Concord

A short drive up from Boston is Concord. This is a statue of a minute man which stands about 20 yards away from where the opening rounds of the Revolutionary war were fired.


This graveyard is called "Sleepy Hollow" which equals creepy. In this little corner called Authors' Hill, Louisa May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau are all buried.


This is Orchard House, where the Alcott's lived. In front, they were staging some drills. Louisa May Alcott started out writing the sorts of stories that Jo writes; murder mysteries, vampire stories and the like. Her editor told her that there was a big demand for girl's books. Louisa didn't know much about girls as she was mostly a tomboy, but she decided to write a book based on her sisters. As we toured the house, it was really neat because all the characters in the book more or less lived there. Their names were different, but we saw "Beth's" piano and "'Amy's" paintings. Below is the desk where Louisa wrote Little Women.



Walden Pond. It was so cold here. It was around 33 or 34 degrees and snowing. I'm not sure what made this 34 degrees so much colder than the 34 degrees in Boston, but I was so cold, I was pretty sure my ears were going to freeze off my head. Thus, we didn't stay at any of these places for very long. If it had been warmer, we would have explored the battlefield, toured Emerson's house, and walked around to see the little hut that Thoreau lived in on Walden Pond. But, it was freezing, and we had a flight to catch.

Dad may kill me

Last night, I watched a documentary called "Why We Fight." I cried almost all night. I didn't know what I could do to help. All I could think of was to write this letter:

April 10, 2008
George W. Bush
President
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear President,
I am a person of no consequence. I have no connections and no real means. All I have is my voice and my vote. I am writing to tell you that I am deeply saddened by what you have done to my country. My America is not a country of lies or half-truths. My America is not a country of bullies or a country of economic imperialism. You have taken my America and made it into these things, and it makes me sad.
It makes me sad to think of mothers around the world who will never hold their children again because of this war that you insist if for my good and my safety. This war, based on lies and deceit is making widows, taking fathers and brothers, and killing children. Even our own soldiers know their life is a lie as evidenced by the unprecedented rise in suicide and depression among the troops.
I had just graduated high school and was preparing to go to college in September of 2001. I had no idea who or what could do something like that to our country. I watched the news and tried to unravel the mystery of what was happening, all to no avail. I could not straighten it out. I realize now that that was the idea all along: you wanted to keep the American public in the dark so we did not see what you were doing. But, I see it now.
I am glad that you are leaving office. I did not vote for you. I pray that whoever will replace you will be able to fix the mess you are leaving. I fear the damage may be irreparable. I fear for this country you have created. I never feared for America, but this is no longer my America.
Sincerely yours,

Amanda Ball

Baston

In AP history, my teacher told me that Paul Revere didn't make his historic Midnight Ride and that he was passed out drunk at the time. After visiting Paul Revere's house, his grave, and Lexington and Concord (the place he rode to) I'm pretty sure that Mr. Sink's version of history is false.

Below is a picture of Lillian riding the Donkey, the symbol of the Democrats because, according to our tour guide, "Massachusetts is very democratic, even the Rebublicans are Democrats."


My favorite part of Boston was seeing the U.S.S. Constitution, "Old Ironsides," the oldest commissioned boat still in the water. It was commissioned by George Washington to fight the Barbary Pirates. She saw something like 30 battles and never lost. During a battle in the war of 1812, the cannonballs were seen to bounce off the sides of the ship (which is made of wood) and some sailor shouted something like "Huzzah! It's like she's made of iron!." Hence the nickname.


The green monster at Fenway Park.


I wish we had more pictures of our duck tour, but the camera died. It's a WWII amphibious vehicle, so we toured through Boston and into the Charles "Chals" river. It was really cool, if not really cold. They gave us these blankets and I realized at the end that I had four and Tyler only had one.

Refrigerator

It was out of a possible 150.

Biking the Monuments

The monuments are located in a place called the National Mall. From the Lincoln memorial to the Capitol building is (I'm guessing) five miles: way longer than you'd want to walk. Parking is ridiculous, so it's impractical to drive to all the places you want to see.

To solve this problem, we rented bikes and biked around. The price was a little steep (around $60 for two bikes, helmets, a trailer, and locks for 4 hours) but it worked out really well.


The guard yelled at us for parking our bikes here on the steps of the Lincoln memorial.


Above: Jefferson memorial; Tyler and Lillian are standing in front of the middle column. Below: Vietnam memorial.


We came the week before the Cherry Blossom festival, which I'm glad about because I'm pretty sure it turns into a big circus. But, we did ride along the Potomac river which was really, really cold, but the blossoms were just coming out, so it was really, really pretty.

Part one: Capitol Building and Library of Congress

Lillian on the metro.


If you go to your congressperson's website, you can order tickets for various tours throughout the city. We got tickets to the Congress building and the Library of Congress.

The above picture is in the Rotunda in the Capitol building. This room is "The Peoples' Room" and it tells the story of the American continent in eight or so large murals. Above is the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a scene which never actually took place in real life; the document was signed over a period of months as it was taken around to the various colonies. The artist simply took likenesses of all the signers and painted them in.


These are the phones right outside where the newspaper men are always running to report big headlines from the floor.



The Library of Congress is a beautiful building and worth seeing, but not so much with a toddler. The building is very ornate and the tour guide wanted to tell us about every little detail. Lillian was not so much interested in learning about the statue of nine muses as she was in touching every little piece of tile in the mosaic floor.

Vacation

Pictures to follow; we didn't bring our camera wire. As most of you know, we're vacationing on the East Coast. We spent about a week in Maryland with Austin and Chantel having fun and laughing with their two kids. Lillian loved Soren and followed him around all day. It was pretty mutual until Soren got tired of all the love. We explored all over DC and are totally pros at the metro system.

Tyler's favorite memory of DC: Soren was saying family prayers and half-way through the usual "bless mommy and daddy" he starts saying in a completely different, high-pitched voice, "I'm an alley cat, I'm an alley cat," and started dancing his cat stuffed animal around.

Amanda's favorite memory: We were getting ready to go watch Chantel perform, I came upstairs and was puttering around waiting to get the show on the road. Owen walks over and asked why people wear see-through pants. I look at Austin to see if this is some sort of family joke and he looks at me like "I have no idea what he's talking about." We finally figure out that he was referring to my nylons.

We left and drove up the coast through Pennsylvania (Philadelphia is totally overrated) and Amish country where we found out that the fancy candle maker no longer makes fancy candles, a devastating blow, and bought some black raspberry jam made by real Amish people. We drove through New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut before reaching our current destination of Boston.

Here are some highlights:

While driving through New York, Tyler exclaims "Wow, New York is ugly!"

We've found that most driving rules like 'stop at red lights,' 'stay in one lane,' and 'cross at designated crosswalks' simply don't apply here in Boston. Instead, they have a lot of extra rules like 'honk immediately as soon as the light turns green,' 'hazard lights mean you can park anywhere, including the middle of road,' and 'if necessary, extra lanes can be created by driving into oncoming traffic.' Also, every intersection has at least five streets coming together. Some go through, some don't, some are one way, and all are ambiguously labeled, if labeled at all.

We've been here for a few days and we've been all over. We walked the freedom trail and saw Paul Revere's house, the site of the Boston Massacre, the old North Church, and the church where they sat and waited for word to start the Boston Tea Party (along with 500 graveyards and/or churches.) We also saw (my favorite) the U.S.S. Constitution, also known as "Old Ironsides." We also decided that Boston has the first of everything: first hotel, first tavern, first statehouse, first public park, first school, first port. And they all have their own plaque. Tyler's favorite was our tour of Fenway Park where we saw the green monster and sat in the original hundred-year-old bleachers. We also really liked the Duck tour where they take you around the city and into the Charles river in a WWII amphibious car. Our tour guide was hilarious and we had a lot of fun, even if it was only in the high thirties today.

Lillian had a breakdown today; her first of the whole trip. I think it was the cold the finally got to her. We had just finished our tour of Fenway Park and were trying to figure out how we were going to get across town to the childrens' museum (which was fabulous if you are ever in the area). It was windy and in the high 30s, and she all-of-a-sudden lost it.

We're leaving tomorrow after visiting Walden pond and Louisa May Alcott's house. I'll post pictures probably Monday or so.

I finally did it

Not distracting at all.

Our lives have been so busy. Between papers, projects, finals, studying, and research our lives are consumed by school. Lillian does not like it when we study, as you can probably guess. So, after a lot of headaches and trial and error, Tyler and I came up with a study schedule where we have specific times set aside where one parent will parent and the other can study.

This was last Saturday when it was my turn to study.


It wasn't distracting at all.

We have a climber

We had our quarterly meeting with Lillian's teacher at her day care. She put it best when she said that Lillian is exhibiting "limit-testing behaviors." One of those limits she's testing is how high she can climb on the desk chair. One day when I'm not looking, she's going to go over the top.

Purloined Family History (150th post)

I was watching this series on PBS called African-American Lives which is, incidentally, very interesting, but not what this post is about. The series got me all fired up about my own ancestry and how I don't really know a lot about anything. I started thinking about how even our immediate history has been broken up between the kids (even though some sources assert that Chad has a disproportionate amount.) So I thought I'd do my part and share the little pieces I have, which isn't much.



These are all the pictures I have of our parents when they were young. The two square pictures say 1970 on them, which is the year Mom and Dad got married, so that makes sense. The other pictures, I'm not sure when they were taken. Can anyone help me out?



Maybe after I graduate, I'll come visit Brea and scan everything everyone has and make CDs for all the kids.

Trip to Ridgecrest

The Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division (NavAir) has offered Tyler a job. So we went to check it out. I know what you're thinking: Naval... ocean... why are these pictures of a desert? Good question. In the 1940s, JPL in Pasadena needed a place to test all of their rockets and missiles. Thus, Ridgecrest came to be. There's even a restricted air space corridor between Ridgecrest and Oxnard so they can shoot things from the ocean and hit things in the desert.

But enough about the company, what about the beautiful city?


Above is neighboring Inyokern's City Hall.


This shot is actually coming out of the "city." As you can see up to the left, the sierras are actually very close. Yes, that's snow.


One Pro: No smog.

This is at the city college. Just to prove that not all the buildings are dilapidated.


This is looking out from the city college over the whole thriving metropolis of Ridgecrest.


The main drag.


The lights belong to a sports complex where little kids play soccer and pee-wee football and t-ball.


So, let's talk specifics. They picked Tyler up to go to his full day of being schmoozed, and I drove around the town. The first half I drove through looked a lot like the above picture. I thought, no way in a million years will we ever live here. Ever. The latter half looked more presentable, like a regular suburb. (You'll have to take my word for it because I didn't take any pictures.) So here's a short list of pros and cons:
Pros:

• Cheap housing. And not just trailers which we could buy with Tyler's signing bonus. No, we could buy a nice three bedroom house in the nice neighborhood for 150-175 thousand dollars.
• Good pay. It's not as much dollar-wise as he could make at some other jobs, but when adjusted for cost of living, it's more.
• Good job. They do conceptual stuff, prototype stuff, testing stuff, building actual stuff, putting stuff on actual planes. When you are a new hire, you work in all the departments you think you'd be interested in for a month each, and then you can pick which one you want to work in permanently.
• Hospital for me to work in. I didn't get a good look inside because there was construction obstructions and a crying baby in my car.
• Small town feel. Tyler's escort took us out to lunch and he ran into maybe 20 people he knew just around town. I kind of like that. But, the guy said that his wife hates it because she can't go to the grocery store in sweats.
• Not as small as you'd think. They do have all the stores you would need (except, I couldn't find a bookstore, but I'm sure there's one there.) They have the sports complex, a city college, parks, etc.
• Lots of outdoorsy things. It's close to the Kern river for those river-type activities. It's close to Lake Isabella for those lake-type things. It's close to the mountains for those mountain-type things. Everyone has mountain bikes, dirt bikes, ATVs, gliders, rockclimbing gear, etc.

Cons:

• It's 40 miles east of nowhere.
• The average temperature in July is 110 degrees.
• It's a desert. I didn't think this would bother me until we got back to San Luis and I saw how green and pretty it is. If Ridgecrest isn't green or pretty in February, there's no hope I think.
• Half the town looks like a rundown trailer park.
  

All puns must die

I like crossword puzzles. I really do. But I hated this one. The NYT Crossword gets reprinted some months later in the Mustang Daily, the newspaper of Cal Poly, so Tyler brings it home for me every once in a while. I understand the concept of word play and I get how it can be funny, but this one was just ridiculous.

(FYI: this whole post is about me complaining about this puzzle. So, if this doesn't interest you, stop reading)

First off, I hate puzzles where you have to do something else after you're done to get the joke. 20A clue: With 59-across, hint to this puzzle's secret. The answer is CLARINET / RELATIVE. Then 41A clue: What to do after completing this puzzle, with four straight lines. Answer: CONNECTALLTHEOS.

It doesn't show up really well on the picture, but if you connect the Os you get a bow tie. An O-bow of you will. O-bow, oboe, clarinet relative. Har har.

To make so many Os in the exact right places, all the other answers were really sketchy. Olaf spelled OLOF, and nos (as in yesses and nos) spelled NOES.

Not to mention the use of the all-to-well-known 15A: Mythical king of the Huns. What? You didn't know about King Atli?

As I was complaining to Claire she said "maybe you should make a puzzle with all the answers being authors of xword puzzles, and one of your clues could be "hint to this puzzle" and the answer could be "lame-oes.""

Finishing touches

I bought some new headbands, and Lillian loves them.

Of course, she only wants to do it herself. (Ignore the large pile of laundry to her right. Tyler took these pictures... I would have never taken this shot : )

My engineer

We made a double batch of spaghetti sauce so we could freeze some. As dinner was winding down, I all-of-a-sudden had no idea how I was going to get the sauce into the jars. Without skipping a beat, Tyler grabs a knife and cuts off the bottom of the just-emptied milk jug. I love my engineer.

Pulled intercostal

I've been sick for about a week with a runny nose, sore throat, and cough. If it wasn't another disease, I'd say I had a whooping cough. My cough was so bad, that my professor told me not to come back to the hospital until it was gone (this was after I thought I was getting better). Then, two nights ago, I awoke in a coughing fit and in the midst of it, I felt something pop in my chest wall and then had THE WORST PAIN OF MY LIFE. My first thoughts were that I either had a pneumothorax or a pulmonary embolus. I woke Tyler up (this is probably about 3:30 am) and told him that I was dying and that we needed to go to the emergency room. Always the sensible one, he pointed out that if we were to go to the ER, we'd have to wake up the baby. He said to take some ibuprofen and see if I was still dying in the morning. I laid there with the WORST PAIN OF MY LIFE and talked myself out of the above maladies and decided I had pulled a muscle of inspiration (the left side of the above diagram).

Turns out, Claire did this a while back so she can sympathize. I just wish she hadn't told me it still hurt her after 8 weeks. The pain has downgraded from hurricane to tropical storm, but it still hurts a lot, especially if I yawn or hiccup, or walk up the stairs to our apartment.

I also have thought of all those COPD, CABG, and pneumonia patients that I've been torturing in the hospital. As people sit in hospital beds and do a lot of nothing, their lungs can fill up with fluid. To guard against this, we make them cough. Sure, we medicate them for pain, but they still complain a lot... and I'm totally Nurse Ratchet and say, "I know it hurts but you have to do it." And if they are little sissy coughs, I make them do it again. So, to all of my patients, I'm really sorry. (But you still have to cough).