Greetings from the therapeutic heat and humidity of far-from-work sunny Mexico.
A proper pictorial update when we’re back.
Now, though, Keaton says she’s ready to “float” again.
You’ll find us poolside, sans watches and cellphones.
someone called me a writer
Happy Monday morning friends.
As you read this, I’m winging my way to South Carlolina via DC. A couple days there doing some sort of work-type stuff and I’m back home. Two days at work and then I hit the skies again, this time with family in-tow, for a weeklong vacation in Mexico. That said, that’ll likely be a pretty sparse week for blogging, so let’s enjoy this while we can.
Anyway, today (Sunday, as I write) was a good day. The girls all got together to do some winetasting, so I invited the abandoned guys over for a BBQ and some beer. I cooked up a ton of ribs, and we all ate to excess. Even the weather cooperated, for the most part. And now, fresh from the shower where I tried, with some small success, to wash the stink of oak smoke off of my skin and out of my hair – I’m ready to start a blog.
Sometime Friday Keaton started showing signs of having a cold again: runny nose and coughing. By Saturday evening she was running a low fever and she was congested and having issues breathing. In fact, by later Saturday night her breathing had morphed into full-on wheezing, and was pretty shallow and fast. Sharaun called the doctor, and she said that, since we’ve been through something similar before, Keaton likely has an asthma-like reaction to some illnesses (I guess chestcolds or something). The last time she was breathing like this they actually gave her a breathing treatment at the pediatrician’s office. Anyway, she asked that we bring her in the next morning for another treatment, and so that they could give us a machine (called a nebulizer) of our own to continue the treatments at home.
For those not familiar, a nebulizer is basically a machine that vaporizes medicine in liquid form so that the user can inhale it directly. It’s used often to deliver the steroids that asthma sufferers use to get relief. In my youth, a good friend of Sharaun’s used nebulizer often for her asthma – and my buddies and I used to goof on her (in front of her, so it’s OK… right?) for it. I think it was the name that was hilarious to us, so futuristic sounding or something. We’d give her the Vulcan salute, and crack jokes about being on the bridge of starship or battling Klingons. Yeah, and now karma has turned it all around on me yet again. Anyway, the treatments really seem to help Keaton, and the doctor said it’s only temporary just to ensure we knock this cold out for good. Read ahead and you can even see a picture of babygirl “nebulizing.”
Changing subject… I upgraded to WordPress 2.5 over the weekend and everything seems to have come through OK for me (I’ve read of some folks having issues). So far, I like the new and improved backend overall, and I’ve reserved a special place in my will for the new image upload/link/align tool – which makes adding images to my posts so much easier. And, with the gallery capability being so integrated now, I don’t need to use the NexGen plugin anymore. Actually, I’m going to go ahead and try to do some 2.5 gallery beta-testing this week, by reviving an old sounds familiar weeklong gimmick from the past. I’m sure you are just dying to know which gimmick…. so…
Back in November of ought-four, I did a cool weeklong “thing” for the blog where I took pictures of what I did each day and posted them along with the entry. Ever since doing it I’ve told myself I needed to redo it, but I never have. So, in the spirit of doing all kindsa new kindsa stuff up in this camp, I’m gonna try it again this week. At our sawmill, we call this week “workweek fourteen,” which we abbreviate, all nerd-tastic, as WW14. So, this week will evermore be dubbed: In Pictures – WW14’08, or IPWW14’08 for… ummm… short. Anyway, one of the rules is imposed this time is that I’ll take only crappy images with my cellphone camera, partly since I’ll be traveling and won’t leave Sharaun without our “good” one, and partly also because I just always have it with me. No time like the present… so let start with Sunday in pictures:
Actually, as something of a postscript here, you may have noticed that those images are still in the old-gallery style (with the fancy popup browser). That’s because, try as I might, I couldn’t get WordPress’s built-in gallery to work how I wanted it to. I’ll keep working on it to try get it right, but for now, and so I can still do this week “In Pictures,” I’m sticking with what works. OK, that’s enough talk about WordPress. And, I think I’ve built up the daily-dose of pictures such that it’ll be hotly awaited each day (right?). And, wrapping up…
Before I go – I read this article with interest the other day, as it reminded me of something I’d written before here on the ol’ blog. I called it “Run 83,” but essentially it’s the same concept: Modern science pushes the limits of experimentation just a little too far and accidentally destroys everything. (A little self-promotion there, I suppose.)
In closing, the other day, someone called me a “writer.”
This someone is the kind of someone who knows me, knows I write here on this internet-website-online, and (I think) reads sounds familiar somewhat often. But, still. To hear someone call me a “writer,” a word used to describe an artist (good one, or not), was humbling.
That’s all. Goodnight.
alternating fits of tears and rage
Hi Wednesday, it’s me here again… writing… again… about… stuff… again.
Tonight, Sharaun had a volleyball game and I stayed home with Keaton. I decided to make banana bread for some reason, maybe to finally get rid of those blackish bananas frozen solid and strewn about the freezer shelves. When I set it to bake, Keaton and I walked down to the mailbox (remote communal mailboxes are all the rage in new California developments, further promoting the laziness of USPS workers).
I was barefoot, and she had on one sock. She shouted at the neighbors finishing up their lawn work as I pulled her past in the wagon, “I’m riding in a wagon and going to get the mail!” “Sounds fun!,” they’d wave back. I occurred to me then, barefoot and pulling my daughter behind me in a wagon while my banana bread baked at home… I’m a straight-up woman. I’m just glad it wasn’t my time of the month, or the realization might have had me in alternating fits of tears and rage right there on the sidewalk. Sheesh.
But, coming back to reality… I’m sitting here on the couch (where I always sit), with my laptop on my lap (where it always is), typing, web-surfing, and listening to music (like I always do). Right now some Most Serene Republic has shuffled up on the iPod, and the scatterstep popcorn beat has me giddy. I seriously love this band, and their albums have really stood the test of time (can you call less than five years “time?”) for me.
On the new music tip, my primo-2008 playlist thus far consists of two measly albums. First, recently SNL-broken Vampire Weekend‘s debut, next, and finally, Cloud Cult‘s Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes), which I think comes out in April sometime. Looking forward, I’m anxiously awaiting leaks from The Unicorns, The Hold Steady, Sufjan Stevens, Of Montreal, and the Postal Service. Sounds like it could be a rad 2008, huh?
Changing subjects now, and bear with me on this one… it’s kinda odd.
Oftentimes, when I eat, I have some sort of sinus-based reaction. Back in my younger days, I can remember my mother referring to a family “curse” which was supposedly to blame for members of her bloodline going into sneezing fits shortly after meals. But, while the mixture of my father’s lineage seems to have spared me from that curse, I do seem to suffer from some milder form. See, when I eat, my nose sometimes decides to run. I know this is common with particularly spicy food, but for me it also tends to happen with regular, run-of-the-mill, meals too. It’s not like it comes in torrents or anything, more like an annoyance. Nevertheless, it causes me to reach for the nearest napkin to stem the tide.
The reason I’m writing about this here, honestly, is to criticize myself. Because, usually, the napkin I end up grabbing to swab my schnoz is the same napkin I’m using to dab my mouth between bites. I find this personally disgusting, but the reality is that I usually don’t even notice I’m doing it until I’ve already done it. At which point I immediate grab another napkin and dedicate it to either nose or mouth usage, trying to place one on either side of my plate for easy differentiation. When I catch myself doing this, I often wonder if my tablemates have also noticed… and what they must think. To those who sup with me regularly, I’m sorry – I’m working on it.
And with that, I believe it’s time to bid you all adieu, for I have nothing more to say (hard to imagine, right?). Time to put the laptop away until I do it all over again tomorrow. Love you all, goodnight.
keaton had a party
Hey guys, welcome to “workweek eleven,” as we call it at my sawmill. It’s gonna seem quite the ramble today, as I wrote it in snatches over the weekend. I tried to arrange things the best I could, and put stuff that could potentially be related together… hope that’s OK with you. The practical side of me thought I should split this up into two entries, guaranteeing Tuesday night in the process – but, I didn’t do it. Enjoy.
Saturday morning I headed over to Pat’s place bright and early to lend a hand with some manual labor (you know, as all good friends tend to do from time to time). After a good morning’s worth of work, I hopped into the Ford to head home. With the sunshine soaked into my bones from the work outside, I was feeling one of those good-weather highs and I rolled down the windows and opened the sunroof as I cranked the tunes. As I drove through the neighborhood, the early great weather we’ve been having prior to the “official” change of season was openly apparent in the populous: Men were out tending their keeps with lawnmowers and edgers and blowers, children were jumping rope and riding bikes in driveways, and the mechanically inclined were propped on elbows next to motorcycles or disappeared up to their ankles under vehicles. The buzz of two-stroke engines and the collective yelps of children swelled together with my music to make it a defining moment for me: My own personal arrival of Spring. I’m ready for summer and all its dry, hot, baking heat. I want to go camping, swimming, and on bring buckets of chicken to parks. I want to drink beer and eat meat. I want to sweat in the yard and fall asleep in the hammock. C’mon Summer… we’re waiting.
I know you guys hate it when I write about my iPod, but I just wanted to share real quick how my whole iPod use-model has changed. Ever since I got the new mega-size 160GB iPod Classic some time ago, I’ve slowly been working on assembling the “ultimate” collection of music on it – my personal musical canon (at this point in time), if you will. Now, previously, my iPod was always smaller than my collection – meaning what went on the iPod had to be a carefully chosen subset of of greater collection on hard disk. Now, however, it seems like I can just keep adding and adding tunes to this beast, and it’ll just continue to swallow them up like a black hole. This phenomenon is so pronounced, in fact, that I’m beginning to reach a critical transition in iPod use: the day when my iPod and my hard disk collection are one in the same (i.e. the iPod can contain everything I have). As a matter of fact, I’m close to this point already.
Lately I’ve been plugging in the iPod and just paging through my collection looking for music to add. With the humungous size of the thing, I often find myself thinking things like, “Every single Roxy Music album through Avalon?, sure, why the heck not?” I’ve picked over my collection so much, actually, that what’s going on the iPod is driving a general “cleanup” of music in the main collection. I mean, if it’s not good enough to put on the iPod, why do I even have it at all? I see this whole thing converging around a single, amazingly complete collection. And, since Apple seems to be increasing the size of the ‘Pods at a good clip – hopefully my iPod will grow as my collection does. OK, that’s enough music stuff.
Or… is it? I promise it’s different from the nerdy kinda music talk, it’s just setup.
A thought struck me the other night: I simply don’t have enough classic Motown records on my iPod. Now, Stax is fairly well represented, but the thought of going through Summer without those classic Gordy A-Sides shuffling up was enough to make me cry. I have one Motown Records “best of” from the classic “Hitsville USA” period in my collection, but even it seemed lacking – since the Detroit output at the time was like a pipeline of #1 records. So, I got online and went to may favorite 100% pay-for-music place and acquired a collection called 100 Motown Classics, which contains, well… one-hundred Motown classics. I dropped it on the iPod early Sunday morning and waited with anticipation for a good time to indulge.
So that’s how a Sunday evening found Keaton and I dancing around the living room to an endless run of Motown classics, like something you’d see in a one of those movies chicks dig so much. You know, that done and overdone ubiquitous scene where a bunch of women dance around to an old-time rock ‘n’ roll record? Yeah… you know the scene I’m talking about – it usually happens in a kitchen, and nine times out of ten words will be mouthed into a wooden spoon. ‘Cept we were in the living room, and there were no wooden-spoon ersatz microphones, and she doesn’t really know any of the words. Still, it was fun.
After we’d danced ourselves out, we played with the loot she got from her birthday party that same day. I know, her real birthday was weeks ago – but we had to cancel and reschedule her party because she got sick when she and Sharaun were in Florida. So, today we met a bunch of her (and our) friends up at the kid-gym place for an hour running around on mats, somersaulting, balance-beaming, and all sorts of other Dad’s-gonna-end-up-out-of-breath -ing verbs. We actually had a great time, owed in no small part to the brevity of the whole thing. Putting an hour-and-a-half limit on it really helped, in my opinion, to keep it short and sweet – without being overlong for grown-ups and kids. And, Keaton took home quite a haul.
I’m mostly looking forward to playing with some of the water toys she got once the weather warms up, and am particularly excited about the junior-gardener set she got – including yellow, red, and green polkadot-ladybug bucket, spade, claw, and little matching gloves. I mean, even though I’m like 100% bull-male, I do enjoy rooting around in the garden – and it’ll be fun to have her out there in the dirt with me. She also got a Mrs. Potato Head, which I think is awesome. Although, Mr. Potato Head didn’t bother showing up… likely out at the Root Cellar again, watching those slutty college spuds peel themselves to pay their way through college or something… Meanwhile Mrs. Potato Head has to make due on the government disability she gets for having an ear where her mouth should be and a tongue sticking out from the top of her head (she really is a sight). Sad toys, really.
Keeping with the Keaton theme today…
You guys may remember (or not, I won’t be offended) I posted a while back about a somewhat disturbing new development on the Keaton front – when she surprised us by coming down with a stuttering “thing” rather out of the blue. Well, turns out it must’ve been quite the transient phase, because no more than a week or two later it’s now almost completely gone. Strange, maybe it was just a kick she was on… maybe she liked the sound of it. Guess we’ll never know, although I will say I’m glad it worked itself out and I don’t have to be “worried” about it anymore – even if it was secretly hilarious. Her speech, in fact, continues to impress me.
She’s currently spending a lot of energy making sure she gets her pronouns right. Each time she goes to say “he” or “she” or “his” or “her” or “your” or “my” or “I,” you can actually see her brain work overtime in an effort to get it right. Honestly, she impresses the crap out of me with the way she seems to figure things out, even to the point of correcting herself on-the-fly. Oftentimes, she’ll say something like, “Here daddy, I’m bringing his phone to you,” and then immediately correct herself by adding, “I’m bringing your phone to you.” Sharaun, of course, thinks she’s the smartest baby in the world, but I like to think that, as the dad, I’m a little more reserved in gushing over her language abilities (but I do my fare share of fawning behind the scenes). She is my little prodigy though, I’ll admit that. /Gloating.
OK, OK, that’s enough. Sorry it was so varied. Goodnight.
a different kind of work
Happy Friday friends, relatives, and lurkers. Thanks for stopping by before the weekend. I managed to get a little bit of stuff typed out for you today, hopefully you’ll enjoy it.
All you guys and your photo-rich blogs, making photos the centerpiece of your writing, or forgoing writing completely for photos… you’re making me look bad. There was a time when I was uploading a new batch of pictures to Keaton’s gallery every Sunday night. Sometime, that slipped to every other week, then once a month, and has now settled into something like every month-and-a-half to two months. I think part of it is that we just simply don’t take the volume of snapshots we did in those first months, and the other part is likely my own laziness. Either way, I don’t expect it’ll change much… but, I did manage to get an update posted today, and you can check it out by hovering your pointy thing here and pressing the button on your mouse with your finger. OK, done looking? Let’s move on then.
I came home early today to work on the fence, work was light.
Oh, hey, that reminds me… did you guys know that, when you’re putting up a fence and you want to re-use the main between-posts sections from your old fence, it’s not a good idea to just assume that each section is the same is the rest? I mean, just because nine out of ten of your between-post sections are 91″ long, you better measure them all instead of just blindly setting all your posts, each in its own 100lbs of concrete, at 91″ apart. I’m just saying… it’s probably a good idea.
I mean, for instance, what if, for some ridiculously dumbass reason, the people who built your fence originally made 48 of your 50 between-post sections 91″ long, and, purely for the shit of it, made the other two sections 96″? What then? Know what? You’d be, like, 6″ off on your last post. Yeah, you totally would. Know what you’d have to do then? You’d have to cut down one section of fence, and somehow extend another. I’m not sure, but I bet that whole “extension” process would result in some pretty ghetto-lookin’ fencing when it was all said and done.
I mean, it’d probably be structurally sound and all… but, like I said, you should really measure each section you want to re-hang and then use those measurements to determine your between-post distances. Then, and only then, should you mark out where you want your posts and set them in concrete. Now, you can do whatever you want, you’re the boss here… I’m just sayin’.
Dunno if you guys managed to read my blog yesterday or not, but if not, I’ll give you a minute or two to scroll down and do so. Back yet? No? OK… Now? Good. Like almost all my entries, that one automatically posted at midnight last night. This morning, when I woke up and was getting ready for work, my BlackBerry made the “new personal e-mail” chime and I plopped down in front of the laptop to check it there.
Turns out an old friend from waaaay yonder back in high school had read the entry, sympathized with me (to the point of commenting), and decided help me out. In her mail, she attached some play money images she’d made, in what I can only assume were the few extra hours afforded to her by virtue of timezone differences. What’s so cool about them is that she actually cut and pasted Keaton’s happy mug right over the boring old dead presidents who normally grace our dosh. I just thought that was a totally cool thing to do.
Thanks again Maggie, Keaton’s gonna love her personalized money.
And with that, I’m outta here. Hope you have a good Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I know I plan to. Goodnight and goodweek.
wheating, or wheated, or whatever
Monday night. Two glasses of wine into the evening alone, and fresh off a late burst of cleaning to recline sweaty on the couch and tackle a blog for the day. Think I have it? I do. Let’s go.
Just last week, my frustrations with the state of my little postage-stamp of Northern California real estate had reached a pinnacle, and I was ready to pay hired labor to get things in order. On my list: fix the fence, do some landscaping to a small patch of front-yard land which has lain barren and weed-ridden for four years now, and re-plant the slope above our retaining wall in the backyard. I had become so fed up with it all that I actually began making phone calls and leaving voicemails requesting free estimates.
The Lord, however, deigned that this was not to be the road He’d have me take. No, instead, the work I reluctantly began on Saturday fixing the fence was meant to invigorate me anew, to stoke the coals within me and make me remember that, when somewhat motivated, my own hands work just as well as a paid laborers (albeit more slowly and less confidently). . The relative ease of the task has inspired me, and I’m once again motivated to do some work on my own behalf – starting with that landscaping in the front sideyeard. Time to order up some dirt and rocks (I still refuse to believe I actually pay for dirt and rocks) and get started. Maybe my house won’t be referred to be neighbors as “that blight on the corner” anymore… well, maybe.
Oh, I’ve been meaning to mention – my wheat finally started wheating, or wheated, or whatever. Yup. While I’d still be hesitant calling the experiment a smash success, at least I’ve got seedheads on a few stalks now. Seems they really did need the slightly warming weather and extra sun (which makes me wonder if I really did get “winter wheat” seed or not). But, with the thirty or so individual grains I should be able to harvest before I have to clear the soil for Spring planting, I figure I can make one heck of an oyster cracker or something. Maybe one really thin Wheat Thin? Eh, like I said when I started the whole thing, I can still just mill the seed I bought to plant in the first place – and I likely will do that as the base for this Spring’s attempt at a sourdough starter. It did make me happy though, that the thing wasn’t a complete failure (pretty close, but there’s still time for more seed to show I suppose).
Before I go, I wanted to pass along this awesome photo-essay (NSFW) I found linked from Fazed. Be warned, it’s very not safe for work – but I found it extremely… hard to stop looking at. As one commenter put it, “compelling and disturbing.” I know it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but I seriously found it brilliant, beautiful, and sad, in a I-am-human kinda way. Maybe bookmark and save for when you’re on your own internet dime… if you dare.
Chugga-chugga-ch
-ch!! Goodnight!
party’s over
Greetings from a sore-muscled Sunday evening… late evening, at that.
I attribute the sore muscles to the rather minuscule amount of manual labor I did over the weekend while working to repair the fence we lost in the storms over a month ago. Saturday, after my Spring-inaugural lawn mowing (first of the season), I tore down the four sections of fence hanging on busted posts. Erik and Pat stopped by for some assistance yanking those huge cement teeth out of the dirt, with some help from the Ford and a nylon tow-rope. Sunday I cleaned up the post-holes and set the new 4x4s (pressure treated this time, not like the cheap-out stuff the builders used) in cement, Sharaun helped hold the posts level while I cemented. And, while we still don’t have a fence at the moment, we’re on our way… sore muscles and all. Seems like I need to get a little bit more done with these muscles, their protests at such a tiny amount of work are fairly embarrassing.
Other than that, we had to cancel Keaton’s birthday party at the kiddie-gym place on Saturday because she’s sick. When I got home from work Friday (a little early, around 4:30pm) she was still down for her nap. The noise of the garage door and me coming in must’ve woke her, and she was babbling by the time I walked by her door. When I went in to get her she was just burning up, the thermometer showed 104°. We stripped her down and put her in a cool bath to try and make her a little more comfortable, and started the regimen of Tylenol she’s still on today. She kept the fever through the weekend, although never as high as that afternoon, and has a nasty cough, a horribly runny nose, and nice gooey eyes. Sharaun, having become quite good at armchair diagnoses, predicts the doctor will call it a double ear infection when she takes her in tomorrow. Poor little thing. Kids get sick a lot, it seems.
Getting right back on the horse-ishly though, Sharaun’s planning a do-over on the party for next Sunday, hopefully she can pull that off. And, we ended up having an OK evening anyway when some friends stopped by with their brood and I got to give the grill its first post-Winter workout (salmon and asparagus). So, despite the canceled party we ended up having an OK day, and since Keaton never really acts sick, even when she is, she appeared to have an OK time too.
Alas, I know, I’ve returned to the standard play-by-play, unable, for now, to get back to the weird-style phase of writing I went through last week. Maybe it was something about Sharaun and Keaton being gone… mind wandering and all… I’ll see what I can do, but only after tonight… because… for now…
I’m done. Goodnight friends and lovers, I love and friend you all.