Blogosaurus

Posting Elsewhere

2010-09-07T13:20:00.000-07:00

I'm posting these days at my other blog:

http://babyblogosaurus.wordpress.com/

This blog has moved

2010-03-11T20:41:00.001-08:00

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HD Update

2009-12-03T21:26:00.000-08:00

Well, after me complaining about the TV, Chris futzed around with the settings and now the HD stuff looks great! He showed me what he changed.. one of them was something about turning off the "smoothing" option but don't ask me what it means. All I know is it looks way better now.

Yippee, HD

2009-11-29T22:25:00.001-08:00

After discussing it for the last, oh, five years or so, we finally bought an HD TV last week. I like it, but... it is not quite as awesome as I thought it would be. The screen is nice, the picture is big, but some programs just look a little off.

It's hard to explain. The close-ups look good, but when we were watching The Tudors on DVD (granted, we don't have Blu-Ray) I started to notice that the shots that are farther out look like.... well, like we're watching PBS or a soap opera or something. Less polished. Also, I feel like I'm much more aware of the camera panning.

I chalked it up to being a regular DVD, but I have noticed the same thing on TV shows like Glee. On the other hand, Survivor looked great. I watched a few minutes of Empire Strikes Back on cable and I hate to say it, but it just didn't look that great.

Maybe it's just something I'll have to get used to, like the shaky hand-held camera thing that started a while ago. We'll see!

Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes..

2009-10-30T14:39:00.000-07:00

Long time no update, eh? Mostly I update over at Baby Blogosaurus. I'm thinking of combining them back into one blog again, since the poll I took last September seemed to indicate most everyone reads both anyway.

Anyway, I wanted to post the latest about my knee. Recap: did no running while pregnant. A couple of months after having Jack, started up running again, after 2 weeks, knee pain. Stopped. A year later (June 2009) I tried again, and again, after 2 weeks, much knee pain. Saw the doctor, got an MRI: right knee stress fracture at the top of the tibia.

No running for a few months, started physical therapy. MRI in October showed: no more stress fracture! Yay! So I have started oh-so-slowly with a running program again. I am just starting my second week, so we'll know soon whether my problem has truly been resolved.

United and their baggage

2009-07-15T13:26:00.000-07:00

We usually fly United Airlines, partly because we have a credit card that gets miles, and partly because it's usually going where we need to go.

In May when we went to Seattle we flew United. United charges $15 for the first bag you check in. My sister and I each checked a bag and paid the fee. When we got to the gate, they announced the flight was full, and that anyone could go ahead and check a bag right now--for no charge.

That made me mad. We follow the rules and pay extra? Nice. So I decided to email United when I got home, just to tell them I didn't think they played fair. I went to Christopher Elliot's travel advice website and looked up the contact info for United's customer support. And within a couple of days, I got a very nice reply, apologizing and giving us each a $25 voucher. Now, the apology didn't acknowledge that they had broken their own rules--it said something about there being a "misunderstanding"--but whatever. I hadn't asked for any money, and they were nice to apologize and to give us vouchers.

Sadly the vouchers are not usable on baggage fees however!

On our Hawaii trip, we paid to check our bags when we checked in on-line. The fees have gone up--it's now $20 at the airport, but $15 on-line. However, my sister and my dad only paid $11, so I called United yesterday to find out why.

Turns out the fee increase is based on when you bought your tickets, and since they bought their tickets earlier, they had the earlier fee.

I still can't even believe airlines are charging to check a bag. It's outrageous. It makes people try to cram even MORE stuff on carry-on. If the airline needs more money, it should increase the ticket price, not nickel-and-dime us to death on basics.

I have to say, though, I don't really mind buying food on the plane. I never much liked the free food they serve, and the vegetarian option is usually also the kosher, low-salt, no-fat, no flavor option as well. I was fine paying the $6 for a snack box on our trip to Hawaii. It had lemon-flavored tuna, crackers, and shortbread cookies. Some dried fruit might be nice, but ah well.

Living in Belmont

2009-05-17T14:11:00.000-07:00

Forbes Magazine recently came out with its list of Top 25 American Cities to Live Well, and Belmont, California (where we live) was number 11.

We've lived here six years, and we like it very much. We love our neighborhood, and its proximity to hiking trails. The schools are very good. It's close to San Francisco. It has a great new library.

The main drawback is the weather.. it's often 20 degrees cooler here than next-door San Carlos! It can get quite windy. Chris doesn't mind it, but I'd prefer it a little warmer. We do have heat waves.. it was 94 degrees here yesterday.. but it seems like its either slightly on the cool side, in the 50s or 60s, or REALLY hot. I'd like more 70-80 degree days!

Also I wish there was a real downtown. There are shops and restaurants, but no real main street.

But I have to agree it's a great place to live!

What's different about England?

2009-05-15T10:51:00.001-07:00

Every time I visit the UK, I see little things that are subtly different than the US. There are the obvious things, of course, like different vocabulary, driving on the other side of the road, having a Queen, etc. This last trip I decided to write down some of the things I noticed. I've listed them here.

Let me preface it by saying I really love the UK, and that these are just my own experiences, from the 4 months or so I've spent there. Your mileage may vary.

Separate hot and cold taps. This really drives me crazy... you either burn your hands or freeze them. The idea is that you're supposed to put the plug in and fill the sink with the right mix of water, but that seems like a lot of bother.
"Half-eleven". Just one of those phrases that I have to stop and think about when I hear it (I would say "eleven-thirty").
"dinner" == Sunday lunch. I still get mixed up about the usage of lunch, dinner, and tea. Sometimes tea means afternoon snacks, sometimes it means a light dinner, sometimes it means a regular dinner. Sometimes lunch is lunch and sometimes it's dinner.
No napkins. Or at least, very few napkins. Chris is adept at eating without needing a napkin. Me, not so much. I didn't realize I was a messy eater until I had to make due without a napkin. Restaurants have napkins, but often have paper napkins instead of cloth even at slightly nicer places.
Putting the laundry out to dry outside. This is good environmentally, and not everyone has space for a dryer, but I see lots of people who do have dryers still using the line. In a country that rains a lot. I remember being in Scotland at a B&B and the owner had just put the wash out to dry, when it started hailing, so he brought it all back in. Then it was sunny again, so it went out again.
No shower door/curtain. Another skill Chris has that I lack: taking a shower in a tub with no curtain. After my 5th visit to his parents', I am finally able to take my shower without getting the floor soaking wet. Showers often have hand-held sprayers that are on brackets on the wall; I must admit I really like my water-wasting more powerful American shower heads.
Small rooms, keep the doors closed! I'm used to houses with more open-plan styles, where you often can't even "close" a room because there's no door. A lot of the UK houses I've been too have smaller rooms, and I see people opening and shutting the doors as they go in and out. Makes sense from a heating perspective. It's just something different.
Soap with a "badge". Chris's parents have this soap called Imperial Leather that has a little "badge" in the middle, that's leftover when the soap is all gone. Never seen that before!

Anyway, those are just some of the little things that struck me. I would love to hear from Brits about the little things they've noticed in the US.

Song Flashbacks

2009-03-05T18:10:00.000-08:00

This morning on the radio I heard Sting's Love is the Seventh Wave and was instantly transported back in time to 1988, driving down Ygnacio Valley Road in Chris W's (POPnet handle: Number Six) yellow AMC Hornet, en route to a party.

I love song flashbacks. When I hear Groove is in the Heart by Deee-Lite, I'm back in my dorm room freshman year at UCSD, dancing with my roommate Amanda. Push It by Salt-N-Pepa puts me back at a high school dance, doing the Running Man. When I hear The Flag by the Barenaked Ladies, I'm driving in my car from Indiana to Kentucky on my first solo road trip.

When I hear Help Me Rhonda by the Beach Boys I picture my Dad dancing in our living room, clapping his hands and singing, and everything seems right with the world. Early Morning Rain reminds me of Jon...it was on a mix tape from him and I listened to it over and over in my Honda station wagon in high school.

Some songs have multiple memories. The Summer of '69 by Bryan Adams brings to mind hanging out at Jason's house in high school, singing along in his living room, as well as early days of dating Chris, jumping on the bed in his studio apartment and air guitaring.

Some songs are sad, reminding me of breakups, or my lonely first summer in Indiana. Some songs make me tearful but for good reasons: the lyric "And when I take your hand, I watch my heart set sail," from Mark Cohn's True Companion fills me with love for Chris.

And there are songs that I just can't help dancing to, like It Takes Two to Make a Thing Go Right by Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock. Lisa and I heard that in the mall the other day and just started grooving at the Gap.

I love how music brings back such powerful memories. Got any song flashbacks? Share them in the comments!

Love Me Tender

2008-12-07T17:41:00.000-08:00

Last night was the Yahoo! holiday party. The theme this year was Las Vegas, and I have to say it was my favorite so far (of the four we've been to). The first year we went, I was feeling terrible from the bug I'd picked up on our trip to the Caribbean. The second year was good. Last year I was 5 months pregnant and spent most of it sitting down. This year I was footloose and fancy free!

My parents babysat and we had a great time dancing, eating, playing Dance Dance Revolution, and renewing our vows with Elvis. Yes, they had a Vegas-style wedding stage, and Elvis performed the ceremonies. They even had wigs/glasses to dress up. The only thing lacking was gingerbread men (available at the previous parties).

Here In My Car

2008-11-11T21:50:00.000-08:00

Chris and I have been discussing buying a new car for years. I'd been driving a 1996 Nissan 200SX SE-R, and he's been driving a 2001 Audi S4.

I loved my Nissan. It was my first new car, and I bought it back in Indiana when I was going to graduate school. I took my first solo road trip in it (down to Kentucky to visit Mammoth Caves), and drove it from Indiana to Virginia, and Indiana to California. It was just right for me: small, zippy, and comfortable to drive. The only thing it lacked was a color: I wanted green, but settled for black. I vowed the next time I bought a car I wouldn't settle.

I briefly considered buying a Nissan 350Z as its replacement, and even took one for a test drive, but I knew I wouldn't end up buying it. Too impractical.

When the baby arrived, I started driving the Audi, because it's a 4-door so it's easier to get the car seat in and out. However, it's still too small to fit two adults in the back in addition to the carseat. So we decided we'd replace the Nissan with a more family-friendly car.

We didn't want an SUV or a minivan, and quickly settled on a wagon. But then we stalled. There are wagons out there, but nothing met all our criteria: good gas mileage, reasonably sized back seat and cargo space, a little bit sporty, 4WD, and, my most important one: it had to come in red!

We dithered for months, went to the car show, test drove a couple of cars, and finally decided on a Toyota Matrix. But finding the Matrix with the options I wanted (red, 5-speed manual, vehicle stability control, all-weather package) was impossible. I tried CarsDirect.com, spoke to various dealers, but they all said that combination wasn't available. One dealer kept calling/emailing me and would say, "Cathy.... are you SURE you want red? I mean... it's RED. Really red."

Finally I called an auto broker and she found the car I wanted in Sacramento. Two guys drove it down on Saturday morning, and when we opened the door they looked at us doubtfully and said, "It's red." I GET IT. Then when I said I wanted to take it for a drive around the block, one of them said, "Well, it's a 5-speed.." Um, yeah, I DID buy the car... do you think I can't drive it? Then he insisted I was the co-signer when in fact my name was listed first. Ok, I'm a 36-year old woman; why is it I can't possibly want a red car with a manual transmission??

Anyway, we drove the car this weekend and I like it a lot. It doesn't have all the luxuries of the Audi--I really miss the automatic temperature control, where you can just set the temperature you want--but it's been nice to drive so far. And, we can fit two adults in the back along with the car seat!

Now I just have to sell the Nissan. I'm going to miss that car.

Duh

2008-10-29T12:36:00.000-07:00

Stupid things I have done recently that I choose to blame on sleep deprivation:

Stuffed the water bill into a drawer and forgot all about it
Went to the grocery store but forgot my shopping list
Went back to the store to get what I forgot, and bought sour cream instead of cottage cheese
Forgot to pay the credit card bill, then argued with the customer service rep that of COURSE I had paid it, it must have been a bank error. Uh.. no.
Set fire to parchment paper on the stove
Drove down the block with the emergency brake on
Sent someone a birthday card an entire month early

I'm sure there's more, but I am too sleep-deprived to remember.

Ho Ho Ho

2008-10-24T18:53:00.000-07:00

I find this a little ironic: it's a bag of coal from Crate and Barrel (really licorice pieces), for Christmas stockings. And it's kosher.

Bad Survey

2008-10-08T22:41:00.000-07:00

As someone who used to conduct surveys, I am sympathetic when I get calls asking me to participate in one. Plus, I actually like taking surveys.

Tonight I got another call from the Nielsen people, asking me to take a television survey. First the guy says, "May I speak to Cathy.. F.... female?" I said, "Cathy F?" and he says "Oh.. no.. Cathy, the F is for female."

Ok, that's me! Then we get stuck on the first question: do I subscribe to cable TV? Well, I asked for a clarification, since cable TV sometimes means literally cable TV (e.g. instead of satellite), and sometimes it means non-broadcast channels.

He repeated the question. I said, Does it include satellite TV? We subscribe to satellite. He repeated the question. Finally, I'm like, I don't know, let's move on.

The next question? "Do you subscribe to a satellite TV service?"

Sigh.

He then proceeds to list every sport known to man, including 10 types of car racing I've never heard of, and wants to know how much I like watching them on TV, on a scale of 1 to 5. Since I don't watch sports on TV, I answered 1 to everything, though I really wanted a negative rating scale for things like hunting and fishing, which would be even worse than watching, say, football.

About 12 minutes into the survey, he suddenly says, "I am having computer problems. I will have to call you back." I ask him how much more there is of the survey and he says "I don't know.. my computer is having problems."

I think their survey technique could use some improvement.

Book Review: Traffic: Why We Drive The Way We Do

2008-09-30T15:57:00.000-07:00

I just finished the book Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What it Says About Us) by Tom Vanderbilt. It was excellent!

He takes a look at the psychology of driving, and has lots of data and studies to look at. One of the most fascinating parts to me was about the "less is more" theory, e.g. it's safer to have FEWER traffic signals, signs, high sidewalk curbs, etc, because those things allow a driver (as well as pedestrians and bicyclists) to feel safe when we shouldn't. He quotes recently-deceased Dutch traffic engineer Hans Monderman, who pioneered this theory. You can read more about Monderman on Vanderbilt's blog, or watch this video.

Two paragraphs really stood out for me. The first is about people's inability to understand the odds of dangerous things happening, and how it makes us try to add security to the wrong places. He articulates something very well that I've long thought (emphasis mine):

Grimly tally the number of people who have been killed by terrorism in the United States since the State Department began keeping records in the 1960s, and you'll get a total loss of less than 5,000--roughly the same number, it has been pointed out, as those who have been struck by lightening. But each year, with some fluctuation, the number of people killed in car crashes in the United States tops 40,000. More people are killed on the roads each month than were killed in the September 11 attacks. In the wake of those attacks, polls found that many citizens thought it was acceptable to curtail civil liberties to help counter the threat of terrorism . . . Those same citizens, meanwhile, in polls and in personal behavior, have routinely resisted traffic measures designed to reduce the annual death toll (e.g. lowering speed limits, introducing more red-light cameras, stiffer blood alcohol limits, stricter cell phone laws.) . . . It might be precisely because of all the vigilance that no further deaths due to terrorism have occured in the United States since 9/11 . . . This raises the question of why we do not mount a similarly concerted effort to improve the "security" of the nation's roads; instead in the wake of 9/11, newspapers have been filled with stories of traffic police being taken off the roads and assigned to counterterrorism.

And I liked this paragraph too (again, emphasis mine):

On the road, we make our judgments about what's risky and what's safe using our own imperfect human calculus. We think large trucks are dangerous, but we drive unsafely around them. We think roundabouts are more dangerous than intersections, although they're more safe. We think the sidewalk is a safer place to ride a bike, even though it's not. . . We do not let children walk to school even though driving presents a greater hazard . . . We buy SUVs because we think they're safer and then drive them in more dangerous ways. We drive at a minuscule following distance to the car ahead, exceeding out ability to avoid a crash, with a blind faith that the driver ahead will never have a reason to suddenly stop. We have gotten to the point where cars are safer than ever, yet traffic fatalities cling to stubbornly high levels. We know all this, and act as if we don't.

Anyway, the whole thing is a great read and I highly recommend it.

A Poll

2008-09-23T13:31:00.000-07:00

Just curious about my readership. (I have the same poll on my other blog too.. please only vote once!)

Which do you read:

1) I only read Blogosaurus.
2) I only read Baby Blogosaurus.
3) I read both blogs.

View Results

Make your own poll

So Close

2008-09-22T22:35:00.000-07:00

This afternoon, a truck crashed into a parking lot of a grocery store in San Mateo, injuring three people and killing a child. The grocery store is Mollie Stone's, where I go every week. I was in that very parking lot an hour before the accident.

Just a reminder of how random these things are.. how quickly lives can be changed forever, even when you're just grocery shopping. Scary.

Cooking

2008-09-22T22:08:00.001-07:00

I've been looking for some new recipes recently as I'm getting a little tired of all our standard meals. Plus I need more quick meals since I don't have much time to cook. Generally, I cook dinner 5-6 nights a week, and one night we do something really basic like frozen pizza. Chris sometimes cooks a meal as well (like when he has a hamburger and I have a veggie burger, or when we have breakfast for dinner and he makes bacon). He also makes very tasty broccoli calzones, but those take a while so we only have them on the weekend. Oh and this weekend he made a lemon meringue pie.. that was good too.

When I say I "cook" that doesn't necessarily mean much; it could just be boiling ravioli & heating sauce and making a salad. But sometimes it's more complicated, like veggie Wellingtons (Chris's favorite vegetarian meal).

Chris doesn't like leftovers, and I can't really complain about that.. he eats anything I make, even though it's vegetarian. We both grew up with moms who were stay-at-home (though my mom did go back to work part time when I was older) and who cooked dinner every night, so we're used to that model.

But I found a way around the leftover problem! Did you know you can make twice as much, and FREEZE part of it? Wow! It only took me 36 years to learn this.

Anyway, two new things I've tried recently: spinach & mushroom in phyllo cups, and sausage-egg casserole.

The spinach & mushroom thing is from Vegan Lunch Box, but the original recipe uses tofu and phyllo you have to roll out, so I never tried it. But then I saw on her blog [can't link to the post; scroll down to "Greg's Great Greek Lunch"] that she used mushrooms in place of the tofu and used the pre-made cups (found in the frozen section) so I tried that and it worked well.

I decided to try some vegetarian sausage last week when we had breakfast for dinner, and it wasn't too bad. I wasn't a big sausage eater when I ate meat, either. Anyway Chris didn't like the plain sausage, but I thought I might be able to find a dish that used it in a less obvious way. I found this recipe on Epicurious and tried it out tonight and it was pretty good--I think we'll have it again! (I substituted veggie sausage for meat, of course, and added more sun-dried tomatoes, and used half-and-half instead of whipping cream).

That's the latest in our culinary adventures.

President of Yugoslavia

2008-09-17T20:57:00.000-07:00

Back in high school, for reasons I cannot explain, I declared myself the president of Yugoslavia. My friend Tara S. declared herself the co-president, and we would talk in funny accents. I had a Yugoslavia keychain and a Yugoslavia sweatshirt, and I visited the Yugoslavia booth at the World Expo.

Anyway, my friend Andy got me a cool huge Yugoslavian flag that I hung in my room, and then later in my dorm room in college. I carried that flag from San Diego to Indiana and back to California again. At some point I thought maybe I should sell it on eBay or something, since I was no longer using it, and someone else would appreciate it more. But I was too lazy to do anything about it.

Until a few weeks ago, when I walked into my mother's group and met someone who was born in Yugoslavia. I said, "This may be an odd question, but would you like a Yugoslavian flag?" And she said "Sure!"

So the next week I brought it with me, and gave it to her. And that is the story of my Yugoslavian flag.

The Android's Dream: Review

2008-09-03T17:58:00.001-07:00

Over the years, I'd heard favorable things about John Scalzi's writing, so I was happy to find one of his books (The Android's Dream) at the local library. The title interested me because of the homage to Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

I really didn't like this book. First off, the core plot revolves around a fart joke--not exactly my favorite type of humor. The writing is sloppy: for example the word "just" would be used twice in one sentence, and there were a bunch of typos. The writing style is extremely casual, which in general I don't mind, but this was casual enough that I was conscious of it.

What I disliked most, however, was its treatment of female characters. I am very disappointed that a modern science fiction writer would do such a poor job of including female characters. It's science fiction.... you can do anything you want! Yet it suffers from the age-old treatment of women as important only as love interests.

There are two major female characters: Robin Baker, and Andrea Hayter-Ross. Baker is a human/sheep hybrid; her mother was genetically engineered as a sheep-woman to satisfy men's beastiality urges. Nice. Baker is described as "attractive," of course, and is pursued by Earthlings and aliens alike for a ceremony to determine the next leader of the Nidu alien race.

Hayter-Ross is really the only decent female character, as someone who started the Church of the Evolved Lamb, a thinly-veiled version of Scientology.

Of course, Baker is always called "Robin" (or "the girl"), while the male characters are usually referred to by their last name.

There are so many politicians, hackers, aliens, etc. in this book--why are they almost all men? In another charming example, Earth has banned all females of a particular alien race from visiting Earth during mating season unless they are on birth control, since their mating practices wreak havoc. It's a silly piece of the story, but why must it be the females who are banned?

This book gets an average rating of 4 out of 5 stars on Amazon. Even if the misogyny doesn't bother you, I think the story is pretty lame. I did actually finish the book, so it's certainly not the worst thing I've ever read, but I can't say it makes me want to read anything else he's written.

Dinosaurs Are Not Just For Boys

2008-09-03T15:00:00.001-07:00

It drives me nuts when people advertise things like dinosaur decorations and label it "for boys". Why on Earth would only boys like dinosaurs? My mom got me a really cute scrapbook with dinosaurs on it and put pictures of everyone in the family in it. It comes with stickers and they all say things like "absolutely 100% boy" and "of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable" and "it's a guy thing". WTF?

Look, I understand that in general, more boys than girls are interested in dinosaurs. But I was a dino-freak when I was a kid and I'm sure lots of other little girls are too. There is just no reason to categorize the world into "boy" and "girl" items. It's like greeting cards--why are Star Wars cards labeled "Boy Birthday"? Why can't they just be birthday cards?

Jack's room is painted lavender. We painted it that color a few years ago and saw no reason to change it when turning the room into a nursery. Having that color for a boy disturbs some people, however. I called a place to ask about glider cushions and when I mentioned the color of the room was lavender and that we were having a boy, the woman said, "Well, and you'll be changing the color of course..."

Just what do people think is going to happen if a baby boy has a room with lavender-painted walls? No doubt he'll be scarred for life.

Great Weekend

2008-08-24T17:46:00.001-07:00

What a nice weekend. On Saturday I went to book club for our 5-year anniversary. We read Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, by Oliver Sacks, and had a great discussion at Bistro Vida, where our book club was conceived. I love book club. We spend about half the time discussing the book, and half the time talking about all kinds of things. I always wish we could meet longer.

Saturday night S. came over and made us dinner: lentil tostadas. They were very tasty and I had leftovers for lunch today. We watched some Olympics and played the Poll Game, one of my favorites. (Dave was out of town so missed out on the fun.)

Today I met up with Amy and visited Lisa and Jason and their new baby boy Jon. They're doing very well and Jon is adorable.

Last night Jack gave us a treat and had a five-and-a-half hour chunk of sleep (he went to bed at 8, woke up to eat around midnight, then slept until 5:30).

Soon, Jack will wake up from his nap and we'll go for a short walk, then have dinner. And that will be the end of a very nice weekend.

3 Day What?

2008-08-18T14:18:00.001-07:00

I'm sure this isn't news to anyone, but the company 3 Day Blinds should really be renamed "3 Day Blinds (if you pay us $150 extra)".

Question on Unlocking Phones

2008-08-17T18:25:00.001-07:00

Ok, people out there who are cell-phone savvy: I need to know how I can make sure my phone will work when we go to the UK.

I have a Motorola Razr V3. I called T-Mobile and told them I wanted to unlock my phone. They sent me an email with the unlocking code and the following instruction: "Before you start, you must have a foreign (non T-Mobile) SIM card entered into the handset."

I want to test this out before we travel (prob in a few months). Can I buy a SIM card here and try it? If so, where would I buy it, what would I buy?

Where the Hell is Matt? At Yahoo!

2008-08-04T12:22:00.000-07:00

Matt Harding, of the website Where the Hell is Matt?, recently paid a visit to the Yahoo! campus. For those who haven't heard of him, Matt travels around the world and does a goofy dance in various locales. He often dances with the locals. This year's video is excellent, be sure and check it out.

I wanted to be in on the fun so I went down with Jack and had lunch with Chris, and then took part in the dancing on the green outside the cafeteria. They just posted the video on the Yahoo! blog. Matt danced all over campus and the part we were in is very brief, right at the end of the video. You can't really see us, but we're standing in the circle at the top left of the Y.

UPDATE: There's a photo of us on Flickr right before the dancing started. We're just to the right of the white light post. In fact that's Jack's diaper bag next to the post.. :) Thanks Mom for finding us!

I Fought the Curl, and the Curl Won

2008-08-03T15:13:00.000-07:00

For 36 years, I've wished for straight hair. I've been going to the same hairdresser for nearly 10 years, and every time I have him blow-dry it straight. All day I say "I love my hair!" and the next time I take a shower, when the straightness gives way to the huge hair that's always been my nemesis, I shed silent tears.

Ok, I don't really cry, but I do wish it could be straight all the time.

My hairdresser's moving out of the state, so I decided to finally try going to someone new. She was all about the curl, so I let her loose. I have to say: I like it! The big question is, will I be able to make it look that way on my own? I think I'll have a good chance at it: she just put some product in and twirled the hair into ringlets and let it air-dry. Never too old to try something new, right?

Too Much Star Trek

2008-07-30T13:19:00.000-07:00

Last night I had a dream about a time travel machine. William Shatner was there and when I asked him where he wanted to go, he said "Montreal World Expo, 1933." (I don't believe there was such a thing..) Anyway, he can go ANYWHERE in the entire history of the world and that's where he picks? Bo-ring.

Steve, Say It Ain't So

2008-07-16T23:03:00.000-07:00

Barenaked Ladies singer and guitarist Steven Page faces a cocaine possession charge after his arrest while visiting two woman at their suburban Syracuse apartment.

Nooooooo!

Snark

2008-07-15T15:17:00.000-07:00

I seem to be getting snarkier in my old age, or maybe it's just the sleep deprivation, but I find myself saying things out loud I would normally keep to myself.

Example #1
I'm at the pharmacy, carrying Jack in the sling. The pharmacist looks over and says sternly, "Make sure you cover that baby up in the sun!" I say, "Actually, I like to leave him in the sun for 5 hours a day, to get as much sun as possible!" I say it with a big friendly smile though so she just looks confused.

What is with people and their fear of sun & babies? I mean if they took one look at Jack it's pretty clear how pale he is; obviously he's not sitting in the sun all day. And even if I were the type of person to do that, is her admonishing me really going to change my ways? Look, if I'm dangling Jack over an open sewer grate or something, you can speak up, but otherwise.. zip it.

Example #2
It's noon on a Saturday. I'm feeding Jack upstairs, Chris is in the shower. Doorbell rings. I ignore it, figuring it's just UPS or something. It rings again. Knocking. Thinking it must be urgent, I rush downstairs carrying Jack who's now crying since his feeding has been interrupted. I open the door, and it's the Mormons.

"Hello, we're from the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints," one woman says.
"I'm an atheist."
"Can we leave you some literature?"
"No. Can I give you some literature on being an atheist?"

They didn't want any, which I suppose is just as well since I'm out.

Grumpy old lady! That's what I am!

Dreamgirls: The Review

2008-07-10T22:12:00.001-07:00

Too much singing.

Song Meme

2008-07-07T23:16:00.000-07:00

1. Put your iTunes, Windows Media Player, etc. on shuffle
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOURSELF?
Impossible

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
Workin’ for MCA

WHAT IS LIFE'S PURPOSE?
Fever

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
Take Me Home

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
Thank Misery

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
None of Your Business

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
I U She

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
Full of Grace

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Brokeback Mountain Score 3

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
Whipping Boy

WHAT SONG WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR WEDDING?
Iko Iko

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
Superwise

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST??
Hell Yes

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST FEAR?
I Only Have Eyes for You

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
Here Today and Yesterday

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
Sister Christian

I need a checkup; and can you recommend a good restaurant?

2008-06-26T17:20:00.000-07:00

I have been feeling a little unwell recently and started thinking I need to find a new regular doctor. I haven't seen a regular doctor since December 2005, when I cracked my head on the bathroom floor. Since then I've just seen my OB/GYN.

I had a doctor I really liked for a while but she moved into private practice. I looked her up today and she's now in a "concierge" group, which means she'll be your doctor 24/7 with access to her cell phone and email, with same-day appointments and no waiting time! It only costs $4000 a year.

Her website says she left her old practice to be able to give highly personalized care to her patients. I can believe it.. it drives me crazy how they schedule appointments in 15 minute blocks. When has that ever been enough time?

Is this the future of health care? The rich people get to pay for excellent medical care, and the not-so-rich get shafted?

Sweet Dish: The Review

2008-06-23T09:21:00.000-07:00

This weekend my friend Lisa took me to Sweet Dish, a candy store in the Marina district of San Francisco.

Those of you who know me know I'm a candy fiend. I've loved candy since I was a kid, when I would eat all of my Halloween candy within the first few days of getting it, and then search the house for the candy my sister would hide and forget about.

I'm very particular about my candy. I love hard candy, and have grown to love chocolate as an adult. When Lisa suggested we visit the store, how could I refuse?

The setting: the store is not very big; it's narrow and deep. The walls are lined with colorful jars of all types of candy (heavier on the non-chocolate kind). There is a very good selection and I liked the look of the displays.

The method: here is where the store loses points with me. Most of the candy in jars was only available in little pre-packaged bags under the jars; you could not simply open each jar and take out what you wanted. (Now, it's possible you could ask for smaller portions from the staff, but to me that takes away all the fun. I'm not going to ask the staff to pick out two pieces of 20 different types.)

I understand why candy stores do this: it cuts down on stealing, and keeps people's grubby paws off the candy. But one of the signs of a great candy store is the pick-and-mix method: letting you get all different types of candy, and being able to try something new without getting stuck with a whole bag of something you don't want.

The service: I was looking for some gummy sour type of candy for a friend but didn't see what I was looking for. They had a lot of soft sour candies, but none of them seemed to be what I was looking for. I asked a staff member which ones were gummy sours, and he said they were all gummy! No no no no, my friend, there is a huge difference in texture! (Perhaps technically they're all gummy in that they're soft, but I am talking about the difference between sour patch kids and gummy bear sours. If you can't tell the difference, you are no candy freak!)

The purchase: I managed to restrain myself somewhat. Prices were high, so I didn't want to go overboard. I got: mint chip caramels; celestial sour stars; and violet cremes. The verdict: all very tasty.

They had a lot of imported candy (like Yorkie Bars--It's Not For Girls!) and there were lots of additional things I'd love to try.

Overall, I give a thumbs up for selection and presentation, but a thumbs down for the fact you can't pick-and-mix. Also it's not cheap, so not the kind of place a kid with their dollar allowance is likely to find happiness.

Final verdict: I'd go back.

Pool Safety

2008-06-21T19:16:00.001-07:00

I'm all for teaching your kids how to be safe in the pool, but this seems a bit extreme:

As a parent of three children, Tracie Muldrow views herself as the first line of defense - and she takes that role seriously.

"Every year, when they don't expect it, I dunk my kids into the pool," says the Danville pool owner, whose children are 12, 9 and 5 years old. "I pick some time when they are fully dressed, when they don't expect it, and I push them into the pool.

"Kids should know how to react if they fall into the water by accident - which is how many drownings occur," she says. "And kids should know how to get out of the pool without using the stairs."

Her children don't necessarily jump for joy when Mom shoves them into the water, but their irritation doesn't deter Muldrow, who proclaims: "My kids are water safe."

I can only imagine what other lessons this Pink Panther-esque technique teaches.. like, your mother is out to get you; always wear a swimsuit under your clothes; trust no one!

Barenaked Ladies: Snack Time

2008-06-18T14:44:00.001-07:00

On Thursday I went to the local Barnes and Noble to meet the Barenaked Ladies. They were there promoting their new children's album, Snack Time. We got there too late to see them perform (they only allowed a certain number of people on the second floor) but I stuck around for the signing portion.

I asked Ed if there was a deeper meaning to the song When I Fall. He said "There's always a deeper meaning!" He said it was about a lot of family stuff.

I told Steve how much I liked the song When You Dream and that I liked to sing it to my new son.

I've seen them lots of times in concert but never had the chance to meet them. Very cool.

Indiana Jones: SPOILERS!!

2008-06-04T20:10:00.000-07:00

Chris and I got to see the new Indy movie this past Saturday (thanks Cindy for babysitting!) Before I comment on the new movie, here are some thoughts on the first three films:

Raiders of the Lost Ark: Clearly the best of the bunch. This is one of the most flawless movies ever made. Indiana Jones is the role Harrison Ford was born to play. The storyline is tight, the action scenes awesome, and the female lead is (mostly) a strong, interesting character. What more can I say?

Temple of Doom: Most people rate this as the worst of the three, but it's actually my second favorite. It's true, Kate Capshaw's character is hideous and if we could excise her from the movie it would be so much better. But this movie has a lot of great stuff, mainly in the action scenes: the bucket of ice covering the diamond, the liferaft falling out of the plane onto the snow, the mine car, and best of all the bridge scene. You will go to Pankot, and you will bring back Shiva Linga!

Last Crusade: This one didn't have the offensiveness of Kate Capshaw, but it didn't have a lot of great stuff, either. Frankly I was BORED during certain scenes, such as the long exposition when Donovan is explaining the holy grail setup. The lead female character was boring. Sean Connery and River Phoenix were distractions from the real Indiana Jones. I do enjoy the parts once they're in the temple, like the optical illusion bridge and the whole choosing the cup sequence.

Ok, so now my thoughts on the new one (SPOILERS!!!!): well, first of all it's colored by the fact it was the first time Chris and I were out of the house alone together in a couple of months, so that alone was fabulous. I had VERY low expectations. Overall I enjoyed the movie, but it had a lot of dumb parts as well, and I don't expect it to be something I'd like to watch over and over like the first one. It was a lot of fun to see Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones again, and I'm so glad they brought Karen Allen back, even if all she did the whole time was grin like crazy as if to say "I'm SO HAPPY I'm in the movie!"

That being said.. space aliens??? Come on, Steven! I kept expecting the theme from Close Encounters to start up. And I didn't care for Shia LaBeouf. I also thought the crystal skull was very cheesy. It might have been appropriate if John Hurt had one of the crystal skulls burst out of his abdomen..

Anyway, a fairly fluffy film, but I still enjoyed it immensely and will no doubt forget all about it soon.

New Camera

2008-05-30T23:19:00.000-07:00

We recently got a new camera: a Canon Rebel XSi. I was a little wary of getting an SLR because I didn't want to have to learn to use all the fancy settings for aperture and lighting and blah de blah just to take a picture, but I was up and running with this camera within 5 minutes. I just put it on automatic mode and it already takes better pictures than our old one.

I love it. It's gotten me excited about taking photos again, like when I got my first digital camera 10 years ago. We've been taking tons of pictures. I think one of the reasons it's so fun to use is the lack of shutter lag--it really does make a difference.

It's definitely a lot more to lug around, but we've really been enjoying it.

Baby Blogosaurus

2008-05-27T16:22:00.000-07:00

I have finally started my baby blog: Baby Blogosaurus. I'll be writing about things related to Jack, my labor & delivery, breastfeeding, baby products, etc. Not that I'll never mention Jack on my regular blog, but I know not everyone's interested in reading about that stuff.

I am trying out Word Press to see if I like the features more than Blogger. Unfortunately you can't map it to a domain like you can with Blogger so I have to use their URL for now (babyblogosaurus.wordpress.com).

Whew

2008-05-20T12:18:00.000-07:00

What a week. Last Monday I took Jack to the pediatrician and the doctor was concerned about his head growth. (He went from 25th percentile to 50th in 2 weeks.. that plus the fact his skull plates haven't all fused possibly meant excess fluid.) So, he sent us to Stanford for a head ultrasound on Thursday.

I spent four days freaking out that Jack had hydrocephalus, trying not to Google too much. Thankfully, we found out Friday Jack is fine--all is normal in there.

It kind of puts thing in perspective. Not to downplay the difficulties we've had with breastfeeding and infections, but in the long run those are minor blips.

Yesterday was a milestone--I took Jack to the grocery store! Woo hoo! I put him in the sling and he was fine the whole time.

Saturday I went to my book club meeting, and Jack stayed home with Chris. It was wonderful to be out and about having grown-up discussions and tasty food. When I got home no one was there.. Chris and Jack were having an outing at the hardware store. I think Chris is hoping Jack will be able to help with home improvement projects by the time he's 1.

As always, latest pictures are up at Flickr.

The Latest

2008-05-08T17:49:00.000-07:00

One of these days I intend to make a new blog for the baby stuff, since I know my (millions) of readers don't all want to hear about it, but for now it all goes here.

Jack is one month old today, and weighs in at 8 1/2 pounds. He's gaining weight at a steady pace. He's still pretty happy and mellow.

WARNING: More breastfeeding talk ahead.

We've had a pretty rough time with breastfeeding; Jack has still had the problem of not getting enough from me. But, it looks like we may be turning a corner! Our visit to the lactation center today showed he's doing much better. I am crossing my fingers it's not a fluke and he'll continue to improve. He and I are also both battling infections, so it's drug city around here. I can't wait to stop taking so many damn pills.

Still not getting much sleep, but I am hopeful with breastfeeding getting easier each feeding will take less time (so I won't have to pump and wash everything so often) and I'll be able to get more time sleeping.

Chris goes back to work next week. I can't say enough about how wonderful he has been this whole month, taking fantastic care of Jack, and of me. He's always there for me during my meltdowns and rallies my spirits to keep me going. There's just no way I could have survived this month without him.

We've had some fun too, going out to lunch with Jack for the first time and going on a picnic. Slowly starting to emerge back into the world again. Lots more photos at Flickr.

He's Full of Surprises

2008-04-25T20:13:00.001-07:00

Today Chris did something that, in the nine years I've known him, he has never done.

He baked cookies!

Chocolate chip. They are tasty.

It's nice to know after 5 years of marriage your spouse can still surprise you...

13 days

2008-04-23T11:48:00.000-07:00

Jack is 13 days old today. Our lives have been pared down to eating, feeding, and sleeping (sometimes).

So far he's a pretty mellow baby. He doesn't spend a lot of timing crying--mostly just when we change his diaper or take his clothes on and off.

WARNING: breastfeeding talk ahead.

The biggest issue is still breastfeeding.. I'm not making enough milk yet and he isn't a totally efficient eater. He spends a lot of time eating but doesn't get that much in. So, I am continuing to pump as well, and Chris (or my mom or Cindy) gives him a bottle of pumped milk, and sometimes a little formula. It means each feeding takes a while.

We've been seeing a lactation consultant and she is wonderful. We've been making some progress. I hope soon I'll be able to stop the pumping and bottle feeding.

The good news is, he's gaining weight! He's healthy and happy right now which is the most important thing.

I've been enjoying not being pregnant any more.. taking scalding hot showers, eating a lot of feta cheese, and being able to lie down comfortably.

We have a ton more pictures but I just haven't had time to sort through them and upload them. Soon I hope.

Heeeeeere's Jack!

2008-04-19T10:14:00.001-07:00

Introducing John Philip Pearl Leggetter. (Philip and Pearl are middle names.) We'll call him Jack.

He was born at 10:30 AM on Thursday, April 10th weighing in at 7 pounds 10 ounces.

I went into labor around 3 AM Wednesday morning. We came home on Saturday.

Since then it's been a little crazy! He lost a pound within the first few days, so since then we've been on an intense feeding schedule. We're all still learning, but Jack is gaining again and doing fine.

My parents and sister have been here a lot, thankfully. Chris has been completely awesome.

More photos on Flickr.

ATA

2008-04-07T21:34:00.001-07:00

We had booked a vacation to Hawaii in January, but had to cancel. We had to re-use the flight credit by December, plus pay $200 in change fees. We were flying ATA, which as most of you know, recently went bankrupt.

I just called our credit card company, and they're refunding us the full credit amount!

So I have to say, ATA going bankrupt actually worked in our favor... wow.

In other news: no baby yet. My official due date is April 15th. Any day now! I am both excited and scared to death.

Walkies

2008-04-01T14:30:00.000-07:00

Today I went for a walk at the nearby (hilly) cross country course--first time in, oh, about 9 months. Now that I'm in my 38th week the doctor said it was ok.

It was so nice to be outside. I saw a rabbit and a couple of deer.

I walked very slowly. I'm pretty darn out of shape now. Can't wait to get back into exercise.

Privacy

2008-03-17T14:11:00.000-07:00

Dearie me, I keep meaning to post more but just never seem to get around to it.

Here are a few links I've been thinking about recently, around the issue of governments (and corporations) and privacy. I'm a firm believer that we should fear the government and do our best to keep our private lives out of the hands of government and corporations. Obviously we can't do that 100%; what interests me is where the balance lies. It boggles my mind when I hear people say "What's the big deal about being videotaped / monitored / fingerprinted; I'm not breaking any laws." Well, not YET you're not.. but wait until something you do every day becomes illegal, or more likely, you have something you don't want the whole world to know about and it suddenly becomes public record.

The links:

Court ruling limits employment drug testing: The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that employers cannot require job candidates to be screened for drugs and alcohol (unless job performance "may pose a great danger to the public"). This was about a woman who refused a drug and alcohol test for her part-time job at the library.

I think this is great. Look, if someone is doing drugs / getting drunk and it's impacting their job performance, then fine. Fire 'em. But do the same if they stay up every night playing video games and can't function at work, or if they do nothing all day but sit at their desk and stare out the window. Pre-emptive drug testing is an unnecessary violation of people's privacy. (And it's not like I have a personal stake in this.. I don't even drink alcohol.)

Pacifist Cal State teacher gets job back: I was glad to see this follow-up after a Quaker woman was fired for refusing to sign a state-required loyalty oath. She had wanted the word "nonviolently" inserted before "support defend the US and California constitutions" and wanted to change "swear" to "affirm". She filed a grievance and the chancellor's office eventually agreed to add "Signing the oath does not carry with it any obligation or requirement that public employees bear arms or otherwise engage in violence," which she was ok with signing.

I'm glad to see this change was made, but I still believe these loyalty oaths are silly. I had to sign one when I was a student at UCSD and took a job doing data entry at the library. Why on earth should that require me to sign a loyalty oath? It's ridiculous.

Fingertip biometrics at Disney turnstiles: the Mouse does its bit for the police state: I agreed completely with Cory Doctorow's post about Disneyworld's policy of taking every park entrant's fingertip to prevent people from re-selling their tickets. (Apparently you can decline and use your ID instead, but not all the employees are aware of this.) Once again, another over-the-top security measure. Some of the comments made about the post say "If you don't like it, don't go," but Doctorow's more important point is how we're indoctrinating kids to view this kind of thing as no big deal. Why shouldn't Disney have your biometric info on file? I haven't done anything wrong! This is scary stuff.

Scotland Yard wants DNA samples from 5-year-olds in case they grow up to be criminals: This one's even scarier. "As reported in The Guardian: Gary Pugh, director of forensic sciences at Scotland Yard, says primary school children should be eligible for the DNA database if they exhibit behaviour indicating they may become criminals in later life. " I can't believe someone is seriously proposing this. So much for "innocent until proven guilty". Imagine if your 5-year-old was deemed a "criminal risk" and had his prints put on file. Good luck getting into a good school / getting a good job / traveling to another country.

Ok people.. if you agree with me, do your part and refuse to participate in silly security measures. If someone asks for your SSN or address, find out if it's absolutely necessary. (I refused to give my address at my local pharmacy when I was getting a refund--they already have all my info on file, why do they need it again? At first she said it wouldn't be processed if I didn't give it to her, but eventually she relented.) When you're leaving a store like Best Buy and they ask for your receipt / to search your bag AFTER you've already paid, just say "no".

A lot of people think these things are no big deal, why make a fuss? But in my view, they are all moving us towards a society in which companies and the government have all your private info, and we simply accept it. When someone asks you to pee in a cup for a drug test, hand over your bags to be searched, or give them your health history, are you just going to say "sure, why not?" You won't care, until the information is used against you.

I'm not even going to get into the TSA... that's a rant for another time.

Push It

2008-02-22T15:26:00.001-08:00

I told Chris the song I want played during labor & delivery is Salt 'N Pepa's Push It. "Oh baby baby.. push it real good! ... Better make it fast or I'm gonna get pissed!" Seems appropriate.

Anyway I am apparently not the first person to have this idea because they played it during an episode of the reality TV show "Scott Baio is 46... and Pregnant". For those not familiar with the show (as I'm sure you all are), Scott Baio played Chachi on the 1970s sitcom Happy Days. This is his 2nd reality show, following "Scott Baio is 45.. and Single." At the end of that one, his girlfriend announces she's pregnant and he decides to marry her.

In the followup series, he attempts to accept the realities of baby and marriage but doesn't do a very good job. He always talks about how his life will be completely over when the baby arrives. He'll never see his friends again, never have time to himself, never play golf. Um, dude? Who are you playing golf with right now--your friends with kids!

Anyway it's very annoying. I am a strong believer that not everyone should have kids--if you don't want to, don't. It's not like the world's population is in decline.

Push it!

Postcards

2008-02-17T11:47:00.000-08:00

Recently the San Francisco Chronicle had an article about the demise of the postcard. It says that with the advent of email and camera phones, and the decline of letter-writing, postcard sending on the way out.

This makes me sad. I love postcards, both receiving and sending them. Being a sentimental packrat, I have kept every postcard that's ever been sent to me. I have a letter-holder from Thailand hanging near the kitchen and I store most of them there. (When I first get a postcard, it lives on the fridge for a while, then gets moved into the letter holder.) I also have a postcard mobile my friend Margaret gave me, which is hanging in the study and holding postcards from Ecaudor, England, Romania, Hawaii, Scotland, Yellowstone and China.

I like sending them as well. Any time I go out of town, I send one to my grandmother and Chris's parents. On longer trips I send them to other friends and family.

I'm not sure what is so appealing to me about postcards. I guess it's a combination of getting a surprise in the mail from friends or family, getting a glimpse of places around the world they've travelled to, and seeing what short message they've chosen to write. Vive le postcard!

Cordless Phones

2008-02-08T10:18:00.001-08:00

We finally decided to join the 21st century and buy a cordless phone. Prior to that we had three phones in the house: my 10-year-old phone, Chris's 13-year-old phone, and a hand-me-down cordless that we rarely used because it didn't work very well.

Working at home re-energized me to want a better phone so after a little bit of research we bought the Panasonic KX-TG1033S Dect 6.0, and so far I love it. I can WALK AROUND while I'm on the phone! I can even go INTO THE GARAGE! While I'm ON THE PHONE! It's incredible!

Other things I love: it comes with three handsets and they're all on the same system, so when I update the phonebook on one I can update it to all three. (Before, only the phone upstairs had a phonebook feature.) It has a mute button (a lifesaver on conference calls).

Things that make it not quite perfect: the volume is on the handset itself so I have to bring it away from my ear to change. The voicemail light doesn't come on when we have a new message (because it has built-in voicemail we don't use, and doesn't recognize our Vonage voicemail stutter tone). It does say "New Message" on the handset display, but that's dark until you pick it up so when you walk in the room you can't tell right away. No talking Caller ID.

Overall I'm very happy with it. We should have gotten one much sooner.

Updates

2008-02-05T21:21:00.000-08:00

Well, I know I haven't been very good about updating this blog lately. I hope to post more in the future. Time for some updates!

The biggest news is that I'm 7 and a half months pregnant. Official due date is April 15th.. tax day! As to why I haven't posted anything about it until now... well, it look me a really long time to get pregnant, and I think that during the pregnancy I have still had a lot of doubts that it was really all going to work out, that we'd have a baby at the end of it. But with 10 weeks to go, I think I'm finally convinced. And thrilled, of course!

I won't go into the details of our infertility treatments on the blog, but I'm very willing to share what we went through. Just email me if you want to talk about it. Infertility is a depressing, scary and lonely place to be, and I think it helps a lot to be able to talk about it openly.

In other news... I'm mostly done with my consulting job, down to just a few hours a week. It's been a really great project to work on and a lot of fun.

For everyone dying to hear about our cats, Jemba had to have yet another tooth out, but thankfully this time he recovered fine and we didn't have any stomach tubes! He's eating normally again, even with no back teeth, poor guy.

I have some photos up on my Flickr site from the last few months.

That's the short version.. I will try and post a lot more in the future.

Am I bovvered?

2008-01-15T23:49:00.001-08:00

Lauren Cooper is a character by British comedian Catherine Tate. She's a student who is supposed to be representative of someone in the "chav" subculture. Anyway, her accent / phrases crack me up. Here's a sketch where she plays a cheerleader.

Lots more sketches if you go to YouTube and search "catherine tate lauren".

2007 Movies

2007-12-31T14:27:00.000-08:00

I went through the list of movies released in theaters in 2007 and counted the number I'd seen: 19. Pretty measly, especially considering 5 of them were on the plane to and from the UK. We saw 10 movies in the theater, 4 on DVD, plus the 5 I saw on the plane.

My top five, in no particular order:

Die Hard 4: Live Free or Die Hard
The Namesake
Hot Fuzz
Waitress
Dan In Real Life

I wanted to include Blade Runner: The Final Cut (which DID come to the theater around here, woo hoo!) but decided it doesn't really count.

My pick for the worst film: The Astronaut Farmer (seen on the plane). Wow was that bad. Yet another story about a man with a dream who will put his life and family's future at risk becaue he just feels like it. Dude, get over it. You didn't make it into the space program.. life's tough. Get a job.

No doubt we'll be watching a lot of other 2007 films on DVD. Any top recommendations?

Here's a list of the rest of the 2007 movies I saw: Music & Lyrics, The Number 23, Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, The Simpsons Movie, 3:10 to Yuma, Beowulf IMAX 3D, Bridge to Terabithia, I Think I Love My Wife, Catch & Release, Knocked Up, and Ratatouille.

We come from the land of the ice and snow

2007-11-26T18:05:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago, just before we went to bed, the upstairs smoke alarms started going off and smoke started coming out of the vents. We turned off the upstairs heater (we have two, one for downstairs and one for upstairs) and did not find any fire. Probably the motor or something burned out in the furnace.

We slept downstairs for a few days because upstairs was smoky. We had to wash all the curtains and bedding.

We had been planning on replacing the furnaces for months (they're 30+ years old) and even had a couple of quotes. Someone came last Monday and replaced the downstairs one, but ran into some problems with the upstairs one. The newer furnaces need more exhaust pipes and the hole in the roof wasn't big enough. So we have to get some roofing work done as well. If we're lucky we'll have it done this week.

We only went one day with no heat, and man was I cold. I know, we live in California and all, but sleeping in a bedroom that is in the 50s is no fun. (We have some portable heaters but we turn them off at night.)

Thankfully we had (downstairs) heat again before hosting my family for Thanksgiving. My brother-in-law Stuart deep-fried the turkey. I am told it was delicious.

Ok, I can vote again

2007-11-16T16:45:00.000-08:00

The good news is, I am registered to vote again, and my provisional vote was counted.

The bad news is: I can't actually prevent politicians from getting my mailing address.

Apparently I was misinformed. In order to do this, you have to petition a judge as to why your name should not be on public record. It's really for people who need to hide, e.g. victims of domestic abuse who don't want their abuser to find them. It's not just to stop the nuisance of junk mail.

Bummer.

Am I Registered to Vote? No!

2007-11-06T21:35:00.000-08:00

Well, I was registered to vote.

But in my never-ending futile quest to stop receiving junk mail, I wrote a letter to the county clerk to ask to be removed from all mailing lists. (By law, political candidates may use your name and address from the voting registers to send you mail, unless you specify otherwise.)

I was curious to see if my letter had gotten there, so today I called up the county clerk, who transferred me to the elections office. And the woman there said, not only did they get my letter--they removed me from the list of registered voters. I didn't even know such a thing could be done.

Anyway, it so happens today is an election day. Nothing major, just things like city council members, but I still wanted to vote. Not being on their list any more, I had to vote provisionally, which means I voted, but my vote will not be counted until they verify whether or not I should be registered, which can take up to 30 days.

Grrrrr. They better have this mess straightened out before the primaries is all I can say...

No Longer on the Dole

2007-10-23T20:14:00.000-07:00

I'm working again. I'm consulting about 20 hours a week, doing the same type of stuff I was doing at Nuance--designing speech recognition applications.

I'm really enjoying it. I've missed being in an office, talking about technology.

I don't want to stay in speech recognition forever, but it's a good fit right now, and gives me the chance to see if I like the consulting lifestyle. So far so good!

All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.

2007-10-12T17:32:00.000-07:00

Just found out a NEW version of Blade Runner, The Final Cut, is being released on DVD on Dec 18th. It's also out right now in theaters in Los Angeles and New York. What about San Francisco??

Ummm... road trip?

Five years

2007-10-09T21:16:00.000-07:00

October 5th was our five-year wedding anniversary. To celebrate, we went up to Bodega Bay for the weekend.

On the drive up, we happened to be crossing the Golden Gate Bridge when the Blue Angels show started (part of Fleet Week). We snagged a parking spot on the north side and had a great view.

We stayed at the Valley Ford Hotel, a little bit inland from Bodega Bay. The room was nice, the rate was good, but it's not very conducive to sleeping. The rooms are above the bar and the walls between the rooms are paper thin. Ah well. We did have a nice dinner at the hotel's restaurant, Rocker Oysterfeller's.

Saturday we stopped in Bodega, famous for being used in the Alfred Hitchcock film The Birds. We were walking around when we saw our friends Eric and Chai-Shune! They had been driving by on their way up the coast and saw Chris's car, then saw us, and they pulled over and chased us down. What a coincidence.

We had a nice picnic lunch at Goat Rock, a lovely beach on the Sonoma Coast. The seagulls tried very hard to get some of our lunch, and I just want to take this moment to remind people to STOP FEEDING THE SEAGULLS! It is bad for them! Thank you.

After lunch we went for a nice walk at Armstrong Redwoods park, and had dinner in Sebastopol.

Sunday we had breakfast in Bodega Bay and got to watch seals playing in the water and pelicans diving for fish. We headed down the coast and stopped at Stinson Beach for a bit before heading up to the top of Mt. Tamalpais where we had a fantastic view--and saw more of the Blue Angels.

All in all a very nice weekend.

Cell Phone

2007-09-13T16:20:00.001-07:00

I got my first cell phone in November 2001. I was "on call" for when my sister went into labor with Molly, so I could pick up Maggie and take her to her grandmother's house. I didn't buy the cell phone...it was a hand-me-down from friends.

I started with Verizon, $15/month, no long-term contract, more minutes than I could use. Six years later (and two more hand-me-down cell phones later!) I am still on that plan.

I am not a big cell phone user. I rarely turn it on; usually just when I'm meeting up with someone. It's been very convenient at times, but I don't really like the idea of being always available.

Chris has never had a cell phone. Generally this hasn't been an issue, but since he's been taking the train to work it has become a lot more important. There have been numerous accidents this year which cause the train to be delayed up to two hours. And he has no way of contacting me.

A month ago we went up to San Francisco to see Eddie Izzard. The plan was for Chris to take the train up to Millbrae and I'd pick him up there and we'd drive into the city. Well, right before I left to pick him up he called (using a friend's cell phone!) to say there had been another accident and I should pick him up at an earlier station.

Turns out the train stopped even earlier. Just as I was about to turn into the station, my cell phone rings with a number I don't recognize. When the train had stopped, Chris jumped off and was planning to find a pay phone when a couple of guys said "Who wants to take a taxi with us to Millbrae?" and Chris said "I will, if you let me borrow your cell phone!"

Anyway, as Chris would say, it all worked out. But I'm still getting him a cell phone.

To make a long story short... I have never bought a cell phone. I have no clue what to get. I know I'll never be able to get as good a deal as I have right now. Here's what I want:

Cheapest possible rate (don't need a lot of minutes)
Preferably no long-term contract
GSM (so it will work when we visit the UK)

I don't need any fancy features. I do not need a camera, WAP, games, music, etc etc. I do have a preference for flip-phones but really I just don't want a phone with tiny buttons.

I'm hoping someone can suggest both a network/plan and a phone. Anyone?

BBC America

2007-09-11T18:10:00.000-07:00

Those of you who watch BBC America may have noticed the new announcements about closed captions, with a British voice saying things like "Not even British people can follow the British accent 100 percent of the time. Therefore you, like me, might want to use closed-captioning."

The voice was very familiar to us and we wondered for months who it could be. Chris was sure it was Jack Davenport (from the show Coupling and the Pirates of the Caribbean movies). I wasn't convinced.

I did tons of on-line searches but didn't come up with anything until about a week ago, when I finally discovered who it is: John Oliver, a British comedian who is a reporter on The Daily Show.

Mystery solved!

Police File

2007-08-25T17:07:00.000-07:00

Our local newspaper sometimes prints blurbs about what the police have responded to in the last week. The ones from Belmont are often highly amusing. Here's a sampling:

Animal in the way
Someone reported a dead dear [sic] in the vicinity. The person later called that the deer got up and left the scene.

Citizen assistance
Laundry is not a police responsibility. A man staying at Extended Stay America called 911 because his clothes were stuck in the washing machine. He said he did not know what whom [sic] else to call. Police gave him a brochure that explained when to call 911 and helped him locate the number of the manager who can help him using the washing machine.

Animal control
Someone complained to police about 40 bunnies accidentally let loose by their owner.

Jemba Update

2007-08-21T15:17:00.000-07:00

Well, after a few weeks of feeding through the tube, Jemba started eating on his own again. And a week later (last Friday) the tube was removed. He's back to his old self, eating and running around the house like crazy.

He is not 100% better; one of his liver values continues to be elevated and we have to give him steroids for a while. But it's a huge relief to have him eating again.

More photos are up on my Flickr site: photos from the San Jose Grand Prix, the Yahoo! company picnic, and the Tour de Peninsula.

Jemba

2007-07-25T15:03:00.001-07:00

One of our cats, Jemba, has been very sick recently. First, he had to have four more teeth removed. After that, he stopped eating, which caused liver problems. After hospitilization and multiple tests, they determined he has hepatic lipidosis, also called "fatty" liver. Left untreated, the liver fails, and the cat dies.

The treatment? Food. Lots of it, until the liver recovers and the cat feels hungry again. Of course, the cat doesn't want to eat. We tried force-feeding him for a while, but it was a disaster--food everywhere. The vet recommended the stomach tube route, so now, we feed him three times a day through the tube. It sounds gross but it's really not that bad.

It could take weeks (or more) for him to get back to normal. The recovery rate is pretty high so we're keeping our fingers crossed. He's only 2 1/2 years old. Poor little guy!

Rex Pro

2007-07-12T16:30:00.000-07:00

I've had my little Rex Pro for about 7 years now. It's the size of a thick credit card, and I use it for two functions: address book and alarm clock. It's perfect for my needs and it fits in my wallet. Technically you can edit the address book on the device itself, but it's nearly impossible. The best thing to do is keep the addresses on your computer and synch it with the Rex. Unfortunately the product was discontinued, and when I upgraded to XP I discovered there were no XP drivers.

I looked around the internets from time to time to see if a driver was out, and finally stumbled on a few websites that had suggestions. It looked like the main problems were with the USB version, and I have the serial docking port. I ran into issues when trying to install the software but found a work around (renaming the file Wininit.ini).

IT WORKED! Now I can update the address book again! Most excellent.

Cookies and Veggie Burgers

2007-07-11T16:15:00.000-07:00

Last month, Lisa came over and showed me how to make double chocolate chip cookies, and lentil walnut veggie burgers. They both came out very well.

UK Vacation Photos

2007-07-10T12:27:00.000-07:00

I put up the photos from our UK vacation. And a bonus: video! We ended up with about 10 minutes of video from the trip.

This is the first time I've edited video. I used Adobe Premiere Elements. Overall I was pretty happy with it, but it was very time-consuming to add the captions. I would've thought that would be a common feature. It's doable but it's very painstaking--you have to add each snippet as a title, edit it, resize it, move it, etc. And if I had decided to change font size or something, I would have had to go back to each piece. Oh well, it worked.

Seach Results

2007-07-05T12:09:00.001-07:00

Every once in a while I like to look through my website stats and see what search terms people use to get here. The most popular by far is "phone phobia", related to this post from almost exactly three years ago. I've actually picked up a little hobby recently, which is to call anyone I get junk mail from and asked to be removed from their list. It's probably futile, but my list of companies called is up to 26. If nothing else, it gives me practice calling random people. (Yes, I have also registered with all the Direct Mail removal lists, but a lot still gets through.)

Other popular terms:

scary monkey pictures [http://www.monkeyzone.com/holiday.htm]
martha washington buried alive [a popular urban legend]
i want a girl with a mind like a diamond [lyric from a song by Cake]
am i going down [website on stats for airplane crashes]
rabbit with a pancake [just what it says]
popnet and various popnetter's names
dinosaur crossing freeway [a poster I had in college]
can i be a vegetarian if i eat salmon? [I won't tell anyone..]

SF Giants

2007-06-22T15:49:00.001-07:00

Last month my friend Lisa took me to a San Francisco Giants game. We had great seats and beautiful weather.

They were playing the New York Mets. Lisa made me wear a hat, though she let me choose between the Giants hat the Mets hat. (She's a Mets fan.)

Click on the picture to see more photos...

Grandma's House

2007-06-21T23:24:00.001-07:00

In April, my sister Cindy and I went to visit our grandmother, who is 93. She lives in Grandview, Washington, a farming town in the eastern part of the state.

My dad had been out to see her a few weeks before us, and the only car available at the rental agency was a big SUV. I had requested a compact car for our visit. Well, when we got in and tried to drive it, it wouldn't get out of park. So they had to give us another car--a Nissan Frontier truck. Grandma's getting a lot of practice at getting in and out of big cars.

As always we visited the farm that my grandparents owned for 30 years. The people who live there now are like family and a visit to Grandview wouldn't be the same without seeing them. By a happy coincidence, Jennifer was in town from St. Louis with her new baby, so we got to see them as well.

Click on the photo to take you to the Flickr site. By the way, Flickr recently improved their slideshow mode--if you click on the (i) in the middle of the picture, you can (finally!!) see the photo captions.

Asps... very dangerous. You go first.

2007-06-21T22:41:00.000-07:00

This weekend we had a visitor in our garage.. a baby rattlesnake! It hissed and rattled a bit at us. Chris nudged it outside with a very long pole.

I've seen rattlesnakes several times when running on the nearby cross country course, but this is the first I've seen one on our property.

John Travolta

2007-06-18T18:22:00.000-07:00

This morning I read in the paper that John Travolta flies his private jet from his home in Florida to Los Angeles five nights a week. Five nights a week?? I hope that's a misprint. Imagine how much fuel that uses. Ugh.

We're Back

2007-06-09T11:06:00.001-07:00

Back from the land of the Loch Ness monster, haggis, sheep, Highlands, and separate taps for hot and cold water.

In Scotland, we visited Inverness, the Isle of Skye, Ballachulish, and Dalry (where my great-grandmother was from). We saw lots of castles (including Castle Aaaaarrrrrrggghhh from Monty Python and the Holy Grail).

In England we saw friends in London and stayed with Chris's parents in Nottingham. We also visited his brothers and saw our new nephew.

Pictures (and some video..!) soon..

Postal Rates

2007-05-10T12:15:00.000-07:00

I just spent the last 30 minutes on the US Postal Service website trying to find out what the new rates are going to be when the stamp prices go up on Monday. You'd think there'd be a huge banner, if not a link, on the front page advertising these changes, but no. If you go to the stamp buying portion, you can see the new rate for domestic is 41 cents, but there's nothing for international.

I could not find the information ANYWHERE. When you do the postage calculation, it gives you the old rates. I finally found a table that had a huge listing of prices but how the heck do I know which one is a regular old letter?

I finally broke down and called them and a customer service rep told me the first class letter price for the UK has gone up to 90 cents (from 84) and that she thinks the post card price is also 90 cents but she's "not sure". It's four days away, and she's not sure? According to this page, it looks like the postcards will indeed be 90 cents, which seems crazy to me--they're going to charge the exact same price for postcards as letters? Hmmf.

POPnet

2007-05-08T22:31:00.000-07:00

I had a dream that POPnet came back to life and everyone started logged in again. We even had a big party and 77 people showed up. I know it was 77 because I asked Her Maj (one of the SysOps) how many people came and she told me.

In the dream I was excited about it but now that I'm awake I'm not so sure.

Lecture Circuit

2007-04-25T15:30:00.000-07:00

Last night my friend Ann (and former co-worker) and I gave a lecture at UC Berkeley's School of Information. The talk was called "Call Center Speech Applications: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly".

We met Bob Glushko, an adjunct professor, at a UCSD Cognitive Science alumni event he hosted last year. He invited us to speak at his Service Sciences course (scroll down to see our talk description on the 24th). It was a great opportunity and we really enjoyed it. His class was very attentive and asked great questions.

Austin

2007-04-20T22:16:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we went to Austin for Frank and Josie's wedding. Frank and Chris met at Nuance, and Frank was best man at our wedding.

Neither of us had been to Austin and we had a great time. The wedding was held at the French Legation Museum, a very nice venue.

We had a little time to look around downtown and visit the Capitol Building. On Sunday we had brunch at Enoteca Vespaio and I had the best poached eggs I've ever eaten.

I put photos up on Flickr. Remember, if you want to see the captions, you can't use Slideshow mode...

American Airlines & Women

2007-04-11T16:00:00.000-07:00

I still feel like this must be a joke, but it appears all too real: American Airlines has a special web page for female travelers, including a PINK, dumbed-down flight search box. It also has handy pointers to articles on safety and security, because we women are so scared to travel. They include safety tips like "Write down where you park"and "If you need directions, ask other women or couples."

Why is our society so keen on keeping people scared? Especially women. When a woman was attacked recently in a local park, during the daytime, the local news suggested women should not go there alone. Don't go to a public park for a walk, in the middle of the day. Yeah, women shouldn't go anywhere alone, really. Who will protect our women! Our poor, defenseless women! Where are the safety tips for men? I guess they don't need to write down where they parked, because men are really into cars and everything so I'm sure they'll have no trouble remembering.

Don't forget the fashion tips AA includes. Here's a great one: "Always bring a little black dress to wear with those heels. Fold it in thirds, roll it as tightly as you can, and place it in the smallest Ziploc bag you can. You may not wear it this trip, or the next, but one of these days, you'll be sitting next to that Japanese violinist who just happens to have an extra ticket to her sold-out performance one evening, and you will need it. Now go out and see the world, ladies."

I wrote an email to AA letting them know my thoughts. If you would like to as well, email them at wehearyou@aa.com.

Edited on 4/20 to add: They have removed the pink search box. Gee, thanks.

Mix Tapes

2007-04-09T12:10:00.000-07:00

I've got about 100 cassette tapes that I have been hanging on to, not wanting to throw away. I still listen to them--I've got a cassette player in the car. Most of them are not store-bought albums, but mixes made by myself, friends, past boyfriends, etc. I have always loved the mix tape, ever since my sister and I first started taping things off the radio with our boom boxes back in the 1980s.

Each tape reminds me of a different time in my life. There's "Songs From the Vickster" that I taped from my friend Vickie at the end of high school. "Gobat: Stuff from Dave" from my college housemate's CD collection. The first tape I ever made for someone else, with the pretentious title "Premier Pour Quelq'un Autre" (supposed to be "First for someone else" but the French isn't even correct) for Jason. "Tape that proves Steve Winwood wasn't always a waste of DNA" from my college friend Lewis. "Mix Tape that Cathy Never Listens To" from Jamie.

Jason and I exchanged a lot of mixes and even kept it up when CDs came around. Our tradition was to exchange the tape with no song titles so each song would be a surprise. We still do it occasionally but in the day of iPods and MP3s, it doesn't have quite the same feeling as when you'd get a new tape in the mail and slide it into a tape deck, full of anticipation.

Lots of memories... and a lot of great songs. I certainly don't want to re-buy them all from iTunes. So, Chris bought me a great gift: a device you can hook up between a tape deck and your computer, plus software that records it and does a first pass at splitting them into individual songs.

I tried it out yesterday. It works quite well, but it's still a lot of work to go through each song, trim it, label it, convert it to MP3, etc. I could do one tape a day and it will still take me almost 4 months.

But I hope to do most of them if I can. I get a lot of pleasure for hearing all those old songs again. I'm very nostalgic, what can I say.

Grocery Shopping

2007-04-03T22:12:00.000-07:00

Within a short drive from our house, there are quite a few grocery stores. Multiple Safeways, a Lundaris, Mollie Stone's, Whole Foods, two Trader Joe's, an Albertson's...we're not spoiled for choice.

My favorite is Mollie Stone's, which is a local chain. They have a good selection of regular food plus harder-to-find items. It's not usually too crowded. The carts are not huge and don't block the aisles. They usually have lots of sample produce to snack on. And best of all they have a monkey on a bicycle who slowly pedals back and forth, back and forth, all day long. Today the monkey was wearing bunny ears.

Closer to home is Safeway, which I also go to pretty often. I get my prescriptions there and we also drink a lot of the Safeway-brand flavored water.

Also close to home is Lundari's but I don't go there very often because it makes me cranky. There are always people blocking the aisles with their carts and the produce doesn't live up to its reputation. And they always seem to be out of the one staple I'm looking for.

A lot of people like Whole Foods, and I think it's good for specialty items, but I don't like it much for basic weekly shopping. Try and find some regular bread that isn't organic, gluten-free and made by local peasants who get up at the crack of dawn to harvest the grain while singing their traditional peasant songs. I mean sometimes I just want some plain old bread, you know?

Casablanca

2007-04-02T10:01:00.000-07:00

I'm famous!

Well, not really, but my question did make it into the "Ask Mick LaSalle" column in this Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle. (Also available on-line.)

Interestingly, it's Chris who loves Casablanca, and he's the one who believes Ilsa no longer loved Rick when she got to Casablanca. I think she was still in love with Rick but went with Victor because she thought it was the right thing to do.

Boy Do I Love Mushrooms

2007-03-20T18:13:00.000-07:00

More cookery going on around here.

From Quick, Simple and Main-Course Vegetarian Pleasures I made Pumpkin and Corn Chowder, which I've made in the past. It's a nice, thick soup.

From Cook 1.0: a fresh approach to the vegetarian kitchen, I made Wild Mushroom Pocket Tarts (a mushroom mixture inside puffed pastry), Mushroom and Potato Pot Pies (adapted from a couple of the recipes in the book), and Spring Butterflies with Lemon Cream. The pocket tarts were tasty; I'd make those again. The mushroom & potato pot pies I've made a bunch of times. The "spring butterflies" are bowtie pasta with asparagus in a cream sauce. I don't like asparagus very much but I know it's good for you so I try and find ways to make it tolerable. I liked the pasta a lot.

From The Essential Vegetarian Cookbook, another recipe I've made before, Sugar Peas and Carrots in Lime Butter. Hard to go wrong with lime and butter. Also, a new one last week: Sauteed Rosemary Potatoes. I'm not big on potatoes (except for French fries and potato chips of course) but Chris really likes them so I try and make them once in a while. These were good, no doubt due to the copious amounts of butter and salt.

From epicurious.com: Green Beans with Wild Mushrooms. For the expense (lots of fancy mushrooms) and the amount of time, I found this really not worth it. Also tried Spiced Quinoa Timables. It was okay, but I would like to find something better with quinoa. If anyone has a good quinoa recipe they'd like to share, let me know!

From Better Homes and Garden New Cook Book: Marinated Salmon Steaks. Easy to make, pretty tasty.

Being a Vegetarian

2007-03-20T17:46:00.000-07:00

I've been a vegetarian for about 8 1/2 years. A lot of people have asked me why, but I don't really have a standard answer down. Mostly I don't want other people to feel like I'm judging them for eating meat, or that they should apologize for eating meat. Other people can eat whatever they want--it's a personal choice. I certainly couldn't be married to Chris if I were on a no-meat-eating crusade; he's a happy carnivore and I can't imagine him ever becoming vegetarian.

My biggest reason is that I feel that we've reached a point in human civilization (at least in the U.S.) where we no longer have to eat meat to survive or lead a healthy life. You can be a very healthy vegetarian and still get plenty of protein and all the basics of good nutrition. So if we can avoid killing animals, why not?

But it's not that hard for me to be a vegetarian. I was never a huge fan of meat. We had meat for dinner every night growing up, and I always dreaded anything in the pig family: pork chops were the worst. I did have some things I liked, such as my mom's meatloaf. We had steak every Saturday night (while watching the Lawrence Welk Show) and the rarer it was cooked the more I liked it. I liked chicken salad, hot dogs, beef tacos, and tunafish.

I contemplated becoming a vegetarian when I was in Indiana but it just seemed too difficult there. Then when I first came back to California, most of my coworkers at NASA were vegetarian and it started seeming a lot more feasible. I had pretty much made up my mind right before I went on a road trip to Texas in December 1998 with my friend Ryan, and one night we stayed at his parents' house in Arizona. They served steaks for dinners--perfectly cooked, juicy steaks. I took one look and knew I couldn't eat it. That was my moment.

I still feel very embarrassed that my "moment" came right then, when I was a guest in someone's home, but there you go. Sorry, Mr. & Mrs. Donahue!

Anyway, I haven't looked back. About the only thing I miss are pot stickers (the vegetarian ones just aren't the same) and occasionally fried chicken. I am not 100% vegetarian: I do eat salmon, and once in a while tuna. I also eat gelatin, and once a year I have my mom's Yorkshire pudding, which has beef fat drippings. I'm sure I've ingested meat a few times over the years; no doubt there's been chicken broth in there somewhere. But I wouldn't say it's been a big hardship to give it up.

Chris has certainly eaten a lot less meat since marrying me, because I don't cook meat. I'll buy it, and he's welcome to cook it as much as he wants, but he usually doesn't bother unless it's something easy like cooking a hamburger when I have a veggie burger. I'm not very fussy about our utensils or anything; I don't have special knives or cutting boards that can't touch meat.

And that's all you ever wanted to know about me being vegetarian.

Slide Scanning

2007-03-12T23:04:00.000-07:00

I've been helping my parents with their quest to organize their photo slides. The slides are from the 1950s to the 1970s and there are hundreds. The goal is to pick just the ones worth saving and scan those into the computer.

It's been fun seeing the slides of Mom and Dad when they were first married, and reliving our trips to Disneyland and summers at the beach with our cousins. Also, there is definitive proof I was at the San Diego Wild Animal Park, while I have always claimed never to have been.

We haven't quite decided the best method for scanning the slides. We could get a slide scanner, but it's going to be enough work just sorting them--adding the scanning process will take forever. On the other hand, I know it's quite expensive to have someone else do it. We're looking for high-res scans of the images--no fancy DVD slideshow or anything.

If anyone has any recommendations that worked well for converting your slides, let me know.

Video Relay System

2007-03-10T15:00:00.000-08:00

The other day I went to see my aunt and she showed me her Video Relay System. It allows deaf people to communicate with other deaf people via their TV and a box-top camera. There is also a relay service, so that the deaf person can use sign language to communicate with an interpreter, and in turn the interpreter can make phone calls and translate between the deaf person and the hearing person.

In the past, the TTY has served this need. The TTY can connect to another TTY and two people can type directly back and forth, or the TTY can call a relay service, where a relay operator will speak what's typed on the TTY to a hearing person over the phone, and type back what the hearing person says.

The TTY was a great benefit: it came out in the 1960s and was used long before people had personal computers and modems.

The VRS is even better because it allows for more natural conversation. Speaking is faster than typing, and so is using sign language. I watched my aunt make a phone call to a company and the interpretation was practically real-time: as the person on the phone was speaking, the interpreter was signing what the person said.

Very cool!

Frequenct Flier Miles: Not so free

2007-03-08T11:37:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I finally got around to booking our flights to the UK in a couple of months. I had been putting it off because I wanted to use our United frequent flier miles, and every time I checked the website there was nothing available.

The website and automated phone service assure you that they have access to all the flights that an agent does, but that just isn't the case. When I spoke to an agent, she initially told me the same thing: nothing available. She said more flights might open up as time went by, but I really wanted to book the flights so we could start planning our trip. Suddenly she says, oh, well, if you go on our partner airline (Air Canada in this case) you can get a flight, sure, no problem.

I managed to get flights on the days we wanted, though they are not direct and not at the optimal times. Also, in addition to the $15 fee for using your miles (whatever), there is a $15 fee for booking with an agent (for flights you can't get to on-line.. nice).. and.... TAXES. Each flight was $133 for taxes. The total came to about $300.

Booking the flights directly would have cost anywhere between $1500 and $2500, so I figure it's worth it, but still. I have to adjust my expectations about what frequent flier miles are. They are not FREE miles by any means. They are discounted, inconvenient and difficult to get miles. But still cheaper.

Chicken and Diplodocus

2007-03-07T13:09:00.000-08:00

I am still posting photos to my "Random" set on Flickr. There are two new ones.

Samosas and Lasagna

2007-03-07T12:44:00.000-08:00

Last week I tried a few more new dishes. First up, two items from Vegan Lunch Box: Aloo gobi samosas, and masoor dal (red lentils) and carrot soup. They took me a lot of time to make, but they were both quite good--we will definitely have them again. I made curry-lime yogurt to go along with the samosas--we've had this before with Indian potato pancakes and I really like it.

I also made spinach-mushroom and gorgonzola lasagna roll-ups from one of Rachael Ray's 30-minute cookbooks (not sure which one--all I have is a photocopy). I had made this with a friend before, and it didn't turn out quite as well this time. Still, I like it enough to make it again.

Finally, I tried a new daikon salad recipe that I found on-line. It was okay--still not quite what I was hoping for, but better than the one I tried the previous week.

I've got a couple of new things planned for this week as well.

One-ManStar Wars Trilogy

2007-03-04T21:25:00.000-08:00

Today Chris and I went to a performance of the One-Man Star Wars Trilogy. It's just as the title suggests: one man (Charles Ross) acts out the original trilogy in one hour, with no props or special effects.

I enjoyed it quite a bit--it was very clever and funny. Chris is not really a big Star Wars fan but he is familiar enough with the movies to enjoy most of it. I think the better you know the films the more fun the show is. I loved the impersonation of the Imperial Probe Droid. I also liked the fact he included snippets of the music throughout (that he sang/hummed/etc).

He's been doing the show five years. If you're a Star Wars fan I highly recommend it.

Random Photo

2007-02-28T15:12:00.000-08:00

Just for fun I decided that once in a while I'll post a random photo to my Flickr account. Today's photo is from our trip to Dominica in the Caribbean back in November 2005.

Pacifica Castle

2007-02-23T14:36:00.000-08:00

On the drive down Highway 1 from San Francisco, I have often wondered about the castle perched on a hill in Pacifica. On Wednesday I decided to go check it out. I put up photos on my Flickr account. (As always, if you want to see the descriptions of the photos, you can't look at them in slideshow mode--you have to either look at them one by one, or click on "Detail view").

Cooking Time

2007-02-22T18:44:00.000-08:00

Now that I've got more time on my hands, I'm trying to do a little more cooking. Cooking is not really an interest of mine, but we do tend to eat at home at least 5 nights a week, so we're always on the lookout for new recipes.

This week I've tried three new things: nepali radish salad from a book called, appropriately enough, salads; mini-wellingtons from Vegan Lunch Box; and almond and broccoli stir-fry from The Essential Vegetarian Cookbook.

The verdicts: I chose the radish salad because we've been getting daikon in our produce box, and I needed to figure out what to do with it. I had a delicious daikon salad at a Japanese restaurant recently. This recipe wasn't what I was looking for. I probably overcooked the daikon (the cookbook is not quite instructive enough for a basic cook like me). I don't think we'll make it again. I'm still on the lookout for a good daikon salad recipe (maybe with rice vinegar).

The mini-wellingtons use puff pastry (hard to go wrong with that) and the inside is a mixture of brown rice, oat bran, mushrooms, walnuts, garbanzo beans, and spices. They turned out pretty well. They were certainly good enough to have again, although they take a little while to make.

The almond-broccoli stir-fry turned out well enough that we'd have that one again too.

2 out of 3 successes: not bad!

2007-02-22T11:27:00.000-08:00

It seems commenting isn't work properly right now, so I have re-enabled anonymous comments. Last time I did this I got a ton of spam comments so I imagine it won't last long, but here goes...

2007-02-17T15:54:00.000-08:00

I'm officially unemployed.

Yesterday was my last day at Nuance. After nearly 8 years there, I decided it was time to move on to the next thing.

I haven't decided yet what that will be--not sure if I'll stay in the speech recognition business or not. I'm going to take a little time off and see what's out there.

2007-02-11T21:32:00.000-08:00

Last fall, we decided the toilet seat in our bathroom needed replacing. Easy, right? The first task was to remove the existing seat, which took a surprising amount of effort because the bolts were difficult to remove. After several trips to Home Depot to buy/return various toilet seats that wouldn't fit, we finally discovered the problem: our toilet doesn't have a normal attached seat where you can access the bolt. No, the bolt goes into the toilet itself. Which means, of course, you must buy a specialty part, not available in any store known to man.

Chris eventually called Kohler to order the missing piece (called an "anchor kit"--see drawing. Do you think that's really worth $30?) and was told it would take up to 70 days to receive the part. 70 days came and went, and when he called to find out the status, he was told that all of the parts ordered from overseas has been in a container on a cargo ship, and the container fell off and was no doubt at the bottom of the ocean now.

Nice.

I called them to see if I could get any more information and was told "Oh yes, it will be shipped to you next week, no problem." Likely story. After nothing happened, I called again and was told there was no estimated date as they looked for a new vendor. One who presumably didn't lose shipping containers in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

I resigned myself to another infinite wait, and was shocked last week when the parts finally showed up. Chris installed them, and finally, after 6 months, I have a non-wobbly toilet seat. It's the little things in life...

2007-01-20T15:02:00.000-08:00

Last weekend, Chris and our friend Ken held a bakeoff at our house. Chris made sticky date pudding with caramel sauce, and Ken made chocolate oblivion (a recipe he created from other recipes) with raspberry coulis.

We had two categories: taste and presentation. Our friend S. took photos of the event, and you can see them--and find out who won--on my Flickr account.

2006-12-21T19:18:00.000-08:00

Today at work I found some old papers from a project management course a bunch of us took in 2000. I found the following handout (filled in by me), entitled "Summary of your leadership skills":

1) Identify your strengths as a project manager
- Good at smacking people down (esp. piledriver)
- Good at yelling

2) What ares of support do you need?
- Help beating Stone Cold Jackson

3) Next week I will:

Stop doing: being a wimp
Start doing: landing on city hall with a helicopter

4) This person can help me continue to develop as a leader: Hulk Hogan

Now, why I filled this in as if I were Jesse "The Body" Ventura, I have no idea. Needless to say I never did become a project manager...

2006-12-10T16:32:00.000-08:00

Here's something you probably don't read on blogs very often.. something positive about Dell Technical Support!

I decided to rip all my Christmas CDs to put them onto my iPod, but when I put my first CD into my drive, nothing happened. I futzed around with the device manager for a while, trying to reinstall drivers etc but couldn't figure out how to fix it. So I gritted my teeth and decided to call Dell's Tech Support. Well, it costs money to make those calls, so I decided to try the on-line chat first.

After waiting a few minutes I was connected with someone named Pankaj. (And can I say it's nice he used his real name and wasn't forced to use some fakey name like 'Joe'..) Anyway, after he asked me a few questions, he asked if he could use the Dell Connect software (like VNC) which would allow him to log into my machine. I said sure. After a few minutes of poking around he figured out the problem (based on the info I saw that flashed by, it looks like it was related to some non-compatible Easy CD Creator software I had installed and tried to uninstall) and quickly installed a fix.

The whole process was about 30 minutes, and now I'm walking in a winter wonderland with Louis Armstrong.

2006-12-07T20:16:00.000-08:00

Movies movies movies! We've seen a lot of them lately.

In the theater...
Borat: Hilarious. "When I bought my wife..."

Casino Royale: I'm not a fan of James Bond movies. Too much misogyny and ridiculous gadgets. And save the "But what about Sean Connery...!" Nope, don't like him either. That said, for a Bond movie, Casino Royale wasn't bad. Chris liked it too--he felt it really tried to get back to the original more serious Bond, which he prefers.

Stranger Than Fiction: Not quite all I hoped for, but satisfyingly entertaining.

Happy Feet: a solid Like. Hard to go wrong with dancing penguins and Robin Williams. But...why on Earth did they feel the need to give the female penguins curves and cleavage?! Come ON. Also suffered from the usual problem of very few female characters other than
mothers/love interest. And it made me sad about Steve Irwin's death all over again. (He voices one of the elephant seals.)

Netflix...
The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill: a little slow (Chris fell asleep...) but interesting. Who knew there were so many parrots in San Francisco? With quite an unexpected ending.

The Lake House: I wanted to like this movie. I love time travel romances. But they didn't even try to follow BASIC time-travel-story rules. Enh.

Syriana: A little difficult to follow. Mostly it just made me depressed that there are people in the world (including in America) who feel that war and death and fighting are an acceptable part of life, and whose end goal is NOT to end these things. How can you even hope to make the world a better place progress with people like that?

2006-12-05T23:01:00.000-08:00

We've been subscribed to Vonage (broadband phone service) for almost two years now. What's the verdict?

Well, we're not giving it up, but I would not recommend it to to everyone. I still love the fact we're not giving any money to the traditional phones companies. It's still saving us money--our bill is about $19 a month, which includes more minutes than we use, calls to the UK, caller ID and voicemail. I like getting email notification when we get a voicemail, which is convenient when I'm at work.

They've finally added 511 service, and TiVo seems to be surviving without a connection. We have the phone jacks wired so we can plug a phone into any of our normal jacks.

BUT. The connection just isn't as good. We still have the randomly-generated DTMF tone problem, which I know other Vonage users have problems with as well. Also, the connection has dropped a couple of times. (That could be our Internet connection--hard to tell sometimes where the problem is.) Sometimes there is an echo on the line, or noise. The other day I was unable to get into my conference bridge for a work call--it couldn't recognize my touch tone entries. Also we've had to install some patches when we got our new router, things like that.

So if you are on the phone a lot, or use your phone extensively for business, or are not tech-savvy, I wouldn't recommend it. But for us, it works well enough that the benefits outweigh the problems.

2006-12-03T12:04:00.000-08:00

I really want to post more but I just haven't been making the time.

We went to a couple of fun shows recently. One was the Barenaked Ladies (I have lost count of how many times I've seen them...) which was entertaining as always. We had great seats, 4th row, center section.

We also attended Judith Owen and Harry Shearer's Holiday Sing Along at the Great American Music Hall. Harry Shearer was Derek Smalls in Spinal Tap, and performs many of the voices in the Simpsons (such as Principal Skinner and Dr. Hibbert). His wife Judith Owens is a British singer. One of the guests was Jill Sobule, one of my favorite singers. They sang a bunch of hilarious songs and then during the second half they had song books for everyone in the audience to sing along with them. It was a lot of fun.

While we were standing in line outside waiting to get in, an old red Subaru pulled up and was parked expertly right in front of the concert hall. The driver got out and someone said "Hey Harry!" I don't know how I thought Harry Shearer would be arriving, but I I didn't expect him to just drive right up.