Monthly Archives: October 2009

My daughter is entering a new phase in her development into a functioning member of society.

She’s started to ask questions.  All…kinds…of questions.

“Where are we going?”  is a popular one.

“What are you doing?” is another.

“What are you making?” happens around dinner time.

“Where is Leo going?” happens usually when our dog Leo is lying right in front of her, fast asleep with no intention of moving anywhere for the next few hours.

“Will you play with me?” happens while I’m trying to work and my wife is trying to get my daughter out the door.

“Are you wiping my butt?”…that one’s only happened once, and oddly enough it didn’t happen at the changing table.  She actually asked me that one after a bath.  ”No, honey,”  I replied. “I’m drying you off.”

That’s not to say that she’s outgrown the declarative statement.  She’s actually started to expand her statements to add qualifiers to make her pronouncements more palatable for adults.

“I don’t want to take a bath…right now. I take a bath later.” (this of course happens when she is going to take a bath, right at that very second)

“I’m going to play for a little while”  (This is a common bedtime declaration)

“You break my tower…in a few days”  (this one happens when I ask her to put away her building blocks.  She’s very particular about how her constructs are treated)

“…and in tonight’s weather, cloudy and cold, with a chance of snow in the North and snow flurries or even light snow in the South.”

I beg your pardon, Wisconsin?

Snow?

In October?

It’s not so much that I was just in California where, as my instructor put it, there is but one season:  Spring.  It’s not so much that its cold and that it might just snow and that the ground might…MIGHT…just retain it long enough to be vaguely visible the next day.

It’s that I was promised…PROMISED…repeatedly by my friends, and in-laws, acquaintances and total strangers passing in the streets that this doesn’t normally happen.

I was told that two years ago, when the first snowfall happened around Thanksgiving.  The snowfall then proceeded to blow away previous winter records that year.

I was told that last year, when the snow was not quite as early nor quite as ferocious, but the winter chill definitely set in early and hard.

And now, a possible snowfall hard enough to graduate from a “flurry” might just hit us overnight.

I tell you, I can hear my in-laws now.  ”You know Dan, it’s not normally like this.  We bought cross-c0untry skis  ten years ago, and have barely had the opportunity to use them.  This is very unusual weather.”

Let’s review:   my sample size is three years.  And in all three years, the weather has been weird.  As an American, I don’t believe in large sample sizes with comprehensive facts and figures leading to a logical conclusion.  I go with my gut.

It snows early and often in this state.   Deal with it.  Put it on your brochures.

If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go put some more pellets in the stove.

Ok, I’m home.  At last.

Actually, I got home yesterday.  I’ve just been busy with all the household activity that’s been pent up since we’ve started travelling.

More Later.

Of all the things that I thought I’d have a hard time getting used to while out here on the West Coast, eating was going to be the hardest.

No, I don’t think that Californians are some sort of wierd alternate species with strange eating habits.

…

No, wait, I kind of do.   Things are different out here.

In any case, despite living in the Midwest, I keep an East Coast schedule.  This allows me to keep a similar schedule as my East Coast coworkers and also get off of work way early.   Flexible scheduling is a wonderful thing for young parents.

So each day I generally end up eating around 11:00 AM Central (Noon on the East Coast).

But now we’re two hours different from Wisconsin.  Plus I’m in a class where the instructor has no respect for the mundane as he lectures us on the ins and outs of advanced .NET WCF programming.  So lunch ends up happening closer to 1:00 PM PT.

I’m not saying that I’ve adapted to the West Coast eating schedule, but my stomach is confused.  Generally speaking, I don’t really feel all that hungry during the day.   I know that I have to eat, and I generally do, but I don’t feel hungry.  Yesterday I met up with one of my college friends who lives in the area, and despite not feeling hungry, I ended up eating half a medium pizza without feeling any ill effects.

My biggest fear is that it’ll be hard to get back on the Midwest schedule next week when I get back.

“Hey Dan,” my boss says to me one day, “I got an email on this upcoming class on .NET WCF Mastery that’ll be coming up in October.  That’s your thing, right?  You want to go?”

That more or less paraphrases the events that got me to California this week.  I looked over the class description, thought it sounded intriguing, and decided to take the company up on its offer for some training.

Continue reading →

So….imagine you’re plopped down in the middle of a city.  Gradually you come to recognize some key landmarks, some phrases, some indications of where you are.

All of the sudden, it hits you:  you’re in Hollywood!  Look, over there!  There’s a Major Motion Picture Studio!  Stars work there!  Look over there, that’s that famous restaurant where a very famous person [ate/got married/punched out a photgrapher/fornicated/passed out/died] (delete non-applicable).  Look, over there!  Isn’t that [insert famous person]?

Ok, take that same feeling, now make it about a thousand times geekier and replace all your stars with Software companies.   That’s how I feel right now.

I’m like 10 minutes away from 1 Infinite Loop (Apple HQ).  I’m the same distance from Google’s HQ.   I’ve seen big buildings plastered with logos of software I’ve used and possibly cursed at.  They advertise software on the billboards, people.  On the billboards!  I have yet to see a single advertisement for Bob’s Roofing, or Larry’s House of Holstein, or Sven’s Scandinavian Furniture…now with more Logs!  Even in Atlanta I never felt myself to be so surrounded by my own people, the Geeks.

It’s really quiet surreal.

As I mentioned previously we did something new and different on our trip back from Georgia….

We traveled on an evening flight.  In fact, our flight left at around 10:00 PM ET.

In previous trips, we’d travel on morning flights.  In fact, the earlier the better really.  Our last flight was so early we practically had to leave for the airport the day before.  And it’s worked well for us.   Depending on which airport we leave from and when and who is available, we have relatives in both Chicago and Milwaukee on whose couches we can crash.  For the vast majority of the flights, our daughter has been reasonably mellow really.  Granted each flight seems to have one or two moments that are a little tense, but we calm her pretty quickly.  The last few times she’d even taken to sleeping in her carseat.  And that’s just awesome.

Continue reading →

I’m sure I’m not the first person to write a post like this…but it’s new to me.

I’m writing this post while five miles up in the air on an airplane.

Amazing, isn’t it?

Probably not as amazing as how the availability of in flight wifi service causes me to cough up money for over-priced internet service. But I read the little flier for the service, thought about how I was going to be on a 4 and a half hour flight, and decided…why not?

So here I am, writing away from an airplane.

It’s been a crazy few days in any case.  I’m exhausted and my head hurts.

As you know, last week the family traveled out to the Boston area for a wedding and returned EARLY Sunday morning.  Friday we set out again, this time traveling to Georgia for another wedding.   As soon as the party was more or less over yesterday evening, we packed up and headed back to the airport to fly back to Milwaukee.  Why such a short turn around time?

I had to catch a plane leaving out of Chicago to head to California for a training class.

I think I wrote about this all a few posts back, but we are putting in INSANE hours and miles of travel these days.

Fortunately for us, it all comes to an end after this weekend.   The OB is putting her foot down and preventing my rather pregnant wife from traveling.  So this should be it.

Thank goodness.

Click Me!

Saturday was the day of the actual wedding.  As my wife was part of the bridal party, this kind of tied her up for most of the day.  My daughter and I struck out on our own.

Actually, the morning was mostly consumed by a visit with some family that I had in the are.

For all her lack of sleep, I was amazed by how charming my daughter could be.  She got over her hesitation around new people very rapidly and spent most of the morning running around and playing with cousins that she had never met until that morning.  (Of course, I am a father and my judgement on such things could be slightly prejudiced.  I was also pretty tired myself.  So she might have been an absolute terror that morning, and I would be able to tell you.)

Continue reading →

You’ll note at the top of the page I’ve linked in the Photo Gallery again.

I’ve also included a slightly winnowed down version of the pictures I took for the wedding in Boston.