Everything in Moderation (Including Moderation)

Barefoot Running

2010-06-22T20:31:00.005-07:00

I tried my first fully barefoot run tonight. I'm in California for the week, and my bike is 852 miles away from here. I've been predominantly barefoot for the last two years since I started working at home. A few months after not wearing shoes very often the shoes I had started hurting my feet. I tried various shoe types but my feet would always ache afterwards. I began seeing people (my brother included) wearing Vibram Five Fingers and I was intrigued. I tried some on at a Summit Hut and fell in love. Finally I found a shoe that felt pretty close to being barefoot!

I've been wanting to try running barefoot for quite a while, but at home it's much easier and more calorie intensive for me to bike so I've been doing that instead. I took my trip to California as an excuse to try it for the first time. Last night I ran almost 2 miles wearing my VFFs (GPS Results). I stopped when my calves felt like they were going to seize up. Running without traditional shoes takes calve muscles that I never use while walking or biking. I was also disappointed at the slow pace I was keeping. I didn't even make a 10 minute mile! I was taking real pains to make my landings as soft as possible so I presume that was partially responsible for my slowness.

I expected to wake up this morning barely being able to walk, because whenever I foray into running that's how the day after always is. I was surprised when I rolled out of bed this morning and felt nothing aside from a slight tightness in my calves. I didn't run very far yesterday and I took it very easy, but it was still heartening to feel great this morning.

Tonight I decided to try a completely barefoot run (GPS Results). The neighborhood I'm running around has relatively flat sidewalks and is meticulously maintained (no rocks)! I ran barefoot from the hotel parking lot to the neighborhood and then around a couple loops barefoot (about .68 mi each). During the second lap I felt like I had a small rock stuck to the side of the big toe on my right foot. By the end of the lap I realized that it was more likely a blister forming, but I wanted to finish the lap off to figure out my time. I caught the blister before it could form, but the skin on my big toe feels a bit raw. After the second lap I sat down, put on my VFFs and ran one more lap so I could compare times.

I was surprised at the difference in running barefoot versus running in Vibram Five Fingers. Running barefoot feels MUCH nicer. My feet never really hurt except at the end when the blister started to form. I think after enough runs I'll quickly grow a callous there and be home free. On the pure barefoot run landing on my feet felt much more natural and I didn't feel the need to concentrate so hard on my landing. As such, my pace increased quite a bit and I was able to keep it just around a 10 minute mile. Hopefully this blister will heal quickly and I can try again Thursday!

Snow

2010-02-05T20:14:00.004-07:00

I lived in Flagstaff as a child with my Mom from 1st grade to 3rd grade and again during college for four years. While in college a friend of mine transferred from NAU to UofA and I asked him if he missed Flagstaff. He told me "I miss the snow, but I don't miss being cold, and I don't miss being wet." That struck a chord and I think it's when I realized I wasn't meant to live in a cold climate, and I was destined to move back to somewhere with 110 degree summer days.

I am back in Flagstaff this weekend for Elias' 6th birthday celebration. For the first time in my life I have actually purchased clothing suitable for playing in the snow. I have bibs, snow boots, a ski jacket with a waist wrap and cool glove thumb hole things, and snow gloves. It's amazing.

I went out tonight with Elias and Eva in our full snow apparatus and we tromped through 18 inch snow, built a snowman, had a miniature snowball fight and rolled around in it like we were at the beach. Snow is a LOT more enjoyable when you don't have ice cold wetness seeping into your socks and frozen fingers. It was a lot like being at the beach actually, except everything was harder to do and I felt like a fireman all bundled up.

It's not enough to make me change my mind about living in the desert and wearing shorts everywhere, but I can see how people could live here now. :) I'm glad I have my snow gear.

Hotel Aficionado

2010-02-05T19:27:00.007-07:00

I wouldn't call myself a hotel aficionado, but I do stay in them enough since I began working for Apple. And I've found myself comparing and contrasting. I tend to always go with Marriott because I travel mostly for work and they have a loyalty program that gives me free room stays when I'm NOT traveling for work. Hotel room costs are usually the largest of a trip, so it's nice to have free stays periodically.

Right now we are staying in a Springhill Suites in Flagstaff. We chose this hotel because it has two queen beds for Kris, me and the kids, as well as a living room area with a couch for Sam. The room itself is amazingly nice. There is a nice roomy closet for all of our snow gear, a desk area for laptops, free WIFI throughout and a microwave/fridge setup. There are even little mounted booklights above the bed so Kris and I can stay up reading while the kids sleep peacefully next to us.

There is some strangeness though. The pool is indoor and heated, which is sort of a requirement for Flagstaff, but the temperature of the pool is at the bare minimum to be comfortable. My kids have barely any fat on their skinny little bodies, so they got cold quickly. There is no hot tub to thaw out in. It seems odd to have a heated pool that is just on the cusp of being too cold to swim in.

After swimming we came back up to the room to rinse off the kids in a bath. With the water as hot as it would go it was at a temperature that I would use in the heat of summer in Tucson. Once again, not so cold as to make you not bathe, but cold enough that you wish you could turn it hotter.

Lastly, I plugged in our portable DVD player so the kids could watch a movie cuddling in bed together. Kris' Grandmother gave Elias a movie for his birthday so he was itching to watch it anyway, and after a romp in the snow they are physically beat. With this portable DVD player, either my cable or the AV out is not so premium, because whenever I plug it into a TV I have to turn the volume up really high to get it to a normal decibel level. Following this hotel room's tradition of minimums, the TV only turns up to 25, which in the case of my DVD player means it's JUST barely loud enough to hear. Luckily I'm not a big fan of loud noise, especially in a hotel room.

None of these things are enough to make me say "I would never stay here again!", they're just unusual given how nice the place is and how new it is. Maybe all this traveling for work is turning me into a hotel snob.

Christmas

2009-12-25T14:58:00.003-07:00

Elias is currently making up a story, to the beat of Dr. Seuss's The Grinch Stole Christmas about him being eaten by a giant plant. I can't quote it because it's akin to the ramblings of a lunatic, but I know it involves a chimney, being eaten, the monster being surprised when he escapes the chimney, etc.

Today on Christmas the family got a Nintendo Wii, a television and Spore Hero. The latter was for Elias specifically, but the other two are because of Elias' desire for Spore Hero. He creates creatures all the time on the free Spore Creature creator, and one day he stumbled upon an advertisement for Spore Hero for the Wii. He asked us repeatedly for it and we replied that we had no TV, let alone a Wii. He was insistent and asked Santa for only that small item. I've wanted a TV for some time to replace my 24" monitor as a movie watching device, but it's been low on the budget priority list.

Out of all the consoles I would definitely have choosen a Wii because it focuses on a creative interaction device instead of raw graphics power. That makes for some really fun games instead of just beautiful games. I've noticed that whenever I play games I gradually reduce the graphics quality to get more performance out of the game play. The Wii still looks better that most games on my aging computer anyway. :)

All morning Elias has been either playing Spore Hero or pretending to be a creature from Spore Hero. This strange poem/story is the latest. I think it might be my turn to pick up the Wii Remote and Nunchuck and try out this game! :)

Elias' Wife Planet

2009-12-13T10:16:00.003-07:00

This is the conversation I had with Elias this morning:

Elias: "I want to have 100 kids!"
Dad: "Well, your wife can only have so many kids. Most women don't have more than a dozen or so."
Elias: "I'll have 25 wives!"
Dad: "It's actually illegal to marry more than one person at the same time."
Elias: "I'll tell the policeman that I treat them really well."
Dad: "That's great, but the law is the law."
Elias: "I'll terraform my own planet. On my planet it will be illegal to smoke, but legal to have as many wives as you want."
Dad: "You know, a lot of women want a man all to themselves. They don't want to share him."
Elias: "I'll build a tower on my planet with 100 men in it! They can have those!"

oh boy.

Eva's Morning Song

2009-10-17T08:30:00.002-07:00

My daughter woke up this morning, pulled the guitar out of the bedroom, walked into the living room and began strumming a song. It went something like this...

"Mommy love Eva..."
"Elias love Daddy..."

Most of the song was unintelligible and consisted of Doo-doo-doo=doo's, but these lines stuck out. Eva is very possessive. About everything. She's especially possessive of her claim on Mom. She'll often be heard saying "Mine Mommmy!" very loudly when Kris is hugging me or even Elias. This has thankfully lessened in recent months, but the lyrics of this song make me think i hasn't completely gone away.

"Mine Mommy, Bro Daddy" - Eva

Morning Economics

2009-09-17T08:27:00.006-07:00

Elias and I had a discussion about jobs and money yesterday. It started because he was playing video games in the office while I was working which is normally not a problem. This day though he kept tapping me on the shoulder and asking for help. I don't mind this in moderation but I do work at home and therefore I do have to get something done during the day. :) As such we eventually had to boot him out of the office. He was pretty upset by this so I picked him up, took him to the couch and tried to explain (not the first time) about jobs and money and how those relate to food, toys and housing. During the conversation somehow we got on the subject of what would happen should we not pay for our house, and I told him they would take it away. (The nefarious conspiracy of 'they'!) This really upset him.

"WHY WOULD THEY BE SO MEAN!?!?!" Elias cried.

Kris and I both explained that a lot of work went into building our house and us not paying for that work would cause someone else not to be able to afford food and housing.

On my bike ride this morning I thought up a story I could tell Elias to highlight how this whole system works. When I arrived home I asked him if he wanted to hear it. "YES!" he replied. So I pulled out a colored pencil, a piece of scratch paper and this is what I came up with.

I told a story about his Uncle Jerry, who builds houses. Uncle Jerry wanted to buy some presents for his grand kids for Christmas, but he needed to earn money first. Elias was hooked at this point. He already knew that Uncle Jerry owned a 'Construction Company' and he's always believed all good things come from 'construction companies'. :) Anyway, Uncle Jerry needed $100,000 to build this house, so he went to bank to borrow it. He built a beautiful house with a guest house for Grandparents to stay in. After completing it he needed to sell it for $200,000 to account for all the work and time he put into it as well as to afford presents for his grandkids. Elias took the bait...

"We could buy that house!"

So I drew a picture of our family and said we needed $200,000 to buy this house. Where would we get it?

"From the bank!"

Not sure how I feel about that comment. I wish he'd said "Save up for it and pay cash!" but alas I set myself up with the story. :) We worked out a deal with the bank to borrow the $200k and pay it off slowly over the next 30 years. I botched some calculations but I think he got the idea. I have to remember to not be afraid to do multiplication on paper in front of my 5 year old. Not everything has to be done in your head!

Now our family had a new house, Uncle Jerry had the money to pay back the bank and buy his grandkids presents and the bank made some money on the transaction so they could buy things for their families as well.

Then I asked the question.

"What would happen if I lost my job and we couldn't pay for our house?"

"What?"

"The bank would have to pay for their loan somehow, so they'd need to sell the house to someone else."

"NO!!!" said a very concerned Elias

"Well Elias, you know what we would do if I lost my job?"

"What?"

"Find another job."

"YEAH!"

I think all in all it was a successful story, except for the calculations of loan payments. After the story Elias got REALLY excited and has been modifying and updating this picture adding trees, extra rooms, basements... He added some of his friends to the picture of our family and more detail to the dog. He's excited about this house thing.

Dishes

2009-09-15T18:48:00.002-07:00

I asked Eva to put her dish up on the counter after she was done eating. She complied and then her brother put his dish in the sink when he was done. Then he started filling it with water and trying to rinse it. I asked him if he wanted to do dishes and he said "YES!" So we brought out the stool (and of course Eva climbed on). He washed all the dishes from dinner in a sink full of soapy water and then rinsed them and put them on the drying towel. We had to hover over the kids to make sure the knives weren't doing any extra slicing today but other than that they (mostly Elias) did all the work.

My dishes are clean! Of course, my floor is soaked! :)

AT-AT Morning

2009-09-15T09:16:00.003-07:00

Elias had a cold last night. He was up a lot coughing and hacking. He didn't show it much when he woke up though. We were still in bed and heard him tearing into the lego boxes and pulling out pieces. After 20 minutes of this he came into our room and asked for some help finding more legs for his AT-AT. He already had 2 built and he needed more. I got up and dug through a few bags until he came across some arches that apparently fit the bill. The picture above is his AT-AT from this morning.

After building that I offered to turn on Star Wars V so he could watch AT-ATs in the movie and he said "Yes!". Once he was in the office though he decided that he'd rather play Sim City first, then watch AT-ATs. After 15 minutes of Sim City he got down and went to build more things with legos. He's been trying to construct the 2 legged cousin, the AT-ST. He's now back in the office watching Star Wars V (finally). He wants to watch AT-ATs and then AT-STs, so it looks like I'll be bringing out number 3 of the Holy Trilogy after the AT-AT scene. :)

Funny Quote

2009-08-05T08:22:00.001-07:00

This cracked me up. Going from windows to mac I find my concept of "normal terminal usage" is completely different these days.

"I liken starting one's computing career with Unix, say as an undergraduate, to being born in East Africa. It is intolerably hot, your body is covered with lice and flies, you are malnourished and you suffer from numerous curable diseases. But, as far as young East Africans can tell, this is simply the natural condition and they live within it. By the time they find out differently, it is too late. They already think that the writing of shell scripts is a natural act."

blogging from my iPod.

2009-06-19T22:03:00.002-07:00

I can't believe I never thought to try this before. I can actually blog from my iPod. It's like blogging from a computer except it's smallr and harder to type on. Still, most of my 'lounge' surfing is done on this this thing, so I'll have to try this again

Octopus Story

2009-04-21T08:19:00.002-07:00

Elias drew us a story this morning. He bought this special lined paper that has space at the top for drawing pictures and lines at the bottom for writing a story. Today it was just a picture.

This is a story about an octopus in a cave. The cave is all the little circles with the line around them. Below the octopus is a mother crab giving its baby crab to the octopus. I'm not sure why the mother crab wanted the octopus to have its baby crab, but they're all smiling so it must be all right.

Airport Elias

2009-04-04T07:14:00.008-07:00

Elias wakes up every morning with a story. He'll tell the story for as long as you let him, sometimes it is coherent, most times it rambles on and on. This morning he told me a story about an airport. Airport E L I A S.

Elias wants to build an airport in Tucson called Airport ELIAS. He also wants to build another airport in San Jose and one in the Verde Valley. This way whenever his Grandma Su wants to come visit, she can just go to the airport in the Verde Valley, get on a jet plane, and fly to the Tucson Airport ELIAS. Elias' airports will not have tickets. They are free to all. Each plane holds 100 passengers and there are LOTS of planes. Instead of tickets, Elias' Mom will be at the counter and hand out Hop N' Horseys. As a side note, this means that his Mom won't need a computer while at work.

Why an airport in San Jose you ask? That one is for Jocelyn. Anytime Jocelyn wants to visit she'll say "Elias! Elias! Elias!" and then her Mom will say "Ok, we'll get in the airplane.". Then Jocelyn's Dad will be the pilot and his Mom will be the copilot and they'll fly their jet plane from San Jose to Airport ELIAS in Tucson.

Every day is a busy day for my son's mind!

Bumwing

2009-03-10T07:31:00.005-07:00

A few weeks ago we ordered the kids a bunch of caterpillars for their butterfly net. They come in little jars with food to eat and they quickly get fat and lazy. Then they migrate to the top of the jar and form a chrysalis. At this point you take them out of the jar and attach them to the butterfly net, then wait for them to hatch into butterflies!

Elias really enjoyed this whole process and learning about the butterfly life cycle. We read books on butterflies, talked about butterflies, looked at butterflies outside. Then, after a few weeks they finally hatched and we had live butterflies! Unfortunately, one of the butterflies came out with a crumpled wing. He had some bum luck and it just didn't form correctly. When we went to release all the other butterflies into our yard on a warm sunny day, Bumwing couldn't fly away. He hung out on the grass and flowers for the first day and Elias was sad that his butterflies were gone.

Wasn't he excited to find Bumwing waiting for him on the flowers the next morning! For the next 3 days Elias spent virtually every waking moment with that butterfly. He danced with it, built it a house with flowers and fruit to keep it well fed and told it story after story. He carried it around with him everywhere. He also learned some lessons on things butterflies don't like to do, like be stuffed inside plastic bottles (eek!) I would go on runs with Eva or trips to the store and ask Elias if he wanted to come.

'No Thank You.' he would say without turning his attention away from Bumwing.

Sadly, Bumwing passed away last night. Elias brought him inside because 'The wind is too rough for him', but I think it was too late. Elias will miss him.

I have arrived

2009-01-26T09:26:00.003-07:00

I have arrived fully into the land of parenthood. We purchased a minivan this weekend. With a 3rd kid on the way that puts us with a family of 6. Our current Subaru Outback is filled to bursting with the 2 carseats and Sam. Luckily Sam is fairly smallish so she fits (albeit squished in there). But with another car seat on the way it wasn't going to work, so we took the plunge and purchased a minivan.

We sent out feelers to various dealerships and trolled craigslist to get an idea of the used vs. new market. On Saturday we hit a couple of dealerships armed with various price quotes. The first dealership had a year old 12k miles Toyota that we really liked, and the price was around what we were expecting. We couldn't bring ourselves to purchase it without looking around though, so we left the offer on the table and travelled to another dealership. The second dealership had the exact same van (except in white instead of silver) with a better certification for $1,000 less. We talked them down a bit and then bought it.

It's pretty neat! There is a ton of room. It's worse gas milage than our Subaru but not by much. We're both really excited about being able to go into town when the family is visiting and only take one car. And of course being able to cart Elias' friends around will be nice. Hooray for minivans! :)

Dinner Table Conversations

2009-01-16T19:18:00.002-07:00

We were sitting at the dinner table the other day and Eva was hungrily pursuing her food. The following exchange occurred:

Kristin: "I love how she smacks her lips when she's going after food."

(The sound of a small hand slapping a face)

Us: "Elias, why are you hitting yourself?"
Elias: "I'm smacking my lips!"

heh heh.

Running is a terrible way to lose weight.

2008-12-25T12:20:00.004-07:00

I just got back from a little Christmas day run. I've been running instead of riding for a number of reasons. It's fast. It's easy to set up (just put on shoes, stretch and go). And most importantly I can take my daughter in the jogging stroller and put her to sleep for her afternoon nap. She loves the ride and my son rides along side me with his bicycle. It's great!

I thought that running would be a great way to burn some calories as well, but boy was I wrong. 30 minutes of running = barely 400 calories! 400 calories? That's one lousy mocha. My bike rides to work and back were 1500 calories for a mere hour and half of effort. If I tried to run for an hour and a half every day my body would collapse on itself and I would devolve into a boneless mass of jelly.

I jest of course, running has actually been really enjoyable. I'm hoping that I don't run into classic runner problems (like destroyed joints) if I'm only doing it for a half hour at a time and I intersperse it with bike rides. I'm also hoping that years of bike rides has strengthened my knee muscles to an extent where I am more resilient. Only time will tell. I'll have to keep an observing eye on my aches and pains. :)

And I guess I need to start biking again if I want to maintain my diet of 4000 calories a day. :)

How do you explain a metaphor to a 4 year old?

2008-10-13T05:38:00.003-07:00

I've been listening to Michael Franti a lot since my last trip to California. Elias always likes to listen to music when he rides in the car with me, so he's been listening to him a lot as well. His favorite song is 'See You in the Light'. It contains the following lyrical section, which is why he likes it so much:

"The vampires gather around me, angling to take a bite.
They want to drink my blood of courage, and try to take away my fight.
But no, no, no, they can't do that, for one truth I've learned in life.
You want to scare away the vampires, you simple guide them into the light."

He likes this section so much because it talks about vampires. Way way back he was watching a Magic School Bus episode on the computer and it talked all about bats and vampire bats in particular. There were many bad puns and the kids thought Ms. Frizzle was a vampire. I don't know how much my son really knows about vampires, but the concept that they were cool stuck with him pretty well.

Obviously the lyrics above are not about the mythical vampires but instead about people bringing you down. I tried to explain to Elias that the vampires in Michael Franti's lyrics are actually a metaphor for people trying to make you feel bad, but he insists every time he hears it that, no, in fact Michael Franti is singing about vampires that drink 'your blood of courage.'

How do you explain what a metaphor is to a 4 year old?

:)

Sky Harbor

2008-09-15T06:41:00.003-07:00

Nothing like the flight from Tucson to Phoenix. One hour of boarding/deboarding and 30 minutes in the air. The nice thing about arriving in Sky Harbor airport is the cool automated walkways. I love those things. I don't really see why I have to change terminals when I'm on the same airline, but I don't mind the walk and it gives me a chance to walk SUPER FAST on the rolling automatic walkways. Phoenix airport is the only airport I've been too that has these walkways (not as if I'm a connoisseur of airports...) I wonder if it shares some symbolism with the massive sprawl of Phoenix and all that.

The flight was pretty neat. I didn't get to sleep but I did read a bit in my book. I was seated on the eastern side of the plane and was able to watch the sunrise from a plane's eye view. I've never seen that before. I think it would have been prettier if not viewed through thick scratched plastic windows, but I appreciated it none-the-less.

Upon arrival I purchased a delicious cinnabon and walked half a terminal out of the way to get an Americano to go with it. What can I say, I like Starbuck's Americanos. Something about that burnt espresso taste. mmmm...

Now I'm waiting for my plane to start boarding. I strongly dislike US Airways. It's nothing really different about the airline vs others, so much that I've grown accustomed to the quick efficiency of Southwest coupled with the wry humor of the attendants. It takes forever to board the US Airways plane, once boarded they make slow lurching progress towards buttoning down the plane and departing. The crew is bored and humorless and (I'm probably imagining this part) the plane is cramped. Southwest on the other hand herds people in in massive groups, you snatch the first seat that catches your fancy and while the plane is taxing the crew is sealing the baggage areas, regaling tales and reading the safety guidelines. And not that the free drinks are that big of a deal, but I noticed that NO ONE ordered a soda for 2 bucks on my flight out. I guess that was probably the real intent of charging for drinks on US Airways flights...

The Americano is almost finished and my plane will start boarding in 10 minutes. Time to get ready to watch United 93! That should be a good plane movie! :)

[UPDATE]
Just as I put my laptop to sleep, we got an announcement. Flight Delay. Maintenance on the plane, probably 30 minutes. I guess I'll try and get Jagged Alliance 2 to work in WINE instead of boarding. :)

Good Morning!

2008-09-15T04:52:00.004-07:00

Ahhh! It's 4:50 am and I'm back in the Tucson Airport. I'm rockin' it out to a little Rancid (Back Up Against the Wall, which is funny because I'm about as far from having my back up against the wall as possible, but I like the song...) Getting up early was surprising easy this morning. I think I might be an early person. I'm skipping the coffee for the first leg of this journey in an attempt to possibly catch some sleep on the plane, though I'm pretty hyped, so I doubt I'll be able to.

The weekend was great! I dug a couple holes for our dessert friendly blueberry bushes, mowed and edged the lawn, cleaned the garage, picked up a good chunk of the house and actually cleaned the master bedroom. Our poor room has the door shut most of the time to prevent my inquisitive daughter from emptying all the bathroom cupboards, so sadly it gets neglected for cleaning a lot. It's sparkling shiny now though!

My son's hair was getting a bit ragged, so we told him he had to trim it a little this weekend. We told him he was welcome to keep it long, but in order to maintain hair health it needed to have the edges clipped. He agreed and sat on the hair cutting stool.

While Kris was in the back room looking for hair cutting equipment, Elias asked me "Is your hair short Dad?"
My hair feels long to me right now, so I answered "Medium Short".
He said "I want mine Medium Short."
"Ok, are you sure? You don't have to cut it short."
"Yes, I want mine medium short like yours."
"OK!"

Kristin queried him again with a similar exchange when she returned. He insisted he wanted it short. So we cut it.

I was starting to like the long hair, but it's really neat to see my son with a haircut. It looks really good and you can see his eyes again! He seems pretty happy with it, though I think it's increased his changing of personality. Now he's a different person every half hour instead of every day. He went through being Carlos, Ralphie, DA, and even Elias yesterday, and alternated them frequently. When he 'became' Elias again, I told him welcome back.

He said, "I've been gone a really long time!" heh heh.

In and Around New Mexico

2008-09-08T23:25:00.021-07:00

After the Red River Century Kristin drove my desiccated husk of a body to Santa Fe. We had reservations for a Courtyard Marriott a bit outside of town.

The hotel was great! It had an indoor pool which, tired as I was, I felt obligated to take my kids swimming in as soon as we arrived at 9 pm. They had both napped during the day so they had energy coursing through their systems. We swam in the pool for a short while, took a much needed shower back at the room and after 20 crazy minutes in the dark, Eva (and the rest of us) fell into a wonderfully restful slumber.

We awoke in the morning to the sound of my alarm clock (why did I forget to turn that off before falling asleep? Curses!) and proceeded to swim, swim, swim until our laundry was machine-laundered. Elias and Eva had a blast. It made me wish I had a pool, they love the water so much.

We packed up our room and checked out before we were tempted to stay another night, and off we drove to Albuquerque! My brother was doing something for Pagan Pride Day and was busy until after 5, so we went to the Albuquerque Aquarium and Botanical Gardens. Kristin and I both visited there many years ago before we were even married and remembered it being a lot of fun. It didn't disappoint this time.

Eva and Elias stare into the pond at a group of lily pads.

The aquarium is small but also uncrowded and there are numerous opportunities to get up close and personal with the sea life. Eva loved the tunnel with all the life size fish and Elias loved the shark tank with the 'nasty teeth[ed]' shark. In the gift shop, Kristin found Elias a red baseball cap with a matching shirt, both sporting the Albuquerque Aquarium logo. Elias' favorite character from the Magic School Bus chapter books is Ralphie. Ralphie wears a red baseball cap with an A on it, and a t-shirt with an A on it. Elias has been wanting something similar for weeks now. He's been telling us his name is 'Ralphie' and that I'm Tim, Sam is Phoebe, Eva is Liz (the pet lizard) and Kristin is Ms. Frizzle (lucky her). Once we gave Elias the hat he put it on excitedly and completely forgot that he was Ralphie. He became Elias for the first time since he learned how to pretend. I think the hat has some sort of magic!

With new hats in tow (Eva got a green one), we left the gift shop to see the botanical gardens. The botanical gardens and the aquarium are in the same area and share the same tickets and hours. We left the aquarium at 4:40 PM and entered the gardens expecting to be kicked out at any moment. We stayed until 5:40 PM. It was great!

The gardens in Albuquerque are MASSIVE. I'm surprised they even fit in the confines of the city. Albuquerque isn't that big. But rest assured, it does and we walked almost all of it. Rain clouds were streaming in making the park cool and refreshing and giving a surreal feel to all the sites. The park itself has an entire kids section that makes you feel shrunken down to the size of an ant as you explore a giant vegetable garden, a hollowed out log, a wooded maze and a really cool giant pumpkin complete with seeds and gunk hanging from the ceiling. I think Albuquerque has the best botanical gardens in the world, hands down. Kristin and I were discussing this when I said it was better than the Butchart Gardens in Victoria. She said 'The Butchart Gardens are beautiful, this one is entertaining'. What is beauty if not entertainment for snobs? The Albuquerque Botanical Gardens win!

We stayed in the gardens as long as we could, knowing the experience was inherently transitory. Eventually we would be kicked out. Eventually we would have to find food. Alas, we finally left and returned to my brother's house for a nice quiet evening (once Eva was asleep) of conversation and catching up.

Eva navigates the kids maze at the Albuquerque Botanical Gardens

In the morning, Elias again awoke early to watch the farm work and play with the animals. I think my son was meant to be raised on a farm, but maybe that's how all 4 year old boys are. We were originally planning to stay an extra day and leave Tuesday afternoon, but Eva was a complete destructive typhoon at my brother's house so we decided to visit the Botanical Gardens again and head home a day early.

On the second visit to the gardens we dressed our kids in long sleeves and pants to avoid any more sun exposure and let them run themselves ragged on the grounds. We tortured poor Eva by keeping her awake and running, refusing to let her nap. Elias was in heaven. This time we visited the only exhibit we skipped yesterday, the Japanese Gardens.

Like the rest of the gardens, the Japanese gardens were immense. It stretched for what seemed like miles and contained a giant pond with flowing waterfall and Koi. Upon further exploration we discovered a trail that crossed numerous streams with creatively constructed bridges. Eva came upon one such bridge, stood there cutely posing for a picture than proceeded to turn around and run without warning right over the edge. She soaked herself from toe to screaming head before Kristin snatched her out of the water. She was sopping wet, tired and grumpy. We decided it was about time to head home.

I took Eva, dried her off and changed her while Kristin took Elias to buy a book he wanted in the gift shop. After Elias said goodbye to his new friend, the gift shop owner (one of many he made this trip) we piled in the car, grabbed a quick snack and drove home. We made excellent time and arrived home by 9:15 PM. Eva awoke and bounced around the house for an hour or so before Sam was kind enough to stroller her to sleep.

What a weekend!

Red River Century

2008-09-08T21:35:00.008-07:00

Elias spent as much time with Uncle Alan as he could. This was the night before the race at the campsite.

I have just finished the 6 hour, 15 minute drive from Albuquerque to Tucson (shhh, my average speed was a little high). We traveled there to ride the Enchanted Circle Century Tour and visit with my brother and see his new house.

We left Thursday afternoon and drove to my brother Alan's house arriving late in the evening. The kids did well on the trip considering it was a 6 hour drive with only one stop to stretch the legs and eat in Hatch. I was disappointed in Hatch, NM. After tasting so many delicious chiles from there I assumed the town would be teaming with good mexican food but instead we found a ghost town at 8 pm. Apparently there aren't a lot of late night travelers like us.

After sleeping the night at my brother's house, we awoke to the rooster crowing and Elias immediately wanted to go out and play. He and I went outside and watched the dog, goats, chickens and rabbits being fed. My son formed a love hate relationship with the dog Thistle. Thistle is only a puppy but quite a large one and she was jumping and mouthing my son's legs and arms. Elias loved being around her, and didn't want to go away, but he kept calling 'HELP!' whenever Thistle would do something he didn't like. He eventually retreated to the top of a pile of wood palettes where the goats resided. Thistle surrendered and curled up at the bottom waiting for Elias to descend. Elias loved everything about Alan's house and was sad to leave when we went to find breakfast and begin the journey to Red River.

It felt like it took forever to travel from Albuquerque to Taos because traffic was so congested in Santa Fe. We didn't stop in Santa Fe because Eva was sleeping and instead opted to eat in Taos at the Guadalajara Grill upon Alan's suggestion. The food was delicious but even better than the taste, we had our own private space that we barricaded with chairs affording us one of the few Eva-peaceful meals we had during our trip. :)

The view from beautiful Red River.

After eating we continued on to Red River (navigating an accident at the one stoplight in all of Questa) where I quickly registered for the bike race and then drove a few miles down the road to our camp site. We set up our tent, ran into town for a few supplies and spent the rest of the evening around the campfire until the sub-30 degree temperatures forced us into bed.

It was COLD. Holy cow was it cold. I was actually toasty warm all night thanks to my internal furnace, but my wife was chilly anytime Eva wasn't warming up the space in between us (and instead was curled on the outside edge of the sleeping bag, thereby leaving a gap for air to enter). My daughter was miserable all night because she hates being in clothes, and she hates being under covers. On camping night we made her suffer both which she protested every hour on the hour all night. Elias slept well snuggled in his own sleeping bag.

We awoke at dawn, prepped the bikes, packed up most of the camp and drove to town for the start of the race. We stopped at a local coffee shop to get coffee and pastries before heading to the start line. The Enchanted Circle Century tour is very nice because the town is exceedingly small. It takes almost no time to get places. We actually parked within ten feet of the start line, and Alan and I walked our bikes to the back of the line while the national anthem was being played. We never had to stand in line in the cold. Neat!

I forgot my windbreaker but luckily my brother packed extra clothes and I was able to borrow his. The ride from Red River to Questa was cold and a bit stressful. There were a lot of riders slowing down suddenly with other riders speeding up and cutting in front of me. I went slow and tried not to get in a wreck. Once we rode the 14 miles down the road to Questa it was hot out and I took off the windbreaker. The next part of the ride was a small climb followed by a downhill into Taos. That was a blast! I like climbing and passed quite a few people on the way up. On the downhill we found a pack to draft off of into Taos. Once in Taos the road became quite bumpy and my water bottle flew out of the holder and onto the road. I turned around to pick it up and discovered it nozzle down in a city mud puddle. Nice. I cleaned it off and continued to the SAG stop. It was apparently a day for drinking dirt!

After leaving Taos we began a long climb to Angel Fire (another town on the Enchanted Circle in New Mexico). The climb was really pleasant and pretty. I spent a lot of it gazing at the neat houses sitting snugly in the woods and the sprawling mountain meadows covered in grass and wild flowers. I caught myself a few times wishing I could live in such a nice and peaceful place, but I was usually snapped out of my reverie by envisioning the houses 6 feet deep in snow like they are 10 months out of the year (ok, maybe not 10).

Elias looking at the snow fed dangerously fast river by the campsite.

The climb ended at Palo Flecho pass where we hungrily consumed more granola bars and peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches. My brother finished the climb 15 minutes before me. He's quite the mountain goat. I noticed that my heart rate on this ride was about 10 beats higher than it normally is. The elevation was really taxing me. Tucson is a nice breathable 2,500 feet and the top of Palo Felcho pass is 9,100 feet. My body was heartily rejecting this pretend oxygen I was giving it.

After Palo Felcho pass came a quick switchback downhill followed by some rolling hills through flat lands in the mountains. At 85 miles we hit the 4th and final SAG stop. I was pretty tired at this point what with the distance of the ride, the elevation and my lack of proper training leading up to it, but I was determined to finish. The wind was getting intense and we began the slow climb to the top of Bobcat Pass (at 9,800 feet).

I think I actually lost consciousness a few times climbing that last climb. For the first time in my adult riding career I dismounted my bike and walked up a hill. My speed was a hearty 4 mph while riding, so I only took a hit of 2 mph by walking. After walking and letting my heart rate return to a livable 140 I got back on and climbed a little farther. The next time I got off my bike I just sat there staring blankly at the mountain. I was not the only one. This was the hardest climb I've ever done. I've been in better shape, but a climb like that after 90 miles of riding is outright cruelty. It was awesome! :)

Right before finishing the climb to Bobcat pass, Kristin called me wondering why it was taking an hour and a half to ride my bike 15 miles (I was wondering the same thing). I reached the top, rested a moment and then rode down the hill and back into Red River. That was terrifying because of incredibly strong crosswinds combined with steep descents and exhausted reflexes. I burned a lot of brake pad.

My brother was kind enough to wait for me at various spots throughout the tour so we rode into Red River together, victorious. My kids were playing on the Red River playset as they had been most of the day, and they were happy to see me. After recovering my ability to speak, we loaded the bikes on the car and headed out of town to our luxurious hotel in Santa Fe (Kristin was kind enough to pack up the entire campsite while I was riding)!

It was a highly enjoyable tour. I wish it wasn't a 10 hour drive each way to get there. I'd love to do it again sometime.

The Pied Piper of Hützovina

2008-08-11T22:37:00.002-07:00

I just finished watching the The Pied Piper of Hützovina. I enjoyed it and was sad when it ended. It was kind of like watching a home video of your family, only Euguene Hutz was there and everyone was speaking Russian. Eugene Hutz isn't exactly like Bono in level of fame, but he still is famous by many rights. He came from some pretty humble roots though, and it was interesting to see him go back to them. There was a lot of the movie that felt awkward. He grew up in the areas the movie visited, but he doesn't fit there anymore. Watching his reactions to all the different groups of people he met made me like him even more though.

The scenes of Eugene Hutz interacting with villagers, gypsy musicians and his family were very thought provoking but my favorite parts were the music. There was one scene on a train where he just starts banging out a tune to go with the beats of the train going over the tracks. I have no doubt that if I put my mind to it I could become a technically proficient musician, but being able to create music out of nothing is so far beyond my reach I think it must be magic.

Cool movie. :)

I'm becoming and agoraphobic

2008-07-27T10:11:00.006-07:00

Last night, Fry's was packed with people. It was like the day before Thanksgiving. There was a curving line for every checkout aisle, so I lined up behind the express lane and waited. I asked around, but no one knew of anything that was going on that weekend, it was just strangely crowded. Elias went with me and we were only getting buns. I forgot to bring his shoes (dang hippy kid never wears shoes!) so I carried him through the line. Luckily my boy is slight and the line was short. :)

This morning I rode 4 loops Saguaro National Monument. The first loop was at 6:30 AM and completely empty. The second loop was strange. I saw somewhere around 30 or 40 runners, almost all with no shirts on, in very good shape, with that running doctor feel about them. There are always quite a few runners at the monument on the weekend, but this was insane. I asked the last shirtless superhuman I saw if there was a runner club meeting today and he replied "Not that I know of..." Strange.

I saw a couple friends walking along the loop and asked them if they saw the runners. Nope. I didn't see them again on my next loop. I called my friends when I got back home, they never saw them again either. I talked with another rider (who strangely happened to have a brand new version of my first bike) and he saw no sign of them. I think they were ghosts, or I'm going crazy. (Kristin has some hairbrained idea that they went to a picnic area or used a middle trail to cut through. Ridiculous!)

After the crowds at the store last night and the huge runner's group that wasn't a group I think I have a new mutant power. I think I am attracting statistically large but entirely coincidental crowds. Or maybe all this working at home is distorting my ideas of what a large crowd of people is. I'm taking Elias to see Wall-E today at the movie theater. I'm a little frightened of what I might find...

My Dog is Out of Shape

2008-06-24T19:16:00.004-07:00

My poor dog. She used to be the center of attention, the highlight of the room. Then we had kids. Now she's suffering from 4 years of sporadic walks and staying at home instead of going on trips. We never intended for this to happen, but when you have kids your priorities shift and your time just disappears. It takes a full time effort just to make dinner instead of go out, let alone go for evening walks.

For our dogs sake (as well as our own) we've been trying to remedy this. In the evenings Kristin has been strapping on rollerblades and pushing the jogging stroller while I run beside her with the dog. She can make it for about a mile before she gives up. The pace isn't that intense, but she's getting old and she hasn't done this sort of thing enough lately.

Kristin is out of town this week so I'm taking the opportunity to train my dog a little. We just returned from a 3 mile walk/run. I took her out on a back trail and let her loose while I ran ahead. This gave her more flexibility of pace. She kept up with me for the first 1 1/2 miles, but as soon as I turned around and headed for home, she started walking. I walked with her for a while to let her catch her breath, then ran again. We did this for the remainder of the run. Now she's lying on the floor panting her heart out. I don't want to push her too hard because she is out of shape and getting up in years.

One thing's for certain. Regardless of how tired she gets, she's always happier after getting out.

Early early early!

2008-06-10T04:53:00.004-07:00

I'm waiting in the airport for my third trip out to Cupertino. It's 4:53 in the morning and I've been here a bit. This is my first try at taking a morning flight rather than a flight the night before. It was nice being at my house last night instead of in a hotel room. Getting up in the morning had the same visceral intensity as getting up before a bike ride. I'm not sure on these 4 AM wake times if I'm still basically awake from the day before or if the shock of the alarm going off at 4 AM is enough to wake me up immediately. Either way it's nice to be able to hop out of bed with only a slight stumble. :)

I'm sitting in the airport sipping a cup of coffee and waiting for my plane to start boarding. I had heard that these morning flights were quite crowded, but I had only one guy in front of me at security. I guess I can sleep in until 4:10 next time.

I return on Friday (hopefully I can find my car) and so does my wife. She's taking the family BACK to the Verde Valley tomorrow. I hope she recharges a bit beforehand, we've been on the road a lot this month.

This flight should be a good one because I have a new book! Hooray for Orson Scott Card and his prolific writing!

[UPDATE] In case my family is checking this blog, I made it to Phoenix. There was a woman one the plane next to me with the nicest e-book I've ever seen. It didn't have an obnoxious bright screen, it looked very easy on the eyes. Normally I like my books with pages, but I could see the niceness of an ebook for this whole traveling thing.

Zone 1 is boarding... 6 more zones to go!

Working from home is good for your feet

2008-05-31T10:28:00.003-07:00

I've been working from home for almost 2 months now, and I haven't put on shoes except when leaving the house. At first my feet would hurt a bit from walking on the tile barefoot, but that didn't last long. Now I've found myself able to walk outside in the rocks and my feet no longer hurt at all. Shoes are a bit more uncomfortable when I have to wear them, which is unfortunate. Luckily, I don't get out much so it's not a problem, and even when I do I always wear sandals anyway (well, at least 10 months out of the year).

Last weekend I did an entire gardening project barefoot just to test the toughness. Sure, operating a drill is probably not the safest activity for bare feet, but I would have worn sandals if I hadn't worn shoes (it's too hot for shoes!) so I figured why not?

I've read studies that say walking barefoot is good for your feet. Apparently our feet weren't meant to be crammed into shoes all day with artificial arch supports and shaping. I hope that is true because my son has spent his entire life barefoot. He runs through rocks and gravel, over hot asphalt. I have yet to see terrain that his toughened feet can't handle. My wife, being the dirty hippy that she is, isn't real big on shoes so our kids only wear them if we go into public places. Now that I'm working from home I'm trying to adopt the same foot lifestyle. :)

Garden Beds

2008-05-26T21:29:00.004-07:00

The finished garden beds

We spent the weekend building garden beds. We have a small garden in our back yard right now, but it gets crowded. We just recently had some work done on the yard which freed up a tremendous amount of space in our side yard. We thought about putting in a raised brick garden but settled on square wooden raised beds. We went to Lowes on Friday to pick up the boards and a new drill (hooray for variable speed drills!) and spent a couple hours Saturday and Sunday morning. It was a 2 person job which meant we had to wait for Eva to be asleep or for Sam to watch her to get it done. As such we didn't finish the construction of the four beds until this morning. My delicate computer programmer hands are very sore today :)

Elias was really into it. We drilled a bunch of holes in some spare boards and gave him a hammer and a few screws. He went to town on it screwing and hammering the board until it was pock marked with scars. I think that board filled with bent nails is still sitting on top of his play set. I'll have to remember to pull it down before we have youthful company over again. :)

Elias positions a board to nail it together.

Now that we have the bins we just need to fill them with dirt and plants. The ground in Rita Ranch is pretty much solid concrete. I don't think anything can live in the soil without additive healthy dirt being introduced. Hence the reason for the raised beds. We're debating having the landscaper come back and dig out the trenches for the drip lines - and bring soil with him - or doing it ourself. Having the landscaper do it has the added benefit of getting done sooner rather than later. Curse me and my procrastination!

Down with rental cars

2008-05-05T00:12:00.002-07:00

It's pretty late and I should probably be going to bed instead of blogging this, but I'm feeling inspired. I just arrived in Cupertino for my second trip onsite at the new job. For this trip out, I'm not the only remote employee coming to town. Two of us arrived tonight, and so I took a shuttle from my terminal to the terminal my cohort was arriving in. While waiting there, I saw a guy unpacking a cross train bike from a bike bag. This is an unusual sight at an airport, so I struck up a conversation with him.

He works from home like me, and like me he was out here to be on site for a week. Unlike me, however, he eschewed the rental car and decided to try packing his bike. He bought a steel bike, had the frame cut so it could be disassembled easily and he was busy putting it together at midnight, to ride to the hotel. Wow. I admit, I've thought many times about taking a bike out on these trips. A week in another town is too long to go without riding a bike. It's so much easier to get around a city like this on a bike instead of in a car. I'm completely inspired. I'm sure I could make it to my hotel from the airport with a backpack full of stuff. I always thought I was crazy for thinking about riding a bike from the airport, but apparently I'm not alone.

I'm going to dream dreams of remote bike commuting. :)

Oh and in case you didn't guess already, yes he's a computer programmer, and he's a linux guy, which makes sense when you think about it. Those guys take DIY pretty seriously. :)

Thank God It's Monday

2008-03-31T21:57:00.003-07:00

I'm listening to a little mood music for this blog. 'Thank God It's Monday' by NOFX. I've always liked the song and the lyrics. It's about the musician's love of Mondays when you don't have to go to work. Everything is open, no one is at any of the restaurants. It's a song about the joys of being unemployed (or in the case of NOFX, being musicians which basically amounts to the same thing).

I'm gonna tell you what I really think I like about Mondays
Cause they feel like Saturdays
When you don't got to go to work
Every day is a holiday
I wake up when I want to
I do anything I wanna do
Can't wait for Tuesday

As of this afternoon, I can actually relate to the song as well as enjoy it. I'm unemployed! Fortunately, all the downsides that come with unemployment aren't there for me, because I'm only unemployed for a week to take some time off between jobs, but that doesn't stop me from rocking it out to a little NOFX tonight. :)

I put in my notice at Captaris a few weeks ago because I accepted a position at Apple. I didn't think there was anything better than Captaris in Tucson. I enjoyed my job and the people I worked with quite a bit. Sure, I had complaints but I figured all the niceties of the job more than made up for it. I was talking a few months ago to a friend who works in Tucson remotely for Apple and he asked me if I'd be interested in joining the team. I didn't think Apple would have any interest in a Windows centered guy like me, but apparently they are unprejudiced with regards to past experience. I've always believed it was counter productive to judge an employee based on his exact specifications of experience rather than his overall ability to perform, but I didn't think most companies agreed with me. I guess I was wrong because after a few relatively invigorating interviews I got an offer. I had trouble giving up a job I genuinely liked with people I knew and laurels to rest upon, but the opportunity was too good to pass up.

That is how I found myself facing the terrifying prospect of leaving one job and starting a new one, some three weeks ago. I've never left a job intentionally. It's an interesting experience to go through. There's no way to do it and make everyone happy, because your ex employer doesn't want you to leave. I tried to transition my knowledge away to other people at my old employer, but I'm sure problems will come up. Now that I'm the ex employee, I'm also sure any problem around the office will start with "Stupid Post did that!" :)

Today was my last day and then I have a week off until I start at Apple on the 7th. I'm going to be doing completely different sorts of things (it's all programming in the end, but the tools and such are all foreign to me right now) and I hope to spend the next week at least somewhat preparing for it. I'm rewriting my home website in Java and I plan to use this week to become energized and ready to roll next Monday.

I also have a week to prepare for the Tour de Phoenix, which is at the end of this week. I've trained hard for it for the winter, but I came down with a nasty cold last week and I'm only just now recovering. I hope to take a ride tomorrow morning to take advantage of my newly unemployed status, and start to recover some skill I've lost from being sick (not to mention distracted by my shifting life).

The future looks bright!

Thanks Mom and Dad!

2008-03-08T22:35:00.005-07:00

A boy and his hook.

When I was a young lad my parents were very giving with regards to unique hardware. My brother and I had bo staffs, bows and arrows, battle axes, ninja shoes... Pretty much anything our group of friends could want to pretend to be ninja survivalists. One of these things was a beautiful matte black grappling hook. It was collapsable so an enterprising spirit could stow it away in a back pack or hide it under a bed. I don't remember what we actually did with it, but I remember it being really cool.

A while back Kristin and I were at my parents storage shed digging through old stuff when we came across the grappling hook. Cool! Elias has been playing with it in the back yard on his playset. He hooks it to his slide and then "climbs" it from 50 feet away and then up the slide. It's pretty fun to watch. I've even done a couple of climbs up the slide with it, and it's definitely just as fun now as it was when I was a child. :)

Thanks Mom and Dad!

An Update

2008-02-28T21:11:00.009-07:00

Elias dressed himself in this outfit. It was almost 80 degrees out.

With this blog I've been trying to avoid a "This is what I've been up to" entry. I've tried to focus more on concise stories with a point or a single thought expanded. However, I have done such an atrocious job of actually posting blog entries in the last month, I feel an update is in order.

In the last month my son has turned four and grown in leaps and bounds intellectually. On exactly his fourth birthday, he started asking 'why?' to everything. Before then he would ask us 'What happens when?' questions, but we seemed to have avoided the why stage. It wasn't meant to last apparently, because he is a full blown why-er now. I like answering why questions usually because it's neat to help out his inquisitive mind. We have had to put some limits on the why for the sake of saying the word why. Uttering 'why... why... why...' repeatedly is just intellectual laziness. :) We try to get him to clarify what he's asking why about. So far so good!

Elias' reading skills continue to improve and he's been sounding out more words in his head. He's also starting to master ch, sh, th, etc. That opens up a whole new world of words for him, and it's really neat! On the math front, Kristin has been printing out dot-to-dots that number 1 to 50, or 1 to 100. This has done wonders for his counting skills. He never really wanted to count much past 10, but he loves doing dot-to-dots, and in order to do the larger ones he had to improve his counting. It's amazing to see him recognize numbers like 34 and 67 just by glancing at them for a few moments. He really is growing mentally!

My daughter has learned to pull herself up on things and in general move towards toddlerdom. She's been uttering 'dada' for a while now, but I think now she actually connects the word to me. She's also started saying 'mama', and just like Elias she has a distinctive tone for each. For Dad it's light and cheery, sort of a 'Dad, I'm so happy to see you!' For Mom, it's more of a 'MOM! Why are you not holding me!' :)

Eva has also been showing signs of signing. I don't feel like we've been signing around her as much as we did for Elias, but we've been pretty steady on signing 'nurse', 'Dad', 'Mom', 'dog', 'ball'. Hopefully she'll pick them up as easily as Elias. I think it's great for babies to have a second method of communication, and it's certainly easier than speech for a child so young. Eva has signed 'dog', 'ball' and we think one hand motion she does is 'nurse'. It's not technically accurate, but contextually it usually fits. Granted, she's pretty much always nursing, so that's always her context. :)

Eva with her usual expression.

I've been slightly stalled on my weight loss regime. I lost 11 pounds in the first month, which put me about 10 pounds away from my 3 month goal. This month I think I'm down 16 total. I've kept up my riding and really enjoyed that, but my dietary restrictions on junk food have pretty much been abandoned. I'm still keeping the soda and mocha intake down, but now that I'm down to 182 pounds, my motivation to lose weight is almost completely zilch. :) I think I'll be ready to rock it out on the Tour de Phoenix in April as I've been riding Mt Lemmon almost every week and commuting almost every day. This week has been a bit slow for various reasons, but I plan on kicking it back up to full next week.

My commuter car is giving me trouble. I've put 5000 miles on it in the past year, which I think is impressive given my daily commute of 28 miles (plus all side errands). Unfortunately, leaving your car in the driveway 4 days a week doesn't guarantee that it will have no maintenance costs. This week I drove it to work one day out of laziness (hey, my son wanted to cuddle in the morning! :) ) and out of spite my check engine light came on. I took it to the shop the next day and in the diagnostic they found many things that needed to be repaired, mostly having to do with emissions. It's not fully repaired yet, but it's close. It hurts having to spend money on a car I try and drive as little as possible, but when Sam gets her license in a few months it'll be the car she drives so I want it to be in full working order.

Life has been moving pretty fast. The year is in full swing and the future months are starting to fill up with planned activities. I have neglected my blogging and updating my picture website. I hope to get back into that mode, but my attempts have not been entirely successful of late. We shall see what the future holds!

My Son is Getting Old

2008-01-19T22:17:00.000-07:00

Elias was requesting carrot juice for breakfast. It has been a while since we've done any juicing so we gladly obliged. Typically Elias likes to help out with this stuff by sitting on the counter with his Mom and helping her push the carrots into the juicer.

First, a small sidetrack... I work during the day so I am often caught off guard by changes in my children's abilities and independence. Kristin sees all the gradual changes because she stays home with them, but I increasingly find myself amazed by the leaps and bounds they are making. Now, back to the entry...

This morning was a little different. Kristin washed all the veggies while Elias eagerly awaited for the juicing to commence. After she had the veggies washed, she put them on the counter next to Elias and asked me to stick around and make sure he didn't need any help.

I then watched as my 3 year old totally independently turned the juicer on and off, put carrots and veggies in, and smashed them down with the plunger. He always helped with different parts here and there, but he did everything by himself. I felt very proud of him. He's growing up!

Woes of Heart Rate Monitors

2008-01-19T21:44:00.000-07:00

I have an indented chest. It's a weird genetic deformity that I hear is hereditary paternally (Thanks Dad!). It has never bothered me very much and I rarely even notice it except when I get weird looks at the beach, then it hits me. "Oh Yeah! My chest is hideously deformed! I totally forgot!" Luckily I have copious amounts of chest hair to disguise the hole in these situations. :)

This chest indentation has never really affected anything until my wife bought me a heart rate monitor for my birthday. I could rarely get a signal out of it and I assumed the "chip holder" was the problem. I was about to sell the HRM to a coworker until I explained my problems and he said "Oh no, a lot of people online were complaining about having to shave chest hair to get their monitors to work." This inspired me to try again.

I put on the chest strap, marked the offending areas off with blue erasable markers (Thanks Elias!) and shaved two small strips underneath my pectoral muscles. I put the heart rate strap in place and went to grab my monitor. Dang! The batteries were dead!

This is the second copy of this particular brand of heart rate monitor (an Oregon Scientific SE232). The first one I took back in for a replacement when I failed to get a reading and couldn't manage to reattach the watch straps after trying to swap out the battery. I was not looking forward to replacing the battery again. I soldiered on though and pulled off the top watch strap, popped the battery casing off and put in a new battery. Then I spent the rest of the day trying to reattach that dang strap.

Kristin tried. Sam tried. A friend tried. We all failed, miserably. I looked online for help only to find other reviews of this watch stating that it was nigh-impossible to reattach the watch bands after pulling them off. I was even more discouraged by the prospect of having to go through this every time I needed to put in a new battery. Finally I thought, forget it, I'm taking off the watch bands and gluing it to my bike. My lovely wife suggested I use a handy velcro cable tie, slip it between the two watch strap pins (sans wrist bands) and attach it that way. One minute later I have an up and running heart monitor and I'm delighted! It looks adhoc but it feels and functions fine and in the future I can replace the batteries with ease.

My brother just posted an entry about his resting heart rate which got me curious. If I really slow my breathing down I can get my heart rate in the 40s, otherwise it hovers somewhere in the 50s and jumps to the 70s with mild activity (like walking around). Typing a blog entry is apparently relaxing because my heart rate seems to be staying in the 50s while I type this. This is all assuming the HRM is accurate, but hey, I shaved my chest for this thing so it better be. :)

Too Cold To Ride

2008-01-18T09:14:00.000-07:00

This biggest loser competition is a great motivator for riding. I haven't driven my car to work in two weeks. It's sitting in my driveway right now looking lonely and cold. This morning it was 0° C on my back porch when I woke up. That's definitely not shorts weather. :)

I bundled up in multiple layers, put on my obnoxiously bright jacket and left the house a little after 7:00 AM. It was extremely cold out. I'm glad I haven't shaved my beard down in a couple weeks. I have memories of riding in this weather and not being able to speak properly when I got to work because my cheeks were so numb. Not this morning though.

Once I got in I drank my first ever cup of black coffee (I'm too much of a snob to use non-dairy creamer powder) and then a cup of herbal tea. My fingers and toes are still a little cold, but otherwise I'm warming up nicely.

My lovely wife is on her way to the office with my kids and a delicious bagel! This is going to be a good day!

Happy Birthday To Me!

2008-01-16T16:29:00.001-07:00

Mt Lemmon in the early morning hours.

It's my 29th birthday today. I took the day off of work to celebrate. I woke up at 6:00 AM and was out the door by 6:50 AM to ride up Mt Lemmon. I met my riding buddy and we rode up the mountain together. I made it 9 1/4 miles up to Seven Cataracts Vista and made it home by 10:30. I was a little nervous coming down because another rider hit a patch of black ice a bit above where I turned around and wrecked, badly. From what I understand he cracked a rib, broke a collar bone and punctured a lung. Ouch. I rode slowly through the shady sections at the higher elevations and thankfully didn't encounter anything slippery. :)

I've been working hard on winning that biggest loser competition. I've ridden to work every day and ridden longer rides on Sundays and Thursday. I've really been enjoying my rides to work, even though I've been tired at night. Eventually my body will get used to it and it'll feel more routine. It hurts now though!

After the ride up Mt Lemmon this morning I was dehydrated and drained. I weighed myself before hopping in the shower and I was down to 187.6 pounds! Holy Cow! No wonder I felt thirsty! I weighed myself again after eating lunch and getting dressed and I was back up to 197. :) That's quite a change for a couple hours!

After I cleaned up and rehydrated we drove into town for phase 2 of my birthday, Indian food! We went to delicious New Delhi palace and ate the buffet. Elias was hilarious during the lunch. We ordered him a mango lassi (pureed mangoes and yogurt) and he yelled to the table next to us "Hey Guys! I got a mango lassi!" They smiled at him. He also told the whole restaurant when we left "Goodbye! I love you! I'll see you next time!"

As we were leaving we received a complement on our patient parenting skills from a random diner. That felt good because I feel like my patience has been going in ups and downs lately, and I've been trying hard to maintain calm with a sometimes frustrating 3 year old. I guess it hasn't been as bad as I thought. :)

Right now Elias has two friends over and Eva is asleep in the bedroom. Kristin is preparing a delicious lemon lentil soup for dinner and she's made my favorite angel food and strawberry whipped cream cake. The parents of Elias' visitors are coming over later to play Settler's of Catan with us tonight. That's phase 3. So far it's been a fantastic birthday!

The KKK Took My Baby Away

2008-01-10T10:21:00.000-07:00

Elias doesn't actually know what the Ramone's look like, so these Cars cars will work.

My son primarily listens to kids music. Wee Sing, music from one of his various classes, or things we've bought for him. Lately though I've been introducing other music from my collection into our listenings when he goes with me somewhere in the car or just around the house. I figured you're never too young to listen to the Ramones, so I put them on. At first he didn't like them and protested when I put them on. Then he started singing "The KKK Took My Baby Away" to himself. He didn't have the lyrics quite right, and I believe in accuracy so I put them on again for him. We sang along a bit, and now it's his favorite song.

Having a son who sings the Ramones can be a little strange sometimes, especially in the grocery store, but it always makes me smile. I think he likes the song because it sings about babies, not knowing that it's about the singer's girlfriend rather than an actual baby. He's asked me if the KKK are bad people, and I tell him yes but they live in the south, so he needn't worry. :)

He was completely against any listening to the "Sha na na" song by the Ramones. I like to put it on occasionally just to listen to him freak out and say "No Dad! Not the sha na na one!" heh heh. :)

What to introduce him to next?

The Thought

2008-01-06T12:20:00.000-07:00

The other night Elias was asleep in his bunk bed, and as usual he woke up in the middle of the night and came into our bed. It gets a little crowded in there with a squirmy 3 year old, me, Eva and Kristin so we've been asking Elias to sleep in his trundle bed (which is conveniently spaced about a foot from our bed, on my side). He protested a few nights ago when Eva was sick, so I reached over to his trundle bed and drug it over so it was flush with our main bed. Viola! Instant super king size bed. Elias was happy with this and crawled into his trundle bed and quickly fell asleep.

Last night, Elias woke me up at some early hour of the morning and said "Please Dad, could you move the bed over?" I reached out and grabbed the frame and drug his bed over again. Then Elias proceeded to crawl into the new super size bed and cuddle up right next to me, completely missing the whole 'extra bed space' concept. Ahh well, it's the thought that counts I suppose. :)

Biggest Loser

2008-01-04T12:47:00.001-07:00

My office is holding a biggest loser competition. The premise is simple (and I assume the same as the TV show, though I've never seen it). Each month contestants fork over 10 bucks and hop on the scale for a weigh in. The contest lasts 4 months. The person who loses the highest percentage of body weight wins and takes all the money.

I signed up this year hoping to nab the 19 people * 10 bucks * 4 months = $760 prize. I weighed in at 203.6 lbs. My goal is to be around 180 by April, when the competition ends. I'm not dissatisfied with my current weight, but I am dissatisfied with my junk food consumption. About a year ago I started drinking delicious mochas and consuming sodas, chocolate, cake, donuts, etc. I think a little junk food is healthy now and again, but my frequency is not where I want it to be. I've also put on about 20 pounds and my riding has slowed down. I don't plan on cutting back what I'm eating so much as ensuring that what I'm eating is healthy. The riding increase should take care of the rest.

I also have an ulterior motive. The Tour de Phoenix is April 5th, one day after the final weigh in for the biggest loser competition. It is a 74 mile ride through the only mountains anywhere near the desolate wasteland that is Phoenix and is actually quite difficult. I am trying to lose the weight for this ride as it's a lot easier to lug 180 pounds up a mountain than it is to lug 200 pounds up a mountain. Especially if that 180 pounds has been riding his bike a lot. :)

The winner of the last biggest loser competition lost 5% body weight. If I reach my ideal riding weight of 180 that would be 10% of my body weight which should pull the win for me. My main competition is my coworker who is also a cyclist and is in the competition also. I can't really lose more than 20 pounds without looking like an emaciated skeleton whereas I've seen him 30 pounds lighter than he currently is (which is still less than me) and he was fit as a fiddle. He was also riding his bike 1000 miles a month at the time, which I've never come close to.

So far I've ridden my bike to work today and I haven't had a mocha in a whole day! I want to do a loop around Saguaro National Monument and Pistol Hill this weekend. If I push myself hard enough that should be a good introductory weekend ride with a few minor hills to prepare for the coming race.

I feel better already. :)

Happy New Year!

2008-01-04T10:00:00.000-07:00

Eva on Mt Lemmon in the snow.

The holidays are over and life is steadily returning to balance. It was an enjoyable Christmas. Elias LOVED it and really got excited. This was his first year where his enthusiasm for the holidays took off. Now begins the fun Christmas years. :)

I have been joking a lot with Elias of late. Telling him things like "we only have broccoli flavored ice cream" and "sorry, we don't really allow 'playing' in this house". At first he started freaking out at these comments and taking them at face value. He soon recognized (with Mom's help) that I was merely joking with him and he developed a counter saying. Instead of getting upset he smiles and says "Dad, don't be silly!"

On Christmas Eve Elias was getting pretty excited by the presents under the tree. He kept talking about them and asking to open them and asking if it was Christmas. I told him "You know Elias, Christmas isn't about the presents." He became very quizzical, looked me in the eye and said "Dad, don't be silly!". Oh no.

We spent Christmas day in Tucson and then travelled to the Verde Valley the day after. This was the first trip I've taken to the Verde Valley in recent memory that I didn't get sick from. This feat is made especially remarkable because everyone we came into contact had the flu. Even our kids seemed to avoid it, though Eva had her first fever yesterday (we're thinking it might be a teething fever as she has no other symptoms, but who knows).

Now we're back home and I'm back at work. My goals for this New Year are fairly simple.

Ride my bike to work every day I can

Train for the Tour de Phoenix in April (and reclaim my status as a hill climber)

Blog more

Spend less money on food preferably by making more things from scratch

Emulate the lifestyle and appearance of Eugene Hutz, the lead singer of Gogol Bordello

The Honeymoon is Over

2007-12-05T23:28:00.001-07:00

Eva gave us almost 6 months before she learned to crawl. Now the blissful period of babydom where you can just set them on a 4x4 rug and let them squirm around are over. She's mobile. She's also acquired advanced targeting algorithms. She can find the closest item she's not supposed to be playing with and make a bee line for it.

I'd have to look back at the pictures, but I'm pretty sure Elias gave us 9 months of non-crawling baby life. Elias was even easier though, because he never put anything in his mouth. He never had interest in swallowing chokable objects. Eva is another story. Everything goes in her mouth. She is a hand to mouth kind of kid. I guess we have to put away our collection of marbles and miniature cars. :)

Gaslight Theatre

2007-12-05T22:35:00.000-07:00

Elias and Sam play in the bouncing carriage outside the Gaslight Theatre.

Tonight we went to a Christmas show at the Gaslight Theatre. This is a local western themed theatre house here in Tucson. It fills up quickly so you have to make your reservations quite a bit in advance. They do singing and dancing shows that are often parodies of classic stories or mainstream movies. We've been to the Buccaneer's of the Caribbean and the Two Amigos before. Tonight we went to "Scrooge, A Christmas Musical -or- Older but Miser!" It was the classic Scrooge story set in the 50's with an Elvis ghost of Christmas present. It was awesome.

Kristin and I had gone together without Elias (before Eva was born) a few times and decided that Elias could probably handle the environment now. Tonight was his first time attending and he did wonderfully. The show was hilarious and Elias was cracking up. He also really got into the story which I thought was great. Often times he'll focus on a particular thing he sees and not so much the entire story so it was good to see him get intellectually involved. Kristin wisely reserved a seat on the balcony in the corner so Elias spent the entire time on a chair peering over the railing with a wide grin.

The Gaslight Theatre is catered by Grandma Tony's pizza, a 50's diner. We ordered pizza, fried zucchini, a pitcher of root beer and popcorn. Then for dessert we enjoyed the seasonal peppermint ice cream milk shakes. My son's dinner consisted of popcorn, soda, ice cream and a few bites of pizza. But what the heck, it's a night out right? :)

The main Scrooge show was succeeded by a Blue Grass Christmas Jamboree. This is my favorite part of the Gaslight Theatre. They usually take one genre of music and lampoon famous songs and people from it, and every music act is interspersed with terrible jokes (my favorite kind):

"Did you hear a feller invented a new way to count cattle?"
"Oh yeah? What is it?"
"It's called a cow-culator"

That's comedy gold right there. :)

It was a wonderful night and given Elias' reaction, I think we might have to make it a Christmas tradition. Maybe I need to look into season tickets...

The Greatest Dad in the World

2007-12-05T22:21:00.000-07:00

Vacuuming is exhausting, even when you're only along for the ride!

I'm basically the greatest Dad in the world. Tonight we went to the Gaslight Theatre (that's another blog entry... hopefully!) and afterwards Elias and I came home separately. Our house was a disaster and tomorrow Kristin is hosting the monthly La Leche League meeting here, so it needed to be picked up. When Elias and I arrived at home we picked up, put away groceries, put away laundry, played and in general worked towards the goal of immaculatizing our home. Kristin came home soon afterwards and I took the girl from her, brushed Elias' teeth, put him in pajamas and put him to bed. He fell asleep while holding my hand. It was a nice moment.

With Elias asleep I got up, took the baby girl from Kristin again and proceeded to finish picking up, vacuum the whole house and then put Eva to sleep. Two kids down peacefully, and a clean house. That's a pretty good record for the evening.

In all fairness, this is like a regular day for my wife, but I'm only part time at this whole parent thing. I waste a good 8 hours a day engineering software so my skills aren't as honed as Kristin's. She no doubt would have had a scrumptious meal prepared, the floor mopped and both kids bathed on top of everything I did. Still though, I'm feeling pretty puffed up about my accomplishments this evening. :)

El Tour de Tucson

2007-11-21T10:46:00.000-07:00

Sam, my brother and I wait at the start line.

I rode in my 5th El Tour de Tucson last Saturday. It was excellent! I have a new baby in my family so I haven't been riding as much as years prior, but I still was in decent shape from commuting to work and riding with Sam on weekends. Most importantly though, my brother was out to ride with me. I wanted very badly to keep up with him. He's skinny, doesn't own a car, and is insanely motivated to push himself. He's also vegan, which I hoped would help me given my larger fat reserves and relatively flat course, but in the end (or in the middle actually) he took off like a wild pierced demon and I didn't see him again until the finish. :)

This year was a milestone for my family because it was Sam's first attempt at riding a century. I was worried about her abilities this year until we rode Tumacacori a month prior and she did an amazing job. After that I was confident she could ride the 109 miles and it was only a question of how fast.

We spent the Thursday night and Friday night carbo-loading. I got to experience the joy of feeling full at 9:30 pm and then eating a bowl of cereal, just to get more calories stored in my system. It sucked.

Friday afternoon my brother arrived and we prepared everything for the next day and then ate some more food, finally retiring to bed at the late hour of 10 pm. 6 1/2 hours later (4:30 am) I awoke to the soothing sounds of my alarm and rose to face the day! Sam was already up and getting dressed, amazingly. She neverwakes up for morning rides, but apparently a 109 mile bike race is sufficient motivation. Everything was packed in the car already and it was just a matter of stuffing more food into our full and nervous bellies and then getting my 3 year old and 5 month old into the car peacefully. Luckily it was 57 degrees out so there were no problems with being cold. Sam was a little grumpy, but she was doing an excellent job of hiding it. :) We left the house at 5 am and sped towards the downtown start line.

Elias doing his "victory pose" after finishing the 1/4 mile Kids Fun Ride.

We arrived and had our bikes out and prepped by 5:40 am. By this time the gold start line was completely full and we started at the front of the silver line. Waiting in line is always interesting because there are 5000 cyclists all waiting a couple hours in the cold and trying to find the right time to eliminate before the start. People are generally cheery and it's an excellent time to people watch. My daughter was awake but happy, my son was awake and wanted to go back to the car. We parked our bikes near the fence of the start line so Kris and the kids could easily talk with us. I spent the last half of our wait time holding Elias who was either cold or tired or both. It kept him happy and it kept me warm. :)

At the start line we made Sam down a couple of Gu shots, which are basically super concentrated sugar goop. They taste disgusting and make you thirsty, but they help get that little extra boost of energy straight to your blood stream. Sam hates them. :) My brother, Sam and I were lucky enough to have Kristin and the kids there as a mini support crew. This meant we could wear warm jackets and pants while waiting in line, and then strip down to shorts and shirts at the last minute, handing our extra clothes to Kristin. The problem with the El Tour and my lovely city is it starts out cold (50-ish degrees) and then hits 85 degrees by the time you finish. If you can tough out the cold for a while you have a really nice afternoon ride.

After a long wait, the countdown to start finally began, and we eagerly awaited our race. Unfortunately because we were in the silver line, we had to wait for the entire gold line to leave before we could even start, so we were stuck at the start line for another 5 minutes while all the early birds got to begin. Once we could start we had some catching up to do!

The beginning is by far the scariest part of the ride. My brother and I weren't the only ones who had aspirations of finishing in under 6 hours but happened to arrive too late to get in the gold line. Everyone is jockeying for position and one reckless rider can take down a whole group of safety conscious ones. We held back a bit for the first mile to avoid any accidents or endangering any of our riding companions. After that we opened it up and started passing people. This is where we lost Sam. I never intended to stay with her. She does much better if she's by herself but knows that someone is up ahead. :) My goal this race was to hang onto my brother for as long as possible. This point in the race is when it gets exciting. You are full of energy and adrenaline and there are police blocking every intersection so you can ride as fast as your legs and lungs will allow.

I was feeling good, but not as good as my brother. He was on fire! We would catch up to a group that was going decently fast and I would think "Phew, we can hang here for a minute and catch our breath..." Only to hear my brother say "This group is slow, let's catch the next one!". What could I say but "All right, let's go for it!" :)

We kept up this frantic pace for the first 50 miles or so, stopping only once for a quick snack and bathroom break. At the 50 mile point we stopped again, very shortly at the Sabino Creek crossing. This is a tradition on the El Tour where all the cyclists dismount and walk their 5000 dollar road bikes through the dirt. They reward you with yet more food and a small break in your riding.

Me crossing the finish line. It's important to smile when crossing. :)

After the Sabino crossing the ride starts heading up hill and the packs break apart. I kept with my brother for a very short time, but he had more energy to hop on a pack and eventually took off. I kept up as fast a pace as I could and gradually recovered my strength for the last half of the ride. I managed to find a pack that was going about my speed and hung on with them. The ride was very peaceful and I didn't really speak to anyone on it, but I was always around people. Usually I ride with a group of friends, but this year they all decided not to race so I was alone with strangers.

Usually around mile 90 I start to break down and lose hope. I think this is when my body burns through all of its food and it hasn't had enough time to digest new food yet. Either because I'm fatter this year or because I ate better I didn't feel this at all this year. I rolled into milepost 95 and felt fantastic. I wolfed down a few cookies and pretzels, gulped a bottle full of water and took off for the final stretch - Silverbell!

I hate Silverbell road. It's bumpy, hot, windy, and miserable. This year was different. There was no head wind. My energy level was high. The road didn't feel as bumpy (it must be that new carbon fiber bike). It was fantastic! My brother and I were targeting 5 hours and 45 minutes for our finish time and in order to achieve that I would need to go 22 mph down Silverbell. "No way", I thought! I usually go 10! I latched onto the wheel of a girl in a purple TriGirls jersey and looked down at my speed. 21 mph! What the heck? This must be a different road!

I kept pace with the tri girl for as long as I could and then slowed it up a bit for the last few miles, but by then my time was excellent. I crossed the finish line feeling strong at 5 hours, 47 minutes and 51 seconds. Yeah!

My speedy brother finished in 5 hours and 30 minutes. I was very impressed. I'm definitely going to have to kick up my riding next year to keep up with him. :) We walked our bikes to a shady spot Kristin had reserved with a picnic blanket and relaxed while we waited for Sam to finish. She called us 20 miles from the finish line and said she was feeling great!

Sam completing her first 100 mile ride!

My good buddy Keem and his girlfriend Dawn came to help Kristin out with the kids and film the ride. They brought their new HD camcorder and filmed me as well as Sam crossing the finish line. They also took many pictures of my son riding his orange tiger bike on the El Tour Kids Fun Ride. It's a quarter mile ride packed with 0 to 6 year olds that ride in trailers, on bikes of their own or on tandems with their parents. Elias loves it and he's done 6 or 7 of them so far. One of these days he'll be old enough to do the full thing with me on a tandem. :)

Sam crossed the finish line in 8 hours, 37 minutes and 44 seconds. We were very impressed and very happy for her. She actually wrecked on her bike a week before and still had bright red cuts on her leg from her front cog digging into her. She likes to think she's not very tough, but deep inside she's a stubborn trooper. :) Her knee was sore and she was tired, but the hype from finishing such a feat kept her going long into the afternoon. Then she crashed. Hard. :)

The day was the best El Tour I've experienced so far. The weather was great. My energy level and motivation was high. My family was happy. It was wonderful. I can't wait for next year!

Nightly Walks

2007-11-11T21:25:00.001-07:00

Another successful night!

I just returned from a nightly walk with the wife. Kris bought a double jogging stroller off of EBay a couple weeks ago. I was reluctant to spend the money at first because we are not really a stroller kind of family, we're more of a carry-your-kids kind of family, but I am very happy with it now. Elias has been skipping his naps for the past few months and so he's been ready for bed around 7 pm. Eva has been getting crazy and wild around that same time and a stroll in the stroller puts them both right to sleep.

Tonight Elias was pretty energetic when we went to leave so we let him run along side us for the first half mile or so. And I do mean run! He grabbed onto the dog's leash and skipped and sang to himself happily for the first part of our trip. He started to wear down around the half mile mark so he climbed into the stroller and soon fell asleep.

Our kids like these walks, but Kris and I love them. Once Eva and Elias are sound asleep we get a nice quiet hour to talk. With the busyness and hubbub of modern life, an hour to talk with your spouse uninterrupted is a beautiful thing.

After eating dinner it's also a great way to start the digestion process and stretch the legs out. I thought that riding my bike would diminish my enjoyment of the event but walking stretches a completely different set of muscles than riding a bicycle. A post bike ride walk feels fantastic!

We've gone on a 3 mile walk every night for the last five nights and probably 10 times in the last couple weeks. I think we'll keep up the trend as long as Elias doesn't take naps and Eva needs the wind down. Plus the Christmas season is almost upon us and that means people will start hanging hoards of Christmas lights on their houses. That is the best time to walk!

Cultural Diversity is Awkward

2007-11-09T14:21:00.000-07:00

"What color is Sam?"

While on the Flag Ride on Monday, my family met me at Brooklyn Street Pizza Company for lunch. This is in downtown Tucson which has a lot of university traffic. We ordered our pizzas and sat down at one of the tables. I drank my high fructose cocktail down to the bottom and got up to get a refill. Elias came with me.

While we waited in line a guy walked in, about 20 years old, black, and carrying a laptop with him. He sat down at the table next to us, pulled out the laptop and started working away. Elias stopped, stared at him for a minute, and asked me (loudly) "Dad? What is that black boy doing?" Great. Thanks kiddo. :)

I answered him by trying to steer the subject a bit "I don't know, he's probably working on his laptop. Hey look, he has a laptop just like Danny!" He responds with "What is that black boy doing with his laptop?" "I don't know, SODA PLEASE!" We returned to our seats.

Now my son is a big fan of categorizing. He categorizes pretty much everything in his life, and he loves descriptive terms. We haven't ever sat down and taught him about race and color, but he's a huge fan of differentiating people by gender so it's no wonder he's picked up on color as well. The other day we were talking about what color different people were and the conversation went something like this.

Elias: "What color am I Mom?"
Us: "I don't know, what color are you Elias?"
Elias: "Brown."
Us: "What color is Dad?"
Elias: "Brown."
Us: "What color is Mom?"
Elias: "Brown."
Us: "What color is Sam?"
Elias: ... "Light brown."

During the same lunch, Elias and I were sitting on bar stools eating our pizza and he swung around in his seat, pointed at a man with long hair and dark beard stubble and said "That's a girl!" Wow, my son is in rare form today! The bearded "lady" in question started cracking up and I told Elias "He can't be a girl, he has a beard." Elias said "Girls have beards." "No they don't." Heh heh, good ol' kids!

To top off his exciting day at the pizza parlor, Elias and I visited the restroom before we left. I commented to him on all the cool industrial plumbing and piping lining the walls, then proceeded to do my business. I heard the sound of trickling water behind me and turned around quickly to see Elias turning some wheel valve on one of the pipes. ACCKKK!! I quickly closed the open valve and stopped the oncoming flood of water.

Phew! What an exciting visit to the pizza parlor! :)

El Tour Flag Ride

2007-11-05T17:28:00.000-07:00

Elias must be wondering if his Dad is still alive.

I rode in my 3rd El Tour Flag Ride today. The Flag Ride is an event put on by Perimeter Bicycling where cyclists volunteer to carry the flag of El Tour around the entire route of the race in the weeks before the actual race. I took the day off from work, woke up at 5:45 am and rode 113 miles today.

I am utterly exhausted. The regular El Tour is much easier than the flag ride because there are kind policeman stopping traffic for you, waving you through lights. You can ride with thousands of other riders who take the brunt of the wind leaving you with an effortless glide around the perimeter of the city of Tucson.

The Flag Ride has no such niceties. We always ride on a week day fully engulfed in traffic and stop lights, with only 3 of us (this year) forming our "pack". It's really fun though. What a way to spend a day off! I left the house at 6:30 am when it was just light enough to ride with a minimum of car-to-bike visibility. I met my riding companions 8 miles down the road at Saguaro National Monument and we embarked on the official El Tour route.

The beginning of the route is really pretty. It heads up to the north side of Tucson and we rode alongside the base of the Catalinas. The mountains are beautiful with a warm glow of morning light and the air is crisp. After riding along the south side of the mountains we turned north and rode along the western edge of the Catalinas. This took us into Oracle and through Rancho Vistoso. I like the north side of Tucson, even if it does have a bit of a Phoenix feel to it, but it's so far away from where I work, let alone where I live so I rarely visit it. There is just as much development on the north side of Tucson as on the south side though!

After we hit the northern most edge of the route we turned west on Tangerine. This is where the ride starts to get ugly. Tangerine is wonderful during the official El Tour. It's downhill. It's fast. And it's 80 miles in so it always feels great to really fly. On the Flag Ride we do it's crowded with big rigs and cement trucks. They are generally polite to cyclists but there is no bike lane to speak of and they form quite a wall of wind. It's scary.

We survived that section and continued to Silverbell road which is bumpier and rougher every year. It's an OK road, but not my favorite side of town. We cut over the interstate around downtown Tucson and went to lunch at the delicious Brooklyn Pizza Company. Kristin and the kids met us there so I got to see my crazy son and my cute daughter. Elias was THRILLED to see me and insisted that he sit on my lap. In order to consume any lunch I made a deal with him to sit at the bar on a bar stool. The pizza was excellent.

With only 30 miles to go and sore bodies, we made our way back through downtown and rode along the edge of the pristine east side of Tucson. Woowee, it's pretty ghetto! Along Mission Road there must be some sort of competition to see who can smash the most glass bottles in the bike lane. At first I just assumed some kids had a wild night, but when I looked upon the dirt lots we were riding next to I saw nothing but a sea of glass. It was amazing. Almost beautiful, like a mosaic of discarded alcohol.

The glass tour continued as we rode further south into the dreaded southwest side of Tucson. This is a land of jacked up pickup trucks and loud stereos. We luckily hit this section before rush hour so we encountered relatively light traffic.

We turned east to head back home and entered the bumpiest section of road in the tour. More big rigs and cement trucks passed us, this time along with school buses to make me nervous as they buzzed past. The bumpy road and the pizza were not in agreement with my stomach and I had to slow down to stop from throwing up. I rode most of this section at a crawl and burped very carefully.

My odometer ticked over to 105 miles as I entered back into the familiar territory of home. My stomach was feeling better but my legs were far weaker than they were this morning. I limped home and arrived exhausted and relieved. I am ready for a peaceful night. Perhaps a movie... :)

Halloween!

2007-10-31T22:03:00.000-07:00

Little Red Riding Hood and the big good wolf. Elias started the night with face paint, but quickly smudged it off with his hands. :)

Halloween was excellent this year. We went to my boss's house in 49ers Country Club. It's a great place to do Halloween because the people are pleasant, there are only golf carts on the roads and my boss throws a nice party with catered Mexican food. His house also makes a good home base. We stopped first at the house of another friend who lives in 49ers to show off Elias and Eva's costume, and then we went to my boss's house.

Elias was thrilled because he loves my boss and his good buddy Aiden was there. This year Elias found out Aiden was going as Little Red Riding Hood and he told us he was going as the Big Good Wolf. He didn't want to be the Big Bad Wolf because he's been very observant of good guys, bad guys, policeman and jail. He didn't want to risk it.

Eva isn't old enough to pick her own costume so we decided she would go as a barrel cactus. We live in the desert, so it's a fitting costume, plus it's an outfit a baby can easily wear. :) Kristin spent the previous few nights sewing fur onto shirts and a hat for Elias' costume, and dying a big shirt for Eva's costume. They turned out great!

In the past Halloween was enjoyable, but Elias was shy and didn't really get into it. This year he was talkative! He said "Trick or Treat" at every house, and he also said "Thank You" to everyone. Sometimes he said "Thank You" before ever saying "Trick or Treat". This pleased me to no end. :)

Elias held hands with Aiden and her brother Isaac through the whole night and was so happy it was contagious. Eva was her usual content self. She just loves walking around and looking at things. Everyone loved seeing the baby dressed up like a cactus and Kristin got many invites to take candy for her. We had to decline due to Eva's age (5 months old is a little early for consuming a bag full of candy), but some people insisted that Kristin take them for herself. We took many pictures of all the kids walking together, but it's hard to get good ones when it's pitch black out. Luckily none of our kids went into epileptic fits from the intensity of our camera flash.

Eva in her barrel cactus attire.

The nice thing about going Trick-or-Treating with 3 and 4 year olds is they don't care about how much candy they get, so you don't have to do a Halloween Death March. We strolled leisurely up and down a couple of streets and returned with a small bucket of candy. We spent another hour playing at my boss's house and then drove home with tired kids and tired parents. It was a nice evening.

San Diego Trip - Part 3

2007-10-22T10:02:00.000-07:00

Elias running with a spoonful of wet sand to dump on a mound somewhere

Today we went to the beach! I have to admit, I'm from a landlocked state and I'm afraid of water. Not just bath water, but giant rolling bodies of water. The kind of water you find at, say, the ocean. I've gradually worked through this fear and I never let it stop me from running into the waves and swimming, but in some ways it's terrifying. That endless expanse of water concealing who knows what sea monsters and carnivorous plant life...

My son must share my fear, because he didn't really want to go in the water. He wanted to play in the sand the entire time. He loves playing in the gravel beneath his playset at home, so I should have seen this coming. He got to the beach, pulled out his shovel and bucket, and dug and built mounds all morning. I drug him into the water one time to get him some exposure to it. He was pretty happy, but he clung to me like a many tentacled squid. It took me quite a bit of effort to get his arms off so I could dangle his legs in the water. He smiled and laughed the whole time, but he wanted to return to the beach.

I set him down in the water and reached down to hold his hand. I felt something slip off my finger and that's when I realized I had made a terrible mistake. I sun screened up Elias and I myself and went straight in for a quick dip in the ocean. I did not remove my wedding ring before entering the water. When I got married I weighed around 220 pounds. I weigh just under 200 now and most of it is in my legs. My fingers are quite a bit skinnier than they were when I was fitted for my wedding ring and it always slips off. I usually instinctively clench my fingers together, but holding Elias' hand made this impossible and my wedding ring was swept away by a wave.

I searched futilely in the sand for my missing ring for a few minutes, but when the ocean takes something it doesn't return it. I was pretty depressed by the whole thing. I felt stupid for not taking my ring off when I'm usually so good about it (on bike rides, swimming excursions, while doing yard work). Kristin was pretty upset about it too, understandably.

Eva in a rare moment of awake-ness on the trip.

The worst part about losing that ring was I continued to "lose it" for the rest of the vacation. I had grown so accustomed to checking for that loose ring after washing my hands, pulling ice out of a cooler, taking a shower, etc. that I had a jolt of surprise every 5 minutes when I realized my ring was gone. It sucked. I need to get a new one before I drive myself crazy. I can still feel it on my finger. My old ring had an inscription that said "06/00 K to C" and I wanted to get a new one that said "06/00 K to C (v2)", but Kris didn't like this idea. :) One of these days we're going to have to make a trip to a jewelry store to pick up a new ring...

The rest of the day at the beach was spent alternating between playing in the water and helping Elias build sand castles. We dug a few holes in the ground and the water would occasionally wash up and fill them.

Sam and I took a trip out to the deeper part of the ocean. Not so deep that you couldn't touch (well, not so deep that I couldn't touch) but deep enough where the waves crash over your head. The water was freezing so Sam and her 1% body fat couldn't take it for very long. When she finally did get out she was covered in goose bumps and her teeth were rattling. She had fun though. :)

Kris stayed on the beach with Eva for the most part, except for a walk to Crystal Pier with Sam. Eva did the same thing she did during every day of the vacation. She slept. We bought a beach umbrella to keep her out of the sun and she pretty much slept the whole time we were at the beach.

After the beach we spent the rest of the day relaxing at the hotel to try and recharge our kids. The previous few days were so busy our kids were starting to get fried, and we were joining them. Other than the ocean annulling my marriage, I think it was a good day at the beach!

Tumacacori

2007-10-21T18:49:00.000-07:00

Me with my start of the ride 'warrior pose'.

Sam and I rode in the Tumacacori Century today. It was hard. I've done Tumacacori five times so far and this was the second most difficult time I've had riding it (On the hardest time I rode 120 miles instead of 104 after making a wrong turn in Nogales in 101 degrees). On the way out I flew like the wind and felt very strong. There was a headwind and the final 30 miles was some of the most grueling riding I've had the pleasure of doing. Still, it was an enjoyable day and aside from being mentally defeated I feel pretty good physically.

I haven't been doing much riding this year compared to last year. Last year I rode in a 500 mile cross state ride and a 220 mile loop through the White Mountains on the eastern side of the state. I also trained like crazy for those two rides to try and become a hill climber. After the Grand Canyon ride my motivation dropped steeply (didn't help I had a baby on the way) and I have basically been riding to maintain my new slower status rather than improve. I've been trying to kick up the pace a bit for the El Tour de Tucson if only so I can keep up with my brother. I've been a stronger rider the last couple years but I'm pretty sure he's passed me up this year. He's been riding all the time and he's really been rocking and rolling. This year's El Tour is shaping up to be an intense experience. :)

Kris, Eva (and Elias' body) in the car at one of the SAG stops.

For this year's Tumacacori we arrived a wee bit later than usual. I misjudged how long the drive from our house to Sahuarita was and we arrived just as registration opened. After unloading the bikes, pumping the tires, holding the baby while the wife used the restroom, etc. It was 7:15 am when we started. Sam and I rode the first few miles together while I warmed up and then I sprinted ahead to the first turn around point.

Sam hasn't been riding many long rides this year but her skill has been improving quite a bit. It really showed today. She just got braces and her mouth has been bothering her so I didn't expect her to feel highly motivated, but she really went for it. Kristin and I kept suggesting that she cut a few miles here and there off the ride but she'd have none of it. She followed a few miles behind me all the way to the second to the last SAG. For this version of Tumacacori the second to the last SAG was at 57 miles with a 10 mile ride out to the last SAG, then back to the beginning for a grand total of 100.2 miles. She rolled in to the 57 mile point and felt great. Unfortunately it had been a strong tailwind before that point and many of the returning riders were bemoaning the fierce headwind they encountered on the way back. Sam wanted to go for it but the wind picked up in ferocity and she decided to turn around there and settle for an 80 mile ride. She arrived at the end feeling energized and not too fazed by the wind and now she wishes she'd rode the whole thing. Even though that part was disappointing for her, Kristin and I were incredibly impressed with her tenacity and endurance. I think she can do the 109 mile El Tour de Tucson. I didn't before this day! :)

Sam ready to tackle a century.

Kris, Elias and Eva followed Sam and I around the course in our own personal support car. Elias enjoyed getting out of the car at the stops and playing in the dirt. It's his favorite pass time. Eva was pretty cheery every time I saw her, but Kris tells me she got tired of being in the car on the way back to the start line. It was nice having my family meet me at every SAG stop. They didn't manage to to make it to the last one and a couple of guys that were riding around me remarked "Your family didn't make it to this one?" I think they were envious of my cycling supportive family. :)

I did do the whole 100 miles and I kind of wish I hadn't. My shoulders are sore, my hands are sore, my back is sore and my legs are wobbly. There were two factors that allowed me to finish. I had a strong sense of macho pride compelling me to finish, but more importantly I had given Sam my cell phone and I really had no choice. :)

Sam-isms

2007-10-15T14:12:00.000-07:00

Sam after being inducted into the National Honors Society

Sam is our ward. She's been living with us since she began High School last year. My coworkers thought I was crazy when I told them we were getting guardianship over a teenage girl. After having one for a year I think everyone should get a teenager. Sure, she chats on the computer a lot and frowns when I drag her out of bed at 5 am for a bike ride, but she's fun to be around!

She's taken to riding road bikes with me and she's been hitting up Kristin for ideas on how to cook something more nutritious than ramen. :) She's an amazingly studious student. High school wasn't that long ago so I remember at least vaguely what it was like, and her's seems much harder than mine ever was. She's constantly doing homework, and only rarely does she balk at it.

And holy cow does she help out. I can't count the number of times I've come home from work thinking "I'm going to help the wife out today and clean X room." only to arrive and have it spotless because of Cinder-Sam. She's always volunteering to watch Elias so Kris, the baby and I can go out to Starbucks for a latte and a cribbage game (That's a baby date!)

Sam also comes with a variety of things Kristin and I refer to as Sam-isms. These are strange ideas that only Sam would think of or understandings of the world only Sam would have. We tease her about them constantly. We feel it's our duty to fill the role of mocking friends (we both had ample supplies of these growing up and Sam seems to be lacking them). We know that all kids say weird things but it's interesting to see what Sam's are compared to what ours were when we were growing up or what our kids will be when they hit the teenage years. I've decided to try and catalog them in this entry so I can look back and remember them. :)

Sam pronounces Breakfast without a 'k', i.e. Brefast

What's the C for?

She asked us the other day "What does the C in the handicap sign stand for?"

Upon tasting kalamata olives she asked "What type of olives do they make wine with?"
"Madonna's still alive?"

When talking about Eva's June Birthday: "Wow, Eva will be able to celebrate almost all the major holidays before she's a year old!"

When she cuts sandwhiches, she cuts half the sandwhich, turns it 180 degrees and then cuts the other half. It's cute.

More to come as I think of them...

We like to give Sam a hard time about things like this, but it's all done out of love. She's a fantastic person and we've been very thankful to have her stay with us. She graduates high school in one and a half years and I'm not really sure what we'll do without her. Hmmm... Maybe we can convince her to go to UofA...

San Diego Trip - Part 2

2007-10-15T12:24:00.000-07:00

Elias in the freshwater aquarium sporting a cool sun hat.

Day 2 of our San Diego trip was spent at Sea World. We thought about trying to hit the zoo and the wild animal park as well, but we decided on a simpler trip and just concentrated on Sea World. We scheduled two days to see everything at a reasonable pace, and it's a good thing we did.

Elias had a terrible night unfortunately. He played so hard the day before that he woke up many times in the night complaining that his legs hurt. I don't think Kristin slept much, and Elias woke up grumpy. We soldiered on though and arrived at Sea World right as it opened.

We immediately went to the first event of the day, dolphin feeding! Elias was actually willing to feed the dolphins! He's usually too shy to grab a slimy fish and plop it in the open mouths of any sea creatures, but not today. He's growing up. :)

After the dolphins we walked all around the park going to shows and seeing the animals. When you come to a big amusement park like Sea World with kids you make a choice, stroller or no stroller. I tend to like physical punishment and my wife is a luddite so we chose no stroller. It has the advantage of not having to manuever a clunky wheeled monster through throngs of people, but you end up feeling like a pack mule when you cart in everything in backpacks. Sam, Elias and I all carried camelbacks full of water, snacks, diapers, etc. Kristin carried Eva in the Bjorn with the sling over her body to protect her from the sun.

By the end of the day my shoulders were aching and I realized I had committed camelback sin. The beauty of a camelback is that you carry 3 liters of water around with you and can drink all day. As you drink your load becomes lighter and it balances with your physical exhaustion. It's a wonderful system. I made the mistake of conserving my camelback water. I don't know why I did considering we were surrounded by Sea World employees hawking water, I guess it was just habit. Needless to say, my camelback was still over half full when we left the park, and my body paid the price.

Elias and I wore our dorky sun hats to the park. Kris and Elias got me a sun hat for Father's day (Elias already had one) and I love it. I hate putting sunscreen on my face because it always bleeds into my eyes and makes me break out, but no need with the sun hat. It also keeps you cool. It's great! We were all feeling fairly well sun protected. All except Sam. She thinks our big hats are dorky (she won't say so, but we know :)). She managed to lather up enough sunscreen to avoid any serious burns though.

Sam holding a well wrapped Eva.

The day at Sea World was fun, but tiring. We left a little too late in the day (5 pm) and Elias crashed in the car. We were afraid he would sleep until 8 pm and then be up until midnight so we woke him up when we arrived at the hotel. After 2 hard days and only a 10 minute nap our poor son was a grouch! We should never have woken him up. Looking back now it would have been much better to have a happy boy until midnight rather than a grouch until 9. Ahh well, live and learn.

We got back to the hotel and relaxed for the rest of the evening finally winding down by actually watching television! We don't have one of these at home so we made it a vacation treat for Elias to watch TV before bed. The only thing good we found on TV was Survivor Man. It's a show about a guy who takes a bag full of camera equipment out into the boondocks and tries to survive with very little gear for 7 days. The guy is really funny and down to earth. We all liked him.

Tomorrow we hit the beach!

San Diego Trip - Part 1

2007-10-02T08:23:00.000-07:00

Elias was very excited to be in his hotel room bunk bed.

The family and I decided it was high time to take a summer vacation. We live about 6 hours from San Diego (8 hours in kid driving time) and you can never go wrong with the beach so we booked a hotel, took Sam out of school and off we went!

The drive went amazingly well for having a 3 month old baby in the car. We made a 2 hour stop over in Yuma to eat and stretch the legs, but otherwise drove straight through arriving at 10:30 at night. Elias fell asleep pretty early on into California, but he woke up with a passion when we arrived at the hotel. He had been looking forward to going the beach, staying in a hotel and being on vacation for a month and boy did it show. He was running around the hotel saying "My hotel has a TV! My hotel has a bunk bed! My hotel has a potty!" It was pretty cool.

We finally got the boy to sleep just before midnight and turned in soon afterwards. In the morning we awoke and meandered down stairs for the continental breakfast. I'm a big fan of continental breakfasts at hotels, at least when they come with make your own waffle stations. I once spent a week long vacation eating make your own waffles 6 out of the 7 days. It's not that they're better than waffles I get at home, its more like the vending machine novelty you get from them. It's neat!

Elias pushing the "sled" up a giant hill.

After a delicious breakfast we went swimming in the heated pool. My pansy Arizona boy can't handle water below 85 degrees, so at first he was very wary of going in "the cold pool". We didn't give him much choice though and soon he was swimming around with the whole family (including Eva!). It was a nice relaxing way to start the trip.

We spent the rest of the day at one of Kristin's childhood friend's houses. She lived just north of San Diego and had an awesome back yard with a giant sloping hill. Her kids are 10 and 5 and they created a dirt toboggan track on the hill to swoop down on. Elias went down a couple of times on the rocking-lizard-turned-sled and had a blast.

We had one close call when Elias ran down the hill at top speed. I was watching him come closer and closer to planting face into the dirt as his feet started to lose control, but he remained stable and managed to make it to the bottom of the slope without incident. The look on his face was pure terror. At the suggestion of our hosts I took his shoes off and he had nary another problem. I'm so happy I have a barefoot kid. His feet are way tougher than mine are or ever were. He never wears shoes unless we're going somewhere that requires them, and it shows. He ran up and down the hill and through the bushes for hours with perfect balance and poise. It made me wish I didn't have such tender feet.

Computer Programming

2007-09-05T13:09:00.000-07:00

Elias, programmer in training.

I started learning to program computers when I was 12 years old. My parents procured me a copy of Quick Basic and showed me how to install it. I read through the book's examples and slowly created my first of many text based ASCII art games. Programming is hands down the most fun thing you can do on a computer. It's problem solving, creativity and logic all rolled into one frenzy of typing.

Like any self respecting teenage computer programmer, I wanted to program games when I grew up. My parents bought me many of those "Learn to Program Games in 12 Easy Lessons" books. They even bought me a Borland C++ compiler for Christmas one year. Thanks Dad, you bought me a compiler for Christmas. Before I typed that statement into a blog it never occurred to me how much affect you had on my ability to date girls in school. :)

I messed around with the C++ compiler, the game books and all the programming things I could get my hands on, but I never was able to realize my dream of writing computer games. There was no Internet, and the code in the books I had didn't compile in my version of the compiler. I still programmed quite a bit, but it was more do do helper tasks, math homework and anything I wanted to mess with.

When I got to college I had a strong foundation in Basic programming as well as a smattering of C and COBOL from self learning and community college classes. I started my first C++ class during my Freshman year of college. I struggled a bit with some of the object-oriented programming concepts, but overall it was a pleasurable experience.

A year or so into college, I met Abe and the computer game maker's club. There was a club of students with a like minded interest in writing computer games! Abe was a recent graduate of NAU who had written a couple small games himself and was now teaching some intro classes at the college. He had this cool gamekit thing that simplified all the hardware level stuff for blitting (block image transfer, i.e. drawing a sprite on the screen) and input from the user. With this you could concentrate on the game logic when writing games. It was great!

Upon Abe's advice, the first game I tackled was a tetris game (well that's not true, I started with some really terrible Zelda clone, but it looked horrible and I made almost no progress, so THEN I took Abe's advice). Tetris contains all the components of a good first game. The logic is fairly simple. The graphics are easy. The game itself is fun and timeless. After a few weeks of effort, CraigTris was born! It's not the best tetris game ever made, but it still makes me laugh and it's still playable (Tetris with giant colorful balls for block pieces? Awesome!)

The end of college started to roll around. My senior project was writing a 3D engine to be used by both Abe's company for games, and the USGS for displaying three dimensional map data in real time. In hindsight I took on way too much. I should have just done the USGS thing and made it great, but instead I made both of them mediocre.

At graduation time I was working for the Center for Data Insight doing data mining to help mega corporations determine if the same customers who bought beer also bought blue jeans. The job was a great college job, but it didn't involve much programming aside from what I could shimmy in and it could be exceedingly boring. I wanted to start a game company, but I also wanted to get married and not work at the CDI anymore. I was set to just suck it up and keep working when my lovely lovely wife suggested that I just send my resume out there for an interview or two.

I took her advice and sent my resume to a couple of large companies and a startup that a good friend worked for. After the interview at the startup I was sold. I could get a job programming computers, get paid well and move back to a warmer (much warmer) environment. I moved to Tucson and that was the end of my game company ambitions.

Now that I'm older and wizened I realize that this was the best career move I've made in my life. Programming games is fun, but really, programming is programming. Whether you are working on an enterprise level business application or a 3D game, it's still problem solving and creativity. I have had the pleasure of working with many ex game developers. They are excellent developers who are no longer doing games because the work is hard, the pay is small and the hours are extreme. I like working, but not enough to work 14 hour days.

The real problem with game development is there are too many people willing to do it for little pay, so the competition makes it unappealing to a family oriented developer. Back in the old days you could write a game with a few people, but now it takes teams of 100 to handle all the art, content and coding. It's much more Hollywood than it was when I was young. At my current job we only work overtime when a release is pending. We play LAN games many an afternoon to wind down. The pay is great and the people I work with are fantastic. Not to mention I can ride my bike to work and back and spend virtually every afternoon with my family. I can't imagine giving that up for some job, no matter what it was like.

Besides, I'll always have CraigStars! Now if only I could get some time to work on it... :)

Eclipse Last Night

2007-08-28T08:16:00.000-07:00

The moon in all its eclipsing glory.

I was exhausted last night. Around 8 pm I helped Elias brush his teeth and get ready for bed. He sleeps better if someone lays down with him so after brushing his teeth I laid in bed with him while he fell asleep. I don't know when he actually fell asleep but I know Kristin woke me up at 8:30 pm. It had been a long day, but I really didn't want to go to sleep before 9 pm. :) I drug myself out of my slumber, made Kris and I a couple of delicious mochas and settled in to watch a movie. We borrowed Shall We Dance from Kris' Grandmother a while back, so we watched that (It was good, but that's another blog entry).

After the movie I was ready to crash. I had to get up early the next morning after all. Right before bed, Kristin checked her email and read a message from the Sonoran Desert Homeschoolers. At 2 am last night (or this morning) the moon was going to begin a full eclipse! We debated staying up for it or not, and settled on setting the alarm for 2 am thereby procuring a couple hours of sleep before hand. Before going to bed I had to get my camera ready to take pictures of the moon. This meant delving in the more manual settings to actually get a good picture. I twiddled with the camera for an hour (what can I say, it was neat!) until I captured the large image above and the full moon picture. By this time it was around midnight, and we both went to bed.

The alarm woke us on the dot at 2 am and I seriously considered turning it off and forgetting the eclipse. Something kept me awake though, and I managed to claw my way out of bed 10 minutes later. The night was beautiful! The eclipse had just begun and I started snapping pictures like mad. My settings weren't quite right for an eclipsed moon, so I had to slow the shutter down to 10 seconds to let in enough light to see the moon. I pulled out the telescope. Kristin grabbed a blanket, made a cup of Chai and woke Sam up. Then we sat on the grass and took pictures, looked through the telescope and enjoyed the night.

By 3 am the moon was fully eclipsed and would remain so for the next hour. We watched for a little while longer laying in the grass in our backyard and then finally turned in around 3:30 am.

My alarm went off again at 6 am and I grudgingly got up to go to work. My bike won't ride itself to work after all! This is going to be a tired day I think. A deliciously caffeinated Dr. Pepper is calling me... or maybe this will be my first morning trying straight coffee. (or both!)

Out of Gas

2007-08-27T07:58:00.000-07:00

The Sonoita to Patagonia Time Trial. It was very cold.

My truck is out of gas. After a trip to the Verde Valley at the beginning of the month, our gas budget is much higher than it really should be. We took two cars to visit the family so Sam and I could get back for her school and my work. Our usual Verde Valley gas usage was doubled. My truck is piling on miles like never before.

Needless to say, I rode my bike to work this morning. I refuse to fill up the tank with gas when I can so easily avoid it by doing something I love to do anyway. I am always striving to be a full time bike commuter. I commute as often as I can motivate myself to, but I always fall short of riding the whole week. I have a cycling identity crisis.

There are two types of cyclists (according to me, because I like to categorize and pigeon hole things). There are commuters and racers. Commuters use their bikes to get from point A to point B. They tend to ride older bikes outfitted with racks, trailers, fenders, and extra supplies in case of mechanical failure. Racers use their bikes to ride in races and compete with other racers. They tend to ride new and flashy lightweight bikes. They cringe and squirm at the thought of attaching anything to their bikes and ride for the shear joy of going faster than anyone else.

I started riding by commuting to work on a dumpy mountain bike with a rack soldered to the rear of my bike. I gradually moved into racing and upgraded to one of the aforementioned race bikes. I always considered myself a commuter first and a racer second, until I rode downtown for Tucson's Bike to Work Day. Boy did I ever learn I am not nearly weird enough to be a commuter. Bike to Work Day is filled with some of the weirdest peak oil conspiracists and dirty hippies I have ever seen. I've never felt like a racer so much in my life.

After Bike to Work Day I attended the Patagonia Time Trial. Talk about feeling like a commuter. The cyclists there were decked out in funny time trial helmets, wrappers for their shoes to reduce wind resistance, bikes that cost more than my car and an intense racing drive. I just showed up because it's a good race close to my house. Where do I fit?

I guess I'll just have to keep riding and ignore my need to categorize for now...

The Drawbacks of an Early Reader

2007-08-24T14:11:00.000-07:00

There must be something interesting on the ceiling!

There are definitely some negative aspects of having a kid who reads early. He loves to sound out every word. And I mean every word. For example, just the other day Elias and I were playing outside at Sunflower Market while Kris, Eva and Sam were inside shopping. After a hearty game of pretending to be a fox in the "forest" outside Sunflower, Elias decided he needed to use the public lavatory. We entered the store just as Kristin and Sam were leaving.

When we got to the restroom we split ways and each took a urinal (this is a very manly thing to do with your son). After peeing, Elias realized that voiding his bladder wasn't going to cut it and he went into a stall.

I'm not sure where he learned it, but Elias locked me out of the stall when he went inside. He proceeded to climb on the potty, but he wanted me to take his shorts and shoes off. My son is definitely potty trained, but he can't defecate with pants on. I'm not sure why. He's a naked eliminator I guess.

I told Elias that I couldn't get in to help him with his pants unless he unlocked the stall. He thought this was hilarious and giggled out a "No." So I waited outside, wondering if I was going to have to belly crawl under a stall wall to help my son with the, err, finishing touches of his bathroom experience.

After much laughter on Elias' part, he finally conceded to open the stall door for me so I could help him with his clothes. Then he, finally, sat down to the task at hand.

While sitting there contemplating his bowels, Elias looked to his left and noticed writing on the wall. He began sounding out the words. Uh oh.

I advised him that it was probably not a good idea to read the writings on bathroom walls, but he was in the zone. Luckily for me, this is Sunflower Market, so even the vulgarity was polite. Also luckily for me, Elias chose the largest word on the wall to read, which was "Cripple". Someone must have been attempting to write "Crip" to express loyalty to a gang that I think only resides in LA, and some other clever vandal made a modification. The original artist didn't have exceptional penmanship, so my son thought the letters were G - I - P - P - L - E. In 3 year old reading terms this equates to "Gah Ihh Puh Puh Lll Eh", or "Gipopleh". Elias didn't recognize the word, and so didn't continue his reading. Phew! That could have been much worse. :)

Finally over my cold...

2007-08-23T15:10:00.000-07:00

Elias and I at the Tour of the Tucson Mountains using an umbrella, Tucson style!

I'm finally starting to feel well again after getting hit with a cold last week. This week is my first week back on the bike in 2 weeks and it feels great! I was tired on Tuesday's ride to and from work, but I felt strong this morning. I haven't ridden home yet though, so we'll see how I really feel.

My wife and son unfortunately came down with the same virus I did. Kristin was hit pretty hard and was home walking watching the kids with a fever. I should have come home, but we both thought the fever would break by the time I made it. It lasted 4 hours and she was miserable. She's feeling much better now though, just body tired. My son has the immune system of a mutant. He was grumpy for the morning, fell asleep on the couch and woke up with no more fever seemingly normal. My daughter, thankfully, missed it completely. Hooray for breastfeeding!

On the ride in this morning I noticed about halfway to work that I had forgotten my delicious ice cold water bottles at home. This is no big deal on the 80 degree ride to work, but the 105 degree ride home is another story. I am going to steal a couple of water bottles from work and stick them in my rear pack to hydrate in the extreme weather.

Here's to being back in health!

Vegetarianism

2007-08-16T14:40:00.000-07:00

A delicious Valentines day meal of Portobello Wellingtons. These are portobello mushrooms baked with goat cheese, chopped nuts and balsamic vinaigrette then wrapped in puff pastry dough and served in a pepper coulis.

I have been a vegetarian since 1996. I initially became vegetarian as sort of a punk rock/animal liberation thing, but more importantly because I was going to college and both my roommates were vegetarian. :) I started off as a terrible vegetarian. My diet sans meat consisted of bread, cheese, bread and cheese. For the first few years of vegetarianism I ate a lot of fake meat, cheese pizza, mac & cheese, and grilled cheese sandwiches. I wasn't exactly an adventurous meat eater and I brought that attitude with me to my new vegetarian lifestyle.

My wife went to work on me when we first started dating to try and expand my food horizons. I was stubborn at first, but deep down I always wanted to be that guy who ate any and all food (except for the meat ones). After many years of hard work on the part of Kristin and her family, I finally eat pretty much anything. Before my food awakening I never really liked food. I told my wife once that I might as well eat cardboard, it didn't really matter as long as I got nutrients for it. I no longer feel that way. :)

The animal liberation side of my vegetarianism has gone down a lot. I still don't like the concept of factory farming, and I think $3 for cage free eggs is a small price to pay to give a chicken a better life, but I never disagreed with the concept of using animals for food. I come from a hunting family. I hunted all throughout my childhood and killed my share of fuzzy bunnies who appeared at the wrong end of my sights. Human beings are obviously omnivores. Eating vegetarian is a privilege of living in a rich nation. My motivation for staying vegetarian is partly habit, partly health. I think you can easily be a healthy meat eater, but I find it easier to eat right as a vegetarian. That and I don't really have the desire to eat meat these days. That desire went away after a few years.

Now that I'm a card carrying veteran vegetarian I do have rules for meat eaters (strangely, none of them listen to me...) I think you should be willing to kill your own food. I'm not saying you have to hunt for every meal to eat meat, but I can't stand it when meat eaters are disgusted by where their food comes from, or even by touching and working with meat. Come on now! Sack up a little bit! You owe it to your self respect to not be made squeamish by your choices.

I've been vegetarian for over 10 years now and I don't see it changing any time soon. I like my food and I like what I eat. My meat eater friends laugh at me and tell me that everything I eat tastes like garlic, but it all tastes good to me. :)

My Daughter Has Terrible Posture

2007-08-16T11:24:00.000-07:00

Eva in her favorite sleeping position.

I'm sure she'll grow out of it soon, but right now Eva's favorite sleeping position is slumped into a ball on my chest. She's preferred this position almost from the day she was born. It doesn't look very comfortable, but I suppose for someone recently out of the womb, it's very familiar. I'm sure as her muscles tighten up and she gains more control over her limbs this will be less effective in putting her to sleep, so I'm trying to capture it while it's still happening. It makes me sad to realize that Eva won't always want to sleep cuddled up with me, but such is the nature of children. :)

Return to Mount Lemmon

2007-08-03T10:54:00.001-07:00

This isn't actually my picture, but it shows the mountain-ness of the ride better than anything I've taken. I need to learn to reference my sources!

On Thursday I rode up Mt. Lemmon for the first time this year. This was the first time I've tried to tackle the mountain since upgrading to my new fancy bike. My old bike was solid steel and weighed quite a bit more, but it did have 3 chain rings in the front. The third chain ring, often referred to as the Granny Gear by my cycling cohorts and I, is extremely useful when making an ascent up the side of a mountain. The gearing is such that your legs don't have to work as hard when climbing, even if you do go slower.

My new bike is an elite racing bike, and as such it has only 2 front chain rings. I don't know if this is for reduced weight (2 grams?), simplicity of the gears, or just a general macho-ness that accompanies owning a bike costing over $1000. Either way, the easy front ring on my new bike is not nearly as easy as my beloved Granny Gear. That Granny Gear helped me through many hard climbs in the ride across the state. As you can imagine, it was with some trepidation that I rode away from my house towards this enormous mound of rock that lives on the north side of my town.

The base of the mountain is 15.5 miles from my front door, so I left the house at 5:50 AM to meet a friend at 6:45 AM. I made really good time and ended up slowing way down for the last few miles of the ride. The weather was beautiful. It had rained the night before and was still cloudy all around. There were low floating clouds hovering over the peaks and in the valleys. The entire mountain looked shrouded in a hazy blue. My teammate rode up shortly after I arrived and we began our ascent.

I'm always amazed by how mentally intimidating Mount Lemmon can be to look at, and how easy it actually is to ride. All my worries about my missing gear quickly vanished as my legs pumped away and my bike slowly wound up and around the hills. We climbed without incident for quite some time before we were passed by a group of cyclists from the Southwest Hand cycling team. They were all skinny wiry bastards and obviously had no troubles with the incline. :)

I wanted to ride until around 7:45 AM to 8:00 AM, depending on where we were when it came time to stop. We finished up at the Seven Cataracts pullout and stopped for a rest and a snack. Though it wasn't raining on us, the mist in the air caused me to become completely soaked. It's a good thing it was so nice out, lest I suffer some sort of hypothermia. :) After our short break, we climbed back in the saddle and began the descent.

My old bike was solid steel and therefore quite a bit more rickety than my new one. The descent with the new bike was amazing! My bike was smooth and sleek underneath me and I flew around turns without applying the breaks. I reached 42 mph at one point by crouching as low as I could to allow the wind to glide over my back. I never felt like the bike was even slightly out of control. I really love this bike.

This was taken at the Seven Cataracts pull out about 9 1/4 miles up. It was after a large rain so everything was green.

We reached the bottom in 10 minutes using only a handful of pedal strokes. My teammate had to break off a short ways down the road to climb into his car and take it to the shop so I continued the ride to work by myself. I must have been hyped up by the experience, because even though I was tired I still averaged around 25 mph for the trip back. I came into work panting from exhaustion, but also elated by the ride. I am definitely doing this again next week!

Photography

2007-08-03T08:08:00.001-07:00

This picture was actually taken by Kristin, but I really like it so I put it up here, even though it's not strictly (or at all) mine.

I love taking pictures. I blame my son for this hobby. Both my family and my wife's family live in the Verde Valley, which is about 220 miles from our house. When Elias was born the most effective way to communicate changes in the new baby was through pictures. The day after he was born I began work on programming a simple picture website so our families could view the latest pictures we had taken.

Around day 4 of Elias, a friend visited with a 3.2 megapixel Canon Cybershot. His pictures were so much more colorful, so much more vibrant than those taken with my 1.2 megapixel Fuji. I couldn't stand the thought of my son's earliest pictures being blurry and bland and so I rushed to Best Buy and bought my friend's camera. It was awesome!

Fast forward to November 2005, 2 years and 10,000 pictures later, and I was starting to get frustrated with my camera. The pictures looked nice, but the shutter lag was obnoxious. Every time I'd see a cool picture and go to take it, the camera would take 2 seconds to focus and snap. Meanwhile, the subject of the picture would have moved and the picture would not be nearly as cool as I thought it should be. The lens didn't close very well anymore because we left it in a puddle of strawberry juice (hey, we had a toddler, what can you do?) and it was sticky.

This picture was taken of Eva when she was a few days old. I walked into the bedroom and she was sleeping on our bed. The lighting was perfect and I had to take a few shots.

It was surely time for an upgrade. I had 10,000 pictures under my belt and the hobby obviously wasn't going away.

My job came to the rescue. There was a rewards program at work for doing something extra special that benefited the company in some way. I had written a cool client/server build system with the intent of making our software builds easily managable and automated. My boss nominated me for the award and I won! The prize was an XBox 360. As cool as one of those would be,

I love taking night pictures. This was of a bunch of tents outside a hotel during the Arizona Cross State Bike Tour

I don't own a TV and I get plenty of game time on the computer. I asked the contest coordinator if I could trade my prize in for something more useful. She said "sure, just keep it in the same price range". Luckily, some of my other coworkers who won the award had already talked up the XBox prize to be some ridiculous $800 package with wireless controllers, 4 games, extra large drive, etc. $800 will buy a pretty nice camera for an amateur like myself. :)

I settled on the Nikon D50, deciding that the shutter lag issue really meant I needed to go with a digital SLR.

This is from the same night as the tent picture. It is a picture of Sam and Kristin reading by the hotel's one flood light while all the biker's slept.

The Nikon felt nicer to hold than the Canon and it was also a bit cheaper. Now I have a nice camera that takes fantastically cool pictures. It also has all sorts of manual settings that I can fiddle with. I've never taken a photography class or anything so I really don't know what I'm doing, but after taking 20,000 pictures with this new camera, I have gotten some pretty nice shots.

My Son the Vegetarian

2007-08-03T07:50:00.000-07:00

Elias enjoying a delicious meal of broccoli, hummus, cheese and fruit. What a weirdo.

Elias once again showed his lack of insight into the animal kingdom. He's only 3 and I'm sure he'll learn it eventually, but right now he doesn't get the whole concept of carnivores.

We were watching the Planet Earth BBC series from Netflix the other night, much to the enjoyment of our son. There is a scene where wolves are chasing a group of caribou. The narrator informs us that the wolves single out the baby caribou because they are easier to kill. Sure enough, one of the baby caribou breaks off from its mother and a wolf pursues. The music becomes intense, the action escalates. Elias asks us "What is that wolf doing?" We tell him "Wolves are carnivores. They eat caribou. That wolf is trying to catch the caribou to eat it." Elias hears, but he doesn't beleive us.

Meanwhile, the narrator is telling us in a collegiate British accent "At this time, the chances are 50/50. If the caribou makes a mistake, he's caught. If he keeps running, the wolf will give up after a mile." Kristin and I wait with baited breath, knowing that our poor vegetarian son will not be happy if the wolf wins. The caribou makes a heroic effort, but stumbles at the last moment, and the wolf is upon it! The camera slowly zooms out as the wolf stands over its caught prey...

At this point, Elias asks us again "What is that wolf doing to the baby?". We answer "Well, the wolf caught the baby caribou and it's going to eat it. It's been a long winter and the wolf is hungry." Elias still doesn't beleive us. "No." He says, "That wolf is taking the baby caribou back to its Mom." "Sorry, Elias, the wolf needs to eat and it eats caribou", we say. "No. It's taking the baby back to its Mom" he insists. My son cracks me up.

Flowers is an Herbivore

2007-07-27T20:43:00.000-07:00

Elias feeding his stuffed animal 'Flowers' a carrot.

One of Elias' favorite books (There's an Alligator Under my Bed) stars an alligator that eats vegetables, candy and cookies. Elias has a giant stuffed alligator (actually, it's my alligator, but I am generous enough to lend it to him during his childhood. :)) that he has named "Flowers". This alligator is a more developed version of the alligator in the story, but he shares the story alligator's love of vegetables.

Whenever we juice carrots Elias rushes into his bedroom, pulls out Flowers, and requests a carrot for himself and his pet alligator. Apparently, that's a culinary favorite for alligators. He and Flowers then sit on the rug and each takes bites out of their carrots. I've never seen any vegetable matter go missing from Flower's carrot, but I do hear lots of chomping noises coming from that general area, so I'm pretty sure he's eating.

Elias carrying a bag full of alligator food down the hallway.

On many days, Flowers attends my son where ever he goes. Elias is a generous host and often lines the floor with fresh fruits and vegetables (in most cases, toy blocks) and calls it "food for Flowers". I'm very happy with the name Elias chose for his alligator. For a long time we would ask him what name this toy or that toy would have and he would tell us "Window", "Car", or "Rug". I know he chose "Flowers" because there was a bouquet of flowers on the table, but it's a pretty cool name for an alligator (especially a vegetarian one. :))

Homeschooling

2007-07-27T18:35:00.000-07:00

My wife and I have known since very early on in our relationship that we were going to homeschool. She was homeschooled herself and knew many other families who were. I was public schooled but had a few close friends who were homeschooled.

The decision to homeschool should never be done on a whim. I'm going to try and outline here some of my thoughts on homeschooling and why I want it for my children.

The Whole Socialization Thing
This is the present most common fear I hear people express about homeschooling.

How will your kids learn to interact with other kids? How will they learn how to hold their own against bullies, and in the future, mean bosses? Homeschool kids are all socially awkward and weird, do you want that for your kids?

Weird kids are weird kids regardless of their method of schooling. I've known quite a few homeschoolers and they range the gambit from being totally comfortable in social situations to being quiet and reserved. None of them, however, are nearly as weird and awkward as the countless weird public schooled people I've met. And being a computer programmer, I've met a lot of weirdos. :)

The reason homeschool students have a reputation for being a little off is partly because weird parents have weird kids. And parents that homeschool are by nature a little different from the rest of society.

When it comes down to it, my kids are pretty much screwed as far as social development goes. Kristin and I are both on the fringe. We're vegetarian, we cloth diaper, make our own baby food, cosleep, don't own a TV, etc. Heck my entire family are on the fringe (sorry Mom and Dad, you have to be weird to have made my brother and I. :)). I'm not saying they're going to grow up friendless and alone because they can't cope with society, but their chances of growing up to be mall hopping pop culture enthusiasts is (I hope) slim.

Even though my kids will no doubt turn out odd, I don't see homeschooling as limiting their ability to interact with others. Tucson has a large homeschooling population that regularly gets together for shared activities. There are clubs, sports, and community groups all outside of school that we plan on making use of. There are plenty of volunteer activities where our children can interact, not just with kids their own age, but people of a wide variety of ages.

As for bullies, I think it's debatable whether bullies make you stronger. Some kids respond to hostile environments by toughening up, others by caving in and becoming less likely to interact. When it comes down to it, kids who have a strong sense of self will not cave under pressure, regardless of the source. The best thing you can do for your kids is to provide them support and confidence so they grow up strong. (Either that or let them loose in Compton and hope they can make it home. :) )

Educational Value of Homeschooling
I think of homeschooling as taking the momentum of learning that our kids have and not letting it stop. Elias learns new things every day. The number of things he learns in a day just keeps increasing. I can't imagine putting him into a school environment where he had to learn at the pace of the slowest student in the class. It's kind of snobbish, but he's my kid, and that's part of the whole wanting the best for your children thing.

I would hate to see my son enter school in a couple years already knowing how to read, only to be told to go over his alphabet and letters again because that's what the rest of the class is doing. I don't want my kids to stop that crazy learning roller coaster until the behavior is part of their nature. I want to keep that intensity and excitement for knowledge as long as possible. Preferably for the rest of their lives.

Opportunity
One of the nicest things about homeschooling is the sheer volume of opportunities available to you. When you homeschool you can take your kids to museums, to the zoo, on hiking trips, out to investigate riparian environments, to Europe, whatever you want. Money is the only real obstacle. You don't have to worry about permission slips, or managing 30 kids and buses and cafeterias. With homeschooling you can make any family vacation into a school project.

Every trip, whether it be a vacation or a trip to Grandma's, is a learning event. The whole premise of homeschooling is that you don't need a classroom to learn. Learning is part of everyday life. You should never stop just because the bell rings.

Miscellaneous Thoughts
Kristin and I have been discussing our strategies for homeschooling. We both are leaning towards unschooling. The basic premise of unschooling, as we want to apply it to our children, is that you don't teach your children, you encourage them to learn. No teacher can teach a subject to a student. Students, however, are perfectly capable of learning anything, and a teacher's job is to provide the resources for that learning. It's a subtle distinction, but that view on learning is what draws us to unschooling.

In unschooling, there is no separation between teaching and life. You learn by living. We want to incorporate learning into life rather than a stricter "here are your books, fill out these papers" approach, or even a "this is what we're working on today" approach. Ideally we can encourage our kids enthusiasm for learning enough that we won't have much structure at all. Really, when you get down to it, unschooling is what every human being does outside of a school environment (assuming you aren't busy watching UPN.

When I think back to my childhood, my brother and I were unschooling ourselves from an early age, except that school got in the way for 6 hours of the day. We both taught ourselves to program computers, built entire imaginary worlds, read loads of books and in general were always working on some project or another. Granted, we (OK me) also watched a lot of TV and played hordes of video games. Those things certainly have their value, but I think that needs to be moderated a little more in a homeschool environment.

This may seem like our children will never solve an equation or learn the periodic table of elements. This isn't true at all. Part of learning, even outside of school, is a certain degree of bookwork. Any task you want to accomplish is going to take some research. We plan on exposing Elias to as large a variety of subjects as possible, and anything you learn about can incorporate all subjects. Once you hit on an interest, you expand it and go into depth with both hands on projects and book learning.

Final Thoughts
I fully support all aspects of homeschooling, but I don't think public school is necessarily bad either. The most important part of a child's development is a supportive and loving home environment. This is why so many public school children excel regardless of bad teachers, standardized tests and strange social situations at school. But I don't think you can ever beat the one on one attention you can give your children when you homeschool. This is why I think it's a great idea if you can afford to do it (both financially and emotionally).

Finally, everything I've written above is from the perspective of a dude with a 3 year old and a 7 week old. I'm sure I'll look back on this 5 years from now and think "What the heck was I thinking? I didn't take into account this or this or this..." But that's one more benefit of homeschooling. You can change it to accommodate what works best for your family.

Company for Dinner

2007-07-25T22:51:00.000-07:00

We had company over for dinner last night. One set of old friends and one set of new friends. The new friends, sadly, are moving away tomorrow, but I'm sure we'll make an effort to visit them in their new hometown of beautiful Flagstaff.

Kristin made a wonderful dinner with a Southwestern whole wheat pasta bake, bread and garlic butter with some tasty green stuff in it, our classic beet/orange/feta salad and a pan of brownies for dessert. The pasta bake was delicious. We borrowed ideas on the pasta bake from our old friends who were there, and added a little Southwestern flair with black beans, a little salsa and some diced vegetables. Mmmmm... I should have taken a picture!

After dinner we started a fire in our fire pit in the back yard. The kids all got together and roasted marshmallows. Elias sat on my lap and held the marshmallow stick over the flames. He didn't want to wait until they fully melted, preferring to just warm them up and consume them. He did really well at roasting them this time. He must have had enough practice to actually hold them steady
near the flames, instead of inside the flames. :)

After eating a few too many delicious sugary puffballs we all retired onto the lawn and chatted. Everyone at our house last night went to NAU and lived in Flagstaff for a good chunk of time, so we chatted a lot about the town.

I miss Flagstaff in some ways. The weather was always nice during the summer and the town had a rural feeling with a few modern amenities (like movie theaters and restaurants). I've thought about moving back, but I really like Tucson. I like the extreme heat on a long bike ride home. I love the torrential storms that sweep in at this time of year and deposit half an ocean on our town. There's also no comparing the job market here vs. Flagstaff. Tucson's job selection for Software Engineers makes me nervous sometimes, I can't even imagine living in Flag.

The kids all played well, although Elias is back to being touchy in the evenings. I don't know if he's not getting enough sleep or if life has just been less settled for him the past few days. Right after Eva was born he was amazingly touchy, but then as things settled down he really loosened up and became the loving, sweet, polite boy we know he is. :) Though even being touchy, I think he played well last night. He just had to be taken aside and calmed down every once in a while.

While all the adults were sitting on the lawn and the kids were piling gravel into Elias' recycling truck, I pulled out our camera and started messing around with shutter speeds and focusing. That's where the picture at the top of this entry came from. I really like the way night shots turn out when you get them right. I'm amazed that a camera can get so much color from the environment when there is no light, just by keeping the shutter open longer.

Unfortunately, our company had to eventually go home as their kids grew weary. Cinder-Sam, our non-teenager teenager picked up most of the house while I held Eva and Kristin put Elias to bed. He was exhausted by the time everyone left, and Eva was peaceful in my arms. I crawled into bed soon after hoping to get as much sleep as possible before the next day's early morning bike ride. It was a nice night.

Filled with rage!

2007-07-24T10:30:00.000-07:00

I read my son a story a while back about two mice monks. They were strolling through the forest one day on their way to do whatever meditative rodents do and they came accross a princess crossing a river. She was yelling at her servants for not being fast enough and for having to get wet. The older wiser mouse picked up the princess, put her on his back and waded through the water. She didn't say thank you, and continued on her way, yelling at her servants. The younger mouse brooded all day and finally asked the older mouse how he could have carried the snobbish princess when she was so terrible to him and everyone around her. The older mouse answered "I put her down hours ago, how come you are still carrying her around?"

Now, I read this story to my son and it's always stuck in my mind. I understand the moral it is teaching, but I am the younger mouse. I don't want to be the older mouse. The older mouse should have dropped that bratty princess in the mud, kicked some sand in her eyes and went on his way. She was a complete schmutz! That princess still makes me mad.

This story is especially present in my mind today because of an encounter at the dentist office. I had to take Sam to get a tooth analyzed for a future cap. We arrived early and were waiting to use the sign in sheet, but our way was barred by a balding overweight gentlemen filling out insurance paperwork on the counter (the unflattering description is there to help the reader's imagination).

After a few moments he remarked to the receptionist "You guys should really fill these forms out for me." She laughed it off thinking he was joking, and he told her "I'm serious, I don't know my wife's social security number! I don't know anything about her plan!"

The receptionist informed the man that he could use the courtesy phone if he wanted to call his wife. He then tried to pull the I'm too important for this trick. He told the receptionist "I only have 5 minutes to see the doctor, you're telling me I can't see him if I don't put down my wife's social security number?" She replied, ever so cooly, "You can see the doctor but we would have to take payment from you today instead of billing your insurance company." Awesome! The man grumbled, walked away and took a seat.

Sam signed in and was called back to her appointment, but I stayed in the waiting room, err, waiting. Mr. Grumpy called his wife and asked about her social security number, all the while grumbling loudly on the phone about how "lazy" the employees of my dentist office were. After finishing filling out his forms he gave them to the receptionist. The exchange went something like this:

"Here are the forms."
"Thank you sir, you can take a seat until we call you."
"Were you talking to me?"
"Yes."
"How was I supposed to know you were talking to me when you weren't looking at me? You were looking at your computer."
The receptionist looks the man in the eye
"Thank you sir, you can take a seat until we call you."
"Say please." (I'm not kidding, he actually said this)
"Thank you sir, you can take a seat until we call you."

The man took a seat and grumbled "Well I know the kind of place this is!" Nice.

Now I'm a big nancy. I'm not one to take action against random strangers. It's not my place to say anything, even if the guy was being a complete prig, but I was fuming on the inside. What a complete jerk. I can't even imagine the sense of self importance and entitlement you have to have to treat a receptionist or anyone like that. It was pretty obvious from the exchange that the dude was powerless in life. He didn't speak harshly to his wife, so he certainly wasn't dominating at home. He no doubt takes any chance he can get to be "over" someone, whether it be receptionists or waitresses or whatever. I haven't wanted to walk over and smack someone so badly for a long time.

I suppose I'll be carrying him around on my back for a few days at least. :)

Monsoons are here!

2007-07-23T22:00:00.000-07:00

A waterfall outside the front of my house. This always pours down like this when it rains in the summer.

My favorite part about Arizona, and Tucson especially, is the summer rains. I eagerly await 3 pm every day when the clouds roll in over the mountains and dump a lake full of water on our desert community. This year the weather has been teasing us with hints of rain, but our house has remained parched. This weekend we finally got our first real rainstorm. The rain came pounding down and flooded the streets and our yard. It was fantastic!

It rained last night, but only lightly enough to wet the roads. I rode my bike to work today and came away a little muddy, but not really wet. All day it was threatening to storm. At 2 pm Kris called me to tell me it was pouring at our house. I could hear the rain beating down through the phone it was so hard. Outside my office window the mountains were dark gray and the clouds were menacing, but we hadn't been hit by any real rain yet.

I was facing the age old bike commuter question. Is it raining enough to stop me from riding home? After doing a couple of multi-day bike tours my tolerance for riding in the rain has gone way up.

The ride home was awesome. I had to remove my sunglasses to be able to see (a weird concept in Tucson) because the splatter of raindrops and mist make it impossible otherwise. My shoes were soaked through within the first 5 minutes of the ride, but my core stayed reasonably dry. It never rained hard, just a drizzle.

My bike, shoes, gloves, and other gear completely soaked and covered in grime. Hopefully it'll dry by tomorrow so I can ride again!

The weather was blessedly cool and slightly breezy. I must have been a little tense during the ride, however, because for the last 4 miles my back started to ache and my neck was feeling a little stiff. I rode 36 miles yesterday with Sam, so it's possible I had residual soreness, but I don't think so.

I arrived home soggy and tired, but glad I rode. Elias met me outside where he and Kristin had been playing in the rain. there were two umbrellas leaning against the front porch that had obviously just been used. Elias was happy to see me. :)

My son can read!

2007-07-22T16:11:00.005-07:00

My son loves letters. He's been able to point out any letter in the alphabet since he was 17 months old. I don't know where the fascination comes from. We read to him all the time and I'd love to take credit for his letter obsession, but really, I think it's all him. Frankly, as an engineer I'm just short of terrified that he'll become a poet or an English teacher. I mean, don't get me wrong, I want my kids to be able to choose the path in life that brings him the most happiness. To that end I encourage my kids to be any type of engineer they want, whether it be mechanical, civil, electrical or if they choose really wisely, software engineer. :)

Seriously though, his letter obsession has really gone nuts the last couple months. Whenever we drive anywhere in the car he's asking us "How do you spell 'truck'? How do you spell 'cloud'? How do you spell 'When we get home we're not taking a nap'?" He's been able to recognize simple words like Mom, Dad, dog and car for some time now and we've been helping him learn to sound out words. It suddenly clicked a few weeks ago and his word reading has exploded! He sounded out 'eraser' of all things! It's really neat to watch him read words.

This weekend I had an idea. A long time ago I wrote a letter program for Elias to play around with on the computer. Each time he would press a key it would put the letter up on the screen. I modified it recently to allow Elias to type out whole words, and clear the screen by hitting enter. It displays the letters in a large font and puts them in different colors. It's a neat program. But he's moved on from letters and it was time to revamp the program.

Sam has been wanting to learn to program, so I pulled her out of her weekend waking stupor and dragged her onto the computer. We went over some programming basics for review and started designing and coding up a word reading program. I'm a big fan of simple programs, and Sam is just beginning so we kept it small. It reads a set of words from a file and displays them on the screen in huge letters. When you click the Next button it picks a new word from the word library and displays it. Elias was thrilled!

We've been thinking of new words to put in it all weekend and we've even added a few simple sentences. This is so cool!

Mochas

2007-07-22T10:02:00.000-07:00

In 2002 my wife Kristin and I made a bet. She bet that she could go longer without drinking coffee than I could without drinking soda. She hadn't actually had coffee for 3 months, but I had wanted to quit soda for some time, so we made the bet as a healthy competitive motivator for me quitting the drink. I gave up soda cold turkey. I listened to Quart in Session by NOFX a lot. I slowly eliminated my soda association for every little thing in my life (video games, pizza, movies, eating out) and switched to water and herbal ice tea.

Three years later, Kristin started to realize that giving up coffee permanently wasn't really something she was interested in. It didn't help that one of our good friends would order coffee anytime we would get a delicious chocolate dessert at a restaurant and waft the wonderful smell of coffee towards my wife. Eventually she cracked, and had a cup of coffee. I had a soda again a few weeks later, but never returned the level of consumption I had before.

Now that my wife drank coffee again we stopped occasionally at Starbucks to pick up a latte. Reluctant to be left out, I ordered the only thing a soda drinking anti-coffee guy like myself could respectfully get, a hot chocolate.

For Christmas, Kristin would always make homemade fudge to give away as gifts for our family. One type was dark chocolate and walnut, the other was Mexican fudge (dark chocolate, coffee and cinnamon). I always loved the coffee ones, even though I didn't particularly care for coffee. I really enjoy the combination of flavors that you get with coffee and dark chocolate.

One day at Starbucks, I had an idea. I ordered a Hot Chocolate and asked the barista to add in a shot of espresso. They thought it was strange, but complied. I loved it. This started a whole new obsession for me. Every time we went to Starbucks I couldn't get a regular hot chocolate anymore, I had to have that dash of coffee. It cut the sweetness just enough. It was fantastic.

I tried in vain to duplicate this flavor at home, but our espresso machine made the coffee to strong and the chocolate I had was too sweet. I failed over and over again.

One afternoon we were visiting my parents in the Verde Valley and my Dad was showing us his French press. I made up a quick attempt at a 'hot chocolate add a shot' and it was delicious!

For Christmas, my parents bought a small French Press for Kris. At the same time I switched form using Hershey's ice cream syrup (a suggestion from a Starbucks barista) to pure dutch processed cocoa powder.

After a small bit of experimentation I finally landed the perfect recipe:

- 1 1/4 cup of boiling milk
- 1/2 cup of coffee, made with french press
- 2 heaping tablespoons of dutch processed cocoa powder
- 2 heaping teaspoons of sugar
- A dash of vanilla

After drinking about, oh, one of these a day for 6 months they gradually became not coffee-ee enough for me. I know, I know, that's the sign of a coffee drinking. But alas, once you start you cannot go back.

I now have an improved recipe to take into account my new love of coffee (please bear in mind that this makes a bitter hot chocolate, not for those who aren't fans of bittersweet chocolate):

- 3/4 cup of boiled milk
- 1 cup of coffee, made with french press
- 2 heaping tablespoons of dutch processed cocoa powder
- 2 heaping teaspoons of sugar
- A dash of vanilla.

A few words of warning if you choose to embark down the path of making delicious mochas. These are about 400 calories each. The money savings you get from making them yourself, combined with the addictive delicious flavor make for quite a bit of weight gain. I ride my bike over 100 miles a week, go to the gym and lift weights 2-3 times a week and have a ridiculously fast metabolism. I now weigh 200 pounds instead of 180. I have kicked up my riding but to no avail. The weight has stopped at the 200 pound mark, so I think I have it stemmed off. This has made climbing up some of the mountains around Tucson on my bike a wee bit more difficult than before, but these mochas are worth it.

Cycling

2007-07-21T23:11:00.000-07:00

Me riding away from my son during the Arizona Cross State tour. He wanted to go with me. :)

I bought a bike my first year of attending NAU. The last bike I owned was a Mongoose Freestyle BMX bike, and given that I was now a college student I felt I needed to upgrade to something more suitable, like a mountain bike. I walked away with a 450 dollar 19 inch mountain bike with cool front shocks. I'm 6'4" and the bike was designed for someone 5'6", but I didn't know that at the time and was very happy.

Fast forward 7 years to 2003 and I had stopped riding my bike, gained 60 pounds and been living the life of a true corporate commuter. I drove my car by myself to work every day and didn't really have any physical activity outside of the occasional night walk with the wife. This wasn't really any change from my childhood as I watched a lot of TV and played an amazing amount of video games.

I worked with a guy who commuted by bike every day, 10 miles each way, and another who commuted sporadically by bike 7 miles each way. My commute was 14 miles, but for some reason I had confidence that I could do it. I pulled out my mountain bike one morning, strapped a backpack full of clothes and food on, and rode to the office. My route to work is mostly downhill and in the morning it's cool and the air is still so I found it surprisingly easy, not to mention fun and refreshing. The traffic wasn't scary like I thought it would be and the endorphins from exercise must have been firing in my brain because I felt elated all day.

Then I tried to ride home. It was hot, windy, uphill and overall a much less pleasant experience. I went to bed very early that first night riding home. After experiencing the joys of riding my bike in the morning to work, however, I was hooked.

Me riding in the Mt Lemmon Time Trial for the second time. It was very hard, but very fun.

I gradually picked up my bike commuting until my other two biking cohorts asked me if I was interested in riding in the El Tour de Tucson. "What is that?" I asked. "It's a 100 mile bike ride around the perimeter of Tucson" they replied. "That's stupid, who would do that?", I believe was my answer.

Needless to say, that opinion didn't last long and we all began training for this Herculean cycling effort. After my first 40 mile training ride my knees started to ache acutely and I learned that my beloved mountain bike was 7 inches too small for me. I went to my now favorite bike shop, Performance Bike, to look for a road bike upgrade. They had two bikes in the 61 cm frame size I needed. One was solid steel and $550 dollars, the other was some elite super bike for $1200 dollars. I grabbed the cheap one and have been an avid road biker ever since.

I go back and forth from being a racer and being a commuter. I'm not quite fast enough or dedicated enough to truly be a bike racer, but I'm not quite weird enough to be a full time bike commuter. Perhaps I need to drop my need to categorize and just be a simple cyclist. :)

Introduction

2007-07-21T21:20:00.000-07:00

Eva relaxing on my chest outside in my backyard. She can't move on her own yet, so this is pretty much all she does. :)

My wife Kristin and I have known each other since I was in high school and she was in college (she has a giant 3 years in seniority on me). I didn't really know her at the time, but she grew up with one of my close friends, so we knew all the same people.

We both coincidentally went to NAU for college. Me because you can fill out the application in pen, her because it was close to home but still far enough away to not be at home. We met outside of the Physics building one day, went on a date (I took her to pizza, not very original :)). For some reason she actually fell for me (or at least settled) and 3 years later we were graduated from college and married!

I didn't quite realize it at the time we met, but my wife is a fanatical hippy with all these wacky ideas about breast feeding, home birth, home school, cloth diapering, no TV, etc. I was a punk rocker, though not a very good one (not mean enough), so I was on the lookout for something that fit better. It turns out I'm actually an engineer with Luddite leanings so the whole living more naturally thing fit really well.

We both were weary of the cold weather of Flagstaff and longed for warmer climates. I found a job as a Software Engineer in Tucson, Arizona and we moved everything in our small one bedroom apartment to a more spacious Tucson home.

Three years after getting married and moving to Tucson we had our first son, Elias (02/04). He was born at home after 8 hours of the quietest labor in history (my wife is a birthing machine, she made not a single noise throughout the entire event). He's now 3 1/2 years old and walking, talking, reading, counting, playing, biking, running, screaming and all those other things that make kids so fun. Six weeks ago we had our daughter, Eva (06/07), also at home. This time the labor was a grueling 5 hours and much less quiet. We sat with a friend and chatted between contractions. :) Eva is still a little young to be running and playing, but she is distinguishing herself as the gruntiest baby ever to live. I also think she may have had mono for the first 4 weeks of her life, because she rarely ever awoke.

My goofball son after he ate a red candy sucker at a birthday party. He's great!

A year ago we were granted guardianship over a teenage girl who was a friend of the family. She has atrocious grammar and eats like a bird, but we love her. She has picked up on my cycling craziness and competed (we use the term loosely in our household) in a number of races. She hopes to work up to the 110 mile El Tour de Tucson cycling super ride this year, so I imagine our training sessions are going to get a might bit longer.

I hope to use this blog to record both the activities of our family's life as well as a sounding board for anything else I'd like to write about. I hope one day my children and grandchildren can look back on it and get a little insight into their family, as well as their wacky ancestors. Oh yeah, and I also want a place to show off all my favorite pictures. :)