Jon

Just to note that, after the recent whirlwind of (scheduled) travel, work sent me off to New Jersey and Manhattan the day after ironheadjane and I returned from seeing friends and family in the Bay Area. Sixty hours later, I was home.

I've finally posted a few photos of last year's trip to Hawaii and this spring's trip to Bermuda. I'm working on my photos from Sydney from February, but to a certain extent I'm not sure I've got the stomach to finish that work now.

You've probably noted a lot more of my Two Ideas blogging. In part, I've realized that I can do a pretty good job if I batch the work into one or two big weekly sessions, and pop in with brief additional ideas when they come to me. In part, I've been stalled on the fiction project I've been working on, and am trying to see my way clear to getting it going again. In the meantime, my mind wants me to keep writing, so I'm doing my best...

My sister and her husband are in town at the end of this week, as is another friend. I'm looking forward to that a lot, but I've got my first complete in-office workweek in almost a month ahead of me largely between here and there. We'll see how it goes.

Good day yesterday, with a whole lotta nothing, a little bit of food prep (marinated cauliflower salad and a black bean dip), and barbecue at Jer's. Too much food! And now, a little bit of writing then get ready for work. Not enough sleep - about seven hours.

Tomorrow and Thursday I'm on the road, at a customer in Mountain View. Unfortunately I doubt I'll have any time to see people: the kind of business travel I do tends to mean 16-hour workdays. Tomorrow I'll be up at, oh, quarter to four, so I'm unlikely to want to be up very late... by the time I get back to my hotel room and have dinner, it'll be eight or nine and I'll be done.

Went diving with my friend/co-worker Blake last weekend -- it was spectacularly good. We'd hoped to get out this weekend, but tides were unfavorable and Blake was on-call. Plus, I hear the viz was lousy. Still, the two dives we did at Redondo were among the easiest, and most pleasant, in recent memory.

Also, Laura's convinced me to give running a try. Ran three times last week, the third on my own. I'm truly lousy at pacing myself: I tend to slowly work myself faster until I'm going too fast, and it takes me a while to cool off when I slow down. But at least the heart-rate monitor tells me I'm doing it! Without it, I'd be pushing myself a lot harder than I should. Still, on that run I managed to do three and a half miles in about forty-five minutes, which is beyond what I would have guessed I could reasonably do. Maybe I'll get to run again this evening, though what with the trip and the packing my schedule is probably a bit tight...

Last night, dinner was Twice-Baked Samosa-Stuffed Potatoes. This was a mixture of our normal baked potato recipe and the samosa recipe from The Moosewood Cookbook.

First, we took two large potatoes and baked them. We used Idaho Russets (not what we normally use, but perfect for this) and baked them for about an hour at 450 degrees. I run a metal skewer through each potato, so that it cooks faster, and rub the skin with a bunch of salt after washing them.

When the potatoes were nearly done, We took one small yellow onion, and chopped it finely. We also minced about one tablespoon fresh ginger and two cloves garlic. Then we sauteed these about ten minutes in one and a half tablespoons butter with one teaspoon mustard seeds, one teaspoon ground coriander, one-half teaspoon turmeric, and one and a half teaspoons salt. Get the butter nice and hot before adding the other ingredients.

When the potatoes came out, we split them in half and scooped them out, leaving enough on the outside to maintain structural integrity of the potato skins. We took the insides of the potatoes, and mixed them with the sauteed onion-spice mixture, one-half teaspoon cayenne pepper, and two tablespoons lemon juice. In fact, we used the immersion blender to puree them together until smooth.

Then we took one and a half cups frozen peas, and stirred these into the mixture gently. We took the potato-onion-pea mixture and refilled the potatoes, putting them on a baking sheet using aluminum foil to hold them upright. We sprinkled these with paprika, and baked for ten more minutes at 350 degrees before turning on the broiler for a couple of minutes. If you do this, make sure that you stop as soon as the potatoes start browning on top!

If I was doing it again, I'd probably sprinkle on a little extra paprika after taking them out of the oven: the turmeric stains the potatoes a beautiful yellow, the peas are a brilliant green, and the deep red of the fresh paprika would be very appealing, visually.

Very tasty, filling, and healthy!

The next few months will be a marathon of travel.

This week, Wednesday through next Sunday, Laura and I will be in Bermuda. Work is sending me to the annual Sales Club to thank me for the deals we've closed due to my onsite intervention, including a major last-minute deal last quarter in Australia. We may opt to stay a couple of extra days at the tail-end of it and enjoy ourselves a bit more.

Next month, we'll be spending a week at Disney World with my siblings and some extended family. We're very much looking forward to seeing my Aunt, Uncle, and Cousin, who will be visiting from Israel, as well as my siblings and their spouses and my niece, and also my sister-in-law's extended family. It should be exhausting, but in a good fun way.

July, we'll be headed to the Bay Area for a long weekend -- the 16th through the 20th. We're very much looking forward to getting together with friends and family while we're there, and we're not yet heavily planned... so if you'd like to see us in SF, let us know soon.

Several weeks ago I'd planned to have a small movie night this past weekend, to celebrate my 33 1/3rd birthday. Given the craziness of the last couple weeks, not surprisingly, I failed to plan it or to invite anyone.

Fortunately, 2049live and ironlemur were visiting from Chicago, and we watched The Third Man, so I can at least claim to have fulfilled my plans. Though I didn't have a cake that looked like an LP. (No, I was never actually planning that -- it just occurred to me now.)

It's all right, though, as I spent a nontrivial portion of the weekend helping out with emergency work stuff. My role was limited, from a technical perspective, but time-consuming nonetheless.

Hopefully I'll plan a substitute movie night soon -- it would be good to make sure we still see people.

We have an answer on what happened to Ezra: a blood clot in the umbilical cord. While this doesn't make us any less sad, it's at least an answer. When Laura's off of blood thinners for the clot in her leg, we'll be doing the full panel of clotting disorder tests, and likely she'll be on blood thinners when we're ready to try again.

Not sure if we'll be joining much of the family at Disney in June -- it's expensive, and if Laura can't enjoy the rides due to the blood thinners maybe it makes more sense to pay down the credit cards, or at least not spend down the market-battered nest egg. On the other hand, even if Laura can't enjoy the rides we'd enjoy spending time with my siblings quite a bit. I still have to see if I can get the time off of work anyway, so I guess it's a bit premature to worry about that.

Speaking of worry, I'm dreading work this week. Not because I don't love my job (because I do!) but because of the volume of end-of-quarter work that needs doing. I'm involved in four separate situations involving last-minute problems and potential big money... it would be exhausting to think about, even if I wasn't already exhausted from day-to-day living right now.

I did have some interesting dreams last night -- in one, I was onstage. I'm not sure exactly what my act was, but I was fairly content and comfortable up there, whatever I was doing. There was a guy in the audience in a wheelchair, near the front, and I asked him his name, which was Joe. Someone in his group made a "Hey Joe" joke, and I replied that if I was closer to the drum kit I'd have given the rimshot myself. Everyone in the audience laughed, which surprised me and made me smile.

In another dream, I was trying to explain to someone why they were having more trouble writing their second novel than they did writing their first. I had two foam rings of exactly the same size, with the hole in the middle of each ring also the exact same size. I had a ball that exactly fit the hole, and I asked the novelist to pass the ball through the first ring. No problem.

I asked him to pass it through the second ring, but he couldn't fit it through. He measured and confirmed that the holes were exactly the same size, then tried again. Still no luck. I asked him what accompanied the ball on the second time through that ring that wasn't there the first time around. He didn't know. I answered: ego.

We welcome you to come support Jon and Laura as they say goodbye to Ezra Daniel

Sunday March, 8th 2008
10 am


Evergreen-Washelli Funeral Home
11111 Aurora Ave N
Seattle, WA 98133

In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to 826 Seattle
http://www.826seattle.org/

Please RSVP for details about luncheon to follow

We finally got back from the hospital yesterday evening, and had dinner with some family before they left. (Laura's mother is still in town a few more days.)

When my stepmother died, Laura had a taste of what sitting shiva is like, and I think she found it comforting. We're adapting the tradition, in our own way. So we would very much appreciate folks local to Seattle stopping by in the afternoons and evenings this week, to keep us company. Some folks have offered to bring food, but feel free to bring nothing besides your company.

If you're planning to stop by, please feel free to check in via e-mail or calling us, so that we can make sure things aren't too crowded. (I don't imagine it would be a problem, but it's true also that we'll be going out at least some of the time and I'd hate for people to stop by when we're not here...)

We haven't yet had the opportunity or energy to respond individually to everyone who has offered their love and support, but please understand it's deeply appreciated at this time.

This is just a short note to let our friends know what's happening. I don't feel much like writing about it now but can't bring myself to tell everyone individually:

The baby is dead.

I've (obviously) cut my trip short, and managed to get home yesterday about 24 hours from when we first had the news.

I'm currently at the hospital with Laura, who is (thank goodness) physically fine so far. Labor has been induced and we're waiting. Laura has been properly medicated and is resting.

I'm upset beyond words. I'm crying terribly as I write this.

Thanks to everyone who has already come forth with support. The well of love shared with us by our family and friends has been deeper than I would have ever imagined. (More the fool me, I guess)

We will be receiving visitors on and off next week. Please call or e-mail before showing up, but we welcome everyone's continued support.

I believe a memorial service will be a week from Sunday. I don't know any details yet, but if you want them please mail me and I'll be sure to let you know when they're available.

People who are uncomfortable around death and grief should feel no pressure to attend, or to visit us this week. We understand that not everyone has the time or resources, physically financially or emotionally, and we really don't want anyone to be uncomfortable. We promise that we won't cross any names off our Christmas card list. (Metaphorically speaking, as we have never managed to mail Christmas cards, even if we talk about it every year.)

We thank everyone for their love and support in this awful, terrible time.

If you didn't see my twitter this evening, I wrote "Stuck my hand in a hat hoping to pull out a rabbit. Afraid now it might be an angry kangaroo."

I realize that was cryptic and might require some exegesis, as we used to say in philosophy class.

This afternoon, work decided that I'd be a great guy to send to fix some problems we're having in Sydney, Australia.

I'll admit to having done a pinch of lobbying, with the acquiescence of my lovely and tolerant wife, but truth be told I didn't expect it to be successful lobbying, since other more relevant people were perhaps better choices.

Only it turns out they didn't want to do it. So it's me.

And I leave on Sunday -- something else I didn't plan for.

And, "as long as you're in the area," my boss told me, he wanted to send me to some customers in Malaysia on a fact-finding mission and to work on one customer's longstanding performance problem. ("In the area" means, apparently, an eight hour flight away...)

So I'm a little bit freaked out now -- it's a lot of planning and thinking and learning to do on short notice. The Malaysia piece of the trip is still a bit up in the air, as are return dates -- I'm trying to figure out if I should bring my dive gear (and if so, how much of it), and even what else I need to figure out before Sunday.

So, awesomely, my team successfully completed our rescue diver course dives today. Definitely worth taking a day off of work to go diving.

I celebrated by buying spring-straps for my fins. The normal straps have a terrible habit of getting tiny pebbles stuck in them, which makes them difficult or impossible to adjust, and they're tricky to put on. The new straps seem much easier to get on and off, but should hold the fins tightly enough. Laura says that my fin straps have been a thorn in her side, because not only does she need to help me every time, but she then struggles with the straps herself.

On the downside, one of my friends was just laid off from where I work. He's a smart guy, and I'm sure that the cost-savings makes sense for his department, but at the same time I wish they'd found another role for him where he fit. He's an awesome talent that I hate to lose for the company.

I've put off dinner and cooking in order to buy Jerry drinks and console him. (Need to ensure it's a bar with decent food.) I'm a bit surprised by how bummed I am by his misfortune.

But, still, rescue diving completed successfully. Despite having the dream last night where I show up to take the final exam ("French 4") and realize that, as it was the last class of the day, I'd forgotten to go all semester long. And spent two hours trying to match the terms on one side of the page with the descriptions on the other. And then, after the teacher suggests just giving up, having the conversation with her where I explain that, somehow, I failed to go to class all semester, and "it's just like that dream you have where..." I'm a touch surprised that said realization didn't actually bring me any lucidity, but oh well.

I'm not fully rescue-certified yet. Have to finish / re-finish my chapter conclusion test answers, and take the CPR class later this month. But I've done the open-water dives, which was the part I was concerned with. Yay!

( Don't click here if you don't want to read about my weekend )

The bad news is that my team in the rescue diver class completely botched the rescue on Saturday. I'll be taking time off of work next week to try to do better. Sunday we didn't dive, as it was snowing and all three of us were in wetsuits. Hypothermia is not in my dive plan. (If I had infinite wealth I'd really, really want a drysuit, but even if I felt like I could reasonably spend $1400 on one right now I would rather use that money to pay down the last bit of debt we have or to save it for baby expenses.)

The good news is that issue 1 of The Ne'er-Do-Well arrived. Yes, my fiction is really and truly in print. I received two copies (plus one I need to autograph and send to my dad), and know where the copy I'm not keeping is going. Still, need to get going on that.

The other good news is that the pizza Laura and I made for dinner Saturday after my rescue diver class was probably the best we've ever made. Nothing fancy, just good mozzarella, tasty tomatoes, and fresh basil on top of a regular tomato sauce -- but exceptionally good nonetheless. Sunday we made a mushroom casserole out of The Enchanted Broccoli Forest (one of the Moosewood follow-ons), which was also completely delicious but a whole lot of work. (Washing and chopping two pounds of crimini mushroom caps is something that I'm not very fast at. The rest of the process put together took less work.)

As far as movie-watching goes, we've been on a Criterion Collection kick since they started releasing on Blu-Ray a few weeks ago. I think we plan to buy The Third Man at some point, and we also enjoyed Bottle Rocket and Chungking Express. I wouldn't say I enjoyed The Man Who Fell to Earth, but I was definitely fascinated by it.

This weekend we watched The Last Emperor, which was beautiful and entertaining but I'm not sure that it was especially deep. That said, even the first fifteen minutes of the commentary track were enlightening: the title sequence was created by Maurice Binder, who did the James Bond titles -- after which the sequence looked more like a James Bond opener than it did one for a fancy foreign film! The opening fifteen minutes of commentary on Chungking Express gave some details that explained the film to me in a way that it made sense: I now understand that Wong Kar Wai's relationship with the old, disappearing Hong Kong parallels the cops' relationships with women in the film. That's something I wouldn't have picked up on otherwise. (If I had the same infinite pile of money that let me feel like I could buy a drysuit, I'd probably 'subscribe' to Criterion's Blu-Ray releases.)

Last night we watched Roger Ebert's commentary track on Dark City. Turns out he recorded a new commentary track for the Director's Cut, which is on the same Blu-Ray disc but which I've never watched. I'll have to plan to watch the new version, then the other three commentary tracks at some point soonish.

One hundred and more years ago, racists thought that someone was "black" if they had a single drop of black blood in them -- if one of your great-great-great-great grandparents was black and the other 63 of them were white, you were still black. Just one sixty-fourth black blood was definitive.

Today, some racists claim that Barak Obama isn't black because he's half-white.
Poll #1337256 Pudd'nhead Wilson Asks...
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 14

Is this progress?

Today's going to be my first day back in the water since, oh, August, when viz was miserable. Tomorrow I may dive more.

Next week I take the rescue diver course, with checkout next weekend.

Spent most of this morning prepping and checking my gear. Everything looks good to go -- I did have to change the dive computer battery, hopefully I did the excellent job I tried to do and it doesn't leak and get ruined. (I definitely want a new computer, but I was thinking maybe next year if somehow I fall into a giant puddle of money or something. Even if I did have the cash around collecting dust I think I'd rather just hold onto it right now. Of course, if I don't have any dive computer, that's a little bit different.)

Since August, life's been too busy to dive: Laura's rescue diver course (which meant me not diving then), the initial pregnancy news, moving, a million work trips (you don't believe a million? Okay, only 52 days on the road last year for business), and the holidays. Really last weekend was probably the only time since August that I'd have been able to schedule a dive.

Still, I think that I need to establish a regular monthly dive with some group of people -- it would mean I'd do it, if I had a regular schedule and group. Honestly I'd love to dive twice a month, and the roadblock has been (other than the horrendously busy fall) the organizational effort. I need to work on that this year.

As I noted in my other blog, I'm finally getting a short story published. That's five and a half years from first draft to print -- at that rate, I'll have a book of short stories maybe in time for my eighty-fifth birthday.

Also, in the "long time coming" category, I've finally made back every penny of my advance on Think Unix. That was published eight and a half years ago.

Sadly, I failed to accomplish my one new year's resolution for 2008, which was to find D.B. Cooper. Although early evidence this year suggested that someone else might get ahead of me on this, all those leads proved false, so while I failed to accomplish my objective here, nobody else really did any better.

My objectives for 2009 are pretty simple: stay employed, completely eliminate the last of our household debt including Laura's student loans, stay out of debt, and raise a happy, healthy baby. I don't expect to finish that last one this next year, or to do it without a whole lot of help, but it's what I'm most looking forward to doing.

Wow, everything went more or less as planned. I had a schedule indicating what needed to be done at roughly fifteen minute intervals from 1:30 this afternoon until 6 pm. With a few minor modifications I stuck to the plan, and dinner was served at about 6:05 pm.

( Details of Assault on Kitchen Mountain )

Hors D'oeuvres
Deviled Eggs
Cheese and Crackers
Chips and Salsa
Captain Radcliffe's Punch

Dinner
Pork loin roast
Turkey breast roll, with stuffing
Mashed potatoes
Gravy
Stuffing
Mashed celeriac
Green bean casserole
Butternut squash puree

Dessert
Mince Pie
Coconut Macaroons

So I've been remiss in announcing the holiday have-people-over gathering. Laura was mostly handling it.

Anyway, if you're in Seattle, and you're mobile in the weather (or in Ballard), and you'd like to come over, cocktails start at 3 and dinner sometime between 5 and 6.

If you don't know where our new place is, e-mail me or call. And if you don't know how to do either of those things, comment here.

Well, the good news is that it didn't snow today, and ironheadjane and I had our thrice-scheduled (and long-before-that-talked-about-vaguely) dinner with batboymaxx and blowtorch_betty at Tavolata. The food was lovely, and the company was charming. A good time was had by all, it seems. (Though I'm always nervous that people are just being polite and pretending to have a good time...)

The bad news is that, other than dinner, today was a total loss. I had lots of trouble sleeping last night I blame 3pm Americano for that, plus ironheadjane's recent not-unexpected sleep troubles, plus just random luck, so I had fewer than four hours sleep overall, and not two hours consecutive sleep. (Earlier today I actually thought I had less than two hours sleep total, which is obviously not quite right and more evidence of how tired I am.)

The other good news is that I'm managing to write fairly regularly -- about two hundred fifty words a morning. Actually, my minimum per morning is 250 words, but it hasn't worked out since the middle of last week but one day, yet I'm still averaging more than my minimum. There's a lot of work between writing a lot and having finished or publishable pieces, but I'm trying to close that gap in other ways -- and writing regularly is a necessary-but-not-sufficient first step. (And more news on that soon, too, but I'm super-superstitious and don't want to say anything until it's too late not to say anything.) It's a bit unfortunate that the only time I can find is between six and seven in the morning, but it's far better than nothing.

I was going to post additional bad news, to even stuff out, but I can't think of any. That's a good thing too, which throws off the good news / bad news balance further still. If those were matter and antimatter, this starship wouldn't be flying anywhere.

Right, probably time to pass out now.

... and had a lot on my mind. Please see below:



Due date is presently estimated at mid-late May.

... to say that I'm finally back in town -- I got told on Friday, October 24th that come Monday, October 27th I would be in Baltimore for two weeks, until yesterday, November 9th. But I'm back now.

And boxes are starting to unpack, and there's some room to walk in now, in some places.

And it's my birthday, and I made pasta sauce from scratch for dinner. Not the most elaborate thing I cook, but it's nice to have home cooking for a change, after spending something like three of the last four weeks on the road.

Tomorrow I go back to work -- a new bus line, to the same building, but a new cube. Kind of strange.

All this week, more unpacking, and stuff. Next weekend, cleaning the old place, unpacking the new place some more.

Glad to be home, and to have this opportunity to begin to settle in, but boy am I exhausted!