Busy Week

Got back from DC on Monday just in time to hear the Ukranian neighbor screaming at the top of his lungs as they advanced past the Swiss on penalty kicks. Attended a full day work conference to learn about the future direction of science at the University. Fascinating and inspiring to be a part of it. Started a new writing class. Woefully underprepared. Will have to do some serious work on it this weekend.

A couple red eyes and a bomb scare

Left for DC Friday night. Tried to sleep on the plane, but those chairs really aren't meant for sleep. Managed to keep my eyes closed until we were someplace over Ohio, but not that well rested. Found every wrong way to get to my friend, Ed's place in DC. According to Ed, there are no tolls between the airport and the city, but we managed to throw away about $4 because of wrong turns. Yahoo maps are awful for this part of the country. For traffic circles there is no such thing as a left turn. Walked a lot on Saturday. Walked from Ed's appartment downtown to White House. Bomb Scare at White House. Out of place blue fanny pack and the cops threw everyone out of the area. In order walked through Washington Monument, WWII monument, Vietnam Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, Korean War Memorial, FDR Memorial, Jefferson Memorial, to Smithstonian. FDR was latest and best. Modern and elegant, though faux waterfalls do not compare to real ones. Not into the old Greek style that covers most of the city. Trust me it was quite the hike. Had lumch at American Museum. Place specialized in American Indian foods. Very cool. Saw that museum. Almost fell asleep standing while looking at some exhibits. Overall sense is museum still needs some work. Too many things needed too much reading. Next went to National Gallery. Saw Vah Gogh, Matisse, Georgia O'keefe and dozens of other top notch artists. Dead tired and weather incredibly hot and muggy, but kept going. Took subway train back to Ed's. Had dinner at a chilli place. Slept well.

Sunday: Got up. Pouring like crazy. Managed enough motivation to flip on the TV and watch soccer. (It's not football.) That striker on England is a punk, isn't he. I was glad to see him pull a red card in the next game. Anywa, after game, went to Alexandria to look around at old topedo place, historical cobblestone stuff and eat. Good food, drove by Iwo Jima and Pentagon on way there. Got back later than we thought and rushed off to wedding. Pouring, pouring rain. Yahoo directions again sucked. Eventually found the place just in time for processional despite all the water, darkness and poor directions. Cool wedding. Got to see friend through another side through her friends and through family and through the guy she was marrying. It looks like they should be a great match. Way home, rainy, dangerous. cops closed road. Cop gave detour that consisted of 30 miles through backroads. Saw rocks and stones in the middle of the road that took out several cars ahead of us. Or at least popped their tires and made their nights doubly miserable. Said quick prayer and made it through the rocks. And since they were stuck, they were happy to give us directions. Eventually saw Washington Monument like shining beacon lighthouse so that after 2 hours we finally knew we were on the right track. Even in DC many streets closed and sirens all over. Got back. Did not sleep. Got up at 4 to get to airport for return to Oaktown. Crazy Crazy time in DC.

It's really happening.

Going to the ultradsound was a real experience. As soon as the technician flashed her probe on Wifey's belly you could see a living thing in there, like a skeleton in a dinosaur museum. All the bones showing through, but this thing moved, shifting positions and crawling around. Suddenly, the whole idea of becoming a dad made more sense and felt real.

For the next half hour or so the technician manuvered the probe around and took pictures of every part of the little one. She checked the spine, the skull, all the limbs, gathering all kinds of information. Fortunately, everything seems great. Oh, and if anyone was still curious because they couldn't make out the details in the pictures I put in last time, it's going to be a girl.

What do you guys make of this?

Someday, this kid is going to be telling his/her psychologist that Daddy put these fuzzy pictures on the Internet and permanently scarred his/her psyche. I figure the kid will need to overcome some adversity in his/her life, so he/she might as well start early. Just trying to toughen up the offspring.

Ready for lift-off.

So the last few days our house has been "staged", which means ready for outsiders to come in and view with an eye towards buying. What I've learned is that selling is twice as stressful as buying a place. There's no certainty. No decision to make until someone else makes one first.

It's been odd staying here since this place has been staged. It's like we're guests at our own place, or a hotel. We want to make sure everything remains spic n' span. Every morning we take out whatever garbage we created the night before. Half the things we use, we can't just reach over and grab because we've already stashed it in a box somewhere.

Someone come buy the place this weekend. Please.

Field trip

Today I went on tour of the Cancer Center. It's one of the newer buildings on campus and they went all out to make it something to be proud of. There a lot of smart people working very hard to treat patients and find cures. There are a million things that need to be done so people can work on the science and they wanted to show us what they do, so in some small way we can help them do what they need to do. It's a tough business. Cancer gets beaten back once in a while, but the underlying story is still tragedy.

Time gone.

Today I got my handshake, my certificate of recognition and my Institution pin acknowledging five years of service. I really can't complain, but I should call my probation officer to see if I can get a reduced sentence for good behavior.

On its way.

If it wasn't obvious from the phrasing or the brevity of the email (purposely kept short to minimize the opportunity for grammatical error) or the fact I would never claim to be wise the last posting on this blog was the 2nd ever appearance of Wifey as Guest Blogger. She poses an interesting hypothetical that may have but most likely did not happen in reality and/or Crinkle World.

One topic I've eluded to in passing a couple times but not really expounded on is Wifey's pregnancy. She's doing well and next week we should be learning the gender of the new addition. It is great to think that we're having a kid. It's a definite life changer, but something we're as ready for as we're ever going to get. Already, we're moving and thinking ahead because we know there will be this little helpless infant depending on us. We talk about it all the time.

But I have to admit, it's somewhat unreal to me at this point. This is all happening to her body. She can feel it with every breath. She's the one who has to change diet and lifestyle and everything. So far I'm just a spectator at the back of the bus along for the ride. (Though somehow I'm gaining weight too.) All I can do is pat her belly and note that it is somewhat larger than it was last week. (As is mine.)

There are dozens of blogs out there with neurotic women detailing each and every last detail of being pregnant. Usually they scream at their husbands, at their doctors, and everyone else in the world for not understanding the changes they are going through, the suffering they are enduring as if every mother in the world hadn't gone through the same thing at some time, but I'm not there. I'm just glad I'm a guy and don't have to endure the whole thing for nine months.

Words from the Wise

FYI. If your pregnant wife asks you for McDonald's french fries at 2 AM in the morning, the WRONG answer would be, "go suck on a pickle".

Moving sucks

I've lived many places in my life. I've moved many times. I think between the time I was 18 and 30 I has about 13 addresses. It's been a great experience. I spent time in Taiwan, and I got very familiar with the Bay Area, living in South Bay, SF and the peninsula at different times.

But during that phase of my life, I travelled pretty light. Now there's more stuff and moving is more daunting. Or maybe because this is the first place where I was an owner and this is the first home I was sharing with someone since I was a kid. Whatever it may be, moving is tougher this time.

Still it's in full swing. We've been working on different aspects of the move with a full cast of supporting characters. Everything for the new place seems to be going well. We've selected the place, and maybe that's the hard part. It's just a matter of getting the paperwork together over the next few weeks.

The hard part is getting our place ready for the open market. Each night, we pack up a little piece of our life and box it, knowing that we won't be able to see it or use it for a couple weeks. It's our stuff and no one else really wants to see it, so we're putting it aside to fetch top dollar. It'll probably be a couple months before we really feel settled again. Just in time for that little one on the way.

Big cat disappears.

For the last two weeks or so, there's been a sign posted at every entrance to this building. It informs us that a mountain lion was seen in the area of Campus Loop and Serra. Essentially right where my building is and it's accompanied by an artist rendition of a little animal that looks like a less furry version of my cat, Anya.

Well, after two incident free weeks, (maybe the signs scared off the lion) the signs were finally taken down. Not that I want to see it when I leave for the parking lot in a bit, but I'm wondering what happened. Hopefully, she just came down to campus for a little stroll and is happily back up in the hills.

Your employees are slacking.

"We're not going to stop until marriage between a man and a woman is protected," said Sen. Sam Brownback. Do any of you think marriage between a man and a woman is not protected? It's very interesting how the republiskunks are pandering to the fringe without wanting to actually say they are "homophobic" or "anti-gay". And the sad thing is that it probably actually fools people. Rolling Stone magazine did a huge write up on Sam Brownback a couple months ago. Read it if you get the chance. This is one scary, scary, stupid, stupid dude. Sooner or later he's going to take a shot at the White House.

So even though everyone's retirement is scary crap and health care is even crappier, corporations are killing us (literally) and there's an illegal war that we shouldn't be fighting, those people we pay in Washington have been spending the last couple days arguing discriminatory legislation. They should all be docked two days of wages for this. Maybe three days for the Republiskunks who put this on the agenda.

Here's the heart of the matter. Marriage works. It's been around forever, and its great. And from my own experience, I can tell you there is nothing greater that sharing your life with someone. But if someone ends up finding a special person of the same gender, no protection is afforded. That person is not considered a relation and has no say in your medical decisions. That person has no spousal immunity and may be compelled to testify against you in a court of law. That person can not adopt and raise a child with you. Honestly, those are the people that aren't being protected. Civil rights for all has always been a painfully slow process in this country. But someday it will happen. It's part of the American experience. May we never be stupid enough to pass a Constitutional amendment to limit freedoms rather than add them.

And yes, this obviously is a ploy being used again like it has in the last few election cycles to motivate the Conservative base. But the sad thing is it works. In the hotly contested Congressional race in San Diego yesterday, the Democratic candidate ran on a platform emphasizing integrity and Republican corruption. The Republican ran on xenophobic anti-immigration platform. Part of that whole Republiskunk generate distraction from their failures, and the Republiskunks won.

It's beyond hoping that people will vote wisely. If they simply learned to vote in their own self interest that would be enough.

Smurfin a bigger mushroom.

So the big decisions we've been working on is whether or not to buy another house. And after some serious soul searching and number crunching, we've decided to go for it. www.edigitaltour.com/0506/20467/ It's going to make finances pretty tight for a while, but hopefully, in the long run it will be the right decision. At the least, there should be some extra room for that extra mouth we're expecting by the end of the year. The little tot will have a larger roof over his/her head, but we may have to count on him/her having no modesty and going naked and hungry for the first five years of his/her life.

This decision has set in motion a flurry of additional choices that we are slowly working our way through. Yesterday we had several appointments. We met with a real estate agent from noon to two to discuss the procedures for putting our place on the market. There's a lot to it. From two to five we were at the new place as an inspector examined every nook and cranny of the house. As with every house there are some things that could use some work, but overall he was impressed with the condition of the place. We're expecting his formal report in the next day or two. At seven last night we met with our loan officer to hand off paperwork and discuss our loan options. From eight to nine we started packing a few boxes, stuff that needs to be done before the broker inspection at our place next Monday. From nine to twelve we filled out the disclosure packages that needed to be handed in to our agents the next morning. These disclosure packets are really detailed in California. There are disclorues on everything from Megan's law to broken appliances to earthquake potential. It was quite a full day, and probably for the next two weeks, it will be pretty full days.

Still a geo-novice and something I stumbled across.

Today my work/geocaching group went on our second expedition. We went to the New Guinea garden on campus that features a wooden alligator log drum and several other neat Polynesean sculptures.

After some searching we did find a little metal box. However, we were quite confused when we opened the box. Inside was a little posting that said, "This is not a Geocache! Inside was a small logbook with stamped entries and a rubber stamp. There was also a reference to letterbox.com.

At first I thought, okay this is interesting. Who ever posted coordinates at the geocache site must be some sort of prankster doing an elaborate marketing scheme for this other website. How not cool.

It turns out we never did find the actual microcache out there, (we'll have to go back sometime). And letterbox is a legitimate alternative to geocache. It seems to be the same scavenger hunt concept without the neat little GPS toys.

A competitor. Who would have thunk it? One of my co-workers is much more prepared for geocaching than I am now. She's gone out and got a $450 GPS device that has more functions than my phone and my GPS put together. Color touch screens and all kinds of funky applications. She's also got the Dummies Guide to Geocaching that she's slowly working through. She's way hipper than I am, isn't she?

Is there such a thing as certainty?

Sometimes life is smooth sailing, the changes from day to day are small and manageable and whether they be good or bad, there's a certain direction to things. But at other times the wind seems to be blowing every which way and you're lucky if you can make out up from down.

My life is pretty good, and for the most part, it's been about sailing along, but the last few days have been full of very quick monumental type decisions. It's been about holding on as best as you can and making the kind of decisions that we will be living with for a very very long time. Fortunately, I have a steady wife to keep me somewhat buoyed on my trip, and it's great that we can make talk and make these big decisions together.

And I feel good about our decision. Based on what we know, it should be a good one in the long run. It would just be nice if I could know it was the right thing to do.

I know this post is a bit vague and cryptic. You'll have to stay tuned in to some later date for details.