wink     ; )

Moving

When Saturday rolled around, I was feeling mostly better. I was still weak, but I no longer felt achy or exhausted. My friends were moving to Vancouver that day, and, since this family helps us out all the time by watching Spark, I was determined to help them out even if I was on my deathbed.

I wasn't able to help all that much with the big furniture since I was still weak, but I was able to load up my car with boxes and help them figure out where everything should go in their moving van. Extra people showed up to help unload everything, so unloading was a snap.

I woke up on Sunday morning with sore muscles and a brand new cold. Huzzah!

(That pretty much catches us up to the present. We now resume our normal programming: dead air.)

The Concert

Vienna Teng was in town giving a concert shortly after my birthday. I was all excited to go to the concert as a little birthday present to myself. As the day of the concert approached, I wondered if I would be healthy enough to go.

When the concert day arrived, I didn't feel great, but I didn't feel horrible either; maybe I'd be able to go after all. But then Tree came down hard with the flu. So when concert time came around, though I might have been able to make it, it was a moot point because there was no way I could leave Spark with Tree seeing was Tree was not awake, and even if she was, she was in no condition to take care of him.

So I missed the concert. Sigh.

Maybe next time.

Happy Birthday

I think that I overexerted myself on the day we got the referral. Between the lack of sleep and not having really recovered from the flu, I must not have been ready to have been out and about that much, because the next day I was barely able to get out of bed. But I needed to get out of bed because Tree needed to go to work, so I somehow managed to muddle through the day.

Usually, when I feel bad, I can take Spark to a friend's house and they can have a playdate. But Spark still had the flu and, though he would have been perfectly content to infect his friends, I was unwilling to do so. So we just stayed at home and were grumpy at each other.

The next day was my birthday. I still felt horrible. Happy Birthday to me! Celebration entailed eating a slice of pizza.

During this week, I realized how much, at least in my family, celebration means eating stuff. I was extra frustrating having the flu because it felt like I couldn't celebrate the referral or my birthday.

An eventful day

Tree stayed home from work the next day in order to help take care of Spark. I went to class in the morning feeling pretty wiped out, having gotten less sleep than I needed and still not having recovered from the flu yet. During one of my breaks, I went to talk to someone about a website I was building for her and got an earful of criticism about my work. It was meant to be constructive criticism, but she was too frazzled to present her criticism nicely and I was too wiped out to take it well. (Later, when I sat down and really thought about it, I saw that she was right about most of her criticism.) I walked home from class in a foul mood.

Until I saw the balloon on my door proclaiming "It's a Girl!"

My heart leapt and my foul mood disappeared. I ran inside and got the news: we got our referral! (I.e. we now know who our baby is going to be. For those of you who don't know, we are in the process of adopting another child from Korea.) Tree had gotten the phone call from our adoption agency while I was in class and we could go right away to the agency to pick up more info about our child.

One problem...our car battery was dead. Tree got in the car to steer while I pushed the car out into the street so that we could use our other car. But the ground was wet and I (still recovering from the flu) was far from full strength. I couldn't get the car all the way out of the driveway. After exhausting myself, and falling on my face (the ground was really slippery!), a sympathetic passerby helped me out and we got the car out of the driveway.

We drove our other car down to the agency and walked in as possibly the least excited family ever to get info about their new child. It wasn't that we weren't excited, it was just that we were all suffering from the flu to one degree or another (Tree was just starting her downward descent at this point).

After picking up the info, we went to McDonalds to celebrate. Except that Tree was the only one who could really eat; Spark and I just picked at the meal.

On the way home, we were stopped at a red light when the man who was crossing the street in front of us collapsed, hitting his head on the pavement. We jumped out of the car to see that his head was bleeding and he was not responsive. We called 911 and tried to stop the bleeding and tried to keep the man from moving to much once he woke up. Mercifully, the ambulance came quickly.

When we got home, I immediately crashed and took a long nap, even before calling to tell friends and family the good news.

Spark gets the flu

Two days after I get the flu, I'm starting to be able to get up and walk around again. Tree and I put Spark to bed and I'm attempting to get some homework done, and around 10:00PM Spark starts crying--not in a "I'm feeling whiny" kind of way, but in a "Hey, there's a serious problem here" way. I go into his room to discover that Spark has thrown up all over his bed.

Spark spends the next two hours throwing up every ten minutes. Tree and I rapidly develop a rhythm of washing out buckets and doing loads of laundry.

Eventually, we put Spark back down to sleep with a bucket in his crib and I slept in the spare bed in his room. Amazingly, he didn't throw up again once we put him back down to bed.

Getting the flu

I got the flu. I went to sleep early because I wasn't feeling great, but I was hardly feeling bad. Two hours later I was feeling horrible. I felt like I was going to throw up. I needed to throw up. But I couldn't. My body knew that what was in me needed to get out, but it couldn't make it happen. I looked for syrup of ipecac, but we didn't have any. I've never been able to make myself throw up by sticking my fingers down my throat, and sure enough, I wasn't able to that night either.

I spent the next two hours wishing that I could throw up, or, failing that, that I could die, but to no avail. When I finally did throw up (violently), I immediately started in on the diarrhea. Every ten minutes for the next three hours, I was sprinting to the bathroom.

I effectively got no sleep that night. And then I spent the next 48 hours in bed avoiding all food.

Tree and Spark were troopers during this and let me suffer in peace. The highlights of those two days were when Spark would come barreling into my room carrying a gift for me, a look of pure joy on his face that this gift might make me feel a little better. And seeing that look on his face always did make me feel better.

Flu

I've been sick with the flu. The past week or so has been quite eventful (despite the flu), so I'll try to belatedly post the events of the last week as I can this week.

New Mexico

We had two goals for our vacation. Have fun hanging out with friends. And see a little bit of the SouthWest.

Our friends are just living there for the summer (having gotten internships at Los Alamos). They scored a great rental house which I thouroughly enjoyed staying at. We spent most of each day just hanging out at the house talking and playing and entertaining Spark and watching The Gilmore Girls on DVD (I may now be an addict...we'll see if I have withdrawl symptoms in the next few days). Goal 1...check!

We did a little sight seeing as well. Notably, we went to see Bandelier National Monument which was simply awe inspiring. Basically, it is an ancient Pueblo settlement which was lagely comprised of caves carved into cliffs. And while I would have been annoyed at living in a cave smaller than my current bathroom, I could easily see myself waking up every morning, poking my head out of my cave, looking out over the valley and taking in the spectacualr view and thinking to myself, "This place is Awesome!"

Goal 2...check!

Spark had a fabulous time as well and was enamored with our hosts--we will be hearing their names for weeks. All in all, a very successful vacation.

Why no updates

Though I had indicated that I would have internet access during vacation, I never got to post here. Why not? Well, they certianly had internet access. But there were 4 internet junkies fighting over one laptop. The only way I could get blocks of time on-line was to stay awake later than everyone else. This is normally no problem. But one of our hosts is an insomniac and only slept for 2 hours a night. And while she certainly was willing to share the laptop late at night, I was too incoherent by then to post. Ah well.

Home!

We're home from New Mexico and we had a great time. The only glitches were on the travel days...

We left for NM early in the morning with a friend of ours very kindly providing a ride to the airport. When we were unloading the car, she commented on how light we pack. I was all proud of ourselves for that. Shortly after she drove away, I realized that we had packed far too light...we had left a bag at home! I managed to get our ride on her cell phone and convinced her to retrieve our bag for us and haul it back out to the airport for us. And then I waited. And waited. We had only given ourselves a little over an hour to go through check-in and security so that our ride wouldn't have to get up too early. But that meant that there was very little time for her to retrieve my forgotten bag. Plus, the security line was longer than I'd ever seen it. Luckily, we live pretty close to the airport and we had remembered to bring our frequent flier cards with us (which allowed us to go through the shorter "trusted passenger" security line), so I was able to get on board with about 5 minutes to spare.

All that to say, L (our ride) is a saint. Thank you thank you thank you.

The trip home was not as dramatic, it was simply tedious. While going out was a direct flight, the way home invoved three takeoffs and landings. Combine that with a 4:00 AM wake up and a 90 minute drive to the airport and the various layover times, we had a very long day. Spark is a great traveller, but he isn't even 2 yet and his patience has its limits. He didn't sleep at all during any portion of the trip, so when naptime rolled around and we were still in the air, Spark was pretty cranky. If I had been him, I would have been too. In fact, despite not being him, I was pretty cranky. Spark is a trooper though and was fine the next day.

Oh, and our stroller didn't make it all the way home, but got left in the Oaklnad airport. This was fine by me as my in-laws live in Oakland and the stroller they bought for our visits there is horrible. So I told the airline to leave the stroller there and I'd have my in-laws pick it up. We'll just let them keep it and we'll get a new one for here.

Vacation

Tree is off work! I'm done with school! That means it is vacation time! We'll be going to New Mexico for a while to visit some friends and see the sights. I might actually have decent internet access this trip so maybe there might even be some updates during this one.

It's not a bug, it's a Feature!

I'm building an e-commerce site for a client using a prepackaged system. One of the features of this system is that I can use scripting. So I build the site using PHP and have trouble making the actual store portions of the site work. A call to tech support reveals that using scripting breaks essential funtionality of the store. So apparently scripting is enabled, but it is also useless. Gah!

Fluctuations

Started getting better, then got worse again. Am now starting to feel better again. Who knows how I'll be feeling tomorrow.

Sudden Sickness

Yesterday, I got sick. I started off the morning feeling groggy with a sore throat. As the day wore on, I felt progressively worse. My stomach started feeling queasy and every task seemed hopelessly daunting. My muscles started aching and my skin felt sensitive everywhere. Spark was particularly needy as well and kept asking for things which I couldn't give him. (He kept wanting to see various friends, but they weren't available to play.) At one point, I just lay on the floor exhausted. Spark chose this time to beg insistently. I was at a loss. I ended up apologizing to him that I couldn't give him what he wanted and just started crying.

That didn't last long. Spark is a bit too empathetic at times--he started crying too. This was not helping matters, but I knew that he wouldn't stop until I did, so I pulled myself together and struggled through until naptime. He woke up from his nap feeling fine. I woke up feeling even worse.

Luckily, by then Tree had come home from work and was able to help me out. That was also the low point of the day; I started to feel better after that. By the end of the day, I felt merely bad instead of miserable. Today, the only remnant of yesterday is the sore throat (that it seems to be getting worse). (Oh, and the Shadow I got today was a doozy, but that had nothing to do with getting sick yesterday.)

Besides being a sob story, which this is, it is also a reminder to me that moods are contagious. This is one of my main concerns about my Clusters/Shadows. They pretty much suck the joy out of my life and push me way over on the despair end of the spectrum. But meanwhile, Spark is a naturally happy and joyful toddler. Normally, his joy is infectious and I end up happy too. But in times like this, my despair is too stubborn. That'd be OK if it stopped there. But if Spark can't influence my mood, then I end up influencing his. So if he can't make me happy, then I end up making him grumpy, and that is not something that I want to instill into him. I want him to remain happy, even if I can't be. But life doesn't really work that way. I end up pulling him down with me into my foul moods.

I do my best to prevent this, but with only marginal success. I can only hide my moods from him so much and it's not like I can flip on a happy switch. I'm kinda at a loss for what to do. Things would be OK if it were just me, but I don't really know how to best care for Spark in all this.

Thank You!

Our very generous neighbor was edging his lawn. And without any asking or prompting, he went and edged our lawn too. And cleaned up all the mess too. It took hours. It was completely dark out long before he was done.

This is my loud and public "Thank You!" to our awesome next door neighbor, J. Your hard work is much appreciated.

Time Crunch

Though I've been ahead for most of the semester, I've somehow managed to fall behind in my schoolwork and now have only a little more than a week to go in the semester. I've been working hard this past week to catch up, and should be able to get all my work done if I continue at this pace.

But it is a challenge.

There is simply too much going on. This semester has been mostly free from those strange confluences of events which conspire to consume all available time. But I seem to now be in the middle of a doozy.

Last week, Tree and Spark got sick. That's relatively uneventful all by itself, but it did mean that there was no one to take up the slack when...I started getting shadows (mild clusters which last all day--same amount of overall pain, just spread out over more time--these are incredible energy drains). I was unable to take naps when Spark was napping because I had contractors here to redo the deck.

I figured that I would get a lot of homework done this weekend, but Tree either relapsed or got something entirely new. Either way, she was down for the count this weekend and I needed to take care of her and Spark instead of attending to my schoolwork.

I still managed to get a significant amount of work done, but only about half as much as I had hoped. Sigh.

The good news is that we now have a refinished deck and I am having shadows instead of clusters (which should mean 4-6 more months of no clusters, even if it means having 3 weeks of shadows now).

Funeral

The whole family is going to California for Tree's Grandma's funeral. We won't be back till Sunday. Internet access will be intermittent at best and blogging will be low priority, so don't expect much from me here.

Not going bald anymore

Some months ago, my hair was falling out rather quickly. Just wanted to say that that has stopped. It only continued for another month or so after that post. So if any of you out there have been losing sleep over this, then rest assured that I'm fine. Please accept my apologies for being so slow to update you on the issue. And go see a counselor.

Mourning

Tree's (other) grandmother, Grandma T died today. This was not at all unexpected, but we are still sad anyway. She seemed so happy and vibrant when we saw her over Christmas, even though her health was already pretty bad by then. I'm so glad that she got to see Spark (multiple times) before she died.

Rest in Peace Grandma T

New Fridge

We got a new fridge today. The old one was slowly dying. First the ice-cream melted. The next day, the meat in the freezer was no longer hard. That day, we vacuumed the vents and turned up the coldness. The next day, things were a little better. But the day after that was worse. So we cleaned out the freezer--we cooked all the meat and gave away lots of stuff we didn't have immediate plans for. Then we hit six stores looking for a cheap fridge that would simultaneously fit in our kitchen while still being bigger than a dorm fridge. This limited us to 1 fridge per store. We found The Perfect Fridge, but decided to sleep on our decision. The next day was Sunday. The icecubes in the freezer were now melting and the fridge was noticably warmer. We decided to buy The Perfect Fridge, but the store doesn't open on Sundays. Monday, The Perfect Fridge is no longer on Sale, but I convince the salesman to give us the sale price anyway. The freezer no longer freezes anything. The Perfect Fridge will be delivered on Tuesday. Tuesday, the deliveryman's schedule conflicts with mine, so The Perfect Fridge will be delivered on Wednesday. Wednesday, The Perfect Fridge fails to show up. A phone call reveals that when you reschedule a delivery, they say that they will deliver it "tomorrow", but they actually schedule it for Sunday--a day on which, amy I remind you, they aren't open and thus don't do deliveries. Why this is SOP is a mystery to all involved, yet it remains their actual SOP. I get them to schedule it for Thursday, a day when they actually deliver things. Meanwhile, our fridge is just barely holding on. Thursday (today!) they finally deliver The Perfect Fridge. It is Perfect. (We'll see how long that lasts.) Thank God.

Nocturnal

I have been having a terrible time sleeping at night. I'll climb into bed and then lie there for two hours with sleep ever retreating from me. Then I'll take a sleeping pill and feel as alert and awake as ever. Maybe an hour or two after that, I'll fall into a restless sleep.

I'd say that I have insomnia, but I have no trouble falling asleep in the daytime. I'm extremely sleepy in the morning and afternoon and given a few moments of darkness and/or quiet inactivity, I'll drop right off. But as soon as the sun goes down, I become more and more alert despite my lack of sleep. After dinner it seems that I don't have a hope of going to sleep until 4AM.

I've been this way for over a week now, with only a few exceptional nights of decent sleep. Sleeping pills usually solve these problems for me, but they don't seem to be having any effect this time. I'm starting to get worried.

Today I feel horrible

I had a cold last week. But then I got better. But apparently not better enough to spend two hours in below freezing weather hauling around 50 pound boxes in a 3D tetris game (i.e. helping a friend load his moving truck).

Quiet Time

Yesterday, out of the blue, a friend of mine offered "Do you want me to watch Spark tomorrow morning for an hour or two?" My response was a no-brainer. The real question was what to do with the time. This morning I finally settled on going to Starbucks (we got gift cards in our stockings) and having a long quiet time there.

Amazingly, everything went as planned. I got a solid hour-and-a-half of prayer, mediation and journaling done. It was enough time to get beyond the normal clutter in my brain and really have quality "hangout" time with God. And of course I fell in love with Him all over again.

I know why I don't do this more often. My real question to myself is why I don't try to do this more often.

How the experiment went

Celebrating Christ's birth on New Years was better than trying to do it On Christmas, but not as good as I had hoped. I suspect it takes practice. Part of the problem was that we had left many presents at home when we visted family for Christmas. When we got home, we decided not to open them right away. We kept not opening them until New Years. So when we clebrated Christ's birth on New Years and also opened presents, well, it kind felt like we just delayed Christmas by a week.

Note to self: next year, be more disciplined about separating secular Christmas (and the associated gift opening) from spiritual Christmas.

Happy New Year

I've been a little under the weather, and Spark is starved for attention after being at Grandma's house where there were 7 adults who did nothing but play with him. So there is a certain amount of crankyness at the wink household. But despite this, we've been having lots of fun. Some of our friends are in town, Spark loves the toys he got fro Christmas, I got to see Enjelani while we were in CA, and our travels have been smooth.

We were wondering how to keep the spiritual aspects of Christmas alive under the crushing weight of secular Christmas. We decided to dodge the bullet instead of facing it head on. We'll be celebrating Christ's birth on New Years instead of on Christmas. New Years is a much calmer day, and seems more appropriate anyways seeing as we base our calendar on Christ's birth. We'll see how this experiment works.

Happy New Year!

Tree isn't the only one...

My brain has its own glitches.

Tree: Give so-and-so a call today. It's his birthday.

Me: It can't be his birthday. His birthday isn't until December.

Tree: This is December.

Me: What??!?

Tree: Look around. See the decorations. The Christmas tree that be put up weeks ago. The holiday music currently on the stereo. This is December. What month did you think we were in?

Me: I dunno. March or something.

Groping for words

Tree may be more of a morning person than I am, but that doesn't mean that she doesn't have occasional difficulites too. Here's a snippet of an early morning coversation:

Me: What container is it in?
Tree: The...uh...one that's long...in the...uh...upwards direction.
Me: You mean..."tall"?
Tree: Yeah! The tall one.

Yummy

I'd like to take this moment to say that Tree's pumpkin cheesecake is the best dessert ever.

New Monitor

I was working on a paper for Hebrew last night when my monitor suddenly dripped to half brightness. An hour later, it dropped to 1/10th brightness. (It is darn hard to see what's going on at 1/10th brightness.) My monitor then switch between full, half, and tenth brightness every n seconds (where n is a random number between 5 and 30).

I knew that my computer was fine, but my monitor was apparently about to go. Knowing that though my paper would be fine even if my monitor died, it would be exraordinarily difficult to work on it without a monitor, I quickly saved it to removable media. Then for good measure, I backed up my entire system, since I hadn't done that in a while. My monitor was flicking from one brightness to another the whole time, making it very difficult to accomplish even these simple tasks.

By now it was 1 AM, so I went to bed.

Today, my monitor was still acting up, and the 1/10th was now down to about 1/50th. And the now it was almost never at full brightness--it would just flick between half and 1/50th.

So I went shopping. My old monitor was about three years old. I bought it cheap at Frys and it was a noname brand. The refresh rate was slow and the colors were dim and it was only 14".

I now have sitting on my desk a brand new 17" crisp bright monitor. Sooooooo nice.

Birthday the 30th

Thanks to all who left me birthday wishes.

I had a fun time on my birthday. Tree hid 30 (mostly small) gifts around the house for me to find. It took most of the day to find them all. It added a sense of wonder to the day. Then we went out to dinner with some friends (who unexpectedly paid for the bill-- thanks guys!) Today, we had another birthday dinner, this time with my sister and her family. Lots of fun and lots of good food.

It seems that an inordinate number of people have birthdays this week. Including some bloggers like Lisa (who also celebrated her 30th) and Neil Gaiman. Gaiman writes:

When I was a kid I used to ponder the nature of existence on the day before my birthday. "I'm six," I'd think. "I've been six practically for ever. I know what it's like to be six. And today is the very last day I'll ever be six. I'll never be six again." This would always be followed be a feeling of let-down on the following day, as I'd walk around thinking "I don't feel seven. I mean, I know I am seven. But it doesn't feel any different at all. It feels just like six. I wonder if I'll always feel like this? What if I feel like this when I'm eight?"

I woke up this morning and thought, "this is my last day of being forty-three. I'll never be forty-three again." But I bet I don't feel forty-four tomorrow. I bet I still feel twelve.

Just like Neil Gaiman, my mental age stopped advancing some time ago. I felt like I was 17 until I turned 23. Then I felt like I was 23 until last week or so. But in the past year, I've bought house, brought home a kid, aquired a minivan. Meanwhile, I'm attending a school which has a fair number of 17 year old students. I'm keenly aware that I'm no longer that age. And I'm increasingly arware that I'm not 23 either. This week, I looked in the mirror and said to myself, "Yup. I'm 30."

I wonder if I'll still feel 30 when I'm 45?

End of an Era

These are my final hours in my 20's. And instead of being out and partying, I'm working on Hebrew homework. Sigh.

Bummed

Well, that didn't go as I'd hoped. Sometimes four years seems like an awful long time.

Jet Lag

It is amazing how flying cross-country can drain you. All you do is sit on your butt for hours and then maybe walk from one terminal to another. Total calories burned: maybe 100. Yet at the end of the trip, you are totally wiped out. Why is that?

Kudos to Kim

Kim, the employee working the front desk at the Day's Inn by the airport, she rocks! She managed to score both milk and ketchup for us after we forgot to get both at McDonalds.

In Flight Entertainment

On the plane, I saw an equal number of iPods, portable CD players, and portable DVD players. However, there were more laptop computers than any of the other options.

The flight to Vermont

We boarded early onto our totally full flight--no extra seat for Spark so he was a lap baby. As we settled into our aisle and middle seats, the guy who had the window seat showed up. He saw Spark and I watched as a look of dread fell across his face. Somehow I managed to refrain from saying "Congratulations! You've just won the I-get-to-sit-next-to-a-screaming-baby-for-an-entire-flight Sweepstakes!" He promptly called a flight attendant over to ask if there were any open seats. He was politely told "No", seeing as it was a full flight and all.

During the flight, Spark didn't cry much at all. When he did, he was rather quiet about it. He was clearly irritated at being cooped up in an airplane without all of his toys for so long, but he did very well. I felt kinda bad for the guy sitting next to us, but as Spark was very well behaved, there wasn't much to worry about. And if he couldn't appreciate Spark's company, then too bad for him.

By the time we boarded our connecting flight, Spark was two hours overdue for his nap. He was doing great considering and was becoming increasingly mellow instead of melting down. The guy in the window seat was much friendlier than his counterpart on the previous flight. Shortly after takeoff, he pulled out a portable DVD player and started playing Shrek. Spark was entranced. He sat totally still staring at the screen until he fell asleep in my arms about ten minutes into the movie. He slept for the remainder of the flight.

We may have to get one of those portable DVD players before me make another trip like this.

Back from Vermont

We're back from Vermont. It was a great trip. Fall in New England is without a doubt one of the greatest places on Earth. The wedding was gorgeous and everything went off without a hitch.

We stayed in an old farmhouse. Rustic. Charming. Yadda yadda. More important--it was mazelike. It took me several tries to figure out where my room was. Rustic of course entails the lack of many amenitites. The most important of which was internet access. The next most important: cell phone coverage. Also: too many flies and bees and not terribly clean.

But all was forgiven because it bordered a national forest and had hiking trails. And the weather was and unseasonable 70 degrees and sunny.

The next few posts were jotted down on paper awaiting my return to civilization and internet access.

Depakote is dense

I was going through our prescription bottles and getting rid of the old meds that we aren't ever going to use. Among the discards was my bottle of Depakote which I stopped taking because it didn't seem to be doing any good and it made me feel slightly nausiated all the time as well as making me a bit emotionally roller-coastery.

So how do you get rid of meds? You flush them down the toilet. So I dumped the Depakote and hear it make a disturbing clank-clank-clank as the pills hit the bottom of the bowl. Depakote, it turns out, is as dense as lead. So now I have what amounts to a pile of lead shot sitting at the bottom of my toilet. Flushing acomplishes nothing because the pills are to heavy to budge.

I say to myself, "Who cares. They'll just dissolve overnight and be gone in the morning."

That was four days ago.

And still they remain at the bottom of the bowl mocking me. The coatings fo the pills have fused into one large membrane, but you can still make out the individual pills. And they just aren't going anywhere despite dozens of fluses and even a go with the plunger. I have no idea what it takes to make this stuff dissolve. Do I need to pour a bunch of HCl into my toilet?

I know that I should just stick my hand in there and pull them out, but I'd rather not do that if I can in any way avoid it.

Busy

I just finished teaching a week's worth of class for my prof who is curently at a conference. Whew. Unfortunately, the timing was such that I had to give them an exam. I hate being the bad guy. The upside of giving an exam is that that is one less hour of lecture that I had to prepare.

We're heading out to Vermont tomorrow morning for my sister-in-law's wedding. I'm excited to be able to see NewEngland in the fall again. We'll get back on Monday.

Tuesday, my parents come in to town for about a week. I'm not sure how best to entertain them. They'll be staying at my sister's house, and her family will do most of the entertaining, but I still don't know what to do with them. We're not very creative on the hosting side. I just like to hang out and talk. Unfortunately, my parents and I run out of thing to talk about fairly quickly. Sigh.

By the time the 20th rolls around, I should be irrecoverably behind in my schoolwork.

Hydrofluoric Acid

Back in college, I did research in a chem lab. Some of our experiments essentially created glass. This glass would end up being bound to the glass test tubes in which we ran our experiments. Cleaning glass out of glass is extremely difficult. The worst cases required using Hydrofluoric Acid.

I hated doing that. I was always creeped out for days afterwards.

I'd describe what it would do to you if you spilled any on you, but Joshua does it much better than I can:

Well, let me see. It's highly corrosive. In its pure form, like we have it here, it volatizes at room temperature. As a vapor, it explodes on contact with metal. In liquid form it can soak in wood, concrete, cloth or plastic and make the surface it's soaked into corrosive to human flesh for years afterward. And it passes through your skin and binds up with the calcium in your bones. So basically, you get this stuff on you, your bones turn to jelly, your skin starts coming off in sloughs, your nervous system shuts down and you die. Then your body's categorized as toxic waste and disposed of by being encased in molten glass.

Korean

Tree and I started taking Korean Language classes today. Hoo Boy. While it looks to be easier to learn than Hebrew, it doesn't look like it is going to be easy at all. I wonder which language is going to fall out of my brain as I cram this one in. I hope it's Visual Basic. ;)

Whining

The problem with owning your own business and being your own boss and sole employee is that when life gets a bit crazy and time gets harder to find than, say, leprechauns, and existing clients come to you with entirely reasonable requests, there's no one to foist the work onto. Sigh.

Background to 'Wasted'

(Or, the reason why last night pissed me off more than it probably should have.)

It is impossible to find enough time to sleep.

I hate getting up early in the morning. I am by nature a night person; left to my own devices, I'll stay up until 2 or 3 every morning and wake up around 10. But I am not left to my own devices--I"m left to Spark's devices. And that requires that I wake up by 7 every morning.

Which requires that I go to bed by midnight, even though I would like to stay up so I can get things done, like, for example, my homework. But I go to bed at midnight anyway even though I feel like I have 2 more productive hours in my day because I know that otherwise I'll have no productive hours tomorrow.

Forcing my body to work on this schedule is not working very well. I'm worthless from 7 until 10 every morning. And I never feel rested enough. I have to take naps in the middle of the day in order to keep going. My sleep at night never feels like it is actually giving me any rest when I go to bed at these hours.

But I don't really have a whole lot of options here. I'm not sure what to do.

Wasted

I was so exhausted this morning that I couldn't keep from crying in pure frustration for the first hour or so that I was awake.

Two nights ago, I got very little sleep because my friend was in town and we stayed up till midnight talking and drinking tea. As soon as I got home, I took a sleeping pill so that I could attempt to go to sleep at a decent hour. All it did was take me from "wired" down to "very alert". I couldn't fall sleep until about 3.

I was fine yesterday because I was mostly running on adrenaline. This is normal for me; the day after I get no sleep, I'm fine, but the day after that, I'm screwed as the sleep deficit catches up to me. I can only outrun my lack of sleep for one day.

Last night, my friend came over again. This was the last night he was going to be in town, so I was happy to be able to spend time with him, even though I should have been either doing homework or going to bed early. But I'm always more than happy to shirk school in order to make time for my friends.

I figured we'd have a fun time hanging out. Unfortunately, it was not meant to be. My friend ended up spending most of the evening planning his trip back to the east coast. By 9:30, I was ready to go to sleep due to my lack of sleep the night before. That's when he started surfing the net for hotel deals. I spent the next two hours impotently watching him check hotel prices on orbitz and hotwire and priceline and listening him debate whether or not he should upgrade from a 2 star hotel to a 3 star hotel for $11. The whole time I was thinking to myself that I should be either 1) sleeping, 2) doing homework, or 3) hanging out with my friend. But I was doing none of them. When 11:30 rolled around and it was clear that he was not even close to being done, I could stand it no longer. I was falling asleep in my chair and was growning exponentially more bitter. Though I hardly wanted to say goodbye to my friend in this manner (seeing as I probably won't see him again for several months), I kicked him out of my house.

So when I woke up this morning, I was frustrated and exhausted beyond all measure because of the colossal waste which was last night.

hope

I got the following email from enji:

bravo for being a stay-at-home dad -- it's not an easy thing to defy societal expectations in the name of doing what's right for your family. if it's not too grandiose to say so, you're the hope for our generation. :)

Thanks enji!

Going bald?

Lately, every time I take a shower, enough hair falls out that I totally clog the drain. This was not the case, say, two months ago. This worries me. Things got slightly better after I got a haircut, but then I realized that it was just because the volume of hair that fell out went down, but the number of hairs that fell out seemed to stay the same. If this keeps up for a year or so, I'll be bald. Sigh.

Hero

My in-laws are here for the weekend. I love spending time with my mother-in-law. She's great. But my father-in-law is here too. It's not that I don't like having him around...it's just that I have no idea what to do with him. About the only thing that we have in common is a love for movies (though we have pretty different tases). So we went to see a movie tonight.

We saw Hero.

My God what a beautiful movie. Think how beautiful Crouching Tiger was. Now think more beautiful than that. Now you're kinda getting close to how stunningly gorgeous this film is.

In addition to the amazing cinematography, I loved how the story just kept uonfloding and unfolding and unfolding. During the first half-hour, I thought that they were gonna run out of story. How were they gonna fill the rest of the time? But then they delved another layer, and then another, and then another. By then end I was crying. Very cool.

And China must be the windiest place on the planet what with all the billowing robes and sashes and hair.

At any rate, it you liked Crouching Tiger, then definitely go see Hero. Maybe not as emotionally complex or deep as CTHD, but more complex structurally and oh the images and colors which get seared on your retinas. (Now if only it had cellos instead of violins in the soundtrack...)

Back in Action

Finally I have my computer back up and running. For the past couple of months, I've been having more and more trouble with my computer. In the past week, my internet connection has been flaky. Three days ago I my internet connection quit altogether. I know it was something to do with my computer and not my internet connection in general because other computers hooked up to my router are connecting to the net just fine.

So finally I did what I had been planning on doing for quite some time but have been putting off...I reformatted my drive and started over.

Typically this solves all your problems but is a royal pain.

Imagine my surprise when I still couldn't connect to the net. Urg. I tried a different ethernet cable. No dice. I figured that my network card must be fried. Great. So I pulled an ethernet card out of a spare computer and plugged it in and now I'm funally up and running again. Whew!

I was amazingly relieved to be my computer back. I felt like I was missing part of my brain. Having a dead computer under my desk was also a huge insult to me...I worked the help desk for three years and here I was with a dead connection--I should be able to fix this in my sleep. What was wrong with me??!? I'm soooo glad that that's over with.

A Very Light Blue

I finished repainting the bathroom today. Boy am I glad to be done with that.

Title Wave

The whole family went to Title Wave the other day. Man that place is awesome. Basically, when our county library needs to get rid of books, they bring them to Title Wave, slap a price tag on them, and sell them to me.

So the other day was Educator's Day. Which means that Teachers and Educators get 60% off.

Tree is an Educator.

60% is a lot off.

The average (median) price of a book that is not on sale at Title Wave is somewhere in the $1.00 to $1.50 range.

60% is a lot off.

60% off of $1.00 is practically nothing.

We walked out with an armload of pretty cool stuff and it only cost us $6.00.

If we had remembered to bring our $5 gift certificate with us, we could have paid for our whole purchase using spare change.

Fare thee well my friends

Our best friends moved today. They will soon be living across the country. I spent much of the last month hanging out with them late into the night, talking and playing vintage video games. This past week, we went to Victoria together as a last hurrah. And now they are gone. We will miss them dearly.

May our paths cross soon and often.

Vacation

The whole family is going on vacation to Victoria, BC. We'll be back on Saturday. Don't expect much posting here as I don't htink we'll have internet access at the hotel.

This is the first vacation we've gone on with Spark that hasn't been to a family member's house. We're staying at a hotel. We've never taken Spark to a hotel. What are we going to do when he's sleeping? TV? Will that wake him up? Should we just leave him in the room sleeping and go to one of the common areas in the hotel and hang out? Or should we just read quietly in the room with Spark? Hmmmm...we'll see what works.

Anniversary!

Tree, thank you for marrying me seven years ago. Thank you for all the wonder and joy and love and silliness and fun you've brought into my life. Thankyouthankyouthankyou.

Recovering

Tree is doing great today. She barely needed any assistance from me at all. Which is good becuase Spark was extra clingy today (as I expected he would be--punishment for not spending enough time with him yesterday). Tree spent much of the day sleeping, and most of the remainder on the internet catching up with what she missed yesterday.

The day ran very smoothly except that Spark cried tons every time I put him down to sleep. This is not normal for him; I suspect he is scared that when he wakes up, I won't be there (since that is what happened twice yesterday). He ended up skipping an entire nap today because he wouldn't stop crying. I felt soooo bad for him, but there isn't much I can do about it except for being there when he wakes up.

My only issues with the past two days have been my clusters. Both days I've had low level clusters that have lasted all day. They've been just bad enough to annoy me without disabling me or forcing me to take meds. It just made everything an effort (or more of an effort than usual). Ah well. In the end, it wasn't that bad. It did force me to be more intentional all day yesterday and today, and that is a good thing. If it has to come at a cost of some pain and the occasional staring off into space, then so be it.

Surgery for Tree

Tree had surgery today. Everything went fine and she is recovering now. It was minor surgery--in and out of the hospital in the same day. Tree is of course in terrible pain and is currently drugged up to the gills so that she can sleep. It took some serious maneuvering to get her comfortable. Hopefully she will be better off tomorrow.

Our friends who live just down the street from the hospital were kind enough to babysit Spark for most of the day so that I could be with Tree in the hospital. When Tree was in the OR or other times when I couldn't be with her, I would run back to take care of Spark, feeding him lunch or putting him down for a nap.

By the time we collected him at the end of the day, he was seriously starved for our attention. I had to keep him up an extra hour just holding and cuddling him so that he could get enough "us time" for the day to consider going to sleep.

I'm not sure how I'm going to take care of both Tree and Spark at the same time tomorrow. Neither one is going to be satisfied with only partial attention. I've got my work cut out for me. ;)

Motivated by Spiderman

I'm home again. Been so for a few days now but I've been working on a revision of my thesis. I haven't worked on it in months and was thinking that I wouldn't get to it this summer either because I was being too lazy (and there is this internet thing that sucks up gobs of my time).

But then I saw Spiderman. And while I normally hate the idea of responsibilty, Spiderman manages to package it in a way that is downright appealing to me. Great Power. Great Responsibility. Use it for the good of humanity.

I can't save people's lives. I don't have that kind of power. But I can write my thesis. I'm the only one I know who can. And my thesis needs to be written because I think that I've got ideas in there that the world needs to hear. Important ideas. Paradigm changing ideas.

So I've spent the week reading, writing and revising because Spiderman lit a fire under my butt. Go figure.

Resuming Aikido

I went to Aikido for the first time since Spark came home. Boy did that feel good. Though I couldn't remember how to do anything when I was at home, my muscle memory kicked in and everything was fine on the mat. Turns out that what I missed the most was the warm up at the beginning. It provides this wonderful feeling of having stretched every muscle in your body and makes you feel like you are prepared to do anything.

I had been hesitant about going back. I always don't feel like going to Aikido. I'm always glad that I did once I've gone.

I'm really glad that I went.

Crabby

I have become uncharacteristically crabby in the past week or so. I'm not sure what my problem is, but I need an attitude adjustment soon. (So far Tree has been patient with me. It would be best if I did not exceed her patience.) Maybe I'm too tired. Maybe it's too hot out. Maybe I thought that all my problems would go away when Tree got home for summer vacation (her summer vacation started last week) but they didn't. I dunno. But I snap at people. I'm impatient. I'm condescending. I'm frequently irritated. I don't carry any of this behavior to an extreme, but it is all more than normal and I'd rather nip this in the bud if I can.

Brushing My Teeth

Around 5:00 PM today I went to the bathroom. When I was done, I brushed my teeth. I do not normally brush my teeth in the middle of the day. I left the bathroom and was talking to Tree before I realized that I had just brushed my teeth for no particular reason.

I still have no idea why I did that. I must either be so tired that my brain is misfiring, or I'm going senile waaaaay early.

Beta Testing

I'm beta testing a new puzzle game right now. It's a wierd experience. I'll figure out an optimal strategy (which may be a bit too optimal) and tell the programmers about it, and the next version of the game is rebalanced so that that stategy is no longer so strong.

The game itself is not terribly addicting, but I can't really think of any significant improvements either. Hmmmm...

Bye Mom

Peppy came by this morning and picked up Mom and they left to go home.

I rather liked having Mom around the house. Dishes and weeding and gardening and laundry all magically got done with her around. Plus, it is now too quiet around the house.

Bye Mom! We miss you.

Peppy

Peppy is here for a visit. Yay for Peppy! This is the first time he has seen Spark, who is Peppy's third Great-Grandchild. They seem to be getting along famously.

Tiles

We tiled the bathroom today. By "we" I mean Tree's co-worker's husband and I. And by "we tiled" I mean that he tiled and I followed his instructions.

(I am now really good at cutting tiles.)

When we first moved into this house, we hated the bathroom. Everything in it was new and clean, but it was so cheap as to be an eyesore. But because everything was new and clean, we put the bathroom at the bottom of our priority list and dealt with every other room in the house.

Well, we finally got fed up with the bathroom. In particular, we hated the tile walls. And by "tile" I mean "linoleum made to look like tile, but done so badly that it only serves to highlight the fact that it is decidedly not tile". Besides the poor quality of the linoleum, the fact that it had been nailed to the wall was a powerful clue that the walls were not covered with real tiles. (Note to the previous owner of this house: not only are nails not the proper affixative for tile, it is also not the proper affixative for linoleum either.)

So last night I tore all of the linoleum off the walls, and today we tiled. It took almost all day, but we're done now. (OK, we still need to grout, but we're done for the moment.) It looks soooo much better.

More Delirium

On the occasions when I'm not awakened by headaches or Spark's cries, I have been waking up thinking that Spark is in our bed. I don't know why I think this because we never put Spark in bed with us, but I wake up thinking it nonetheless.

In those first waking moments, when it is impossible to distinguish between dream and reality, I'm always reaching out to keep him from rolling off the bed or crawling over the edge. Then, after a moment or so, I realize that Spark's presence was just a dream.

As my sleep gets more and more fragmented, I'm having more and more trouble telling dream from reality. My dreams bleed into normal consciousness and reality takes on a dreamlike quality.

I woke up to go to the bathroom and thought that Spark was in bed with me. So I gathered him in my arms and got out of bed. Then I carefully laid him on the bed. I realized that this might be a mistake as he could just crawl right off the bed, so I went to pick him up again.

And I couldn't find him.

The rational part of my brain then put some pieces together and told me that Spark was still in his crib and that he had not been in my bed at all.

The delirious part of my brain didn't care. I had felt him in my arms. I had just cradled him moments ago. Every sense and every memory was telling me that Spark had been in bed with me. Only logic and experience and his otherwise inexplicable absence told me otherwise.

I spent the next two minutes checking and rechecking the bed and the floor to see if Spark was there. He was, of course, not.

Delirium finally gave way to reality and I stopped searching. But I was, and still am, unnerved by how vividly and completely my dreams have invaded my waking life.

Doing Dishes--not so sexy

A while back, both Julie and Tania mentioned that they find it incredibly sexy when their husbands do the dishes. Seeing as many (most?) days Tree only touches dirty dishes while in the process of making them dirty, I figure I should be seeing a lot more action than I'm actually getting. What's going wrong here? So I asked Tree "Do you think it's sexy when I do the dishes?"

"Suuuuuuuure." she said in that long drawn out voice that makes it clear that you are only humoring the lunatic that you're talking to long enough to either make a break for it or get a hold of a weapon. "Why do you ask?" she asked, stalling for time and edging towards the nearest exit.

"Some bloggers mentioned that they found it really sexy when their husbands do the dishes. That's all. Wanted to know if you felt the same way. Looks like that'd be a negative, huh?"

"Ummmmmmm...yeah." she said, visibly relaxing and no longer trying to escape.

So now I know: washing dishes--not so sexy for some women.

This confirms what I'd suspected for years. Way back when Tree and I started dating, Tree showed me an article in Redbook or something which had quotes of women saying how sexy it was when their husbands did housework like vacuuming or dishes. I was skeptical, but she insisted that it was true, for both her and other women. I told her it sounded like a manipulation play: "If you do housework, I'll make it worth your while." I didn't see anything inherently sexy about doing household chores, so the "You're so sexy when you vacuum the floors" just sounded like a fairly transparent ploy to get the guy to vacuum. Tree insisted that the sentiment was sincere--watching men do chores was a turn on.

I didn't believe her, but I let the matter drop. I don't really know that I'm happy to have been proven right.

Bedridden

This past weekend I was bedridden. Spark had been sick last week, and I finally caught what he had. At 2:30 AM Saturday, I got diarrhea. For the next hour, every time I stood up to go back to bed, I had to go running back to the toilet. What sleep I got from 3:30 to 5:45 was poor at best and maybe totalled half an hour.

Then Spark woke up. And the way he was crying made it clear that he was not going back to bed without help. Or possibly at all. So I got up and got him out of the crib and carried him around in my arms to soothe him. That didn't work so well, so I fed him a bottle. That helped, and I carried him around some more.

Then I noticed that I was freaking freezing. Even though it was an unseasonably warm 75 degrees at 6 in the morning. I was practically shivering. And all of my joints hurt. Like, a LOT. And I was stumbling around a lot in my walking.

Worried that I would just fall over, I put Spark back down in his crib. (Thankfully, he fell back asleep.) Then I crawled back into bed. I was in a bad way. When Tree woke up, I begged her to call in sick so that she could take care or Spark as I knew that I was totally incapable. I told her what happened earlier. She looked at me, agreed that I looked like I was going to keel over, and called in sick.

For the rest of the day, I drifted in and out of sleep incoherent, freezing and sweating as my body lost its ability to regulate its temperature. My skin told me that it hated me--all of my touch receptors decided that they were going to be pain receptors today instead. I had a headache all day (thankfully, just a normal headache, not a cluster). When I got up to go to the bathroom, I found that my heart was pounding from the exertion from the simple act of standing in one spot. Walking down the hall and back left me panting and lightheaded. I burned through all of my energy reserves so that I could witness Spark's first steps.

I had to study for my hardest test in this condition. Somehow, I did half of my studying this day.

Sunday was better. My headache was gone. My skin left me alone as long as I took enough Advil. But I still couldn't eat. Most of the day I felt like I was throwing off heat like a furnace, yet other times I couldn't get warm. And I was still weak. I was supposed to pick up my friend from the airport, but I had to send Tree instead as I was afriad I would drive into a ditch. While she was gone, I lay panting in a pile next to Spark hoping that if he decided to crawl anywhere that I'd be able to keep up with him.

Somehow, I did the other half of my studying this day.

Monday was better. I was mostly just low on stamina and I still couldn't eat anything besides carbs (and not much of that either). I took my exam with only moderate concentration available to me. And yet somehow managed to do fairly well. My brain was fried when I was done. I was so loopy afterwards that I sang several songs about "fried brains" to Tree. Somehow, I manage to do all of my studying for my last final this day.

And by Tuesday, I was fine again. (At least regarding being sick. As for my head...that story will have to wait for tomorrow.)

Thank God for all mercies.

What I did on my Spring Break - Tuesday

[Note: events in this post take place on March 23, 2004.]

A cluster wakes me up at 2:30 this morning. Oh joy. That wonderful feeling of having my eyeball flattened as my brain is being squeezed out though my eye socket. By this stage in my cluster, this is a familiar feeling and not at all unexpected. I roll myself out of bed, grab the Imitrex shot sitting on the bedside table, stumble out of the room (so as to not wake up Tree), and impale myself with the needle.

Six minutes later, the pain melts away like magic.

I go back to sleep. And I wake up feeling like my head is in a vice and a javelin has been shoved through the back of my neck and out my eye. Great. A daily double.

And now I have a decision to make. I've already taken three of my five shots. I go home tomorrow. If I take another shot now, I'll have one left for tomorrow. I can reasonably expect to have another headache tomorrow. But if I have another daily double, I won't have enough. The only other tool at my disposal is heavy pain medication--hardly ideal (it takes a long time to kick in and only deadens the pain to just bearable levels). Do I take the shot now and risk having to travel with a cluster treated only with pain meds? Or do I take the pain meds now while I'm not travelling and save the extra shot for the not-likely-but-altogether-within-the-realm-of-possibility worst-case-scenario of a daily double while travelling?

I am trying to think this decision through while in blinding pain. It takes me 10 minutes just to think the whole argument through. 10 very painful minutes.

I decide to save my shot for tomorrow. I down some pain meds. And wait. Nothing happens. I wait for an hour. In agony. The pain meds are not making a dent in the pain. I take some more. Half an hour later, the pain subsides to a mere "my entire head is being squeezed like a grape" levels.

I am finally able to go back to sleep.

[Update: Wednesday--I wake up at 2:30 with another cluster. I give myself an Imitrex shot. I have one more just in case. My trip home is uneventful and my last Imitrex shot is not needed. I probably should have taken it yesterday.]

[Another Update: Three days after I get home, when Oxygen fails to have any effect on one of my clusters, I am very glad to have that last Imitrex shot on hand.]

What I did on my Spring Break - Sunday pt. 2

[Note: events in this post take place on March 21, 2004.]

When we returned from downtown, I had the following converstaion with Tree's mom:

Tree's mom: Did you see any protests downtown? The news said that there were protests yesterday.

Me: We didn't see any. What were they protesting yesterday?

Tree's mom: The War.

Me: ...

Me: The one in Iraq? Isn't it a little late for that??!?

Tree's mom: ummmm...I guess so. Maybe they were just protesting Bush in general.

What I did on my Spring Break - Sunday pt. 1

[Note: events in this post take place on March 21, 2004.]

Spark got to meet his great-grandfather today. Unfortunately, we cut our schedule too tight so our visit was far too short.

First off, we arrived late. Only ten minutes or so, but late nonetheless. And ten minutes is a lot of time when you only have a little over an hour to spend. My grandfather was so anxious to see us that he had climbed onto a bench to lean over the fence so that he could see down the sidewalk. The sight of him was adorable and touching.

By the time we got to his apartment, we only had about an hour to spend with him before we had to leave to go see Tree's dad who is in rehab. An hour was simply not enough time.

But then again, an hour was plenty. Grandpa is nearly deaf. He knows a little bit of English. I don't know any Cantonese. There wasn't much more we could've said to each other even if we had stayed longer.

Nevertheless.

That hour was far too short. We looked at pictures together. I gave him a massage. We held hands. He held Spark. We didn't need words for any of that. And with more time, we could have done more. There was laughter and smiles.

And when we left, there were tears.

Tired yet unable to sleep

I am utterly exhausted today. But I drank a ton of caffine today, so I'm wired too. I can feel the tiredness under the surface, but the caffine is keeping me superficially awake.

End result...I'm really cranky. I have no patience and nothing seems enjoyable. Sleep will be good when I'm finally able to get some.

What I did on my Spring Break - Friday pt. 2

We're about to leave for CA. I'll be 5 days without my precious oxygen (which does a great job of aborting most of my headaches). And I've already finished my course of prednizone (which does a decent job of preventing my headaches while I'm on it). So for the next 5 days, my only defense against the Clusters are my Imitrex shots. I have 5 doses. Lets hope my Clusters don't decide to double up on me on any given day.

I'm a tad nervous...

What I did on my Spring Break - Friday pt. 1

I met my work deadline. WooHoo! Doing so meant several nights of staying up until 5 AM, but I did it.

Scrivs says that you should avoid the low paying clients as they invariably suck up more of your time than your clients who pay you full price. I'm starting to see his point. I did this project as a favor, but the time I put into it was disproportionate. My client just didn't trust some of my design decisions. Maybe because she isn't paying me much, she thinks that I don't know what I'm doing? Maybe if I charged her full price, she would have left the professional to do his job in peace? Who knows.

I had endless discussions with my client about color and emphasis. Sample discussion:

client: We need to emphasize these names...and can you bold this...and make these links stand out more."

me: Well, yeah, I can, but I don't think that's a very good idea. Look, you can't emphasize everything on the page; that has the same result as emphasizing nothing.

client: But everything on the page is important.

me: Yes, I know. But the very fact that it is included on the page indicates that it is important. If it wasn't, we would have cut it. Choose the 1 or 2 most important things on the page, and we'll emphasize those.

client: But I want to draw the reader's attention from this paragraph to the next one, and then to the next one. The bolding will tell them where to look next.

me: Actually, the fact that the paragraphs follow each other is enough of a cue to your readers that they should read it next.

And so on and so on. Why hire a designer if you aren't going to trust his design sense? My client is too used to making fliers; every design suggestion pushed in that direction: more fonts, more bold, more colors, brighter colors, bigger, more in-your-face. Appropriate for fliers (maybe), but not so much for the website she asked me to put together. She finally relented on most of her requests when I got another designer, one that she trusts (he designs her fliers), to back me up.

Whatever. This stage of the project is done. Now it gets shown to the Board of Directors who will undoubtedly give me a fresh batch of changes to make. But I'm done. Off to vacation with a clear conscience!

Back from Vacation!

Apologies for not posting earlier. I meant to post before leaving for California to visit family, but my work project consumed all available time and I was packing furiously up until the moment we left.

I had planned on posting a lot while in CA, but that didn't happen either. My main opportunities to get on-line were when Spark was sleeping. Unfortunately, the only computer with internet access was in the room that Spark was sleeping in. Other opportunities were foilded by the general crashiness of Win98.

Upon returning home, I stupidly opened a virus. I had been looking for an excuse to rebuild my machine, so I went ahead and did so, but that took my computer out of comission for several days. And now there's school again. Sigh.

So I wrote a bunch of stuff down using actual pen and ink, and will try to post those over the next few days. If/when I do so, their titles will be prefixed with "What I did on my Spring Break". If I am diligent about this, I can actually get caught up to the present.

I have my doubts. I don't think I've ever started a post, set it aside and then actually finished it. We'll see if I can do it this time. Wish me luck.

Almost Done

I'm finished with my midterms! WooHoo!

I did about as well as I could have expected given my ongoing Clusters, my responsibilities as a stay-at-home dad, and my work responsibilities. Now I'm devoting my time to finishing a project for work--deadline: Friday morning.

Friday afternoon, we fly to CA so that Tree's family can meet Spark. Spring Break is gonna be sweeeeeet. Midterms over. Work deadline passed. Additional help taking care of Spark. With any luck, my Cluster will be over and done with too (fingers crossed).

Tardy

I want very badly to finish writing this series on infertility. However, each chapter seems harder than the last to write. There are lots of exposed nerves down there.

Meanwhile, the present marches on and I have been remiss in chronicling it as well. Sigh. I will simply have to jump right in and catch everyone up after the fact.

Also, I did a slight modification to the templates to simplify the sidebar. Plus I added a bunch of people to my blogroll (something that was long overdue).

Warm Stranger

I got to see Vienna Teng perform at Music Millenium today. What a treat! Even better, I got to meet her briefly after her set. I got a hug, some pictures, and some autographs.

And though we really know each other no better, we are now warmer strangers.

Listening to, seeing, and meeting Vienna was just one part of a beautiful day full of sunshine and warmth, and I was grateful that I was able to take this first opportunity to relax in weeks to make a long awaited meeting.

Home Again

We're home from CA. The time we spent there for Grandma's memorial service was quite good, though very sad and difficult at times. I spent a fair amount of time cuddling and calming down two of Grandma's great-grandchildren. I really love those kids.

We missed the cremation due to our flight being repeatedly canceled, but we were able to make it to the memorial service. It was packed. The service was solemn and filled with emotion. It was held in her church, a beautiful Episopal church which was smaller than I expected. We sang her favorite hymns, read her favorite psalms and took communion. We cried.

The family spent a lot of time in her house afterwards. Going through her stuff resulted in a flood of unexpected emotions. The grief I expected. But there was excitement in exploring and discovering new things about Grandma; regret that we had never done this before and would never do it again; longing for Grandma to be around so that she could tell us the history behind this object or that; delight when some family member actually knew the history of a knick-knack or heirloom; laughter when everyone tried to foist off the ugly painting onto everone else; dismay when we saw how Grandma had cut apart some of her clothes in an effort to make them more comfortable in her final days; bemusement at the many things that she had bought but never opened much less used; shocked hilarity at the surprises (my sister-in-law popped out of a closed holding a box and declared "There are some things a person should never find out about her Grandmother." Inside the box: a pair of tasseled pasties.); comfort in the fellowship and in being surrounded by memories of Grandma and the familiarity of her things; sadness in knowing that after this, the house will never feel like her home again--it will get emptied out and cleaned up so that it can go on the market and her personality and presence will be erased from the house.

I miss her.

Grounded

Due to inclement weather (read: airplanes embedded in ice), we have not flown to CA for the memorial service yet. Maybe tomorrow, if the airport is able to thaw out the planes.

Memorial

We're off to grandma's memorial service. Be back Sunday or Monday. Don't expect much by the way of posting between now and then.

Stacks of unread stuff

Way back when, before grad school, after college, during my gainfully-employed years, my mind yearned for intellectual input. I could feel my brain getting stale. My job had stopped being intellectually challenging after about 4 months. I had read every book in my apartment several times over. I did not yet have internet access at home. I was so starved for something to read that I would devour Tree's Redbook, reading it cover to cover on the day it arrived before Tree even realized that the mail had come.

Now, life is a bit different. Information overload has caught up with me. I'm not complaining, mind you--I prefer this by a longshot over my previous situation. School, interesting work, multiple periodicals delivered to my door, and 24/7 internet access give me plenty to read.

Tree once asked me why I spend so much time surfing the web. My response: "I haven't finished reading it yet." However, my attitudes have slowly been changing. I'm getting used to the fact that more good stuff is produced than I can consume. Evidence: the stack of a dozen partially read magazines in my basket. In another time, I would have finished each article in each magazine before putting them down. Now I only read what I think might be interesting and leave the rest for later. Which of course never comes.

Now I just need to figure out how to filter and prioritize so that I don't waste too much time.

badly timed comic

Today's For Better or for Worse is nice and all. But all it really does is remind me that this is the first morning since she was born that Grandma didn't wake up.

*sniff*

Ollie, Ollie oxen free!

Grandma P died around 8:00 PM today.

"Ollie, Ollie oxen free!" was one of her favorite phrases. She used to shout it as a child to let her sibs know that it was time to come home. And throughout her life right up until her death, that phrase would never fail to produce a laugh or a smile.

Time to come home Grandma. I hope you're having fun wherever you are.

Happy New Year Grandma

I'm back from visiting the in-laws. It was a very good visit, though depressing. Tree's maternal grandmother, Grandma P, has cancer pretty much everywhere. We spent a good portion of our time in CA hanging out with her, taking her in for radiation treatments, and listening to her stories. Time well spent.

It is extraordinarily difficult to imagine that she is dreadfully sick. She has always been fiesty and full of life and though it was muted during our visit, her trademark vitality was still quite evident. The cancer and the associated drugs have killed her vision and have filled her with pain, but she was relentlessly joyful and loving.

During our vacation, we did one of the smartest things we've ever done: we bought a camcorder, sat Grandma P in front of it and had her tell her life-story to us. Pure gold. This woman has done and seen everything.

When we rang in the new year, I though to myself (just as Cobb did regarding his ailing grandfather), "2003 Won't Get Her". Given her energy and spirit, I figured January wouldn't get her either. Even as we left her to come home saying "Goodbye" for likely the last time, she still managed to put a smile on our faces.

Today we got a phone call from Tree's mother. Grandma P is semi-comatose and the doctors don't think that she'll last a week.

Mightiness of Sunlight Bottom

I got a little toy car as a stocking stuffer. It was made in China, as the included instructions make clear. The following is an exerpt of the "safety rules". (To save me the trouble, just assume that there is a "[sic]" after every misspelling and grammatical mistake in the following section. Thanks.):

Safe rule

1. prohibition against 3 years old below of child usage;
2. play attention, you of finger, hair, clothes...etc, don't touch car and wheel, in order to prevent quilt harm;
3. car while ddving not want to by hand grasp it;
4. don't let the remote control close to any fire with car odginal;( such as electric stove, stove beside or mightiness of sunlight bottom)
5. not want the place in danger to play;( such as street, steep slope...etc.)
6. don't let the wet water of car, and not want under the rainy day is open-air usage;
7. not want on the sand ground to play;
8. forbid the child to tear open the remote control with the car;
9. if the car dash to piecesed, and should pass by the per son check or profession personnel maintain the rear can coninue to use.

What the heck are "ddving" and "odginal"? And why are they concerned about "quilt harm"?

Numbers 4 and 9 are my favorites.

I have to believe that the English (if you can call it that) portion of these instructions were produced using machine translation. Otherwise...some poor Chinese-to-English translator is going to have a very short career.

Merry Christmas

Off to the in-laws for the holidays. Should be fun. Will be gone for about a week. Might be able to post sporadically.

Merry Christmas...or if you aren't celebrating that particular holiday, then general merriness to you.

Birthday Loot

Mostly, my birthday gifts this year came in the form of cash. Which is fine by me. But that doesn't make for very good storytelling. The one non-cash gift of note was from Tree. She got me an electric matress pad. Previously, getting into bed when the weather got chilly was a shiver inducing exercise. This is made worse by the fact that our bedroom is the second-coldest room in the house (after the converted garage). Now we can get into a toasty warm and welcoming bed at night. This is one of the better gifts I've gotten in my lifetime.

Obviously, this gift is for Tree as much as it is for me. But that's fine, 'cause half of it was paid for with her birthday money, and the other half with mine.

Recovery

I have been trying not to let my surgery disrupt my schedule very much. I've gone to all of my classes and attempted to finish all of my assignments on time. I've also been going to work (and work elated meetings). I have largely been successful (though I may need an extension on one homework).

That means that I have been walking to and from school and home and work. It is a slow process, but it has been speeding up every day. Unfortunately, I think I may have overdone it on some days. Monday may have been too early to have taken a full day of classes because I felt really bad on Tuesday. And I was in quite a bit of pain walking to and from Professor N's retirement ceremony. I will probably be paying for it tomorrow.

I hope that I have not prolonged my recovery by trying to keep a somewhat normal schedule.

Normally, I am more than ready to be very lazy and to use any excuse to sit around and do nothing. Why haven't I done that with this recpvery period? I'm not really sure. I think that it is becuase I'm aware that the worst part of the semester is coming up in a week and if I tried