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).

Just Like Heaven Hair

I've been considering cutting my hair for some time. I had all but made the appointment when pretty much every woman in my ward cut their hair. I kind of liked being the only one with long hair that everyone was jealous of, but seriously, I'm tired of it. I've been looking at doing an A-line bob (probably less fancy than Victoria's though). But Tyler and I were watching "Just Like Heaven," which I would recommend because it's super cute, and I really like the cuts of both the actresses in it.



So, let's take a vote. Let me know how I should cut my hair.

Thanks you, love Cindy Loo Who

We had our friend watch Lillian a while back. It was just for the inbetween time that I'm still at aerobics and Tyler is still at school. Our friend took Lillian to the evening institute class where a girl taught Lillian how to write on herself with a pen. Now she does it all the time.

Thanks.

Also, here's a shot of Lillian in her pig tails. Number of people who told me she looks like Cindy Loo Who (which she doesn't): 4.

Two Days Late, But Still Great

Tuesday was our third wedding anniversary. I was going to try to be fancy like Caitlin and put a song on this post that would epitomize our time together but I couldn't decide on just one song. As far as I can tell, our time has been somewhere in between "Mess Around" by Ray Charles, "The Way I Am" by Ingrid Michaelson, and "Who Put the Alphabet in Alphabetical Order?" by They Might be Giants.

Whatever it is, it's been great.

This is Tyler speaking. Here's Amanda's quote of the day: "Don't make her dance for her food."

Well, I think so anyway

Dad and Jerri stopped by on their way to Northern California and we were talking about something, and I pulled out my scrap book to illustrate my point. Jerri wanted to look at the whole thing and when she got to the first picture, I thought that I looked a lot like Lillian. Or, that Lillian looks a lot like me.

I went to work to try to find a picture that would prove my point, but every picture we have of Lillian, she either crying, concerned, or laughing with her mouth wide open and her eyes all squinty. This bottom picture was the best I could do at finding a match. And even then, we don't look that much alike. Maybe, it's just our essence is alike and you just have to see Lillian to feel the connection.

Rainy Day Women #12 & 35

These pictures are a week old, but I thought they were cute. We had a big rainstorm come through here and it shut us in our house for a few days straight. Lillian and I were at our wits end trying to come up with more inside activities that she would enjoy (we had already made a fort, played with play doh, eaten a picnic indoors, driven around and looked at all the big waves in the ocean, built (and destroyed) countless towers of blocks, made sugar cookies, and played with every other toy she owns, twice.)

Then, I discovered, she just likes to look at the rain.

Lost Watch

I lost my watch sometime last night. I took it off to type on the laptop and never saw it again. This whole affair took place after Lillian went to bed, so I know she didn't immediately run off with it and hide it somewhere. She didn't flush it, she didn't throw it in the trash, the couch didn't eat it (but we did find at least three dollars in change when we did surgery), she didn't put it in the subwoofer, it didn't get swallowed up by the clutter on the desk, it's not under any bookshelves or the bed, it's not behind the toy box or in any of Lillian's toys, it's not in any of the kitchen drawers or pots or pans, it's not in any of my purses or bags, and it's not in our giant bag of filberts (which is a different story).

Any other ideas? I liked that watch. Dad got it for me my first Christmas in college, making it six years old. (By the way, what the heck kind of screwed up Associates Degree takes six years to attain? Even if I did switch majors (only once, and doesn't everyone at least once?) and have a baby: that's messed up.)

Playing Mom

If Lillian sees me putting my make up on in the morning, she always want me to put some on her too. It's the cutest thing ever: I'll swipe her eye lids a few times with my eye shadow brush and then she'll blink hard a few times and then flash a huge smile. I realized today that she was batting her eyes.

Wave Organ

In San Francisco, at the west end of Golden Gate park, you'll find the Wave Organ. It's an instillation piece that's half musical instrument, half art.


These tube stick down into the ocean and vibrate different frequencies with the waves. Sometimes it sounds really cool, sometimes, it just sounds like a big toilet flushing.


It was made from the ruins of a graveyard. You can see in this picture all the different listening stations. The alcove in the top picture is called the echo cave, or something. It has the sound of the ocean magnified and it comes at you from all angles.

Look across the water, and you have a fantastic view of the golden gate.

Methuselah

On the way back from Half(-)Moon Bay (see below) we went through the woods while Mark played tour guide. We were driving along and all of a sudden, Mark exclaims, "pull over!" Down a little unmarked path stood Methuselah. The sign reads "Age estimated 1800 years. Height before top broke.....225 ft. Height 1954.....137 ft. (I'd hate to be around when 88 ft of any tree breaks off.) Diameter at base... above burls... 14 ft."


We found this banana slug on the path. I almost threw up when Tyler leaned down to touch it. He says he was just providing 'perspective for the shot.' I think he was just trying to make me woozy.

Half Moon Bay

We drove out to Half Moon Bay (It should be Half-Moon Bay, but we won't split hairs). It was a beautiful day; cold, but beautiful.


This is at The Mavericks. It's the place where they have the big surf competitions. I guess the big waves are a mile or so out because no one could surf in these little-bitty waves.


We ate lunch at Barbara's Fish Trap. It was really good. I thought it was funny because it was right next to this fancy-pants restaurant which was empty and it was this hole-in-the-wall place but it was super packed. We had to wait 25 minutes for a table.