Charlotte Turns Two

Charlotte Turns Two

Charlotte turned 2 years old on November 27. She was very excited. Charlotte's favorite thing in the world is dogs, so Carol made a special doggie cake. Charlotte understood exactly what to do with the candles: she started blowing them out as soon as they were lit, while we were singing. She extinguished them in two tries.

For a long time, Charlotte's "transitional object" or "lovie" has been a beanie baby dog named "Ploppers". But whenever we go to see Thomas the Tank Engine at Barnes and Noble, Charlotte always wants to play with Plopper's alter ego "Puppers". Carol bought a Puppers for Charlotte's birthday. It was love at first sight. Charlotte immediately abandoned both her Ploppers and now Puppers is the apple of her eye. Charlotte will tell you that she got Puppers for her birthday. She'll hold him up to you and blow.

Charlotte's language is coming along all of a sudden. She learned the word "No" one day. I was surprised to see that as soon as she learned the word, she stopped shaking her head to say no. I would have expected there would be a period where she would do both, but there wasn't. A few weeks later she said her first sentence: "No, Mine!"

In other news, Audrey went to the dentist for the first time last week. I had been feeling really guilty thinking we should have taken her a couple of years ago. But the dentist told Carol that this was a fine age for a first visit. And the best news of all? He said her teeth look great and her home care is just fine. Both girls brush their teeth every night before bed (often with our help), but we weren't very consistent about it for the first two years of Audrey's life. I was relieved to learn that she is doing fine anyway. And she was very cooperative with the dentist.

I have two more days of work this year. I'm taking Friday off. Then on Christmas Eve we fly to Tucson to visit with Carol's parents. On the 28th we'll borrow their car and drive to Palm Desert, CA, where my parents winter. Their 50th wedding anniversary is December 28th. They are having a big party on the 29th. The next day we'll drive back to Tucson to stay with Carol's parents again until we fly home on the 4th. We're really looking forward to the trip. Carol in particular is looking forward to 70 degree temperatures in Tucson and even warmer weather in Palm Desert.

Our New Toy

I have a loose rule I follow with expensive gadgets. If there is a gadget I think I really want, I wait a year and see if I still want it. The rule has served me pretty well - there are several items I ended up not buying because the lust dissipated.

I've wanted a high definition flat panel TV for at least three years now. Coincidentally, I got motivated a few weeks ago to make another attempt at selling a bunch of china and crystal from my previous marriage on eBay. This time I was fairly successful. Se we had the cash to match the desire. Add that to the fact that Sears had a TV on sale that was highly rated by Consumer Reports and we had the perfect storm. I went to the local Sears and bought the thing.

We bought a 42" Vizio LCD TV. Vizio, it turns out, is one of a new breed of electronics company. They don't actually build anything, and they only have about 70 employees. They contract the manufacuturing to Taiwanese OEMs. But like I said Consumer Reports has rated them well for the past several years so we took a chance on a company that isn't a "big name". I found out after the fact that Vizio sells more LCD TV in the US than any other company.

Shortly after we bought it, I ordered a Peerless wall mount. Last Friday night we reconfigured the TV room and mounted the new TV on the wall at eye level when sitting on the sofa. Perfect.

Our cable box has the capability to make "favorite channels" lists. I made one with only the HD channels (we get 15). When I watch TV now, I go to that list first. I find I'll watch almost anything if it's in HD :). (I'm sure that will wear off in a while). Football, in particular, is visually spectacular in high definition even though I'm not a football fan.

A Note for Email Subscribers

One detail I forgot to mention in the farewell message on the Wordpress blog: the email notification on the new blog only works in "digest" mode. Every day at 5am, if there are any additions or changes to the blog in the previous 24 hours, email subscribers will get an email message. You'll get at most one message per day. Typically I only post 2 or 3 times in a month (meaining you'll get 2 or 3 emails in a month).

If you absolutely must have the latest Methot family news hot off the presses, figure out (or ask me!) how to read it via RSS.

Welcome to the new Methot.net!

I started this project back in March. My geek friend Alex is my tech idol. He moved all of his photos to Picasa Web Albums and his blog to Blogger because it simplified his life. I wanted to be just like Alex. Then I signed up for the Bioinformatics Certificate program and my spare time for projects like this went away. But, as is my habit, I thought a lot about how to do it on my mind's back burner.

Finally, after my Biostatistics final exam on December 8th (I think I aced it, grades aren't posted yet) I had time for personal projects again.

The first order of business was to get the photo albums moved. The blog posts all contained links to the albums in the their old locations at methot.net/gallery. I spent some time writing a program to move them, but then realized that those albums all originally came from iPhoto on our Mac. So I had the bright idea to just re-export them to Picasa Web Albums. That took a few hours but was, as Alex would say, easy peasy.

Then I had to update the links in all the old blog posts and make their formatting consistent. Wordpress uses MySQL. I dumped that database and made a local copy. Then I edited the MySQL export script directly and updated all of the photo gallery URLs to point to the albums' new homes at Picasa Web Albums. Once that was done I imported the modified Wordpress database into my local MySQL server.

After that it was a fairly simple matter to write a little Java program that read the posts from MySQL and used the Blogger API (Google published great APIs to a bunch of their tools) to post them to Blogger, complete with their original post dates. Viola! You can read every post since I started blogging at the new location, and all of the album links in the posts point to the photo albums' new locations.

The final steps were to redirect my Feedburner RSS feed to the Blogger version of the blog and set up email notification for my readers who live in the dark ages :). I think that's all working now.

The only thing missing is the photo captions that I had entered by hand in Gallery. But I can write a program to go find all those and transfer them to the Picasa version. And if I want to get really ambitious, I'll transfer all the really old albums at http://methot.net/photos to Picasa Web Albums. That's a much more difficult problem because they were created using an old photo editing application (LView Pro) that emitted very dirty HTML that's hard to parse automatically.

Anyway, here we are. Thanks, Alex, for the inspiration (and always for the geek advice and guidance). Welcome, everyone, to the new methot.net!

Thanksgiving 2007

Thanksgiving '07

Album | Slideshow

We spent Thanksgiving at Carol's brother Bob's house in north Seattle with his family and Carol's nieces and nephews and other family. 17 people altogether. The feast was delicious and we all had a great time. Audrey and Charlotte ran and ran and ran with their cousins and came home exhausted. They both slept all night and "late" the following morning (until 7:15!). Carol and I went to bed at 9:30 and had our best night's sleep in a long time. We failed to get up at midnight to hit the outlet malls.

Charlotte decided a few weeks ago to give talking a serious try. All of a sudden she has a lot of words. The first color she learned was brown, which she says as "brr". Then she learned yellow ("lellow"). Anything that isn't brown is "lellow". She regularly says "uh oh" now. Carol is "maaa" and as of this week I am "la la" very consistently. Charlotte also clearly says "baby" and "happy". Carol heard her say "puppy" once but she hasn't repeated that. This morning Charlotte was sitting on my lap looking at family photos and she started saying "Audrey" clearly and repeatedly.

Audrey's favorite thing to do with me is play chase. We often play for a long time when I get home from work. Charlotte plays sometimes, too. Lately Audrey prefers a variation where once I catch her I wrap her up completely in a blanket and squeeze her, or reach in and tickle her. She could play this game for hours. Sometimes I pick her up in the blanket like a sack of potatoes and carry her somewhere else in the house. "Where am I now?," she'll ask from inside. When she's watching TV she loves to be all buried in a blanket nest so she just has a little opening to look through.

Audrey is also trying to learn letters and numbers. She's been singing the alphabet song. She can't quite get it right yet, but if we sing along with her she can make her way through it. And she's starting to do some reasoning with numbers. This morning at breakfast she said, "We have three girls and one boy." I started asking her questions like, "If your cousin Kristen came over, how many girls would we have?" Audrey was able to reason it out every time.

Halloween '07

Halloween '07

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It's been two weeks of Halloween around our house. That's how long ago Grandma and Grandpa took the girls shopping for costumes. The girls have worn their costumes almost daily ever since. They each chose their own. Audrey had been saying for weeks that she wanted to be Spiderman for Halloween. Charlotte couldn't communicate her desires, but we could have guessed it would be dog-related. Dogs are Charlotte's favorite thing. When they entered the toy store, Charlotte made a bee line for the dog costume and wouldn't even consider anything else.

On Halloween night Carol and I took turns taking the girls Trick or Treating while the other stayed home to answer the door. It was a little cool out, but not too bad. Carol took the first shift with the girls and they did both sides of the street on our block. When they came home for the handoff, Charlotte chose to stay home with Carol and Audrey and I headed out for Round 2.

Audrey was a very polite Trick or Treater. Several houses tried to get her to take several pieces of candy, but she'd often say, "No thank you, I already got one piece." We only visited about 5 or 6 houses before Audrey told me she was finished and wanted to go home. On the way home she told me that she wanted one piece of candy before she went to bed, and one piece of candy every day until it was gone. I told her that sounded like a very sensible plan. I think someone had been influencing her in the days before Halloween. Amazingly, Audrey has almost stuck to that plan. She is definitely not gorging on candy, even though she knows it is available. Charlotte, too.

We've had a couple of fairly lazy weekends. Carol's been working on her latest furniture project. I've been futzing with the pickup truck. This weekend I got a radio installed in it (it had none) and tried to fix the horn, which doesn't work (I tried a bunch of solutions, but there is a short somewhere in the wiring harness and all my attempts to outsmart it just blew fuses). Other than that we were unusually lazy. Nice for a change.

The midterm for my Biostatistics class was two weeks ago. I was feeling disheartened after the test (open book tests are the worst!), but grades came out this week and I scored well above average so I'm feeling more motivated again. I'm only taking the course for my own edification - there's not really anything riding on it - but an expectation of high grades was programmed into me very strongly as a child.

Since having kids I've lamented that I never "read" anymore. I realized this week that I still read just as much, I just don't read books. I read tons of material on the web, including news and whatever historical or technical topics grab my interest during the week. For example, I'm reading "A Tale of Two Cities" a little bit at a time from dailylit.com. That led me to do a few hours of reading online about the French Revolution. I'm also a throwback who reads the local newspaper cover to cover every day. I've done that all my life. Anyway, I was amused to have the sudden realization that my reading hasn't stopped, it's just changed shape.

Someone pointed me to dailylit.com a couple of months ago. "A Tale of Two Cities" was the thing that caught my eye the most, and made me wonder how I got all the way through four years of high school honors English classes and college without every reading a Dickens novel‽ I'm really enjoying it. I never knew Dickens was such a smart-ass. Right up my alley.

Bringing Vinyl Albums Into the 21st Century

When I was in my twenties and financially irresponsible, my favorite form of retail therapy (and debt accumulation) was buying records. I built up a collection of more then 500 vinyl albums. Most of them were acquired during the three years or so that I was a DJ at community radio station KCMU; they reflect my tastes at the time which were heavily influenced by the eclectic nature of the station.

The last time I had my album collection available for use was when I lived in Boston before moving back to Seattle in 1997. Since then they have been in boxes in storage. A few years ago my storage locker was burglarized and my turntable was stolen, so I didn't even have a way to play albums any more. But I would still occasionally think about favorite music that was languishing in those boxes. Once I moved everything from the storage locker to the attic in my new garage, I also started worrying about all that weight up there.

In May, I bought a USB turntable at Costco and started the project of ripping albums to MP3s. Carol's father is interested in doing the same thing so we split the cost.

I ripped a few LPs in June but then got busy with school and the garage and stopped for a couple of months. At the beginning of September I started again and got pretty serious about it. I just finished this week.

A lot of the music I was buying in the 80s was pretty experimental. Much of it is outright angry. Many albums I would just bypass without even listening to. Others were borderline and I'd drop the needle on a few tracks to decide if I wanted to invest the time to convert them. Much of it is interesting, but I know I'll never listen to it again. Other albums had historical interest (some local New Wave bands, for example) but I knew I'd never want to listen to those again either. I think in the end I ripped about 1/3 of the albums I own.

I also came across many albums I know I never owned - I must have inherited them from a previous relationship. Most were junk (and in poor condition), but there were a few gems. Some Sergio Mendes from the 60s, as well as a couple of "Disneyland" label albums that are stories: "Snow White", "Peter and the Wolf", etc. from 1960. The latter are humorous because they tell the whole story on one side of an LP - limited to about 15 minutes - by speeding up the music and speaking very quickly.

I figured I'd write about my experience so that should you tackle such a project you'll know what you're getting into.

First of all, if you have a sizable collection your project is going to last weeks or months. I recommend that you set up a dedicated "station". You need room for the turntable, a staging area for the records, and a place for the computer within reach of the USB cable from the turntable.

Once you start ripping it's a multi-stage process:

1. Put on a record.
2. Fire up the ripping software (I use Audacity, an open source audio tool that came packaged with the turntable)
3. Start the record. Set a kitchen timer for 18-20 minutes.
4. When the timer goes off go check on the record and wait a few minutes if it isn't done yet. "Pause" the software, flip the record and start side 2, un-pause software. Set the timer again.
5. Timer goes off for side 2, "stop" the software. At this point you have the entire album as one big waveform in memory. You can save the raw data to a file, but I never did.
6. Using the software, pan and zoom around in the waveform to find song boundaries. This is easy for most "song" albums (the song breaks are readily visible in the waveform) and harder for less commercial works that have sounds between "songs" or pieces that blend together. You also probably want to clip out several seconds of silence at the end of every song.
7. Make markers at the song boundaries and type in song names at the markers. Audacity's UI for this is fairly crappy - double check before hitting return on each title. Depending on the album, you need a place to put the album cover and or the record itself to read the song titles from during this process.
8. Tell Audacity to store songs as MP3s. Enter artist and album title and "go". It takes about 5-10 minutes to write out the MP3 files. I made a file hierarchy in c:\<artist>\<album>. I knew I'd eventually import it all into iTunes so the structure didn't really matter, but I'm anal that way.
9. (optional) I edit the filenames that Audacity creates and put the track number as a prefix (e.g. "01-<first song title>.mp3") so I get file ordering that mirrors song order on the album.
10. Go to step 1.

Overall it takes about an hour per single album. I worked it into other stuff I was doing. For example, I can rip an album in the morning: start side 1 as soon as I get up and then go make breakfast for the girls. Turn the record over and then make breakfast for myself. Then maybe do the editing and title entry and saving (or leave it until evening). In the evening I can do several albums while doing other things like homework and dinner.

Note that Audacity has a feature to find "quiet" spots between songs automatically, but I never tried it. I liked doing it myself so I could put cut out as much blank space as possible and put the song start points exactly where I wanted them. This step is best accomplished using headphones. Audacity can also attempt to remove pops and other vinyl noises, but personally I find them charming so I didn't bother.

Once I was done I imported the ripped files into iTunes. Audacity sets the ID3 tags pretty well, but it has a weird list of genres so you have to fix some of those in iTunes. I also like to set the y part of "track x of y", and the compilation flag if appropriate. Then adding album art is a whole different task since you have to do it manually for LPs. iTunes does it by Gracenote signature - i.e. number of tracks and length as they are on the CD; your ripped tracks are never going to have the same time signature so iTunes rarely finds album art automatically. I find the album art somewhere (amazon, usually, or by Google image search) and drag it to iTunes. An image size between 200x200 and 300x300 works pretty well without wasting disk space.

I also add "from vinyl" to the comments for every ripped song. I have a smart playlist called "Vinyl" that automatically includes everything I've ripped.

I ended up ripping 173 albums (some were double or triple LPs) totaling 1,713 songs and 8.71 GB.

It was a long process but overall fairly painless. It's great having all that music available again in a format as convenient as iTunes. I rediscovered a lot of wonderful music along the way.

Spray Painting

Spray Painting

Album | Slideshow

Last week we got Carol set up with a compressor and spray gun. She has a project due for a charity auction next week, so it was time to get cracking.

I did a fair bit of research to figure out what to get. I also talked to our friend Matt who has an amazing woodworking shop in his garage (3-car garage with room for 0 cars). There is a "new" spray gun technology called HVLP (high volume, low pressure) that produces far less overspray and is therefore more efficient with paint and also less likely to coat the whole workspace in paint mist. But most HVLP guns require a very high capacity (i.e. expensive) compressor.

I finally figured out that there is a special type of HVLP gun called a "conversion gun" that "converts" a normal compressor for its use. A pretty strange terminology since you don't do anything to the compressor. We bought a Wagner HVLP conversion gun and a "normal" compressor. I chose the Makita MAC2400 because it runs at lower RPM than other models so it's quieter and lasts longer. The cooler temperature also means less condensation in the compressed air. And I like the compact shape because it takes up less room in the garage.

When I was trying to get everything set up I went to Fittings Inc. to get air hoses and the fittings I need to plumb for air from the garage to the studio (so Carol won't have to listen to the compressor while working). I thought air fittings were universal, but no. There are apparently 22 different styles of male fittings! It took two trips, but I got there. Fortunately another customer who was waiting there for his order gave me some good advice - use "universal" female fittings everywhere and then it doesn't matter what type of male fitting you use.

For now we've been painting in the garage. The gun is indeed very efficient with paint. It has a 1-quart canister that we would fill halfway. Putting a coat on the entire table and chair set only used half of that. And there is very little overspray.

The past two nights Carol has been working in her studio painting the details on the table and chairs. I wanted to take a photo of her working there but the camera battery is dead. Next time. She's loving the space. It's heated, has good lighting, and I bought Carol an iPod speaker system for her birthday so she has music to work by.

I'll of course post photos of the table and chair project when it's complete.

Honorarium for Scottie

Scottie Honorarium 10/27/07

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I started road cycling as a serious hobby in 1998. I'd been a pretty serious mountain biker throughout the 90s, but I kept getting injured. In the summer of 1998 I moved to an apartment in downtown Seattle. That made mountain biking less accessible as well as hazardous. So I bought a road bike. I think I rode my mountain bike about twice after that. I immediately liked the speed and smoothness and the more sustained workout one gets from road biking.

I rode mostly solo for several years. In 2001 or so I decided to try some group rides and went on a few with the Cascade Bicycle Club. I love the club and am a member, but I found their organized rides annoying - the rides I went on stopped way too often to regroup - negating the aforementioned sustained workout benefit. But on one aborted ride I met Greg Scott and we made up our own ride. We became instant riding buddies and rode together almost every weekend and some weeknights for a couple of years.

After a while, Greg asked if I wanted to try a Saturday ride he knew about that left from the Eastgate area of Bellevue. We joined in that day and I've been riding with the Saturday group semi-regularly ever since.

The Saturday ride is organized by a fine gentleman named Scott Sensenbrenner. Scott sends out an email in the middle of every week reminding people of the ride and suggesting the start time (earlier in summer, later in winter). The ride goes almost every Saturday year round. The only reason it's usually canceled in advance is a forecast for snow or ice. Scott's been doing this for something like 20 years.

Scott's the friendliest guy you could hope to meet. We often pick up strangers on the ride. Scott gets their email and they become a permanent part of the list. Everybody feels welcome. The group has a wide range of riders, from those who are new to cycling to current and former racers. Every year we talk about getting club jerseys. But the group is so informal that we can't even agree on a name, much less a jersey design.

I've made many good cycling friends from the Saturday ride. It's with people from this ride that I ride STP and the MS Bike Tour and all the other local annual rides. Many of my best days on the bike have been with this group. In the summer when everybody's in their best shape we have some fantastic paceline riding.

A few weeks ago, fellow member Dutch sent out an email organizing a collection. He wanted to give Scott a token of our appreciation for making this ride happen every week for so long, and being responsible for so much enjoyment by so many people. Dutch got a pretty good response. When he went to buy the gift certificate at VeloceVelo in Issaquah, they knew Scott and kicked in some more. Then Dutch waited for a week when he knew turnout would be high. This week he announced that today was the day.

Indeed about 20-25 people showed up on a cold, foggy morning to witness the gifting and show their appreciation to Scott. The "ceremony" such as it was contained the usual amount of sarcasm and ribbing. But it was clear that we all feel gratitude toward Scott.

Then we headed off for a 40 mile ride to Issaquah, Maple Valley and Renton. Fortunately it warmed up a bit after the first 10 miles or so and our fingers came back to life.

Thanks, Scott! I know you don't think you do much, but your welcoming spirit and friendliness are the glue that holds this whole thing together.

Turning Leaves

Turning Leaves

Album | Slideshow

I was on a roll there for a while with frequent posts, but then life went and got busy again.

The most exciting news at the moment is that Charlotte appears to want to potty train herself. She sees Audrey using the bathroom and she of course wants to be like her big sister. She's just starting, but she'll point to her diaper and signal that she has to go, and she'll use the toilet! We'll see if it lasts. It would be ironic if Charlotte were potty trained before she could talk.

One day Carol was in a bind about what to do with Charlotte while she took Audrey to preschool. So I took the morning off and hung out with Charlotte. The weather turned out to be more pleasant than expected, so we went to the beach. We had fun just hanging out together. The beach photos of Charlotte and me in this album are from that day.

As I've said, I'm trying not to obsess about Charlotte's lack of talking, but I do think about it. In the end, it'll happen when it happens. It occurred to me that I could go back and look at video of Audrey - maybe I completely disremember where she was at this age. Charlotte has been making a few efforts. She likes to say "yellow".

Audrey continues to spout pearls on a regular basis. One day (I can't remember the situation) she exclaimed, "Great Ceasar's ghost!". In the middle of one night when she came to our bed scared, Carol said, "You'll be OK." Audrey said "I don't want to be OK!" Another time Audrey told me, "I'm just popping a bubble in my bottom."

Some background for the last Audreyism: 1. We often set the kitchen timer to motivate the girls to do something. Examples are "dinner is on the table for 5 more minutes" or "we'll get out of the tub in 3 minutes". 2. The girls don't watch much TV. Audrey gets some time on the PBS kids channel in the afternoon if Carol needs to get some work done during Charlotte's nap. But on weekends they get to watch Disney movies on DVD.

Last Wednesday we bought two DVDs: "Jungle Book" and "Cars". Audrey asked about a hundred times if she could watch them. After hearing the standard answer (we watch movies on weekends) every time, on Thursday Audrey asked me, "Dad, could you please set the timer for Saturday?"

We ordered a compressor and a spray gun for Carol's furniture business. She'll be able to spray the primer coat, background color coat and the polyurethane at the end. Not having to do those three tasks by hand should save her a lot of time. The goods are supposed to arrive tomorrow.

I'll break in the compressor and gun by painting the trim for the studio. I cut it all a couple of weekends ago but was too lazy to paint it all by hand. Once the trim is installed the studio is essentially finished.

When we built the garage, we demolished a couple of sections of concrete block wall that have been here since shortly after the house was build in the 50's. The north fence is now out of sight behind the garage, so while I had finishing it on my list it was out of sight out of mind. The neighbors finally asked us to fix it (it had a dogtooth edge and was also a little unstable due to cracks from the demolition vibration). I tried for a month to find a mason and finally got one to give a bid. It was affordable, but he couldn't do it until December 21! Apparently fall is the busy season for masons; who knew? We couldn't wait that long, so this last weekend I did it myself. Had to disassemble a bunch of the wall end back to where the cracks were, using a demolition hammer to chisel out the mortar. Same for the west fence. Then I used the demo hammer/chisel to clean the old mortar of all of the blocks so I could reuse them. That was some hard work. Then I rebuilt the north fence and provided a clean termination and also closed off the gap between the fence and garage, and put a new clean termination on the west fence. I used a big gas-powered concrete saw to cut the blocks for the ends and corners. It was about 18 hours of labor and very exhausting with lots of stooping and lifting heavy blocks (they're not cinder blocks, they're an old aggregate block that I don't think they make anymore) and flying grit and dust. I now know I don't want to switch careers and become a bricklayer.

Carol took the girls to Richland for five days to visit her parents. They'll be heading south for the winter pretty soon and the girls need time with their grandparents. Carol had the usual relaxing time and the girls got plenty of playground time as well as treats from Grandma like ice cream cones at 10 in the morning.

Meanwhile, My school is in full swing again too. I set the bar high for myself by getting an A in the first of the three semesters of the course during the summer. Now I of course have to go for perfect grades in the whole series. This semester the course is Biostatistics, a body of knowledge that is used heavily where I work (although not directly by me). It's great to learn what the heck those scientists are talking about, but it's also hard work! I spend about 8-10 hours a week studying and doing homework. The mid-term is this Saturday. I should be studying for it right now.

Lastly, I'm surprised by the psychological difference I feel at work now that I'm a full-time employee. Even though I always acted like a part of the team, now I really feel like a member. Plus, the project I'm on at work got especially interesting and I'm learning a lot. So I'm really enjoying going to work everyday. The sense of security, illusory as it is in my business, is nice.

Jiminy Cricket!

I forgot to mention crickets in my most recent post. We have a large dirt pile left over from garage construction. It's awaiting our next project: landscaping the back yard. This summer, a colony of crickets took up residence in the weeds that are growing there. They sing all day and all night. We think it's charming.

A month or so ago Carol found a cricket in the basement. He wasn't feeling too well we think and wasn't singing. A few days ago when I retrieved the newspaper from the front porch and unfolded it there was a cricket resting inside. I released him in the back yard. Finally, last night another one was hanging out on the stairs to the basement and singing away. I caught him in a cup and put him back outside where he belongs.

We also seem to get a lot of spiders in the house this time of year. I noticed that early last fall, too. They must seek warmth when the nights get cooler.

Mutter. Ouch.

Mutter. Ouch.

Album | Slideshow

Ah, a weekend day with the kids. I've missed that while working hard on the garage. Today the girls and I went to breakfast with my friend (and garage architect) Jason. After breakfast we dropped Jason back at home and we continued on to the Woodland Park Zoo. We had a great time with no plan or schedule - I just followed the kids wherever they wanted to go for three hours. We spent most of our time at the "farm" and in the "habitat loop" which is really a playground. It has a concrete "burrow" that kids can run through and climb on and into and out of. And the area also has a spider web made out of rope that kids can climb and turtle shells they can climb into and slides that are supposed to mimic otter habitat. I think we spent about 90 minutes there.

As we drove away from the house Audrey asked why Carol wasn't coming, too. I said, "Mommy needs some Mommy time." Audrey thought about that for a few minutes and then said, "I think Charlotte needs some Charlotte time."

A few weeks ago for some unknown reason Audrey started referring to Carol as "mutter". I'm not sure what Carol thinks of it (especially since she hears it at least 1000 times a day) but I think it's kinda cute.

Charlotte's main word these days is "ouch", said with two syllables like E.T. She said it to me several times this morning while I was fixing her hair (I don't think I was hurting her, she usually likes it when I fix her hair).

Carol and I have been designing storage for the studio. We used a cabinet system design tool that one can download from Ikea. We designed what she wanted, but we were shocked and depressed when the tool computed the total price. Today we realized we had accidentally selected an expensive finish. When we fixed that the price dropped almost by half. Whew! The cabinets are going to look great and give Carol plenty of flexible storage.

2007 MS Bike Tour

2007 MS Bike Tour

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On September 8-9, I rode the Washington edition of the MS Bike Tour, a fundraiser for the National Mutliple Sclerosis Society. It is a two day ride with 50, 75 and 100 mile options on Saturday and 50 and 75 mile options on Sunday. Like last year I rode with Team Copaxone, organized by Maureen “Mo� Manley. Mo is a former elite level cyclist who was selected for the 1992 US Olympic Team before being diagnosed with MS.

The ride is centered in the town of La Conner, a small former fishing village that is now full of artists, galleries and quaintness (there are still a few fisherman, too). It's a wonderful place to hang out and is surrounded by scenic farmland, forests and shoreline.

This year the weather forecast (and the actual weather) couldn't have been more perfect: temps in the high 70s and lots of sunshine. I didn't even pack any warm cycling clothing with me.

I've been so busy on the garage (see "Garage Complete") that I haven't ridden any long rides at all since STP on July 14. I've still been commuting, which is great for aerobic conditioning but doesn't do anything for endurance. So I knew this ride would be a bit of a stretch.

Saturday's route heads from La Conner to Anacortes, then down the shore to Deception Pass and onto Whidbey Island. We did a big loop on the island (we chose the 100-mile route this year) and then headed back to Deception Pass. It's a pretty hilly route with some serious wind in places, so it's fairly demanding. I dropped my chain at mile 76 and bent a link. I could have fixed it, but it would have taken a while and I didn't want to hold up the team. There was a support truck right there, so I threw my bike in and got a ride back to La Conner. I was a little bummed not to get a full century, but I was also tired. I bought a new chain from the mechanic at the rider village and was good to go for Sunday.

Saturday evening they hold a program in a big tent in the rider village. Several people with MS speak and tell their stories and express their gratitude for the riders and the money they raised. It is very moving and inspiring. Last year I raised the minimum of $250, but the program last year inspired me to aim higher this year. My goal was $1000 and I ended up raising almost $1200. Thank you to all my generous friends and family! The ride overall is expected to raise $1.4 million. There were almost 1800 riders.

Sunday the route is quite different. It starts out with about 25 miles through flat farmland, then goes through some rolling terrain and past beautiful Lake Samish. Then it turns onto Chukanut Drive, which is considered one of the prettiest roads in the state. Lunch is at mile 50 in Larrabee State Park about half way down Chukanut Drive. A few more miles along the bluff and the road spills out into farmland again for about 15 miles back to La Conner. The winds can be pretty fierce in the fields.

We had a fast group of about 15 riders for most of the day. For much of the day we were riding in a double paceline. That is my favorite sensation in cycling - riding along in a fast double paceline with a bunch of riders you know and trust. It's feels so smooth and graceful (and did I mention fast?). It's also very social. The scenery was spectacular and the weather was fine. Just a heavenly day.

My lack of miles caught up to me at about mile 68 when we started making occasional turns into the wind. Eventually I dropped off the group about 4 miles from the finish - my legs just couldn't accelerate with the group any more. But I kept up a good steady pace anyway and came into the finish very shortly behind the team.

I'll definitely be back next year. So expect to be hit up for money again.

If you are really into photos of this event, you can find more from Laura, Mo and Dave.

Garage "Complete"!

Garage "Complete"!

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The building permit for the garage and studio was set to expire on September 7. So since STP in mid-July I've been working really hard to get the prioject ready for final inspection by the deadline. That meant some final framing to support drywall; a few wiring changes; installing insulation; hanging taping and mudding drywall in the studio; hanging and mudding drywall for the fire-rated north wall of the garage (due to proximity to the property line); installing the plumbing fixtures and many other details.

My previous post ("I'm a Drywaller!") was a bit premature. As I suspected, hanging is the really easy part. Taping and mudding is a pain in the keester. Part of my problem was that the advice of the book I bought and people I talked to didn't sink in: don't sweat the neatness of the mud in the first two coats. Just slop it on and it'll all work out when you sand it. So I probably took about twice as long taping the studio as necessary. The benefit of that, however, was that I had very little sanding to do. We decided to try a "smooth wall" finish (meaning no texture whatsoever - just paint on the drywall). That can be hard to achieve (you pay pros a lot extra for it) and I thought my job might not look too good. But once I painted it we realized that my job was pretty much perfect. I'm quite proud of it. You can't see a single joint.

The plumber who did the rough-in unfortunately had a stroke a few weeks ago. He's recovering, but obviously was not going to be available to do the finish work. After worrying about how it would get done and asking questions of my dad and brother-in-law Frank I figured out I could do that all myself. The sink installation in particular was tedious, but I got it all installed eventually. Now we can stop moving the sink (in the box) out of the way everytime I want to work on something else :).

Carol did some research on floors and ended up choosing a click-together cork product. It met our budget and Carol's desire for a floor she could abuse without feeling guilty, and it should provide a little cushion while she stands at the easel.

We passed the final electrical and plumbing inspections on September 5 and scheduled the final for September 6. I was nervous about it, but the inspector came at the very end of the day and I think he just wanted to get home. He gave me one simple correction to make, but signed off on the final. He was very friendly (as was I) and seemed not to remember the big argument we had way back when he was failing us four times for no reason on the foundation forms.

Having the building permit closed out is a huge monkey off my back. Now I can do the remaining work as I have time. The studio is very close to completion. It needs cabinets and trim, and Carol and I are designing a system that will be a large work table that is hinged to the wall to fold up, with a easel on the back of it that can be used when the table is stowed.

August at Home

August at Home

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Ever since the STP bike ride on July 14, I've devoted pretty much all my spare time to getting the garage "finished" (see "Garage Complete"). The building permit, which is valid for 18 months, was set to expire on September 7 and while it is a simple matter to extend it I wanted to use that as a deadline for myself. I made it, but it meant not having much fun with the family on weekends or evenings for more than six weeks.

Carol, wonderful as always, took up the slack on the parenting front. We usually alternate which child each of us puts to bed every evening (because Audrey is a much bigger time investment), but many evenings during this push Carol put both girls to bed and cleaned up the kitchen (usually my job, since she cooks). Audrey is showing the effects of Dad-deprivation - she is obviously in need of some individual attention. I'm working on that now.

Audrey is substantially potty trained at this point. We still have the nightime part to deal with but during the day she pretty much has it down. Audrey started her third year at the Phinney Co-op Preschool this morning. She now goes three days a week from 9:30-noon. Carol only has to work one of those days, so she can get a little more free time now if she puts Charlotte in the inexpensive day care at the preschool or takes her to Grandma's house.

Charlotte is still being pretty stubborn about talking. That's a little behind the curve age-wise, but nothing to worry about yet. As everyone who spends time with our family knows, Charlotte doesn't have to talk. Her index finger and the noises she makes suffice to get her pretty muich anything she needs. She does say a new word now and then. The other day she said "apple." I've tried coaxing her to say the word for whatever object she wants at the moment, but that just makes her angry. It seems pretty clear that she is choosing not to talk. If she only knew how much easier life would be for her if she communicated with words. Oh well, she'll figure it out.

Carol is the chair of Audrey's preschool class this year. She had a ton of organizational work to do in the month before school started today. Yesterday was her big meeting to get it all finalized and delegated and she's very glad to be over that hump. She worries about every detail but of course does an excellent job.

Gainfully Employed

For the past two years I've been working as a contractor because I haven't found a permanent position I wanted. I was hoping my current contract position at Rosetta Inpharmatics would become that. A few weeks ago a position opened up in my group, it was offered to me, and after a couple of weeks of negotiation I accepted that position this morning.

I had another offer in hand for more money elsewhere, but when it looked like it wasn't going to work out at Rosetta I found myself feeling very sad. I was pleasantly surprised when the situation changed and I was able to stay. I love the science at Rosetta and the dedication of the people at Merck to making life better for patients. I'd had my eye on this company for many years but had never seen a suitable position advertised here. It feels like a place I could be happy for a long time.

Carol and I had a couple of long, deep conversations about our priorities and options. One of the many things I love about Carol is how wonderful she is to talk to about important life matters. Thanks, Carol.

The new job has plenty of great benefits including an anachronistic retirement plan (most companies have been doing away with those). But my favorite benefit is that it starts with plenty of annual vacation. Having not had any paid time off in almost two years that will be very welcome. In fact, I think I'll take a day off next week to work on finishing that garage.

I'm a Drywaller!

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I've been trying to find a drywall contractor to finish the garage and studio but not having much luck. They are all busy, and the one that came and gave a bid wanted $4300. That was about twice what I was expecting to pay. So Friday I bought a "how to" book and read it that night. Saturday morning I bought drywall and rented the Home Depot flatbed truck and Javier to help me unload it and then I got to work.

I rented a brilliant invention called a "panel lifter" that allows a single person to drywall ceilings and upper walls. I was able to hang the drywall in the entire studio pretty much by myself. Ken and Britt and family fortuitously came by for pizza Saturday evening and Ken helped me with the awkward gable pieces and the first ceiling panel. Carol helped me today with the two 12' panels I used. The most value from the book was in laying out the project for minimum linear feet of joints to tape. I think I did pretty well. For example, I used 12' panels to cover an 11' span of wall with no butted joints.

Hanging is pretty much the easy part. The real test is taping and mudding. You don't really know how well you've done that job until you paint the walls. So we'll see. We're reminding ourselves that it's only a studio so we don't care if it's perfect. But obviously I'd like it to look nice.

I just have the skylight left to do in the studio. I'll probably start taping evenings this week and then tackle hanging the garage next weekend. But tonight the studio looks like a real room and I'm very satisfied with what I accomplished in one weekend with no experience.

Carol's 20-year Reunion

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We spent last weekend in Richland attending various events for Carol's 20-year high school reunion. There was a cocktail party Friday night, a tour of her old school Saturday afternoon, a formal dinner Saturday night and a family picnic Sunday afternoon. We had fun at all the events. Carol has much clearer memories of her classmates than I do! We got to spend time with Carol's best friend (and classmate) Kim, in town from Fort Collins with her husband Dan and kids Rachel, Mark and Natalie.

Carol's old school is nearing the end of a 2-year "renovation" (replacement, really, but without ever closing). The cramped, dark old building she went to school in is the last part to be demolished - a few weeks from now. Good timing! The new building is gorgeous: huge roomy science labs; video projectors in every room; wireless networking throughout; very cool photo, video and stagecraft facilities; and a beautiful 20-foot-wide falcon that a local artist painted on the center of the basketball court in the gym.

Charlotte is saying more words all of a sudden. Now she'll say "mama", "ouch" (in two syllables, like E.T.) and "uh oh". She still has the pterodactyl rendition of "mine".

The girls see me in bike clothes every day when I leave for work and when I return home. Fairly often Carol and the girls meet me for lunch at a park near my office. On Friday, when they got to my office and Audrey saw me in street clothes, she said "Daddy's not wearing his work clothes." At the park on the swings (both girls are recently very fond of swings), Audrey indicated she wanted to go higher. Carol confirmed, "You want to go a little bit faster?" Audrey replied, "I want to go a lotta faster so I can see the whole world." We didn't know she was aware of "the whole world".

Last fall someone asked Audrey what she thought her daddy did all day while he was gone at work. She said, "He builds garages with his friends." Which is a good seque into my latest project: drywalling. I've been having trouble finding a drywaller who can do the garage and studio as soon as I'd like, and the one bid I got was at least double what I'd hoped. So yesterday I started doing it myself. It's going well so far. I'll put up some photos in a separate post.

There's news on the work front. A coworker at my job left a couple of weeks ago so Rosetta (Merck) has offerred me that position (I've been contracting, this would be "permanent"). Unfortunately it doesn't look we'll be able to agree on salary, but we'll see. I love the work and the environment, but I can only sacrifice so much financially for that enjoyment: we've got college and retirement to save for. I have a standing offer for another job with less enjoyment but almost 30% more money than the current Rosetta offer, plus another opportunity I'd like to explore. Stay tuned.

Even if I leave Rosetta, I hope to still finish the Bioinformatics certificate course I started in May. I was pretty unsatisfied with the quality of the course materials (it's all online). But then I got a 4.0 GPA for the first semester so somehow I feel better about it now. There are two more semesters to go.

Charlotte Speaks!

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After much anticipation (at least for me), Charlotte is beginning to speak fairly regularly. A month or so ago she said "doggie". Then a couple of weeks ago "tickle". But the last few nights she has repeated the same words while reading Dora the Explorer stories at bedtime (the stories often ask the reader to repeat words or phrases, in both English and Spanish). Now Charlotte will reliably say "map" and "abre" during her favorite Dora story ("Dora's Backpack"). She gets very excited. She also has her own pterodactyl sound for "mine", which is her favorite thing to "say". Charlotte is very territorial.

Audrey's drawing ability is taking off. She draws very creative and recognizable pictures and then makes up stories about them. The photo album with this post contains a great drawing of two princesses. Carol, artist that she is, provides ample opportunities for artistic expression. She often tapes a big piece of butcher paper to the floor, wall or kitchen island and the girls go to town on it. Carol is trying to remember to take photos of the best artworks the girls produce. They also love to draw on the Magna Doodles.

A group of friends that met mountain climbing in 1999 call themselves Team Mango. All single at the time, most of us are married now and many of us have kids. Erik and Kim invited the gang over for brunch last Sunday. They live in a 1922 brick apartment building that was converted to condos a few years back. Erik is the principal in the Urban Wedge architecture firm. They have executed beautiful renovations in their top-floor unit and it has been featured in a couple of design magazine. Go to the Urban Wedge web site, click on "Projects" and then "Baldwin Condominium Remodel" to see some gorgeous photos of Kim and Erik's home. They also have produced a handsome son named Samuel, now 15 months old. In addition to admiring their son and their home, we had a great time seeing friends.

The excuse for the brunch was to see another Team Mango member, Jeremy, and his wife Jill and 5-month-old daughter Iza. They've been living in Warsaw for the past two years; Jill teaches at the American School there and Jeremy teaches English as a freelancer. They come back to the US each summer. Last summer it was to get married. This summer it was to show off Iza. We got a couple of photos of Iza but forgot to get one of the whole family! Maybe next week before they head back to Poland.

We're headed to Richland tomorrow. It is Carol's 20-year high school reunion and there are events all weekend. I'll come back to work on Monday and Carol and the girls will stay with Carol's parents all week for a little vacation.

Mid-Summer Already

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How the heck did it get to be late July already?

It's been more than a month since my last post. The Bioinformatics certificate course I'm taking took over my life the past few weeks. At the end the homework, final project and studying for the final exam took every bit of my "free" time. But it paid off: the final was Saturday and I think I did very well. I'm very glad to be done with that. Now I'm free again until September when Fall semester starts. The entire course lasts three semesters.

Audrey has been taking her first swimming lessons. During the first session the instructor tried to let her float and every session after that Audrey would tell the instructor repeatedly, "Don't drop me!" Audrey also thought she was there to play, but the last couple of sessions she's started paying a little bit of attention. And last week Audrey actually swam about 15' (with water wings). She was very proud. Apparently kids can't generally learn to swim until they are four or so. But she's trying and it's a fun thing to do with her. Audrey is also in Music Camp for two hours every day this week.

Charlotte is moving closer to talking we think. Her vocalizations are sounding more and more like language. We remember this phase when Audrey was about to talk. One day it sounds like Russian, the next day Chinese, the next day German. Carol thinks today Charlotte said "tickle". We can't wait until she can tell us what she needs. For example, for the past few days she's had an intermittent fever and at times is obviously very uncomfortable but she can't tell us what would make her feel better. We think she might be getting over that bug now.

Carol has been very supportive while I was studying. She put both girls to bed every night (we usually alternate) and generally picked up all of my usual parenting duties. I'm very grateful.

Oh, we also ended up staying up too late the past two weeks because after studying we still had to watch the Tour de France every night on Tivo. At least we could fast forward. The Tour ends Sunday. It's been exciting to watch a wide open tour with no clearly dominant rider.

Carol Furniture: Planes, Trains & Automobiles

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We've mentioned before that Carol was considering starting a business painting custom children's furniture. This was her first commission. Another mom from Co-op Preschool ordered a table and chairs for her two little boys Graham and Spencer. She left it up to Carol to decide on the theme and all the details.

Carol kept close track of her labor this time. She ended up spending more them than she estimated but she learned a lot. And she came up with plenty of ideas for how to do it more efficiently. For example, I'll now build in plumbing to pipe compressed air from a compressor in the garage to her studio (so she won't have to listen to the compressor). If she uses a sprayer for the primer and base coat it'll save a lot of time.

Carol's first customer was very pleased. She teared up when Carol delivered the furniture.

STP 2007

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Saturday July 14th was the annual Seattle to Portland (STP) bike ride. For the third year in a row, I was dumb enough to do all 204 miles in one day. I did it with the same core team of Peter Kellogg-Smith, Steve Wyand and Steve Schock. Also teaming up this year were Brian Patton, Laura Spencer and Kyle Yurchak for a total of 7 riders.

I commented in last year's report that I was in the best shape I had been in for some time. Well, this year I'm even stronger. I learned last year that doing a lot of long rides early in the season serves me well, so I focused on that again this year. That along with my daily commuting has given me some really nice conditioning.

We rolled out of the start at about 5:15am and avoided the usual chaos of the first few miles (STP attracts tons of riders who have no idea how to ride around other people). It was uneventful until the first food stop at mile 25. Brian was riding a little away from the rest of us and apparently we didn't communicate that we were stopping (he thought we weren't stopping until mile 55). He also left his phone in the car, so there was no way for us to reconnect. We were all bummed to lose a teammate, especially only 1/8 of the way into the ride. But there wasn't anything we could do so we rode on.

We had the usual great paceline riding along the West Valley Highway through the Kent Valley all the way to Sumner. Then up the only big hill of the ride at mile 44 in Puyallup (Laura's comment at the top: "That's it?!") and on to the second food stop at Spanaway.

Bob, father-in-law of the Steves (they're married to sisters), drove sag for us this year. We all got to provide our own food, so we knew we'd have vittles we liked. When we got to each stop Bob would already have a blanket spread out for stretching and the huge cooler with cold beverages. It was heaven.

Between Spanaway and Tenino we leapfrogged a guy in a CSC jersey a couple of times. I guess he liked our pace because he eventually joined our line. Normally you don't want strangers to join because you don't know and trust them (riding in a fast paceline is a huge exercise in trust), but he was doing well. Peter eventually introduced himself and found out the new guy's name was Amos.

In this stretch we also came across the guy I call the Bumble Bee. We first saw him on the Chilly Hilly ride in February and have seen him on several organized rides since. He is a big round guy and every piece of clothing on him and every piece of equipment on his bike is yellow and black. He's apparently a pretty strong rider (he was keeping pace with us for a few miles), but he could stand to learn some bike etiquette. I noticed in Tenino that he had laminated his bike number placard and added the text "Killer Bee" sort of like a license plate frame.

You don't really feel heat while riding at speed on a hot day because you're making your own breeze. But when you stop, you feel the sun like a heat lamp. That's how it felt when we stopped at the Tenino food stop. And it was only 11am.

After Tenino I was commenting that Amos must have ridden on by himself, but suddenly there he was in our line again. He had seen us leaving and hurried to catch up. So we adopted him and invited him to join the feast at the halfway point in Centralia. Amos rode with us the rest of the day, doing strong pulls and giving Steve Schock a run for his money.

Bob's sag catering got more and more seductive the farther we rode. Plus we started making the mistake of taking off our shoes at every rest stop. We have this pattern every year: ride really fast and blow by everyone on the road, then stay way too long at the rest stops so they all pass us again. We end up passing everyone else in the ride five or six times during the day. Oh well, the passing is fun! There is no feeling in the world like flying along in a paceline at 26 or 27 mph with friends you trust.

My main goal this year was to avoid the bonk. I especially wanted to avoid bonking in the section after crossing the Longview bridge (mile 150) into Oregon. I ate a Hammer Gel just before the bridge this year and it served me well. We all rode strong and stayed together to the last rest stop at mile 175.

At the last stop my body was done with eating. We estimate that someone of my size burns at least 7,000-8,000 calories on this ride, but you just can't eat that many calories in a day. To put that in perspective, if you ate only Clif bars (for example) that would equate to 35 to 40 bars. So while my body still felt fine, I was really concerned I'd run out of gas somewhere in the last 30 miles. I soldiered on and before I knew it we were coming into the outskirts of Portland and then we were at the finish at 7:13pm. 10:20 riding time (19.7mph average) and 14 hours wall clock time (see? long breaks!). Guess who was there? Brian. He had arrived at 5:30.

The weather was hot and muggy. Carol said the car thermometer hit 90 on her drive down to Portland. We all did well staying hydrated, although I had a pretty good headache by the finish. Several of us had big salt patches on our clothing. We had no flat tires or other mechanical issues. We had a couple of wheel touches with each other, but nobody went down.

Each year has gotten better for me. In 2005 I felt like the strong riders in the group dragged me to Portland (and I bonked at 80 miles but recovered). In 2006 I felt much better but bonked at 160 miles (then recovered). This year I faltered a little mentally at 175 miles but never bonked. Plus I felt like I really pulled my weight for the first time. That was satisfying.

There are more photos from Laura Spencer here.

June Already

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The biggest news these days is Charlotte's first word: doggie. She makes lots of word-like sounds, but that is the first definite word she has said. It's an appropriate word, since dogs are one of her favorite things and she excitedly points out every one she sees. Even though she can't talk, she's getting pretty good at communicating what she wants. For example, when we put her in her crib, at night or sometimes at nap, she'll point to the door and indicate, "you leave now." Meanwhile, Audrey gets more articulate all the time. She makes up very interesting little stories or skits. The best ones are when she doesn't think anybody can hear. Tonight Audrey "read" her own version of "Harry the Dirty Dog" to Charlotte and me as I was putting them to bed.

Carol is busy executing her first commission for hand-painted children's furniture. She's painting a table and chairs for another mom from the preschool (they lost out on the set at the auction). This set has a transportation theme (planes, trains, and automobiles). From the sketches I can tell it's going to be great. We'll post photos when it is finished in a couple of weeks.

I continue to ride my bike to work every day (8 miles each way). I had a perfect record in May, which was Bike to Work Month (I was a team captain). I also just rode my third century (100-mile ride) of the season on Saturday. I'm in just about the best cycling shape I've ever been in. I've felt very good on the last two centuries, both all the way through the ride and afterwards as well. It makes me very happy to feel this strong. This coming Saturday is Tour de Blast, an 84-mile ride up to the closest visitor center to Mt. St. Helens. Then July 14 is the big one: Seattle to Portland (STP) - 200 miles in one day. I'm also taking an online certificate course in Bioinformatics from the University of Illinois, Chicago so reading and homework is taking up most of my spare time.

My parents got a last minute slot at Wapato Point Resort at Lake Chelan with some expiring timeshare points. Carol and I and the girls drove over on Friday night (June 8) and had a fun weekend. Then my parents came over Sunday and kept the girls and Carol and I drove home. We went straight to a movie, then out to dinner and a movie on Monday night, too, before the girls returned home on Tuesday. Wow, was that nice. We love those girls, but a little time off to be human and adult was a treat. Thanks, Mom & Dad!

More Spring Fun

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We're having lots of fun in the warmer spring weather. The girls love naked time outside. And inside, too.

Yesterday was my birthday. I told Audrey in the morning while I was making us oatmeal, and she said "Daddy, can I have some of your birthday?" I said, "Of course!"

Carol and I did a little swing dance demo at Audrey's preschool. The kids were enthralled. Even though Carol and I only dance once or twice a year in public (we dance pretty often for a song or two after dinner with each of us holding a girl), we still remember how to do it pretty well. And we love dancing together - it's how we met and the fact we enjoyed dancing with each other so much is a major reason we're here together now.

A while back Carol was cleaning out her closet with help from Audrey and Charlotte. Audrey discovered a flower-print negligee that she fell in love with. She hasn't gone to bed without it since. It is now her "nightgown".

Dennis (Carol's dad) and I split the cost of a USB turntable that was on sale at Costco.com. For the past week I've been "ripping" vinyl albums. I have about 1000 albums that have been in boxes since 1997. It's a trip down memory lane seeing and hearing them again. Obviously I can't rip them all - I'm picking the ones that are not easily available on CD (and that I haven't already replaced on CD). It takes about an hour per album (playing time for the record plus some manual processing one has to do).

Pussycat, Pussycat

Audrey liked a Tom Jones song she heard in the car today. It's on a CD that her friend Harper made for her. Tonight she was singing it in the back yard while running around with Charlotte.

Carol's Auction Furniture

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For the third year in row, Carol hand painted children's furniture as the contribution for Audrey's class to the Phinney Neighborhood Center/Phinney Neighborhood Co-op Preschool annual fundraising auction. The first year she painted a table and chairs and last year she painted Adirondack chairs. This year it was a table and chairs again, with an "art" theme.

After the auction, Carol got several inquiries about doing commissioned work for people. Carol is considering starting a business doing this and is pondering thing like how much to charge and how to save some of the labor time. We'll see.

The interior isn't finished yet, but Carol got to use her studio in the new garage for the project. There is progress on that front: the plumbing is now roughed in and gets inspected tomorrow. Once that passes, we're ready for the final framing inspection, then insulation and drywall. We might finish the garage, yet!

2007 Inland Empire Century

Saturday, May 12 was the date for the 2007 edition of the Inland Empire Century, a supported bike ride put on by the Tri-City Bicycle Club. I had done this ride in 2005 with two friends and enjoyed the route. It's a great chance to get in a 100-mile ride early in the season.

Coincidentally, Richland happens to be Carol's hometown so doing this ride also means we get to visit Carol's parents. All the grandparents are back in their northwest homes after wintering in their southwest homes. So on Friday Audrey and Charlotte got to see all four of their grandparents on the same day, albeit with a 200 mile drive in between.

Those same friends from 2005 originally said they were going to do the ride this year as well, plus a couple more. But they all bailed over the past couple of weeks, leaving little ol' me to do it all by myself. That diminished my motivation a little, but I really wanted those miles. Last year I got in a lot of miles early in the season and it gave me a base for the best biking season I've had in many years. I plan to repeat the experience from now on.

I made it to the start by 7:15 and started riding at 7:30 sharp. Within a couple of miles I found myself riding with another guy about my age, from Pendleton, OR. We rode side by side along the river path on the Pasco side of the river, but when I got a front flat at about mile 12 I told him to ride on without me. Fortunately, that flat was obvious and easy to fix by just pulling out a few inches of the tube and patching it.

The ride has 25, 50, 75 and 100-mile routes. They all share the beginning portion, so I was always around other riders. But once the 25 mile route split off and the rest headed for Benton City, riders became a lot more sparse. At the first food stop at 22 miles I saw a group of about 9 fast riders go by without stopping. They were apparently a local club because the food stop volunteers yelled to them. That was the only paceline I saw all day long. I wish I had been riding when they passed me, I could have jumped on (after asking, of course).

The winds were hard to figure out all day. Sometimes I'd feel like I was fighting a headwind, but I'd look at my computer and see 23mph. I can't do that pace into a headwind, so obviously it wasn't. Other times I'd feel the same resistance and I'd be going 17mph - obvious headwind. Hmmm.

I endured the most boring part of the ride, a long straight stretch along a frontage road to Benton City, refueled, and headed for the big climb of the ride - up Weber Canyon to the high plateau of Horse Heaven Hills. At the bottom of the climb, though, I got my second flat - on the rear this time. This ride is famous for flats, mostly caused by tackweek (aka goat's head or "bendies"). This time I found a tackweed thorn in my tire. I contemplated putting in protective tire strips before the ride but didn't because I had just installed new tires that are supposed to have a puncture-resistant layer. I guess it doesn't resist tackweed.

My legs were mixed all day, switching back and forth from tired to strong. Little rollers would bring me to a crawl, but big climbs would feel good. Very weird. Weber Canyon actually felt pretty good and I sustained a 10mph pace. I passed a few people and was only passed by one rider almost at the top. Fortunately, after leaving the water stop at the top the winds were cross to tail for the long straight due-west stretch across Horse Heaven Hills. I felt pretty good the whole way and kept up a steady 21-22mph. Even for the little climb before the big drop down to Prosser I felt pretty good. The descent is a couple of miles of 6% grade that are fun but a little scary with gusty crosswinds. My top speed was 43mph.

From Prosser at 64 miles the route follows the Old Inland Empire Highway back to Benton City at 82 miles. I found myself practically staring at the odometer wishing the miles would go by. But it was purely mental because physically I was doing fine. In fact, the winds were obviously at my back because I was doing long stretches at 24mph again. I made a quick stop at the food stop at Benton City, but when I went to leave my rear tire was flat again. OK, my third flat repair of the day. But then when I went to leave again, my front tire was flat. Sheesh! Fortunately right then a sag vehicle pulled in with a floor pump so I didn't have to make my arm fall off trying to get 110 lbs. into the tires with my hand pump.

OK, only 18 miles to go. A few mixed winds along the way, but overall not too bad. No big hills. At 2:30 I rode into the start/finish area. 102 miles in 5:45 (riding time) for a 17.7mph average. Given that I didn't draft for an inch the whole ride, I'm pretty happy with that pace.

I downed my traditional polish sausage at the finish and rested for a couple of minutes, then grabbed my bike to ride 2 miles back to Carol's parents' house. I had another front flat! There was no way I was going to repair another one, so I just pumped it up as far as I felt like and rode it home. I made it. 5 flats in one day is a new record for me.

Back at the in-law's house I pretty much collapsed for the rest of the day. I rallied to walk the kids to the playground with Carol, but mercifully a storm started brewing so we headed back to the house and the sofa. I was pretty hammered.

The sponsoring club's web site now says that 279 people ended up registering for the ride and 155 of those signed up for 100 miles. It sure felt like fewer riders than that were on the road. I had long stretches of seeing no one. Other than the tackweed, this is a great ride. I think they should market it more to people like me from the west side of the mountains. The weather was perfect and the scenery is beautiful. Even the drivers are nice - only one driver passed me unsafely all day long.

Next big ride: The 7 Hills of Kirkland on Memorial Day. My loser friends assure me they'll actually ride that one with me.

Spring Fun

Spring Fun

This is somewhat of an experiment. I'm in the process of transitioning the infrastructure I use to manage this blog and related photo albums. I still have a lot of work to do to transfer all the existing content, but I can't keep you waiting forever for new photos! But the image link in this post may or may not work the way I hope.

The new photo album system (Picasa Web Albums) has several advantages. The main ones are the nice slideshow, and the fact that it scales the photos to whatever screen resolution you are using to view them. I know some of you use smaller screen resolutions - with the new albums you will never need to scroll to see an entire photo.

In family news, everybody is doing fine. Audrey is talkative as ever. She can entertain herself for long periods making up skits for her little fairy dolls. She also makes up her own languages. Charlotte continues to communicate better all the time. She comprehends many, many words and can answer a lot of questions with vigorous head nodding or shaking. She's starting to vocalize more and sometimes even strings sounds together with something resembling sentence cadence.

Carol is in the process of creating her third annual hand-painted children's furniture for the Co-op Preschool auction. We'll be sure to post photos when it's complete. And we now realize that after she finishes she has to paint a table and chairs for our own kids! Carol's been hitting the gym more and is enjoying that.

My contract at Rosetta Inpharmatics has been extended through the end of 2007. I still hope to get hired full time by then. I'm enjoying the rich scientific environment immensely. I continue to commute to work by bike almost every day, rain or shine. A little more shine these days, thankfully. Bike season is gearing up. I did a 70-mile ride a couple of weeks ago and a 62-mile organized ride last Sunday. I'm schedule to do my first century (100-mile ride) of the season on May 12 in Richland, WA (and spend Mother's Day with Carol's parents). The goal every year now is to get in plenty of miles before July when I do the Seattle to Portland ride with a bunch of friends: 204 miles in one day. I'm well on track this year.

For the technically curious, the current blog is managed using Wordpress and the photo albums using Gallery2. Both require maintenance (by me) to keep up with security patches and new features. I learned a lot doing it that way, but now I'd rather spend my time on other things. So I'm switching to Blogger for the postings and Picasa Web Albums for the photo albums. Both are Google products and all the infrastructure is managed by them, not me.

My Mother the Car

I came home from work today to this happy scene:



If you don't see a video player above this paragraph, you'll have to follow this link.

I'm grooving on this video thing now. It's a much better way to let you see video than the ambitious super deluxe DVD project I've been planning for three years but have never worked on.

Video Stars

My friend Alex, a younger version of myself (i.e. a real geek!), is always dragging me along into new technical frontiers. Lately he's been posting non-public videos of his daughter on the web for friends and family. I finally decided I have to keep up with him. So here, for your enjoyment, is our first (public, by nature of being linked here) video of Audrey and Charlotte.



Hope you enjoy it!

The Binkie Fairy Cometh

Audrey has a great fondness for her binkie(s). Over time we have purchased about 20 of them, growing in size as she did. Recently she has developed a few favorites, the "squeaky binkies", or as she says it, "squinky binkies." They are large binkies that have developed a leak so they squeak when she sucks on them.

Our pediatrician recommended that we get rid of pacifiers long ago, but we figured she'd give up the habit when she was ready. Lately, however, she has just seemed too old for it, and Carol was getting concerned that Audrey's teeth were being affected (alignment-wise). So, we decided it was time for a plan.

Carol had read previously about parents using the story of the "binkie fairy". We started preparing Audrey a few weeks ahead of time. Carol cut lots of photos of babies out of magazines and covered a cardboard box with them. Every once in a while, we would encourage Audrey to donate an old disfavored binkie to "the babies" by depositing it in the box. Then we told her that one day the binkie fairy would come and take all of the binkies - even the squeaky ones - and leave something under Audrey's pillow in return. Audrey decided that "thing" should be Disney fairy dolls that are connected to a new Tinkerbell movie that is coming out (her first instance of being influenced by advertising). Fair enough.

Last Friday the binkie fairy finally came. I managed to get the binkie out of Audrey's mouth in the middle of the night without disturbing her, and left the new fairy toys next to her pillow. At about 6:30am she showed up in our room with them and was very excited.

Audrey did pretty well all day. We usually keep pretty busy on weekends. Saturday night she was sad to go to bed without her binkie, but she did alright. Sunday, when she was upset about something and would normally use her binkie to calm herself, she complained, "I want the binkie fairy to come back and bring back my squinky binkie!" Poor thing.

She mentioned it a few more times over the next two days or so. But now it's been a week since we've heard a word about binkies. Carol and I always visit Audrey's room to admire her before we go to bed. We enjoy the fact that now we can see her whole face.

Another milestone passed!

Friday Night Pizza

Friday Night Pizza

Quite often on Fridays, when I get home from work, we head down to Pegasus Pizza at Alki Beach for dinner. The weather almost always permits at least a brief walk along the seawall. This last Friday was especially pleasant and we spent a long time at the beach.

Charlotte isn't starting to talk, yet, but she's thinking about it. Carol thinks Charlotte said "more" the other day, and maybe "ball." She says something that starts with "Aud..." when she see Audrey. But she has a pretty large vocabulary of words she understands. She can point to various animals by name in books, like cow, kitty, dog and bee. And if you tell her you're going to her bedroom she'll lead the way. She's been shaking her head "no" for a long time (kids somehow learn that very early), but lately she has nodded her head "yes" as well.

Lately Audrey likes to lay out some elaborate series of events that she would like to see happen and then finish with, "That sounds like a great plan, doesn't it?"