checkup and checkout

That was the nature of our morning... Danette had an appt with the doc this morning for a routine checkup of the progress of the pregnancy. All was/is well, looks like the baby must be growing (at the very least it is kicking/swimming a lot) and the heartbeat was good... next time is the standard glucose test, though we have to a wait for a special order for that one - the lab only stocks orange which usually has a yellow food dye which doesn't agree with my fair wife... but there are other options. After the appt we went and checked out a day care provider that takes infants (most places don't start taking kids until 18 mo to three years)... the nice thing about this place is that we know four families that take their kid(s) there - all with pretty good results... seems like a nice place and the program mostly reasonable... food especially - no refined sugars or preservatives - ever... Though I must admit there is one thing on their lunch menu everyday that I could not tolerate - beets... the world's worst vegetable, and possibly the worst food as far as I am concerned - I can't image how much time and energy my parents wasted trying to get me to eat those horribly wretched things... anyway if we take our kid there, I will be interested to see how the beets fare (Danette has a similar aversion to bananas)... we are both interested in the results.

college sports...

all right, it is clearly not a typical year when I caught my first Tar Heel basketball game just last weekend... how a year changes things... the NBA draft lured all the big names away and the team is really, really young... heck, David Noel is about the only guy with any serious court time the last few years... it appears that the boys in blue are kind of on the border of the top 25 (fell out of the AP and #25 in the ESPN Poll)... They do have a decent freshman big guy in Tyler Hansbrough and it looks like the ACC is giving him a good initiation to play in the paint in the ACC... at least last week's game at Florida State seemed that way. At least they are beating Arizona at the half right now and maybe if they win will be able to position themselves for the rest of the ACC season and a good tournament in March.

Now, the guys on skates in maroon and gold are doing a little better... one of the best things about digital cable is that the Gophers hockey team is on Fox Sports virtually every weekend... and we have seen several of those games, and it is nice that they are winning a lot of games - including over #2 Wisconsin last night. Go Gophers!

50 degrees in January in Cleveland????

backyard_January 28, 2006

You know you are getting older when you remember the Superbowl (#40 this year, sorry - XL) being played on the last Sunday in January.... anyway, it is 50 degrees F out here in Cleveland and I just came back in from doing yardwork of all things. A lot of the month has been kind of like this... a little snow, then it melts and gets into the 40's... it is great as far as I am concerned. I just took the pictures in this panorama a few minutes ago. I trimmed up one of the bushes on the far right near the air conditioner and some of the hedge trees on the left and pulled out the small piles of dead wood. You might be able to make out some orange X's in the back left - the power company is finally coming out to trim and remove trees around the power lines. Residents and the City of Shaker Heights have been on them about this for a while since the big blackout 2 1/2 years ago, and some other local problems around town.

Well, Danette went off this morning to get her hair cut and then to her pre-natal yoga class... she has ambitions for this afternoon of either a movie or more registering at Babies R Us so it is done before her baby shower... we only registered for the really important stuff before xmas, mainly as an impetus for us to decide on the important things like carseats, etc... I think I'd rather go to a movie or do something outside... but we'll see. she'll be back in a bit, so I should get a move on...

And a Happy Birthday to my Mom tomorrow!

yet another thursday...

It has been a pretty quiet week around here. We had a little snow yesterday, but not enough for me to even bother shoveling, especially since it is supposed to be 47 degrees tomorrow. We did get a surprise call this week letting us know that our crib that we were told would be here in 6-12 weeks or so is actually in! They'll hold the crib as long as we want them too, but we will have it delivered in a couple of weeks when I can plan to be home for a few hours during the day (on a day I am not teaching). This is a lot better than some of the horror stories that we heard from people when we lived in DC a few years ago and how many months people were waiting for cribs there. Actually, the dresser for the baby's room should be here in the next few weeks too. That one will be a little more work - it needs to be stained and polyurethaned first and then carried up the stairs. I will have to get some help with that one.... basically things are coming together. Heck, there is even a baby-shower planned for Danette thanks to our friend Beverly... pretty darn nice.

Work has been a little busy this week - mainly because I had to finish up my third-year review package and turn it in to the Department. It is out of my hands now, presumably I will hear something by the end of the semester, which could give me a clue as to how my tenure case might be perceived in a few years... or not. At the very least I got some of the materials for the tenure package together and organized, at least for the first half of my pre-tenure period. Otherwise, the week has mostly been reading and writing, all for my courses... even delving into the philosophical side of science - kind of strange to be exercising that Philosophy part of my Ph.D., especially since I haven't really done that before... but it is good to examine the why and how of the operation of science beyond the technical details... and the students seem to find it somewhat interesting too.

I felt the kid move!

Over the last week Danette has said she has felt the kid moving and kicking a lot more. The last couple of days we have tried to see if I could feel the moving through her belly - but no joy. We weren't sure the movements were strong enough yet. Well, just a few minutes ago (actually in the middle of writing the previous blog entry) I felt the kid move, twice! and man does that kid already have some good moves. I hope for Danette's sake it is judicious in when and where it squirms, though unfortunately, I doubt that will be the case...

when I was a greyhound...

So, "nesting" took brief hold in our house today and Danette decided that closets needed to be re-everythinged before the baby arrives... anyway a big closet got completely emptied this afternoon, and with it a few boxes of stuff from high-school (the greyhound reference for the non-Duluthians) and earlier.

Now most of this stuff is sports cards that my brother and I kept as kids (and maybe a tad bit after that), mainly of the baseball variety (I preferred Topps). These are mainly cards from the late 80's and early to mid 90's, so cards from the heyday of guys like Al Newman, Jeff Reardon (recently in the news, unfortunately), Vince Coleman, and many others. They seem to be in good condition. There are even some basketball cards, presumably my brother's, though I blame those on the influence of Nate for some reason - whether he had anything to do with it, I can't really remember. A bunch of them are still organized by teams, though a lot are in boxed sets, some complete, others not.

The strangest items in boxes included some notes and homework from some of my classes in high-school. That was fun and weird at the same time. I still had notes from American History with Mr. Moe and Biology with Mrs. Mendoza (and yes we learned about evolution, including a whole bunch on Darwin!). Even Spanish notes for some reason - no idea why they were kept, but oh well. The interesting ones were from the two AP classes I took, English and European History. Five paragraph essays for english and analyzing "documents" for European history... heck I even had the questions from the two AP exams I took... I certainly couldn't answer some of those questions today... I am sorry to say that I do not remember much of the origins of pan-slavism! Still, it was interesting to look at them, before most of them hit the recycle bin....

Night out...

A strange thing is happening... I am wearing a tie to go to party. Where did I go wrong?

Actually, we are headed to Danette's office "Winter" Party - an alternative to the holiday party, and probably cheaper for the company too, I would guess. Free food always tastes good, and she has some nice co-workers - the few that I have met... so it should be fun... but a tie... and wait for it, yes... a name tag. Ah well, a party with name tags and a kid on the way, I might actually be growing up... but let's hope not.

wish we were here..

This pic is one that Danette took while away for a work trip back in November. I was looking through the images on my hard-drive and even though most of January has been unseasonably warm here in northeast Ohio, this beach looks quite tempting. Oh yeah, she was working down in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands at the time and I guess this was view was only a few feet from her hotel room door!

Anyway, a reasonably good weekend around here. Yesterday we went to a birthday party for some friends' 1-year-old. It was interesting not only because a cute kid had her first birthday party, but also to see the dynamic of the participants. Most of the people there were from a "play group" ... that is most of the people there were mothers and almost 1-year-olds... neat and hectic at the same time.

Today was a bit more mundane, house stuff and catching up on a little writing... well, classes start back up again this week, on Tuesday. Tomorrow is MLK Day, meant to honor the man with a truly incredible dream, so no students... though I do hope some of them are partaking in some of the opportunities available to them. I need to get better about it too, like I tried to be in college... Anyway, Peace to you all. 

our baby...

Well, here he/she is! Everything seems to be going well. Apparently the darker spot on the left in the torso is the stomach and the one to the right is the heart. Some little fingers are there in the background. 

When fluorescent, green pigs fly...

Yesterday, yes yesterday, the title of this entry would have been overly far-fetched and cliche.... today it is just a paraphrased cliche. According to a Reuters article on Yahoo, researchers in Taiwan have bred three male transgenic, fluorescent, green pigs. Now it is news to me, but apparently partially green pigs already exist... but these little hams (insert favorite Green Eggs and Ham reference here) even have green hearts (yup, presumably they can claim to be the first true fans of the Boston Celtics that bleed green?).

In all fairness, I know close to nothing about embryonic biology, and this is presumably important. I am guessing because it is a demonstration of what might be done, allowing specific conditions that can be "turned on" at the embryonic stage to be studied... but I never really thought that we might someday see black-lights at a pig farm!

deconstructing January...

Life is becoming forcibly a little more productive this month. Not only are we beginning to move into a higher gear of preparation for the incoming bambino, but somehow work is moving into a higher gear too (new challenges are great, but sometimes it would be nice to trade some of the old workload for the new). This is the month that my third-year review package is due. The third-year review is basically a pre-tenure check-up. I have to pull together all the materials that will go into my tenure package in 2.5 years that I have at this point. That includes: an up-to-date CV (resume that has all my jobs, papers, talks, grants), statements about my original scientific contributions, my service contributions to the University and beyond, my teaching portfolio (all of my syllabi, course descriptions, homeworks, exams, assignments, as well as all of my numerical and written evaluations by students), a list of my peer-reviewed papers with how many times they have been cited, as well as a sampling of my papers for good measure. This package will go to the tenured faculty in my department for discussion and then forwarded on with their comments to a committee from my College, to the Dean, and the Provost too if memory serves (gotta go back and look at all the details before doing the final polish). Basically they will look for weaknesses in my package and hopefully provide a constructive window as to any additional expectations that need to be met and preferably exceeded before going up for tenure in 2.5 years. Pulling this all together is a detail job - I have all of the info I need, I just have to pull it all together and polish it up appropriately.

On top of that I have a paper that I am about finished revising and will send to the journal. Then I have two new classes to prepare - classes start next week. Hopefully this will be the last semester for a while where my classes are completely new to me, and I can start refining them to work better. The courses are relatively small as things go, and one of them is actually for graduate students, which is kind of a treat - so hopefully it will be a good semester. Finally, by the end of the month I have some progress reports due for some grants. The research has been going well, so those will be a matter of just sitting down and writing.

Of course, I am not the only busy one in the family.. Danette has a bunch of projects going and is even doing a there-and-back trip for work trip today; she was up at some early hour like 4 or something to get ready and get to the airport in time for her flight.

Nevertheless, we seem to be on-track at the moment, and that is a feeling I will take any day of the week.

What is this blog about anyway?

There are lots of different types of (we)blogs on the web these days - personal, professional, political news, humorous, and some mix things up a bit. This blog will tend more heavily toward the personal end of things... a combination of the interesting and mundane from the far edge of Shaker Heights. The intended audience is family and friends - basically a way to slightly handle the usual complaints that I never write (okay, email - no one wants to read my handwriting) while dishing out what is happening out here on the south shore of Lake Erie with our 202 cloudy days a year. (aside: I had always heard since we got here that Cleveland was the 2nd cloudiest city in the U.S - a little google action and we learn.... wrong!).

So, to summarize: the contents of this blog will be primarily self-centric (to our family and goings-on) and hopefully a good way to communicate and archive what we are doing in our little (and growing!) family. Political commentary will be rare at best, geek commentary will be occasional (considering who is the primary author here), and family stuff common.

I hope you enjoy what you see... and if not, hit the next blog button at the top-right and see if you can find something else that better suits your interests or tastes....

Ciao!

of dentists and bookshelves...

I am trying something new today as I am using the Performancing plugin for Firefox 1.5 to write this blog entry directly from my Firefox browser rather than logging into Blogger and typing in the box. We'll see how this little test goes.

Today has been relatively productive as days go - finally got some time (and motivation) to work on the revision of a paper I am working on and did some committee related work. The big work of the day was yet another trip to the dentist. Seems both of the crowns I got in 2003-2004 were not put on that well and a was getting cavities underneath where I couldn't brush if I tried. Fortunately, this one was caught early enough that all should be well when I get a new crown sometime in the next month.

We've (especially Danette) have had some fun comparing notes with our friend Cari who is expecting a baby the week after Danette. I am delinquent in scanning in our ultrasound pictures to share - maybe this weekend.

I was feeling particularly motivated when I got home for once and put together a short bookshelf that we picked up for the baby's room to hold books and toys. Not usually all that exciting of stuff - but man was it so easy, finally something built with home assembly in mind when it was designed. And what's more, it is solid wood - not particle board. I was most impressed - it was so intuitive that instructions weren't really needed, but they were in pretty good shape too. And an object from Target Boutique no less!

There's a baby in there!

Today Danette had the 20 week Level II ultrasound (just a targeted ultrasound that measures sizes and checks various major limbs and organs). Everything turned out normal/nominal/fine/as expected, which was great news to us. We chose not to find out the gender. We were both feeling a little ambivalent about finding out - both of us shifted a little from previous views (me: I generally like good surprises, Danette: the planner wanted to plan). We decided ambivalence, meant we should go for the surprise at this point.

All that said, watching the screen of the ultrasound was so cool. The first image we saw was of the baby's brain! Then the doctor backed off and we saw the whole head, which she measured. She then went on to measure the femur and other parts of the body. We saw both hands and a foot (the doctor obviously saw and measured more than we were able to take in). But one of the coolest and most interesting things we saw was the heart. The doctor even zoomed in on it and we could see each of the four chambers and all of them pumping away. Somehow the doctor even estimated the weight (mass actually) of the baby at around 400 g (normal). Another thing I found interesting was near the end of the ultrasound the doctor turned on a mode that had color! My geophysical mind went to work and I realized (and later confirmed on the web) that the color was from the Doppler shift due to things moving inside the baby. My web search indicated that it was most-likely highlighting blood-vessels allowing the doctor to check on yet another aspect of the kid's anatomy.

Apparently everything is in good shape. That is wonderful news as we sit here at the half-way mark. We have a lot to do before May... but we've started projects around the house that we'd like to have done before the kid arrives and have even started stocking up on new furnitute. If you've seen our house there is a low density of furniture. We picked up the all important glider-rocker last Friday and ordered a dresser for the baby's room from our favorite local unfinished furniture store. We also picked up a bookcase for baby books and toys, but haven't put it together yet. Work to do another evening...

she's so sharp!

My wife, that is... Today just doesn't really feel like New Year's Day around our house. Why? Well, that was the question... Danette just nailed one of the answers (I actually saw the lightbulb floating in the air after she said it): There was no Rose Bowl Parade today! The 117th Rose Bowl Parade is delayed (presumably because of the whole BCS thing for the football game and they delayed the parade too.) Some things are meant to happen on certain days. Fireworks on the fourth of july and a big parade on New Years.... ah well... so starts another year. Happy 2006!