Spots on Winnie

We attended a great wedding on Saturday. So even though LSU lost, it was a good positive evening. But maybe the best part of the weekend was that I finally painted the spots on Winnie, our van, where she was losing her paint. It was something I've wanted to do for the past year or more.

Some Fords are notorious for their paint peeling off, and our van was victim to this automotive malady. The spots I painted back on hardly look better than the gray spots that were there, because the color and sheen doesn't match exactly. But at least I got the rust off of the roof and sealed up all the metal to protect it more. Plus, as Papa Jeffrey says, "You can't tell a difference driving 65 down the interstate."

what to do, and the tots

My blood is O negative, by the way.

This weekend we'll be heading back to Louisiana for a wedding.

I am happy working with the school system I'm working with now, but I am also interested in getting my teaching certification, so I am working with an alternative certification program to do just that. Long-term, I'm thinking to teach for a couple years, work on a principal certification, and perhaps an EdD. I would like to stay involved with the school system which got me to Houston, a new school which just opened up to its first students as a college this last month, and will continue on to become a university in the next few years once we have graduates. The language school I teach for is a part of that system. Some of the students I teach now will go to that college to get their bachelor degrees. The school is proud to offer teaching only from instructors with doctorate degrees, so maybe down the road I can be involved with that. Or perhaps I'll be involved with the administration. We'll see.

The thing is, my love for Houston leaves something to be desired. Instead, I say, why don't we live somewhere with mountains and four seasons? Or somewhere not designed around cars. We'll see.

I didn't mention The Kiterunner yet, did I. The words I want to use are affecting or impactful. But for words which describe how something affects you, both of these words just don't do it. I keep thinking about the characters and emotions from this story, even though it's been weeks since I read it. While it's a tremendous story, I actually hesitate to recommend it on account of the depth of universal human emotion it roused, even from my stainless steel heart.

Let me tell you about the tots. Orry started drawing faces, people, and various things lately. He has a little magnadoodle style drawing board, on which he darws these things. The thing he draws most, I must admit, is a union jack or any of several variations. This comes not from the inspiration of the flag, but from the simple symmetry of the four lines in a rectangle. He is big on symmetry.

Isaac is talking more. Still his speech is quite incomprehensible, if it weren't for his antics which help even strangers understand his half syllabic words. "Dinosaur" sounds like "door", "Come on!" sounds like "Khan" and so on. He talks a lot, for being quite unintelligible. And now he seems to be less kranky than he was a few weeks ago. Next week he will undergo some anasthesia and a scope, and if you're more curious about him you can read up on our blog IBD In Our Home.

Annie started babbling in a new gurgly way yesterday, exploring the sounds she can make. She is our little laugher, and she also crawls around to wherever she can get the most attention. She started standing up next to furniture or things. And she's eating whatever food she can get.

Our family is interacting pretty well. We like to spend time at the park near our house and at the museums of natural science. We would like more play time outside now that the weather is agreeable. Food has become a bigger deal lately, as Isaac has a special diet, and of course, so does Annie.

Cheers. Thank you for staying current.

O Positive

Let's focus on the positive.

Poison Ivy--or Poison Sumac, to be more precise--, I concede that your species is in some ways superior to mine. Our last head to head was not pleasant for me, and I'm wondering if we can bury the hatchet and call a truce? I have determined that with a light exposure such I experienced with you last, my body will react for just over two weeks. It won't be bad for a couple days, and then there will be a few days where I hope that I'm not really that infected. Then there is the acceptance period, where I realize I am affected, but remain hopeful that it's not going to be intolerable. Near the end I get ready to go to the doctor thinking that I better get some steroids before it gets out of control. But then it thankfully subsides before I go and my lesions fade into the usual pale pinkish color of the rest of my skin. I am glad to be done with that itch.

Our van has a new transmission with a year warranty. We have been driving it around this past week. It was really nice to get it back, even though we really don't want to be the family that needs a car. Especially with the doctor appointments and all, lately, having our private wheels helps alleviate some stress! We're glad to have the car back.

Anyway, there's more good stuff, but no need to overdo it.

Happy October!

cosmic truths and inaction

My lingering cough must have weakened my immunity, and now I have a painful infection with a debilitating fever. Interestingly, in the wee hours of the a.m. after uncomfortably writhing all night, I found, in my delirium, some original cosmic truths. It has happened to me before, and now I wonder about the prevalence of such "revelations". It's not all that. The experience can probably be likened to drug induced revelations of the colorness of colors or the connectedness of the universe, etc. Two years ago, in a sickness induced delirium, I had a fantastic idea that resolved some problems I had been thinking about in astrophysics. This time, again, linked to the metaphysics of the universe, I developed an analogy which, again, offers an insight that resolves a lot of disconnectedness between the origins of the universe, God, science, the human mind, and so on. Now I hope to write it all down, but, like remembering a dream, it will be a difficult task of crystallizing some pretty vague and lofty ideas. So I won't do that now, but if I ever do write a book, maybe I can include these ideas therein.

Also lingering in the spirits of my now 11905 day year old self, is the tension in my life between deliberation and action. Or potential and realization. It seems like a easy line to cross. If you want to write a book, just do it. If you want to start a business, just do it. But the factors of life and probably other character flaw obstacles continue to stack up as excuses for not doing some of the things I want to do.

What we did last week was pretty fun. We went to the beach, this time as a morning sandcastle excursion. We also checked out some free places in Houston. The "action" of having a family is a delightful undertaking that easily consoles me from the inaction mentioned above.

Peace.

Happy September

The penguins of Madagascar just mentioned that the sum of the square roots of any two sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to the square root of the remaining side. Interested, I googled it, and found that the scarecrow in the movie The Wizard of Oz delivered the line lo so many years ago. Sine then it's been used on the Simpsons, and now the Penguins as well. Of course, the only relationship between the twin legs of an isosceles triangle and the third leg is that the twins are each more than half as long as the third leg. In fact, the line is almost brilliantly wrong in each possible way (but there are, indeed, three sides of a triangle.).

I have had a nasty cough for a while. Otherwise, I feel okay, but when I have a coughing fit it's horrible. Earlier I was sicker, but now it's just the lingering cough.

We have explored around Houston some more. We went to the beach this weekend, but it was more like a driving tour than a beach excursion. We rode the ferry. While we were waiting for the ferry, our car battery discharged enough that we couldn't restart our van. Thankfully, a guy in a jeep nearby saved the day with some jumper cables. It all was resolved in such a quick manner that we did not slow down the line of embarking vehicles. But it wasn't completely resolved, of course, because as soon as we embarked, we had to turn off our vehicles' ignitions. And our Jeep friend was parked on a different part of the boat, too. I crossed my fingers and hoped that the van would start just fine. We watched dolphins and seagulls and waves, and at the end tried without success to restart the van. I quickly tried to get an attendant to see if they had a solution, but the attendants were all busy getting ready to unload the ferry. On the way back to our van I asked the guy in front of me (in a small car--I was sure the chance was slim) if he had jumper cables. When he said yes and jumped out of his car, I realized they'd have to be pretty long to be able to help out right away, since our cars were all arranged like a traffic jam. But, would you believe it, he was a mechanic, and his jumper cables were attached to a 12 volt jumpstarter, and it was all resolved in such a quick manner that we did not slow down the line of disembarking vehicles.

When we got to a convenience store, I poured some cola on the terminals to get rid of a bunch of corrosion that was helping to discharge our battery. Since then, we've been okay.

Life is good, but Annie just chewed off part of the cover of Bonnie's library book while I was typing up that story. So now I'll go and pay more attention to the young 'uns.

well ballyhoo, we're in texas

Happy Birthday Orry, you were born almost exactly four years ago this minute.

We are moved into an apartment into Houston, where we feel like we're a little on the wrong side of town. But on the plus side (and this is why we live there), we live about a three or four minute drive to work. It's about a mile and a half, but what's funny is that it's really just across a road. But it's a big road, beltway eight. And actually, I haven't ever been on it, because it is a tollway, and it has service roads that go around it, which serve the purpose we need of crossing it.

I actually like Texas, so far. Maybe I was hasty to reproach the lone star state. Some examples for my second thoughts: service is considerably better, drivers are considerably better, people are considerably nicer. Some more good points about where we live are that the area is a sort of convergence of a few different international cultures. My job, by the way, for the time being, is a lot like teaching English in another land. All my students are Turkish or from somewhere similar (like Azerbeijan or Uzbekistan). Many of them are fresh from overseas. I like it.

We eat breakfast at the school each morning. And after the schoolday we also usually eat dinner. There are a lot of olives and cheese.

Annie rolls, Isaac babbles, Orry is four, yes, four years old. Sheesh, time flies.

a May 30 quickie

My number two boy turned two yesterday, which means a few things. The precise day is passed when he is the age Orry was when he was born, although in two weeks they'll celebrate being half, or twice, the other's age for a year. The other milestone is that from this day forward, for now, Isaac will have spent most of his life in the USA again. He has really started babbling less incoherently, and has been seen jumping, singing, praying, and playing games which satisfy and delight us.

Annie is also developing well. On Thursday we'll move to Houston, and she will cross her first state line.

The Theobalds are coming over later today, and we'll have some fun. And we can show off our "finished" home. No, it's not turnkey perfect. But it is ready to rent out for the next year, and we signed a lease (hooray!) so it'll do for now!

For inappropriate quote use, see here. We have a dentistry pamphlet to submit. Seriously, after all that school, you send out a mailing that includes so many unnecessary quotes?! Seriously?!

a near mid-May report, 2010

It is nice Tawna has been working on genealogy lately, but I've been missing her blog action.

I've been working moderately over the past month or so to learn Spanish.

These are times of change.

Every single person in my immediate family working outside the home has changed jobs in the past year or will change in the next few months. This pattern extends also to many outside my immediate family, of course. Bonnie's family, by the way, is a little more solidly employed, it turns out.

I got a book from the library set in Idaho, since it will have to do for not going to Idaho this summer, by the looks of things. A Country Called Home.

I am another half day older.

Bonnie got another cookie book. We are about to sample some lemon lime cookies that would make even the sourest of frowns turn upside down, I bet. And that's going by the smell, and a few licks of frosting and dough.

We saved another turtle today. They want to cross the road, but the road is wide and their pace is slow. Who knows, maybe it would have made it on its own. Bonnie doubts it. We brought the refugee to the Bluebonnet swamp area, and then we got some turtle books from the library.

We've been going through our books and belongings and making donation trips.

magic beanstalk

The magic beanstalk at our place is made of bamboo. It grows a few feet each day, or did at least, the last we could see of the top. Actually, there are a few stalks, racing to become poles to blog about. Giant bamboo. Admire it.

I am trying my darnedest to complete a list of items in time for us to move to Houston soon. We don't know how temporary or lasting this move will be.

LSU vs BSU...

I pour myself some tootie fruities. I eat the green and red ones first. Then the fruities that remain are purple and yellow, blue and orange. When I eat some LSU colors I try to eat some BSU colors to balance it out. When I eat some BSU colors I likewise try to eat some LSU colors. The same goes for reds and greens, if I perchance eat some school colors. I try to keep the game balanced. At the end, when I can easily count the remaining fruities for each team, a winner is declared. So far I think Boise State is a few games up.

I sometimes think about such a game. Although I don't get to catch Boise State play very often, and I usually do watch LSU, I'd know so much more about LSU. But of course in my heart I'd want the mountain team to blast by the southern big boys. Either way, I guess it's a win-win. And that's how my day starts on select mornings.



I ate some cookies again. After a couple months of abstinence, I had some thin mint girl scout cookies. They're okay, but not that good, really, I mean come on--it's a cheap crusty mint flavored cookie in a little chocolate. Bonnie makes a mint chocolate chip cookie with Andes chips and real mint, and it's much better. And then, after the thin mints, Bonnie finally cracked under pressure and made a batch of chocolate chip cookies (not mint flavored). I ate three last night after a bunch of cookie dough--enough to feel like I didn't need even three cookies. Then, today, I had way too many little frozen cookie dough balls. Jeesh.

Bonnie was talking about gradually using less and less sugar in her tea, with the aim of cutting it out altogether eventually. But something tells me it probably wouldn't work with cookies, slowly cutting out the butter and sugar. I mean, what would be left? Yum, chocolate chips in egg flour!

Old Spice's advertising campaign has paid off for them. I bought an Old Spice product today, and do you know why? To smell like a man, man.

We sat down to watch Avatar last night but it was a German version with no subtitles. I fell asleep waiting to hear about the miners. Tonight, Project Runway goodness. And no hope for the coal industry.

I got enthused, and then a little doleful today. First, about Emanuel Sachs and silica PV cells. Then dolorous about the disqualification of my life achievements to get me on board with a company like his, doing something along the lines of what he is doing. I want to go work with him for free, you know. And then get PV rooftops on all the houses in the southwest, for example.

In the end, I got to feeling good again. I put a For Rent sign in the ground, put up some sheetrock, taped up some joints. I didn't listen to the Spring Fund Drive of my local NPR station. What gets me is how much of the pledge drive I listen to. Today, I listened to my own thoughts.

After working, I got to spend a good amount of afternoon with the family. That's a treat. We got ready for a picnic and soccer get-together tomorrow.

These days Venus and Mercury show their stuff in the dusky western sky.

flowers in baton rouge on easter 2010

Now that I am the age Jesus was when

Now that I am the age Jesus was when he expired, I just don't seem to have the energy I used to. Or do I? I used to be able to stay up all night painting the house. But, I must remember. These days I wake up before dawn and do physical labor most of the day. I guess my energy level is fine.

Today I am most excited about an opportunity I don't really have. But my fellow homelanders in Idaho have it. It is the opportunity to see an asteroid eclipse a naked-eye star early Tuesday morning (between 4:30 and 5am). Actually, millions of people from Los Angeles up into Canada have the chance to see it. But come on, how many of these chances do Magic Valleyers have? Actually, that's a good question, so I'll see if I can get a good figure.

It looks like these asteroid occultations are quite frequent, but notable ones are far less common. For example, I will get a chance to see one in a few days, here in Louisiana, but it will take a telescope, and the star's brightness and the brightness of the asteroid are close in comparison. In the case of Anastasia (the asteroid's name) crossing between you Idahoans and the particular naked-eye star, the star will plumb blink out for a few (up to 8) seconds. The asteroid passing in front of Baton Rouge and a star in a few days is named Bobhope.

Getting recorded observations from many people is a good help to scientists. If you are interested you can trudge through here, or read this forecast for the particular event across the western US.

I was excited yesterday about flying squirrels. I spent some time here at howpeg when I should have been preparing the house to be painted. It's inspiring to see someone make amateur nature videos with regular household equipment. And also that so many other people get inspired by it and do it. Recording a bunch of random sightings from people all over north america just wouldn't have been logistically feasible when I was growing up, before the internet circuitry came about.

That is enough excitement for one blog. If it weren't for sherbet. Here are 10 reasons why "rainbow" sherbet is better than neapolitan ice cream:

1. it is easier to spell, but actually "rainbow" is a silly name. There are 3/7 colors represented, only one of them primary. A better name would be "citrus trio" sherbet. Because
2. lemon
3. lime
4. orange are great citrus flavors. I'd be keen to see a grapefruit mixed in there. Speaking of mixing,
5. the sherbet is mixed in a swirly random chaos, much more fun than the sometimes off balanced and plain three strata of chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry.
6. plant based, not animal based
7. no lipids
8. it cools you down after a day of work
9. it hearkens you back to your childhood days, and
10. it comes from the middle east, like Jesus.

when siblings marry....

Let's say your dad's sibling marries your mom's sibling. Any children from this union share grandparents with you, so they are your cousins. But they share all four grandparents, not unlike your own siblings, so they are closer to you than mere cousins. Cousins such as these, are double cousins, or more precisely, double first cousins. My own great grandfather Carson married a Goodson, whose brother married a Carson--my great grandfather's sister. As a consequences, double cousins run down the line. My papa Carson had double cousins. Their offspring are double second cousins with each other. And so on. Statistically, your double cousins are at least the DNA-equivalent of half-siblings. But depending on which genes are shared, they get closer than that. Imagine identical twins marrying identical twins. I found out on wikipedia that this is called a quaternary union, the second generation of which are indistinguishable from full siblings, DNA-wise.

The Carsons and Goodsons came from North Carolina. I wonder why and how they ended up in Idaho.

I found out that my paternal grandfather was not as German as I thought. Only his dad's family was German, and his mom's family was Dutch and English, it would seem. I am four last names short of my 16 GGGrandparents: Becker, ______, Albright, Richardson, Douglass, Fairbanks, Brook, Parker, Carson, Hodges, Goodson, ________, Ignacio Candido, de Acis Neves, includes Texeira-_______, ________.

I am pretty much done with genealogy for now though. This is my work week, since Bonnie and the kiddos are in Houma for Spring Break. I would be working hard right now, but I had a night of food poisoning last night, so it was a slow morning. I am feeling sturdier now, though, so off I go.

I have been alive for....

Annie is going through that stage where in no time at all she began: holding her head up, looking here and there, concentrating, smiling and laughing, cooing. And also she thickened up and her eye color darkened and she started pooping more all at once instead of two dozen times a day. She is a little angel baby most all of the time. Oh, also she began regularly skipping a feeding in the middle of the night, so Bonnie gets more sleep these days.

I am pretty sure about teaching English in Houston in May. That gives me just over a month to finish up some projects here and get lined up for Summer. I don't know exactly we will do, but there's an opportunity for me to teach at a language school in Houston for May and June and longer if we choose. We are tossing over a bunch of scenarios which include Houston, Idaho, Korea again, and elsewhere. Also in our life sketch ideas we are considering Japan.

Let me tell you a little about more ancestors of my children. The names in their closest Japanese heritage are Koike, Akiyama, Iida, and Shima. Bonnie's maternal grandparents were born on Oahu and Hawaii to Japanese immigrants. The immigrants came from Osaka and near Hiroshima. Oh wait, I don't know for sure now. It looks like I need to learn more. At one point, I heard that there was a family mushroom farm in Japan. I am curious. Bonnie's middle name, Nobu, is the name of her grandmother's mother, born in Japan as Nobu Shima. Nobu stands for trust. Shima means island. Becker means baker, or an egg-stand.

So a hundredish years ago, these Japanese folks were adventuring further out to the Pacific. Meanwhile, the Azoreans I mentioned in a recent post were loading up on a boat to cross the Atlantic. My German ancestors in Iowa were setting off to work on land in Idaho, being developed by pioneers using Chinese labor. My Mormon ancestors, on the run from Missouri, were about to settle on some land there. I don't know what my mom's paternal branch was doing; I will have to investigate the Carsons some time. Nor do I know about Bonnie's dad's branch, but something tells me they were all collected already in southern Louisiana.

All three of our little tots were born in the same hospital here in Baton Rouge. Isaac has still lived most of his life overseas, but Annie has never even crossed a state line. Orry, bless his heart, has lived in five homes in his 45 months of life.

Tonight, we had some tortellinis in some spinach and artichoke cream sauce. With veggies on the side. I keep saying, if it weren't for the cheese, cream, and other animal based foodstuffs we eat here and there, we'd be 100% vegan. As it is, we're 100% vegan only some of the time.

And speaking of time, it is time to end this discourse.

P.S. I have been alive for almost 386 months.

On Saturday...

When your uncle is your father, you might find that some of your siblings are also your cousins. As it turns out, my great-great uncle is also my great-great grandfather, in this sense: My great-great grandmother Marian was married to two men, one at a time. They were brothers, and the first was tragically killed at a young age. The brother, Manuel, spawned my Granny and six of her sisters, who were couslings with two from the earlier uncle-father.

Tonight I am relishing in the memories from my granny's early childhood. The childhood was on a farm north of Shoshone, Idaho, where the Ineases came to homestead, all the way from the Azore Islands in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. These were the roaring twenties, and then the not-so-roaring thirties when Granny lived her first ten years. Oh, the good old days.

Granny had only two Becker boy grandkids, mostly because she is my maternal grandmother, so the Becker comes from a different family. I am one of those grandsons, and my brother Trent is the other. It doesn't look like we'll be siring each other's kids, since we're both married with spawn of our own, but you never really know what the future has in store for you.

Today, though, my brother and I found ourselves together with a chainsaw each, sawing trunkwood for dollars. It is the last chance we'll have to do that for a while, as Trent and family are trekking back across the USA towards Shoshone, Idaho. Well, they probably won't get as far as Shoshone, but it is a sort of homesteading trip of their own too. I have enjoyed the blessing of living near my broski for over one and a half years, and in that time we've had some good family times. Nicole has shared with Bonnie the ups and downs of Becker life, and we were all tickled to have an intimate part in Little Ila's first four plus months of life, which has brought in this not-so roaring decade. We all ate some Jamabalaya and some homemade apple turnovers, and for now we've bade adieu.

But now you might be wondering about our family future plans as well. They are up in the air. I have forecast another month to finish my most important Baton Rouge project with our Sparrow house. Then we'll have to see what happens after that. Trent was a great help getting done with that, and if money was no issue we would have finished sooner. Of course, if money was no issue I guess I probably wouldn't be working on such a project.

If money was no issue what would I be doing, you ask? Probably setting up an astronomer's delight bed and breakfast observer's ranch in the middle of a lot of land in the middle of nowhere Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, or West Texas. Or Idaho or Oregon or Montana or Colorado. Or I guess Canada or Mexico, or elsewhere, really, if money is no issue. I like the idea of raising our children elsewhere, especially where they may easily become bilingual.

Isaac is working on understanding our English language, and Orry is working out the code we use to read and write it. Annie is working on making sense of an upside-down world where some of the things look familiar and they make lots of coo noises and smiles, but really all that matters is something she'll come to know someday as comfort.

While I'm making up words like couslings, let me also say tha the Japanese Magnolias are wrapping up their lovely Pre-Spring show. I have come to call them Japagnolias. I know, it's only two syllables shorter, but the cadence helps it roll of the tongue smoother.



And, now, I'm another half-day older, not accounting for time-zone changes or that extra second that was sandwiched between 2008 and 2009.

Mmm, those were delicious apple turnovers.

Thank you for reading.

On, um, Monday...

Well, more teasing, but I really was impressed with this Evan Premo, who is the artist I heard on the radio the other day. You can read a little here, and check out a intro sample here (but you have to look down the list and play the seventh selection). Evan Premo and his wife make up Duo Borealis. Great. Here you can watch Evan Premo participate in the Polar Bear Club. Also, at that link, if you click on "Listen To The Show" I think you can hear the song I have been talking about, "in Just-" (tune in at 37:00).

Let me not hesitate any longer to report the great impetus of this blog, however, which is that Isaac began counting today. No, not abstractly attributing cardinality to sets of things, but, as Orry started years ago, uttering the exciting and anticipatory 1-2-3 before getting thrown in the air, twirled around, dipped to the ground, &c. And let me also say that although little Gonzo's 1-2-3 was not as clear as a bell, it is his first expression of numbers. And you know how that makes a daddy proud.

On Sunday...

How excited I was to bring together for you the current sunshiny Spring weather, ee cummings, a contrabassist and a soprano, and a little romance, all courtesy of one of my favorite radio programs From The Top. However, they don't seem to have the program online yet so I'll have to settle for cutting and pasting the poem and sharing it with you later.

Oh! But here I found a treasure trove of the song set to music! It doesn't have the particularly likable piece I referenced above, but it should satisfy for you the juxtaposition of sunshiny Just-Spring weather, ee cummings, and music at least. Oh, but it doesn't link you to the music--just teases you by telling you about it. Like I am doing, I guess.

The poem:

in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles far and wee --

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful
the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and
the

goat-footed

balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee




And now, paying a sort of vulgar tribute to cummings, here are some made-up words we use in our house, and you might have too, if you've had babies in your house or not.

snart: to simultaneously sneeze and fart
furp: to simultaneously burp and fart
cfart: to simultaneously, yes, you guessed it, cough and fart. if you say this one just right (that is, explosively enough) it is onomatopoeia.

And now, since you read this far, let me continue on and say on this beautiful day we are going to picnic after church, and hit up the Lousiana Art and Science Museum. The kiddos are still a little sniffly, so we'll probably bring them into church with us instead of letting them infect the other kids at the nursery.

This week some rain is due so I'm looking forward to finishing some inside projects.

Have a wonderful second week of March.

Month-end Report

Before February ends, I ought to write again.

The state runs an arsenal museum at the park in the capitol area which is open until 4 on Saturday. However, we ran there after work yesterday, and although we got there by 3:30, the doors were closed. We made the most of it, climbing the old Indian mound and racing on the sidewalks and grassy knolls. Then we went to the capitol and gawked at the big statues, big ceilings and big art, and rode up the big elevator. Today we went to the old state capitol and played on the stairs and hillside. We also saw the Merci Train boxcar.


I've been watching Mars lately. I am hoping to go to the observatory with the boys one of these winter nights.

Annie is growing. She smiles and still grunts a lot. She looks around and controls her head when sitting upright.

Isaac is healing well from his collarbone fracture and his usual rambunctious self. His communication skills are improving but he is not racing to talk or to use the potty either.

Orry is racing to read and write and to distinguish between convertibles and other cars. He has also become quite the little runner.

Meanwhile, Bonnie and I are making backwards progress in our developmental skills. Talking like toddlers or cooing like infants, laughing absurdly at little things, and playing Monopoly City or trying to watch shows after our bedtime.

Many of you know I do tree work to make extra money, but not many of you probably know the dynamis of working on crews that remove or trim trees. This sort of work is great outside work, labor in the elements, enjoyment of a job that changes from day to day, but I realized all this can be soured by either of two things. a) working with a lousy crew, and b) getting a government contract. Regarding a), the crew that Trent and I have worked with has been hit and miss over the past months. Working with Trent is great when we get a chance, but mostly we work with other guys. Regarding b), the company we work with got a state contract in January, and it is fairly demoralizing for the day or two a week we work that job, where the objective seems to be to work as slowly and as inefficiently as possible. Well, last week I had a breath of fresh air as I worked with two new guys on a residential job. The two new guys, Mexicans, made up a good crew to work with, and it is so nice to work "hard and fast" again.

It smells like a wonderful dinner at our place, so it must be time to close this up and feast. thank you for reading!

I finally got the chance to...

I finally got the chance to kick a door in. I locked myself out of the house just when it was time to go down to Houma to pick up the wife and kids. Because I had observed that the jamb had signs of compromise, I knew I could kick it in cleanly. There was no wasting time. Bam.

Well, we've gone mostly vegan in our household diet. We still eat quite a bit of meat, not to mention the occasional cheese and yogurt or other dairy products or eggs to consider ourselves vegan though, that's for sure. I was thinking today, though, while we were at our produce market, that we eat pretty healthily. I think it's apparent because we're at that place so often, getting lots of fresh veggies and fruits.

My latest hankering is to get childhood memories and stories from the kids' great-grandparents while they're still kicking. I am such a sloth though. I wrote up letters to send out to the three great-grandparents, but I sure haven't gotten them in the mail yet. One of the great-grandparents was born to parents from an island in the Pacific Ocean. One of the great-grandparents was born to parents from an island in the Atlantic Ocean. And one of the great-grandparents was born to parents from I don't know where, but maybe she was born on a houseboat. In the good old US of A, presumably.

In our experience, children's movies from the library just don't play very well in our laptops.

I hope you all have caught sight of Mars lately in the evening sky. There is a good line up of three bright heavenly bodies. Sirius, the star brightest in our night sky, Procyon, part of the Winter equilateral triangle and also of the little dash in the sky that is Canis Minor, and then Mars, a little lower in the evening than Castor and Pollux in Gemini.

Bonnie beat me again in Monopoly City. That makes two times she has singlehandedly taken down the champ.

I am giving up chess for Lent, and I am giving up cookies for Lent.

There is lightning out there tonight, causing peals of thunder to rumble in our ears.

tomorrow and the day after tomorrow

Tomorrow is the day my paternal grandfather would have turned 91. Bonnie's maternal grandmother would have turned 88. Abraham Lincoln would be celebrating 201 years of life after birth, as would also Charles Darwin.

We started playing the new Monopoly City game. I have won two games, the most of any Baton Rouge Becker, so I am the Monopoly champion. I think I will cease playing chess for now, finally.

I added up numbers for my remaining expenses on projects, and I'm quite pleased with attainable light at the end of the tunnel. Lots of sheetrock work awaits. I'm not excited about that, but oh so thankful that Trent will help it go by with much better company than the company I have when I do things myself.

I experienced a new weather condition today. When the sleet started this morning, it really sounded like it was raining small ice crystals. Out in it, you couldn't even sense them falling, except for the quite conspicuous sound, like millions of tiny ice crunches. As the precipitation picked up, it was more like the sleet and freezing rain we all know. But at the beginning--strange.

I love spending time with my family. Read more about us all in Bonnie's blog, if you haven't already.

Valentine's Day is an extra special day in our family, because that is when Bonnie turns 26 each year. But if you ask her, she might tell you 22. I think she's into perpetual youth. Me? I'm into perpetual Bonnie. Anyway, I need to think of something romantic we can do, like maybe finding a romantic action movie to torrent, or maybe going to play darts or pool together. I know! I can arrange all the dirty diapers that need to be rinsed in a heart shape in our bathroom sink, so that when she goes to rinse them out, she will have a warm smile in her heart. Or, maybe I'll clean and wash the car and take her to the movies but then decide they cost too much these days and take her downtown instead and walk around the riverside and talk about days gone by and days ahead.

Annie

We are getting used to a household of five. And to calling our little no-name girl by her name, or nickname, if you will, of Annie. Annie short for Anza.

Trent and I took our goats to the fair with a girl named Anza, lo those many years ago in our 4H days. I wondered what became of our goat-girl and thought of her some these past nine months when naming a little girl came to be a priority. But today I found out some clues courtesy of google, and now have a pending facebook contact which may reveal more about what one Anza thinks of another. Bonnie and I are just tickled about finding the perfect name.

Reading, Veganism, Gestation

What a fine time I had with the family over the past couple weeks here in Baton Rouge.

I have a problem with writing things these days. I suppose the biggest report is that Orry is a little reader these days. He sounds out words like a champ, and likes to read and write a little each day. Also he types, picking out the letters and the sound. He typed these:

orry
hat
sad
hot
kld

As you can see, he is not the most advanced yet. Also, the other day, when we asked him to read "top" he read it from right to left. He'll do that, and he'll write a word backwards as in mirror, and sometimes, I think, even backwards with the letters oriented frontwards. Anyway, that's fine, because we're tickled he likes to do those sorts of things instead of drawing crayon on the newly painted walls.

As far as me, I am pretty convinced about veganism for optimum health. I'm not a non-meateater myself, but sure recognize a plant based diet as a treatment and cure for obesity and some cancers and other pathologies. I guess most of this comes from reading The China Study and its critiques. Actually, it all comes from that. I've always leaned towards vegatarianism owing to the killing of animals and the unnecessary energy going into feeding animals to feed us. On top of that, there is the "big industry" meat production and egg and dairy production and I've frowned at all that. But then, there is the appreciation of animal life and flesh and the smaller scale animal farming which I've got behind in my day. But reading The China Study and about the argument more has tipped me over the edge. Now, like I said, I'm not vegan myself, but I did convince Bonnie to change our menus more in that direction and we're having good fun with all that.

We discovered quinoa, for example.

We also cooked mirlitons, finally.

And now, I will go get Isaac out of the bath. He is fine, and so is Bonnie, although she is in quite an uncomfortable time of her gestation.