news: June 2008 Archives

Well, here we are at the end of 30 Days of Blog. It was fun, but I must admit that this turned out to be more difficult than I initially thought. Just finding the time to write was enough of a challenge, but finding interesting topics to write about was also difficult at times. I was trying not to sacrifice quality for quantity, but I'm not sure I was entirely successful over the course of the entire month. I'll leave that for the reader to decide. I will no longer be posting everyday, but going forward, I would like to continue posting once or twice a week. I hope you have enjoyed, and continue to enjoy, reading.

When Josie was only a week or so old, I never would have guessed that we would have gotten a picture like this. Noah just wasn't into the whole big brother role, and his actions toward her were what you could only call agressive. But he has mellowed quite a bit, and now he even seems to like her, and her face lights up whenever she sees him. I know it won't last forever, but it sure is sweet while it does.

Fridays are the hardest. Whew. When I accepted this challenge, I wouldn't have guessed that one day would be harder than the rest, but Fridays have turned out to be more difficult to find something to write about than the remaining days of the week. So yeah, I'm cheating. It's actually Saturday and I'm pre-dating this entry. And it's not really about anything except the difficulty of finding something interesting to write about every day. My hat's off to the talented bloggers out there who manage to crank out a quality product day after day. Yeah, I'm cheating. So sue me.

If you came of age during the 70s and 80s, and had cable TV, you undoubtedly watched Carlin at Carnegie. Probably many times. I know I did. I think I had the entire thing memorized at one time in my life. Everyone has certain pop culture icons that influence their childhood, and for me one of the biggest was George Carlin. I can't explain it, but I always felt a special connection to him. Needless to say, the news of his passing this week saddened me -- moreso than I would have expected. We will miss you, George.

We hosted a little shindig today for the whole family so everyone could meet the newborn babies -- our daughter Josie and my cousin Laura's daughter Becca. We had a sprinkler set up, Stomp Rockets, and of course Noah's Hummer is always a hit. I think everyone had a good time. A few pictures from the festivities are in my photo album.

Looks like I might have spoken a bit prematurely last month when I said that the end was in sight. Since the contractor has been negligent in watering the new sod that they laid down in our backyard, most of it has turned brown, and I'm not sure it will come back from that. I called MSD about it on Monday when it first appeared, and they sent two rubes out to water the dead grass. They then proceeded to leave our gate open when they left. So MSD got another call about that. I really don't see why treating your customer with respect is so difficult.

There was a brief period of Internet history after bandwidth was sufficiently plentiful, but before YouTube came along, when email servers everywhere were bludgeoned by the weight of funny video traffic. You remember these, right? Enormous attachments that clogged your inbox, most of which you didn't have the proper codecs to even watch, and of the ones you did, most were not funny? Yeah, those.

But among the chaff, there were a few classics. One of which I just referenced in my entry about Linux. But hunting that one down (on YouTube, of course) made me remember another one that used to make me laugh. Who remembers Intellitoast!?! It's STREAMING!! Classic.

I spent today catching up. Catching up on work around the house. Catching up on writing. But most importantly, catching up on some serious play time with my little man. He is a bundle of energy, and always ready to play catch or play cars, but today it was Stomp Rockets. Simply put, it was a good day.

We took Noah and Josie to the circus today. Noah got the biggest kick out of it, he was so charged up during the show. He kept clapping and bouncing up and down in his seat. Josie, of course, slept through it.

The circus has really gone high-tech. The lighting and sound was really excellent, and the special effects (pyrotechnics and big screen TVs) were more than I expected. It is definitely more than just elephants walking around in a circle these days. But the animals are still a central part of the show, as are the acrobats and daredevils. It really is an impressive show. I'd recommend it, and you'll especially enjoy it through your kids' eyes.

As I mentioned previously, I was considering installing a photovoltaic system this year to offset some of our home energy costs. But the PV systems are still quite expensive. Even with net metering, it could take decades for a system to pay for itself, and as the fine folks at Missouri Solar Living pointed out to me, something close to 15% of your home energy costs is your water heater. So a much more economical way to save money is to replace your gas or electric water heater with a solar powered one. So that's what we're going to do. I will continue to post updates on this project, so stay tuned.

A month or so ago, there would have been no way that our daughter Josie would have passed out asleep on the floor this way. She was pretty fussy. No, strike that, she was uber fussy. Actually the word fussy is insufficient to the task of describing her. But we figured that was just how she was, and that we would have to learn to deal with it.

Then one day in May, she stopped eating. She was inconsolable. We tried everything. Finally our pediatrician directed us to take her to the emergency room. After a series of tests, looking for everything from a hair tourniquet to a lacerated cornea, her urine test came back with a bladder infection. We were staying the night at the emergency room.

They started her on broad-spectrum antibiotics. It took a couple of days to grow the culture and positively identify the bacteria. We were expecting it to be one of the usual suspects of internal infections, like E. Coli. But on the day we were anticipating bringing her home, the doctor dropped a bombshell on us. It was a nasty little bacteria called Enterobacter and it was going to require seven days of intravenous antibiotics to be sure we killed it all.

So, we did what any family of four does when they find out such news, we bought a Wii and hunkered down in our hospital room for another week. To make a long story short, our baby's fussiness was a result of the pain from her bladder infection. Now she is home and pain-free, and she is a completely different baby. We are very thankful to be getting to know our new daughter.

If you've ever been to AmIRight.com, you may have seen one of my favorite misheard song lyrics -- Creedence's "bad moon on the rise" in some people's ears turns into a "bathroom on the right."

Speaking of bathrooms, it's only taken six months, but our bathroom remodel is finally coming to an end. I got the room painted. Gray. Well, actually, no. It's not gray. They don't sell gray paint anymore. They sell "Pewter Mug" or "Porpoise." I blame the J.Crew catalog. At some point in the mid-90s, they stopped selling purple sweaters and started selling only "Eggplant" sweaters. It's been all downhill from there.

When I graduated college and started working full time, it was a bit of a shock initially. You never realize how much free time you have until it is gone. I thought I was busy in college. I was double-majoring, carrying a full load of classes, running a radio station, and I was a Resident Assistant in the dorm where I lived. It seemed like my days were pretty full. It wasn't until I started working 40 hour weeks that I realized how much time I had in college to simply goof off and do whatever I wanted.

When I made the commitment to having a wife and family, I knew that I would have even less free time. Finding a few minutes just to do something like writing this blog is a challenge. But the sacrifice of free time isn't as much of a shock because it happens so gradually, and as I look into my daughter's eyes as I write this, and she smiles up at me, I know it is all worth it.

One of my friends from college (who blogs at the curiously named site Numb Trolley Bus) has issued a challenge to his readers. Sure I'll give it a shot. I'll put my new toy to the test, and let's see if I can manage to blog every day in June, shall we?

I actually have a couple of topics that have been stacking up in the queue, so this will give me an oppportunity to clean house a little. See ya on the other side...