessons from Japanesepod101.com, and they're just amazing. They have a work ethic that stuns me: They generate at least one lesson a day, and have since late 2005. Each lesson is in audio with 4 participants, with an accompanying transcript in Romanji, Kana, AND Kanji. And it's all FREE - there are like 600 lessons out there, from beginning to advanced, audio blogs, cultural notes, etc. If a person really owned just one of their 15 minute lessons every single day, they'd be fluent in a year, I really think so. And it's very contemporary culture based, so you're learning polite and familiar terms. It's much deeper than my Pimsleur (which I stalled again... curse you "real life") and it emphasizes reading as well.

SO I'M GOING TO DO IT. Starting at Beginner 1, and going from there.

Oh, and Brainready: I also stalled on Book 3 while Heroes infected my brain. But by the end of next week, both books 2 and 3 will be ready and being proofed. REALLY. I came up with some fun new exercises for book 3, which will really add value to the full set. I can't wait for you all to see them!

Now I really AM going to the mall. Happy weekend!

Viva Carnival!

Last night was the Highlands Elementary Carnival, the annual festive event with moonwalks, games, food, and gift basket raffles. Of course, Bella isn't a student there yet (and won't be for another year), but we've gone the past 3 years just to support the school she WILL be attending.

This year Bella was VERY interested in the bouncy moonwalk-style events - there was a maze that ends with a climbing wall and slide, and she completely OWNED it, going through it 3 times in a row, then once more at the end of the night. Pamela's favorites are the cakewalks, and we were pretty lucky in those - we got two boxes of cereal (Cap'n Crunch Peanut Butter, and Fruit Loops), and two muffins. We came up empty in the "Junk Food" one, and the students were completely mental for the idea of getting bad-for-you food, and were way too cranked up. It was scary.

At the end of the night, we were picked to win one of the gift baskets: A big box of science from Lakeshore Learning - crystal growing kits, mechanical puzzles, electricity experiments, skeleton and eyeball models, and a MICROSCOPE!!! Super cool, and bella thought so too. Isaac spent the evening in a baby backpack on my shoulders, laughing crazily and looking around.

After getting home too late and getting the keyed up kids to bed, I thought it might be fun to watch the new Christoper Guest movie - For Your Consideration. In a word: Meh. No laugh out loud moments AT ALL? Pamela went so far as to say "they shouldn't have even RELEASED that movie". We just didn't know what the point was - it reminded me of some of the very obvious jokes in LA Story that some people thought were "biting" and I thought were "duh". Or maybe hollywood is just such a broad target and has been so well covered that it couldn't help but seem tired.

It was certainly no Guffman, or even a Best in Show... It made us a little sad, so I hope that they really go for something different next time.

Tonight's another Scotch night with the boys: Now we're doing VERTICAL tasting - that means that while we had previously been exploring the different tastes between regions and distilleries, tonight we are trying out different vintages from the same distillery. So a 12 year versus an 18 year. And no jokes people - we don't ever taste enough of this stuff to wind up Horizontal... we're classy. Oh, and the movie will be Batman Begins - the super dark origin story starring Christian Bale and directed by Christopher Nolan (who were also star and director of The Prestige from 3 weeks ago!)

Finally, I'm getting excited about the new gig possibility... and have taken more steps to help my current client find someone "like me" for the maintenance work. I think I helped them get a key concept in why my skillset is unique, and maybe they'll be able to post the job a little better. Up to now, they've been getting techies who can't speak to humans, and project managers who came up through the business, not technical, who don't know the details of how software WORKS.

My suggestion is to look for Data Warehousing people - we always needed to work with end users ("I want to see top salesmen ranked") and techies ("That data is in three databases, you'll never get it together"), and synthesize it all ("I extracted key data from those three databases, built a new database, and here are your reports, sir").

That skillset is surprisingly hard to find, actually, and I reflect on how lucky I've been to be able to work with as many great DW people as I have. It's like we have superpowers.

We're off to the Mall of the Americas for some walking around blowing off steam fun. Later!

Where to start?

1) I am hopelessly addicted to the NBC show "Heroes". It started with a single download, and I'm now 13 episodes in... out of the 18 so far. It's like X-Men meets X-Files, the whole thing is a big story arc, it's well written and acted, and the characters are engaging. EXCELLENT show.

2) I was thrown for a loop this weekend - I worked a "Golive" for one of the modules at my current client. I was at work 6am-2pm Sunday and Monday, with the added bonus that with things going WELL, there was literally nothing to do. Nothing to do but watch 6 episodes of Heroes, I guess. But worse, it threw off my clock (along with DsT) and I've felt uncreative and unproductive so far this week... alas.

3) I think I have a NEW client starting next month - while I've recently been doing work on revenue cycle (the business side of hospitals), my previous gig was working with radiologists, and it was somehow more rewarding: It was good to be directly involved with patient care tools rather than insurance tracking. My current contract does go to the end of the year, but it's mostly maintenance work - and you all know how well I cotton to maintenance work. Well, some old friends called up and asked me to be working with CARDIOLOGISTS for the next year or more at a major hospital in downtown. I've had a couple of interviews, and I also cleared things with my current client, and it'll start part time next month. So I might be taking the bus again, I'll be skyway walking, and I'll be involved in tools that directly impact patients again. FUN!!!

4) Did I mention that I've finished the second BrainReady book? I just need to format the cover and it's ready to go. It should be available in a few weeks. Book 3 is half written at this point - see points 1 and 2 as to why I haven't finished it yet. Between feeling draggy, and needing to finish this fantastic show, my plans for world domination are alas on hold.

5) Tonight, we had a date night, and went to a place called "Let's Dish" - basically, it's food prep stations, where you get a whole mean ready to cook, and you bag it up and freeze it. It's pretty reasonably priced, and you get access to decent ingredients and recipes. And it's fun to go around the stations and assemble these food kits. It was a great evening, and we have 13 different meals, each of which is enough for two nights.

6) Isaac can now sit by himself... until he falls over. But he's soooo strong!

7) Two new Bella-isms: when she gets an idea of something to do, she says "Are you thinking what I'm thinking? How about the Burrito Store!!!" But the "Are you thinking" thing is just too excellent. The other one was her standing on the couch, pointing to a spider web, saying, "Hey, look at this beauty". As though she was a used car salesman or something.

Her language is just so charming. We're so lucky to have such a clever girl.

And that's the update. I'm sure there's more, but it'll have to wait. I need to get up in 5 hours to work out.

Cute kid moment

but this time, NOT my kids:

At work, our building complex is shared with a day care, so occasionally you'll see a line of kids walking, holding the rope.

Yesterday, we were standing in the foyer waiting for the shuttle bus to take us to the main hospital, and we saw the kids-on-a-rope train coming around the corner - some days they just walk them clear around the building once and that passes for exercise. They were all bundled up, and I'm guessing they were all around 2 years old or so.

The line leader seemed to be having some trouble, however - as we watched them approach, he seemed to be stumbling a bit, and flat out falling down. As they passed our foyer, the issue was clear: The kid was ASLEEP: His eyes were shut, and he was being held up by the lead daycare lady. We laughed, wondering just how long this would work... and sure enough, 20 paces further along, there was a new line leader and sleepyboy was being carried.

But naturally, not even 10 paces further, total chaos had broken out - if one kid is being carried, they all wanted to be carried. The shuttle bus came right at that moment, as the line had devolved into total chaos. And of course, this all happened at the exact half-way point around the building, so there was naught to do but soldier on.

And that's the cute kid story.

Flash Daydream

Sometimes at work, if I'm a little tired, I have extremely sudden and strange daydreams based very loosely on what people are talking about, and I usually have to stop myself before I add a comment to the discussion that makes perfect sense based on the daydream.

These are literally "flash daydreams" because they start and stop in a matter of seconds, but the detail and "backstory" created has a scary amount of detail.

I'm taking a moment out of work to document one such instance for you.

In a conference call today, we were talking about the status of a request: The request is to add a check mark to a screen to indicate whether a report has been printed yet by an end-user. It's for surgery, so they know if the supply room is already assembling the surgery tray.

In my dream: I am high up in a skyscraper with floor to ceiling windows, overlooking a futuristic cityscape, with lots of buildings that look like bulbs on the end of long stems - totally Jetsons. I'm wearing a silver unitard with short sleeves, and I'm standing on one leg doing a quad stretch. I have a phone headset on (I'm on the conference call), and am viewing a screen that is hovering over a desk.

"This check mark will certainly come in handy while tracking where one is during a workout" I think.

Fortunately I did not actually come out of my mouth. And I was right back to the meeting... no one was any the wiser that I was temporarily IN THE FUTURE.

I will be very happy once Isaac starts sleeping through the night I imagine. This is getting weird.

Workout Update + Zoo and Ikea

After 10 days, I finally went back to the workout studio for my exercise... And I feel great. I didn't lose any ability being gone those days. I do have to say that part of my not going was about the insane busy-ness we find ourselves in, but also I was a little sad.

Turns out my little 6am "private classes" on Monday and Thursday aren't terribly profitable for the organization, with the Mondays regularly bringing in, oh, two of us. So they canceled the Monday and are keeping the Thursday. The issue is that if not at 6am, then sometime that the kids and family are awake and I could be with them. So I'll have to find a regular early evening slot to colonize to keep my 2-a-week going.

I will survive.

On another subject - we went to the Zoo today with Anne, Tony, Evan, and Marit: I've worked with Anne, and done music with Tony for many years, and we're great friends... and Bella is right between Evan and Marit, so she enjoys time with them too. The zoo was fairly sparse, with all of the outdoor exhibits closed, and "just" the aquarium and tropics exhibit open. But it was great fun. It was bittersweet watching the dolphin show - they've lost 2 or 3 of their dolphins this year, so they're down to 2 performers...

On the way home, we stopped at Ikea so that Pamela could get more boxes with which to better organize her life. On the way in, Bella walked right over to the kid's playland and said - I'll be in here while you shop (it's a sign-in, monitored play area, for this purpose). This would be her third visit to the area, but always it had been with a friend. Today she just wanted to be in there, no matter who was or wasn't with her. It was very "big girl" of her, and we got a little misty.

At the end of the hour, she came out smiling, but not divulging any information about what she did, if she had fun, or anything. Only as we were in bed for stories did she tell me that the best part of her day was jumping in the ball pit in playland.

She also said she didn't ever want to get any bigger, that she likes being small. Well, maybe she could be 5, but not more than that. For once, we're in agreement - I'm going to miss that little girl when get gets bigger.

Let it Snow...

Oh my have we got snow here. In the last 3 days we got over a foot, to go on top of the almost a foot we got a week earlier. It's a good old fashioned winter around here, and we're having a blast. We are truly happy that we arranged for a plow/snowblowing service, because the road berms post-plow are looking like small mountain ranges.

But the snow has also been recreational - Bella loves being a snow bunny and has spent at least an hour outside almost every day. One afternoon, she just plopped down into a field of deep snow, and stared up into the sky for minutes on end, peaceful.

The snow ALMOST caused a cancellation of a Scotch night, but we monitored the snow plowing, and decided that we were safe indeed to have our evening last night. And it was a wonderful night. Two old favorites (Highland Park 12 and Lagavulin 16) and two new ones - something I can't recall from the craggy northeastern shores of Scotland (I think it was distilled from rocks), and one cheap blended whiskey called White Horse which comes from Lagavulin, and is surprisingly tasty for a $16 bottle. (I concealed it from the others by keeping it in the brown bag for tasting...).

The only problem with my surprise was that it followed the Lagavulin 16, which has a quite strong flavor, so the smooth blended taste was completely overpowered - it might as well have been weak tea. But revisiting later, we were able to discern the charms.

The movie last night was "The Prestige" which is an AMAZING MOVIE... a true thriller without any gore or sex, just great ideas, wonderful setups, and a whole lot of "oh my goodness... you don't suppose....?" revelation moments.

Today we weren't terribly ambitious, but had a good day with the family. We had take out burgers from the newly remodeled France 44 restaurant (Cafe44), and it's safe to say it was one of the BEST burgers I've ever eaten... Pamela was beside herself. I grabbed a cold bottle of Prosecco (italian bubbly) from the adjoining liquor store, and we had a real feast while watching Mr Rogers.

The kids are asleep, all is well with the world.

Da BOOOK

Go get my book at Amazon. WHOO HOO!!!

Find it HERE

That is all for now.

Jimmy

Call the Police

Somebody went and swapped our my sweet cuddly boy with a supercharged coil of pure energy.

Mid-week last week, Isaac finally mastered the art of rolling from his back to his stomach, and started showing a lot more interest in being on the floor with toys.

By last night, he was rolling around the floor, grabbing toys, and rolling back. He was rolling over, grabbing a table leg, using it to swing his body around, and rolling a different direction. He's squealing and giggling non-stop with this newfound skill and mobility, and I'm starting to eye every room in the house for childproofing.

Unlike Bella, when he rolls over and reaches something, he likes to give it a good hearty TUG, to bring it with him. He's pulled large dolls over, and come close to having some chairs tip.

And for bedtime, he's not curling up and cuddling as much as he is thrashing like a freshly landed fish until the energy has passed from him to his mattress - presumably for storage, because when he wakes up, we hear the WHOMP WHOMP WHOMP of his legs slamming down, obviously it's the recharging cycle.

And through it all, he is smiling and laughing... awash in joy.

Boys are.... different. I think that we may have a force of nature here.

Inspiration

This weekend I read a fantastic book - The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. He's an author and screenwriter, a late bloomer who is mildly successful (wrote The Legend of Bagger Vance), and has some very important things to say about procrastination and why we don't do the things we should.

He identifies "Resistance" as the primary defeater - on one level, it's the cloud you need to push through to do anything uncomfortable - the first 5 minutes of working out (or better, getting into the car to work out!), the first half hour of any creative endeavor... you need to push through it, even though Resistance gives you all sorts of very good rationalizations as to why you can put this off another day, and how there are all sorts of other things to do.

His analogies in the book tend toward physical combat with this force (hence "war" in the title), and he personifies the force quite a lot... and his tips for beating it are great, as are his descriptions of the rewards you will reap for doing so.

It was flat out inspiring, and really made me think about the things I do or don't make time for... my working out really started against the largest wall of resistance ever seen... and I battle it every week - I'm not sure when I'll make it to the gym this week, for instance. But Music is probably the area where I've self sabotaged the most: I really have no good keyboard technique - I use computers as a tool, but also a crutch, and I don't spend any disciplined time working on my art. If I devoted just 5 hours a week to it, I could be writing a lot more music and getting my hands more comfortable with the keys again... if only I could play with the same unconscious instructions to my hands as I use when typing.

Pressman says that the way through that is to be a professional - treat your art like a job that needs doing: Show up on time, punch the clock, and check out when you're done. Give it the same "gotta do it" we all give our day jobs, and it'll get DONE. So I'm looking at my calendar, figuring I could start with two nights a week, say 9-11pm, and see what that does.

Anyway, it was a short book - the man didn't belabor his points too much and kept it readable. I highly recommend it as a swift kick in the shorts to anyone with a creative pursuit you haven't 'found time for'. Remember, Leo Tolstoy had over 12 kids... and he wrote a heckuva lot.

Fortunately, I haven't been entirely fallow: Brainready.com continues to pick up readers/listeners. While sales of the book are light, it's finally on Amazon, so go get a copy! Search on "Brainready", or "BrainFlex" and it'll be right there. We're also picking up a good thousand or two additional podcast listeners every other week, so that's growing nicely. And I've been writing more of the news posts on the website too... so it's a real partnership.

I also have started work on large-print editions of my worksheets - while they're great for the 40-60 crowd (who we had initially identified as our core market), the 60-90 crowd has trouble with 8-point fonts and crazy formatting, so I'm taking the core exercises and laying them out more straightforwardly. It turns every 2-page puzzle into 3 pages... but that's ok.

Oh one more thing - today at lunch I translated my weekend post into French... on paper. It's at work. But I'll be posting it tomorrow, so you can expect occasional "translations" to appear, as I work on strengthening my language skills. I hope that those of you who know the languages I'm using will help me out when I write something completely incorrectly. French I'm pretty comfortable with, but when I start posting in German or Spanish, I'll need your help.

Ok, that's enough for one night. I'm nuts.

A crazy weekend. SERIOUSLY.

Friday:
- Went to court to finalize Isaac's adoption! Bella was beside herself with excitement about going "To Courts", and was the proudest big sister ever. Isaac was well behaved, but giggled at the court clerk non-stop. So Sir Squirms ESQ is 100% irrevocably one of us. YES!

- Got home, and sent Bella over to JeMae's for a long weekend slumber party with Jenny. Then, CLEANED THE HOUSE. Got us down to 5 zones of chaos (3rd floor closet, 2nd floor workout room, 1st floor dining room (back half), 1st floor Computer Room (Couch only), and basement Tool Room. Each zone can be attacked.

- Caesar and Miho arrived at 10pm from Seattle. Caesar was one of my Tokyo buddies, and a musical collaborator on the Project Manager super-group. He's in town to speak at a school, since he's a super high-up game developer guy. They arrived safely, brought their rented SUV (they heard about the weather), and we had a total blast together until 2am.

- Pamela took off at 1am to get in line for preschool registration for Bella and Isaac. It's totally first come first served, and it's a "cherished" tradition to start the line at midnight. Even at 1am, Pamela was 10th in line. Fortunately, there is honor in the line, so people can sign up their place in line and go back to sleep in their cars. Which Pamela did. She got all the classes she wanted!

SATURDAY:
- Pamela came back to us at 9am, and had breakfast with me and the guests, and conked out at 11. Caesar, Miho, Isaac, and I went out to Target (They have them in Seattle, but Miho was curious if the "Home State" ones were any different), then to lunch at the new France44 deli. Miho, a scotch fan, picked up a bottle of Caol Ila 18 year from the France44 liquor store, too... though I didn't get a taste, because...

- At 3, Caesar and Miho headed out to the Mall of America, and I took Isaac over to Grandma and Grandpa's for the night. I came back and got Pamela for our Night Away. (Caesar and Miho went to the Orchestra to see The Bear conduct and see Uncle Chicken, then housesat for us and watched depeche mode videos until 2am again).

- At 4:15, we checked in to the Graves 601 hotel in downtown Mpls just as the snow was starting up. Turns out a foot fell in the next 20 hours, and we were oblivious. Because we never left our sanctuary. Yes, we had dinner downstairs in the Cosmos restaurant (Deelish - I had foie gras and Char, Pamela has Scallops and Bass - among other things...). Then to relaxing-land. We watched the snow fall from our 18th floor window, watching the ant-cars sliding around the ant-trails...

SUNDAY:
- We slept until 9, had breakfast at 10:30 in the room, Pamela napped again into the afternoon, I read a book and did the crossword and sudoku. We left at 3, got Isaac, got Bella, came home, and are about to eat some food and prepare for the Oscars. Caesar and Miho are now in a hotel in Roseville for the rest of their stay... back to normal around here!

And that's how the weekend went. WOW.

The Portable Dream

Most of you know I'm a musician... I've been doing electronic, computer-based music since the 1980's, and as computers have got more powerful, I've been able to move my gear from a room full of synthesizers to a single laptop with some very clever software - and my music keeps sounding better and better (production-wise - I could argue that some of my earlier songs have not been bettered - especially Chocolate Earl)

But even as computers got better, I've always been tethered to a "workspace" - and that's because until 1 year ago, there were no laptops that were QUITE powerful enough to do the music I like to do. So I've always had to have a big desktop computer that was my "music machine"...

When we flew to Tokyo in April 2005, Caesar was writing music back in coach class with his Powerbook, and I was watching movies. I just didn't have the portable thing WORKING for me.

Well, last summer, I upgraded to a Macbook, sold the desktop, and was finally ready to be the portable musician. The new Macs finally had the horsepower to do what I needed. But psychologically, I still needed to "plant" myself into my studio, hook up the laptop to the rest of the gear. I had just replaced the big server with a little white box, but the rest was the same. Then Isaac came, and no music was being made.

It wasn't until 2 weeks ago that I finally got an old mini-keyboard (regular keys, but only 2 octaves) back from someone who had borrowed it 2 years back. And I took the laptop and the mini keyboard, and a set of headphones, and wrote a song in the living room. Then another. Then one at the kitchen table. Then one in Bella's room as Papa and Pamela were painting.

And I think I'm finally living a portable dream - I really can write music anywhere. I think it's really cool to be using this technology this way. Viva! And the best part is that, like when I blog, I get to be creative WHILE being in the same room as my family - I don't have to feel like I'm sequestering myself away to pursue my arts...

That's the update.

The real story of the Dinosaurs

This evening, we were reading a pop-up book about Dinosaurs for bedtime. At the end, Bella asked me about what happened to the dinosaurs. I gave her the unvarnished truth about the asteroid, and the climate change, and how reptiles can't regulate their body temperatures, but how mammals survived... I like to give the whole story.

She offered her own opinion, and here it is:

"Space creatures came down with spaceships and took the dinosaurs before they all froze to death. They had REALLY BIG spaceships, with holes in the roof so that their heads could pop through. And it was space creatures, NOT the dinosaurs who made the spaceships."

So why did they take the dinosaurs, I asked?

"They took them to play with them. They play with the dinosaurs every day from morning to night, and they never have to go to bed if they don't want to. And sometimes, they go to the Burrito Spaceship. That's where all the burritos are made."

So, at this point, I don't think that her theory is in conflict with accepted theories of dinosaur extinction. There's no reason that our fossil record wouldn't be of stragglers, while a lot of the dinosaurs are living it up out in space.

I don't know where this kid is getting her ideas, but my job is clear: Listen, record, and share.

Primo Bella Quotage

Bella came out with a few good ones recently.

Her one cute speech impediment is to say "Perfect" as "Perf-Tect". So a week back, in describing Isaac, she said "He keeps getting perftect-er and perftect-er". It was a sweet thought, delivered with maximum cuteness.

Last night she asked "What do bad guys look like?". I tried to say that you can't always tell the bad people by how they look, but more how they act... sort of the good cautionary line. Her response:

"No - I think they have red eyes. And turquoise skin. And they dress all in black. AND they're invisible, so you can't even see them. They only appear when no one is around to see them. Like Dinosaurs. They're still around, but they only appear when no one is looking. Also, like Party Balloons."

(Not sure exactly how "Party Balloons" fit into that equation.)

This morning, Pamela reported the following quote:
"If blankets were spoons, they could carry a lot of soup".

Finally, her word of the week is "Turquoise" which she has been using instead of "Blue" in all instances. She says it perftectly, however.

God's Neighborhood

Tonight Pamela was putting Bella down, and read a book called "Old Turtle", which involves talk about God. Now, I'm a registered agnostic, and Pamela's a Unitarian, so we don't have a whole lot of literature about the Big G around, but are prepared to treat the subject respectfully.

Bella asked "what's God?" at the end of the story. Pamela gave a good UU talk about how people have different ideas, but that in general, it's a warm spirit that unites us all and helps give us strength (which sound a little like "The Force" from Star Wars, minus the Midiclorian aspect they tried to shoehorn into Episode I which totally ruined the whole concept by introducing a biological aspect. But I digress.)

Bella said - "No, I think God is a people. He just lives in a different neighborhood".
Pamela asked what neighborhood?

"I don't know - China, or Milwaukee or something. What does Milwaukee look like, anyhow?"

I think that we may have a prophet on our hands.

The Lair is open...

I had Rich and Uncle Chicken over last night for another Scotch and Movie night: These are truly turning into a highlight for all of us - we're bonding well, sharing good stories, and having a great time. The scotches included Oban, Springbank, Lagavulin (as always), Caol Ila, and a taste of Jameson Gold to start. The movies were Idiocracy (even funnier the second time for me) and Run Lola Run (a classic).

The Basement Lair is well secluded from the house, so our belly laughs, screams, and techno music did not disturb the sleeping family.... though the family is still reeling from the sicknesses:

Yes, Pamela has her annual sinus infection, and got completely wiped out starting Friday and really presenting today, with her sleeping til 10, and taking a 4 hour nap in the day too. But she need to heal - I'm not complaining. I'm just glad that my post-scotch fuzzy wasn't too bad - since Isaac had decided that 6 was a perfectly reasonable wake-up time.

With Pamela down, I managed Isaac and Bella... when Isaac went down for an early nap, Bella and I snuck out to do some errands, starting with bagels at Brueggers. I love doing errands with Bella. Isaac seems to be mostly better now, but is now having trouble not getting all of the same attention: He wants a lot of holding, especially while falling asleep. So we're working on getting him back to his normal "sleep when sleepy wherever" self he was. Also, his appetite is back, and he's making up for lost time.

Oh, the Jag is back in the shop: a second tire fell off the rim, which has created a crisis of confidence in the house. This is unfortunately a side effect of not having a garage: Exposing tires and alloy rims to sub-zero temps for 2 weeks straight has resulted in the seal between tire and rim getting brittle. So the tire just sort of wanders off of the rim. this is very bad, but with the cold snap behind us, this will be done with. This same thing did happen to my Beetle many years back, and the only real solution would be to do snow tires on steel rims. But that would be hideous, so nuts to that. More likely, after a coooold snap, a visual inspection of all 4 tires prior to leaving the driveway is the better move.

Ok, enough about that.

This weekend, we'll have a visit from Papabam, which should be wonderful. The "cover story" is that they're going to be primary for the Kids while we finish whipping the house into shape. Over 3 days, we will get a LOT done. Or else.

Off to bed!

A JimVention for you

I was thinking about this idea: "GetMeOuttaHere.com". You go to this website, and for a fee, you can have a text message sent to your pager, or a telephone call placed to your cell with a short recorded message at the time you indicate.

So if you're going to be on a date, or in a meeting, and want a possible out, 30 minutes in, beeeeep you get a page. You stand up and say "sorry, something's up with the server", and you're out. Or you get a call, and you have a short conversation with your previously recorded self, and if things are going poorly on the date, you can say you've been called in to work, or the kid is sick, or whatever.

On a less "sneaky" note, you could use the service to use your cell phone or pager as a wake up service, no matter where you are.

I actually had this idea many years ago (in talking with Eh Xiong back at Ameridata, of all places), but back then, the idea would have relied on a bank of analog modems... but now we have internet phones, and it would be as easy as sending an email...

The drawbacks I see to the plan are several:
1) The most obvious applications are just a little dishonest, and I wonder if that's really a "growth" industry. Is it worth $1 to get out of a meeting? REALLY?

2) It would be so easily abused by people to harass others - imagine programming 20 3 am "wake up calls" to your ex-es cellphone?

3) Suddenly I think about that whole "remote detonation of a bomb with a cellphone" scenario that Jack Bauer is always working against - only instead of a shady arab triggering it with his cell, it's the innocuous coffee bar patron on the web hitting "send"...

So that's a Jimvention that's been on my mind and i figured I'd just lay it out. Run with it people.

And better still

Isaac slept pretty well last night - only one wakeup. He is starting to get his appetite back, and he's definitely clearing up on the wheezy front - I hope this is starting to move beyond us... but will not be counting any unhatched chickens just yet. It's just not smart. Anyway - he's a lot more "consolable" - the crying jags are much less, but he still needs extra cuddles, and likes to fall asleep in our arms, not the crib. We're also weaning off the nebulizer - that stuff was probably making him cranky too - what with it being basically speed. We're down to one a day now, and will probably end it this week.

At which point the Penguin air compressor will be used only to blow up balloons for balloon animals. HA!

So with this crisis nearly behind us, i'm starting to try to get my head back into the world again. I was in meetings today back-to-back, and actually did not almost fall asleep in any of them. I am starting to read my German magazines again, and my spanish novella - use it or lose it! And yes, the next brainready products are in the hopper - but first I need to re-sharpen my brain from the collective "dulling" of the past two weeks of sick kiddage.

A quick correction on my previous numbers on Brainready - while we're doing pretty well, the page hits numbers were artificially inflated: It turns out we have 4000 subscribers to our audio podcasts. Each of them has software that is checking our website once a day for an update. So 4000 x 30 days - 120,000 "hits" and they're all legitimate, but they're not 120,000 people reading us.

Still, that 4000 is twice as many as hit us in December, which is twice as many as in November... it is growing at a decent rate, and considering that we have not actually advertised anywhere, I'm pretty happy.

And it makes me think that we're building something people enjoy: If we had gone from 0-100,000 I feel we could have gone right back to zero as quickly - the slashdot effect - a very popular website links to you, and suddenly you have a million hits, but then once that day is passed and they're on to something else, who remembers you?

Sales of the book are somewhat slow... I think that the key will be to have a few books out there (working on #2 now), and even better, I think that a GAME with our exercises might be a breakout product. I'm drawing up some ideas on that.

So I'm back to my one-million ideas thing. It's good to be Jimmy.

Getting Better

A long long night - Isaac didn't sleep too well, so neither did we. He's more crabby now than wheezy.. we think a tooth may be popping through now. But he's breathing pretty well, save from the occasional coughing fits.

So keep those candles burning, but it sounds like he's on the recovery. I just wanted everyone to know.

An Open Letter

This is an open letter to all bands who have a superfantastic single and then have an album that sounds nothing like that single. I have been burned too often.

1) If your single has a fabulous female singing lead vocals, I will not want to buy your album to discover that that singer is either a guest vocalist or a back-up singer and that all of the other songs are sung by a guy who sounds like he learned by studying songs by Mister Mister. (I'm looking at you Royksopp and Shiny Toy Guns).

2) If your single is a quirky electro masterpiece, I will be very disappointed if the rest of your album sounds like a bar band from Boston circa 1978 (Again, Shiny Toy Guns, the Sounds...)

3) If you get Trentemoller to remix your song, and that's my first exposure to you, then you simply will never be able to live up to my expectations (The Knife, Royksopp) Trentemoller is a god.

I really don't think it's out of line for me to expect that a song that is being promoted by a band SOUND LIKE THE BAND IN QUESTION. To have these singles out there that sound entirely different than the rest of the album brings to mind a few options of what may have happened:

Theory A: They got a record deal based on that new song they wrote, and then when they needed to fill an album they used songs from their bar band past, instead of confidently writing new material.

Theory B: All the hip people know that it was a guest vocalist, and I'm just last in line - and I'm the only sucker in this deal.

Theory C: Kids these days can't write albums like they did back in the day, when Duran Duran would knock out an album in Montressat, hitting the night life, flying airplanes, and touring stadiums, all while looking fantastic.

And that's my rant.

Not RSV related

It has yet to break 0 degrees Fahrenheit out today - it's a cold one. But in spite of it, Bella and I bundled up to go work out to Body Jam this afternoon. It's very fun to bring her... but I've been puzzled: The first time we went, she was very serious about learning the dance moves and really trying to do them all. She's come 3 more times, and each time, she's sort of hung toward the back, or gone off to the side to play with the workout mats.

Today, I finally figured it out: She asked where the BOY instructor was - our first time, Alan was teaching, and she followed his instructions to the letter. Every other time, it has been Maddie, a 16 year old dancer (and daughter of the studio owner). I'm not sure why that would make a difference... but she mentioned it, and it may be a key...

Afterward we had a bite at Patrick's, where the girl who won't eat eggs or vegetables will wolf down a spinach quiche with abandon. Then off to the Hub Hobby center to get model glue for me to build a robot for Isaac's room. (and a horsie for Bella, natch).

Now, as you know, I've built a LOT of robots in my day - I love the Bandai Gundam series, but once you've built one or two (or eight), they're all pretty much the exact same robot. Hub was blowing out their robots for half price, so I got something that had a somewhat mysterious picture on the front - it looked like a bright, dynamic robot with a drill arm.

Having assembled it, I must say that the cover was faulty advertising at best. It's maybe the dumbest looking robot I've ever had in my house. I'm torn about whether it will be staying. Dumb robot.

RSV

Poor Isaac appears to have RSV - which is a respiratory virus, so he's coughing up wet phelgmy coughs, is off his food, and is generally unhappy. But the kicker is that the RSV has exposed a latent Asthma in him... so he's also got a wheeze. We got a nebulizer and some albueterol to help him.

The Neb is an air compressor shaped like a Penguin, and it bubbles the liquid albuterol into a fine mist which he breathes in through a tube we hold down near his nose - we don't have him in a face mask or anything.

We were so worried about him yesterday - he's not sleeping very well, and is so crabby, and around 10pm he got into a coughing fit that wound up with him puking a bit. We got all packed up for the emergency room, when our pediatrician on-call returned our page. Turns out, with RSV, there's really not much they can do at the hospital that's different than what you can do at home. They'd apply the albuterol, and maybe give him some extra oxygen, but there's no magic they can do that is any better than the TLC we can give.

As if on cue, Isaac started smiling and laughing. And he did sleep pretty well in the night. Today, he's still sad and grumpy and doesn't want to be put down, but his rattle does seem to be getting better. We're still nebulizing him. And I finally remembered the "Car Seat trick" for keeping him napping, since he has woken up every 15 minutes during naptime. But pop him in the seat, keep an eye on him, and when he stirs, just rock the seat again, and he stays down. I'm into my second hour of his nap now, and am pretty happy he's getting this rest.

Bella has the cough too - but it's more of a mild, dry one.

It's such a cold day, we're warming ourselves in front of Mr Rogers with no intention of going out again.