From the few blogs that I have seen, I guess an entry is not complete without some text about my emotional and mental well-being.  Right now I feel like an extra in a Cheech and Chong movie.  Asked to run around a lot, not really in the main action, out of focus in the background, and very, very stoned.  Part of this is simply disbelief that I'm going to be a father and the conviction that I will probably screw this up.  The rest is probably due to stress as I start to think about the changes that are in store and the sheer amount of work that needs to be done to prepare for the birth. 

6/20/04    Approaching the Solstice. 

It is a Sunday afternoon, and I spent a lot of the last week up at an EPSCOR conference at Argonne National Lab.  It was pretty much a waste of time, but I got to see some cool toys.  Karen was gone the week before that to go to a teaching seminar up in Buffalo, so we haven't spent too much time together since the last update.  While I was gone at Argonne, we had a call about the Mustang.  Since we are doing a lot of fixing up around the house and are also trying to simplify our lives we made the decision to sell "my" car.  "My" car since Karen was scared to drive it.  And honestly, the V8 burns through gas like nothing else and it really isn't a family car.  Had to fix a few things, but we traded the title for a check Friday.  I thought I was ready to let go.  I'm not really a car guy, never really raced it, and didn't like who I became when I was behind the wheel...  And yet I feel different somehow.  I got the car after being dumped by my fiancee of five years- a time of rapid change in my life.  I guess I somehow made a connection between the car and a sense of recklessness and new horizons.

My emotional state was not helped by agreeing to meet the buyer of the Mustang outside a Babies-R-Us in Tulsa.  I had never been in one before and for the first time I viscerally felt how unprepared I am for fatherhood.  There is a lot of stuff out there aimed at the poorest and least educated class of people in our society--babies.  Carts and seats and monitors and cribs and locks and singing school busses and fuzzy yellow space monsters that make clicking sounds and...  My friend Matt who is serving in Afghanistan right now sees freedom and security as diametrically opposed poles of existence.  After seeing the amount of stuff you can buy for a baby I have to think that both freedom and security are also intricately tied to possessions.  The chains that hold us down aren't made of steel or fear or centuries of oppression.  No we are buried under the plastic effluence of Malaysia, dead AA batteries, and anything that has ever been sold at WalMart.

Karen is doing a lot better.  She is starting to really show which makes this whole process a lot more real to me.  Of course she is not so happy with the spreading and stretching that goes along with the process.  Last night she said she felt the baby moving.  I told her it was probably trying to chew its way out...  I know I am horrible, but it really is true that you don't have a sense of humor, rather it has you.  We go in for the next appointment and ultrasound in ten days.  Also an optional blood test for some of the most common really icky things that can happen to babies.  But that is not in my happy place and I really hope we don't have to go there.

7/1/04    "She came in through the bathroom window, protected by a silver spoon..."

We had another baby doctor appointment yesterday and Karen had some blood drawn for a bevy of screenings to test for birth defects.  Results should be in soon.  Our second ultrasound is at the beginning of August which is our next chance to get some pictures and video of the (as yet unnamed) fetus or whatever it is called at this stage of development.  Karen is doing and feeling much better.  Headaches are down, energy is slightly up, and she is feeling the baby moving inside a lot more, but it is still too faint for me to feel.  We need to think about starting to play some interuterine music for the little tyke, although we will probably disagree on exactly what.  How does AC~DC affect child development?  If we play some NWA what will baby's first words be?

7/18/04  "Keep your eyes on the road, and your hands upon the wheel..."

8/2/04  "I had breakfast with St. Swithin, he was waiting on a train.  He said 'Tell me all your troubles boy, I won't be back this way again.' "

Today was another visit to the baby doctor, and our final ultrasound unless things get complicated near the end.  The whole pregnancy thing has become a lot more real to me since I felt the baby move last week.  So far things are showing a very normal pregnancy, and all the ultrasound technician indicated that all the major organs are in the correct place.  She also didn't tell us whether we had a boy or girl, as we requested.  Although I am no expert, and careful analysis of the ultrasound pictures we took home did reveal some slightly disturbing details...

My folks are on the way to visit for a day, then we all head off to Colorado for a family reunion on my dad's side of the family.  A long drive, but it will be good to get away and drive through the mountains.  I don't know very many people on this side of the family and it will be both interesting and a little stressful to meet them.  Unfortunately Sorcia came down with kennel cough, so we are going to have to take both dogs along if we can't find someone to house-sit at the last possible minute.  There are no pets allowed at the condo we are staying at, so we may have to spring for a hotel too...  Who was it that said "Life is just one damned thing after another..."?

9/16/04  "They told me tales of love and glory, same old sad song, same old story..."

Hard to believe it has been nearly a month since I posted anything.  Time goes by quickly when school starts.  Things are finally settling down around here.  First the news about the baby.  We are not any closer to picking out a name, particulary if Rastamigo turns out to be a boy.  I kind of like "Maxwell" since it can be shortened to Max, and am still putting in a plug for "Inigo" too.  We had a little bit of a scare when Karen failed her first gestational diabetes test, particularly since the disease runs in her family.  But the second, more accurate, test turned out negative so ice cream is still in the diet.  The baby is a lot more active, and Karen has taken to sleeping propped up to avoid indigestion.  She says the kicking is actually a little reassuring now that she has gotten used to it.

9/28/04    "At the wake of the Medusa, no-one shed a tear..."

11-2-04  "Gloom, despair, and agony on me.  Deep, dark depression, excessive misery..."

Well crap.  The election done gone and ended and my candidate lost.  Honestly, since I have a job in higher education, I can't help but feel somewhat personally responsible.  The education system in the United States has truly been lax when a campaign of misinformation, fear mongering, and outright lies succeeds.  Since the Republicans have won seats in Congress, the presidency, and voters overwhelmingly passed bigoted measures, I'm desperately afraid that this experiment we called democracy has failed.  Oh sure, you can say that democracy has succeeded since we elected a president without violence or litigation.  But true democracy requires an educated and politically aware populace who won't fall for cheap tricks and blatant propaganda. 

Post Script (11/4/04).  I found my minor deity of airline travel:  Neil Melly, martyred saint of air travel.  Copied from CNN today:

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- A Canadian man, angry that he was refused a plane ticket to Australia at Los Angeles International Airport, stripped naked, sprinted across the tarmac and climbed into the wheel well of a moving jumbo jet, officials said on Wednesday. Pilots of the Qantas Airways flight stopped the plane. The man was coaxed out of the wheel well and arrested for trespassing, said airport spokeswoman Nancy Castles:

"This was an extremely dangerous thing for him to do. If he had continued to cling in there with the aircraft taking off at over 200 miles (320 kph) per hour, he might have fallen out and could have been sucked up by an engine," she said. "If he had survived that and was in the wheel well when the landing gear was retracted, he could have been crushed by the mechanism. And if not he very likely would have frozen to death during the 15 1/2 hour flight at 30,000 feet (9,150 metres) while wearing no clothes."

The man, Neil Melly, 31, tried to buy a one-way ticket on the Qantas flight on Monday evening, but was turned down because he could not supply a valid credit card, Castles said. Later, he managed to climb over an airport fence, topped by three strands of barbed wire, without injury and was spotted by a ramp worker "running, naked, full-speed" toward the plane. Castles said a check by authorities found that Melly had been reported missing to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and was suffering from bi-polar disorder, a manic-depressive illness.

The whole family was here for Thanksgiving.  Andrea flew into town, and brought her dog, Tia.  My folks drove out, and will be staying with us for the duration.  Well, until late January at the least.  My mom will be leaving for Angkor Wat with Andrea in January some time, and they head back to North Carolina when she returns from that trip.  It is good to have them around even if it is stressful at the same time.  My dad is helping me get the master bathroom finished and had been mudding drywall while I've been at work.  My mom is sewing curtains for the baby's room, and doing other assorted tasks.  They bought us a new stuffed monkey the other day, which is always welcome.  I think we have fifteen now.

So after some discussion with our baby doctor, who is just about as cynical as I am, we decided to induce labor on Friday morning.  That would be two days from now.  The only time he asked us not to have the baby was today since he was planning on enjoying the office Christmas party.  Oh my God!  Christmas!  It is the season isn't it?  I suppose I should be thinking about another Christmas letter.  Anyway, Karen is not so excited about inducing since it makes the contractions tougher and more painful, but what can you do?  Mother Nature seems to be recalcitrant and we need to help her along with a little human intervention.  Intervention...  Sounds serious, but from what our doctor said it is like giving a five year old child a pin and pointing him in the direction of a water balloon.

I've been getting a lot of advice from well-wishers on how to make the baby come.  It ranges from the ridiculous to the absurd.  Rubbing Karen's feet.  Taking her for a ride on a bumpy road, or setting off firecrackers in the bedroom while she slept.  My favorite was from one of my female friends who said that having sex was the best way.  I told her that I was very willing, but probably neither Karen nor her husband would approve.  So we wait.

Another question that people ask a lot is how I am doing.  I tell them "the dude abides"...  "I don't know about you, but I take comfort in that.  It's good knowin' he's out there, the Dude, takin' her easy for all us sinners.  Shoosh.  I sure hope he makes The finals.  Welp, that about does her, wraps her all up.  Things seem to've worked out pretty good for the Dude'n Walter, and it was a purty good story, dontcha think?   Made me laugh to beat the band.  Parts, anyway.  Course--I didn't like seein' Donny go. But then, happen to know that there's a little Lebowski on the way.  I guess that's the way the whole durned human comedy keeps perpetuatin' itself, down through the generations, westward the wagons, across the sands a time until-- aw, look at me, I'm ramblin' again.  Wal, uh hope you folks enjoyed yourselves."

12/13/04  "The future is uncertain and the end is always near..."

...Or how to have a baby in five easy steps.  So Friday morning we went in to the hospital to have a baby.  Seven thirty sharp.  Checked us in, gave us a room, put on bracelets and took Karen's clothes away.  Very much like checking in to prison or a Nazi death camp, but without the long train ride.  At 9:00 they gave Karen oxytocin, which is a hormone naturally produced by the body to stimulate labor.  The nurse strapped a lot of monitors to her to measure the baby's heart rate, whether she was having a contraction or not, and her blood pressure.  At this point contractions were coming about five minutes apart but things were manageable.  Soon after this my folks arrived to witness and participate in the delivery.

Step 1:  Overconfidence

About 0900, the drugs are in, but no real pain yet. 
Waiting to meet the baby and showing off the big belly.

Around noon the doctor came and broke Karen's water (popped the placenta with a stick) and then things started hurting.  She was a real trooper and opted not to take an epidural (needle in the spine delivering pain killer) but rather took a more mild pain-killer to take the edge off.  Contractions sped up to one every two and a half minutes by three in the afternoon. 

Step 2:  Oh crap, what did I get into?

Sometime around 1500 Karen rests between contractions. 
She is looking a little worn out by the ordeal.

About three in the afternoon Karen got the urge to push.  They say it is like having to take a poop in feeling and intensity.  Like really having to go.  Just before this happened we anticipated we were in for a long night so my dad (our doula) went across the street to McDonalds to get three cups of coffee.  Big mistake.  Once the pushing starts things go quickly.  It wasn't long before the baby's head was barely visible and the doctor was on his way over.  The head stayed where it was while the doctor arrived and my dad came back with the no-longer-wanted coffee.  Staying awake was not an issue at this point.  After the babies head deformed enough to pass through the birth canal (this part is really freaky!) the rest of the baby was on it's way!  Then with a huge heave and a little help from the doctor it arrives!

Step 3:  I gave birth to WHAT?

Katherine Elizabeth Cheville (Kate) is presented to the world
with well functioning parts and a high APGAR score. 

At this point the doctor put Karen back together, we cleaned and weighed Kate, and wrapped her in a blanket to pass to Karen.  It was almost another 48 hours before we could go home, but we took the time to relax, recover, and talk.  I don't handle stress particularly well, and often don't know the level of stress I am under.  And the months leading up to having a baby were stressful indeed.  Although rare, the unthinkable can always happen.  You worry about yourself, and feel guilty doing so:  how will my life change, will I be able to handle this responsibility?  But when Kate arrived all the worries begin to go away.  They say that having a baby is a life-changing moment.  It isn't.  It is a process that begins the moment your wife gets pregnant and ends at your death.  But it does change you.  You grow and bond and new horizons open before you that you can barely begin to realize.  Others have said it better than I can:

Pippin: "I never thought it would end like this" 
Gandalf:  "End? No, the journey doesn't end here. There's another path we all must take. The gray rain curtain of this world rolls back, and it will change to the silver clouds, and then you see it. ... White shores and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise."

Or

"Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move."
 

Step 4:  Awe

Karen takes some time late at night to get to know Kate. 
Holding a baby is a pathway to another world.

And before we ever really got our feet under us it was time to go home.  Dress Kate for the winter so she stays warm, learn how to install the car seat, and we are on our own.  Thank goodness my folks are staying with us for support and wisdom.  The general feeling I had at discharge was that I couldn't believe anyone would trust me with a baby.  "What, me ready for this responsibility?"  But out you go into the world, driving more carefully that you every have before.  And you get home and begin to cope.  Life seems to be a disaster waiting to happen, but somehow it continues.  We always seem to cope...

Step 5:  The Unbearable Cuteness of Being

Kate, looking like a czarina, is dressed in clothes too big.  Yes, it was really worth it.

1/6/05    "The multitude of books is making us ignorant."     - Voltaire

So we took Kate home and begun the active care phase, and realized just how ignorant we really are.  We were prepared for the late night feedings and diaper changes.  The month or so spent subsuming our needs to the baby's.  We had read the books and the web articles.  We thought we were prepared.  But when another life is on the line you want to make sure you are doing things right, so you always double-check your sources.  But what we didn't realize was just how contradictory those sources can be.  Feed on a regular schedule, feed on demand, feed every two hours, feed no less than every six hours, feed according to the sacrament on Sunday before Easter but the blood of the infidel on odd numbered days during Ramadan...  Hell, you read too much and you don't know what to believe.  So after a few days where Karen really wasn't sure the baby was getting enough breast milk we went back to the lactation consultant.  It helped for a day or two before another problem arose and we were back again to weigh the baby and to get more contradictory advice.  It just made us more uncertain...

Then I had a realization that I think is pretty profound.  There are three "professions":  physicians, lawyers, and engineers.  And those professions are supported by a class of competent non-professionals:  nurses support doctors, paralegals support lawyers, and technicians support engineers.  In my experience with technicians, they have a world view that is dominated by their individual experiences, and in many cases do not have the theoretical background or training to extend that view outside their experience.  The professionals do have that training and their viewpoint is not limited by their own experience, but encompasses a broader world of countless experiences communicated through education and human knowledge.  The advice we had received from nurses was too limited by their own experience.  We were looking at Kate's welfare through tunnel vision.  When we went to the pediatrician the next week, she was fine.

In the four weeks since her birth there have been dramatic changes.  Movement increases, food intake increases, waste excrement increases, sleep duration increases.  But more importantly you can see connections being made deep inside her head by looking into her eyes.  I can't really describe it other than to say that when she looks at you she is desperately trying to imprint all she sees and is struggling (and succeeding) at making sense of it all.  At this age they are more addictive than a television.  Your attention always wanders back to her.  But it isn't heaven since cares and burdens aplenty go along with the bliss.  While she is sleeping well some nights, other nights my own sleep is short and fragmented.  Something I don't cope with very well.  Adjusting to parenthood is hard, particularly on Karen.  Say what you will about enlightened fathers and a more equal society; the mother bears a greater burden.   But we are coping and redefining our own relationship and roles- not an easy or pain-free task.

Pictures?  Yes, lots of them.  We got my dad a digital camera for his birthday and are trying to get him to use it.  We discovered we can upload pictures to Wal-Mart and pick them up a few hours later.  Sometimes I love the digital age.  So here are some of the better ones...

Otherwise things proceed.  I crashed hard over Christmas.  Felt rode hard and hung up wet.  This week I have had to work hard on some conference review stuff and preparing for the semester to start.  Trying to dredge up some motivation among the exhaustion.  Never did manage to get the Christmas letter out, but it is coming...  My mom left for the far east, she won't be deterred by a little thing like a Tsunami.  I'm reading Patrick Buchanan's Where the Right Went Wrong- an interesting book.  I don't agree with his social conservatism, but I do with his economic and political conservatism.  What a royal mess we are making of things right now...  I just read the NSF budget is getting slashed so my own research programs are going to get much harder to fund.  But the balance will be restored.  These things are always cyclical.  And there is always a life in Belize...

3/5/05    "Well they say your folks are telling you to be a super star, but I tell you just be satisfied to stay right where you are ..."    - Freddy Mercury

Wow, it has been awhile since I have updated this!  Life has been pretty busy lately.  I have a big proposal due next week that has been really kicking my ass.  But let me start where I left off last...  Kate had come home and lost weight.  We were stressed by midnight feedings and the incessant demands of baby.  Then life adjusted itself, or maybe we adjusted to life.   Kate started sleeping better, six hours, seven hours, eight hours a night.  The two month visit to the pediatrician showed Kate was at 95% on height and 90% on weight compared to other babies.  Our fears abated slightly and we learned to enjoy her rather than worry about her.  Healthy, happy, quiet, and content; at least most of the time.  They say having a baby changes everything.  It doesn't, not unless you are living in a way that is antithetical to nurturing life, or so involved in yourself that new demands on your time undercut the foundations of your soul.  Sure,  poop stinks, the grocery bills are higher, I can't spend six uninterrupted hours reading...  But when I creep into her room in the early light of morning and she awake smiles up at me with all of who she is, it makes me feel...  Just soft and squishy inside, like a grapefruit.  A grapefruit in the sense that Douglas Adams meant it when he said "Life... is like a grapefruit. It's orange and squishy, and has a few pips in it, and some folks have half a one for breakfast." 

Somewhat to my surprise Kate is beginning to look like me.  I think I will call her... Mini Me.  Seriously, I am not sure this is a good things.  But fatherhood has its indulgences.  I finally had an excuse to buy some of my favorite long-lost childhood books:  The Adventures of the Mad Scientists Club, 21 Balloons, The Phantom Tollbooth, and A Wrinkle in Time.  I read them to her in the morning while she eats.  She really loves the sound of human voices and is trying hard to speak, although it will be awhile. 

Outside of Kate February was a busy month.  I missed Karen's birthday on the 8th because I was stressed out about a job interview.  I went out to interview at University of the Pacific.  A small four year college in Stockton California.  Very different from OSU and very much like Rice used to be before they got all puffed up with themselves.  Stockton isn't much to speak of, but it is the same distance to San Francisco as from Stillwater to Oklahoma City.  And the same distance to Yellowstone as Stillwater is to Tulsa.  Actually Stillwater isn't much to speak of either.  I think the interview went well, but I was pretty aggressive in letting them know why I went there.  I want to have some institutional and collegial support for the teaching things I have been developing.  Anyway, the interview was on Valentines Day, then I spent one night in Tulsa before flying out to Washington DC for a NSF grantees workshop that ran through my birthday, the 17th.  Bad time for relationships, but the reception our work got in Washington was quite refreshing.  It is good to hear  you are doing the right thing every once in awhile without having to take people to the mat and put a headlock on them.  My colleague Chuck Bunting and I came back ready to shake the pillars of heaven...  Which we proceeded to do.  Or at least kicked peevishly at them and drew dirty pictures with crayons.  We'll see if any Gods fall out. 

Right now life just keeps getting better and better.  It seems that the big wheel is lifting me up for awhile before it takes me down and around again.  And that is even with Bush being reelected, inflation going out of control, and the ongoing insipidness of life in a red state.  The only thing that is a cause for worry is that I started hearing the Doors on the radio again every time I drive home.  The last time that happened we had just survived a car wreck and six weeks later the pregnancy test came back positive.  It only stopped when I figured out what the gods were trying to tell me:  "The future is uncertain and the end is always near."  It was with some relief that the this strange phenomena  tapered off in the last few weeks...  We were actually worried enough that Karen took a pregnancy test which came back negative.  But the radio has me worried since now I am hearing Queen.  What the gods are trying to tell me this time will just have to wait until the next blog entry I guess.  Maybe it is just "Shut up and quit shaking those damn pillars, we're trying to sleep up here!"

Baby Kate and I spent some time the other day rolling her stats
 and trying to figure out her class and alignment...  She wanted
to follow in Aunt Andreas footsteps and be a Cleric, but I told
her they just sit around and heal people most of the time. 

3/19/05    "John Barleycorn is dead..."

So I decided to do a good deed.  Back at the beginning of the year a program officer for the National Institutes of Health called me up and asked if I wanted to serve on a review panel for one of grant programs they have.  I've served on this review panel before, and learned a lot about medical applications of optics.  I knew I was going to be busy , I always am.  I knew I would regret the decision when the time came around to actually travel to Washington, and I did.  I knew it would take time out of a busy schedule, and time away from my new family to do this, but I said "yes" anyway.  I am a real sucker sometimes.  So Friday the eleventh I turned in the big NSF proposal I've been working on, went home and slept for over twelve hours, then started reading NIH grant applications the next day.  Spent some of the weekend typing in my reviews and on Tuesday Karen dropped me off at the airport for an "overnight" trip to Bethesda, Maryland.  Overnight like Gilligan's "three hour tour".  The travel agency that NIH uses is usually pretty good, but this time not so much.  When I got my electronic tickets, it took me about half an hour to decipher the technical travel agent gibberish.  Once I did, I realized I was flying Continental through Houston to get to Washington, and Northwest Airlines through Memphis on the way home.  Below is about one quarter of the e-mail I received...

NBHRNG/28 QSBSB DTPS28  AG 21787511 02MAR
1.1CHEVILLE/ALAN*ZRG1SBMI11
1 CO2203S 15MAR TULIAH HK1  1055A 1233P *         TU   E  6
        OPERATED BY EXPRESSJET AIRLINES INC DBA CO EXP
2 CO 458S 15MAR IAHDCA HK1   105P  500P *         TU   E  6
3 NW 525K 16MAR DCAMEM HK1   510P  633P *         WE   E 10
4 NW5758K 16MAR MEMTUL HK1   710P  835P *         WE   E 10
        OPERATED BY NORTHWEST AIRLINK
5   ARNK
6 ZZ   1Y 14JUL TULTUL HN1                        TH
*** PROFILE ASSOCIATIONS EXIST *** >*PA·
*** SEAT DATA EXISTS *** >9D·
*** FREQUENT FLYER DATA EXISTS *** >*MP·
*** ITINERARY REMARKS EXIST  *** >RM*·
FONE-WASB/405-744-6625/F/405-744-9198/E/
  2 WASAS/1N6/301-816-2160/816-8991 WORLD TRVL SRVC 21787511-LI
TSE
  3 WASB/301-435-1087-EDWIN ECHEGOYEN --CSR--
  4 WASB/301-435-1136-GINA BAUMGARTNER/EDWINS BACKUP
  5 MEMO/***NO MORE NONREF AA TICKETS READ YOUR MEMO
  6 MEMO/FQ PER LITSE 238.29 IF TDGDCA ON DL
  7 MEMO/FQ PER LITSE 238.29 SDGDCA ON CO
  8 MEMO/FQ PER LITSE 238.29 SDGDCA/KDGDCA CO/NW
  9 MEMO/FQ PER LITSE IF AA Y26 1228.30
 10 MEMO/....345P 2 MAR LV MSG TO PAX..AA IS AROUND 1000.00
 11 MEMO/..MORE NN APV..ALSO NO SEATS AVAIL AROUND 5P ON 16 MAR//LS 

On the flight from Oklahoma I got an orange card going through security which meant I had to stand aside, get patted down, and have my luggage rummaged through.  If you've been following this blog at all, you know how I feel about airline security.  What a joke.  I swear to the gods, the next time I fly I'm going to have a plastic bag filled with Kate's crap-filled diapers in my luggage wrapped around a large metal object and let the TSA people rummage through that.  Despite the Gestapo bringing me down, the flight out was uneventful.  Got into Bethesda around 7:00 in the evening after a short ride on the Metro (I always ride the Metro because I feel like I'm in a Berlin song).   This group always meets in a rundown old Holiday Inn.  I was early enough to find a micro-brewery and made a beeline there for supper .  Had fish and chips, two pints of beer, and a big dish of ice cream.  Went back to the hotel and watched TV for the rest of the night.   The next morning spent eight hours reviewing proposals as part of a large panel of people who know a whole lot more about medicine that I do, then rushed back to Reagan Airport to catch my northwest flight home.  Why they named the airport after Ronald Reagan I still have not been able to figure out.  If I died I don't think I would want a place filled with annoyed, angry people named after me.  I have to admit that it really is a pretty nice airport, but security there really, really sucks .  I spent about 45 minutes standing in a line that was barely moving.  I thought I was gonna miss my flight even though I made it to the airport two hours ahead of time.  The holdup was a huge cart full of soda bottles and snacks they had to run through the x-ray machine.  That was just ahead of me in line while just behind me was a 15 year old Christian going off on some sort of missionary trip who just could not shut up about Jesus.  I had a lot of evil thoughts during this time, and figured out a wonderful plot for a movie about a terrorist attack on a large sports venue.  But I will not divulge this on this blog, since post 9/11 writing down thoughts about possible terrorist acts is probably a felony. 

Anyway, Northwest Airlines overbooked my flight, and they kept asking for volunteers who were willing to give up their seats in exchange for roundtrip ticket .  If Karen and I hadn't been going up to Joplin to visit her family that night I would have volunteered.  As you will see, I should have.   So the Northwest ticket agents spent about 45 minutes screwing around trying to find volunteers.   Then it was a huge rush to board the plane so we could leave even close to on time.  They were yelling at all of us to sit down and put our bags way so we could push away from the gate.  By the time we finally got into the air we were 45 minutes late, then ran into 150 mile an hour headwinds, and because of turbulence we flew about 10,000 feet lower in altitude than we normally would have.   Finally landed in Memphis about the same time the connecting flight to Tulsa was taking off.  The last connecting flight to Tulsa.  The last flight out of one of Northwest Airlines major hubs is at 7:30 in the evening!  I guess their pilots aren't certified to fly at nigh.  So they shunted me out  through security to the ticket counter, booked me into another Holiday Inn for the night, and gave me some coupons I could use to buy dinner with.  Of course I didn't bring in extra change of clothes, so I got to wear the same pants for three days in a row, and the same underwear twice.  The Holiday Inn Select was in a very scary part of town. "Holiday Inn Select"-  makes it sound like its special .  Not an ordinary Holiday Inn but a "Select" Holiday Inn.  I think "select" means it was selected to be condemned by the Memphis zoning board.  The place looked like a basketball arena; a huge open space in the middle surrounded by rows of rooms .  Huge metal halide lights hung from the ceiling casting an eerie blue glow on the people dwarfed by this vast open area.  To give it a somewhat festive air someone had scattered decorative garden gazebos here and there, and built a little bar and lounge area, a restaurant, and the check-in desk.  These puny structures were dwarfed by the sheer open space of this monstrosity of a hotel.  My room was half underground, but at least the door had three locks.  I was too afraid to wander around this neighborhood after dark, and made the mistake of having dinner in the hotel restaurant .  It was truly vile.  Powdered potatoes, vegetables so overcooked they had the consistency of something that grew in the dark at the bottom of a compost heap.  Chicken and ribs are hard to destroy but they really tried by slathering meat bought from the highway department with the cheapest 99¢ a bottle Kraft barbecue sauce.  It was all washed down with a $5.00 Sam Adams served at room temperature.  Memphis room temperature, which is 102°F and 87 percent humidity.  For this gastronomic disaster I paid $30.00 .  The tip was included for parties of one or more, which was a very good thing for them because they weren't going to get one any other way.  I went back to my room and watched more TV till I finally fell asleep.  I wanted to catch a movie on HBO, but I don't think HBO plays movies anymore.  Something changed while I wasn't looking. 

Got up the next morning, caught the shuttle back to the Airport , got pulled aside for another security check and pat down.  The guy noticed the Green Man necklace that I always wear and asked about it.  So I made up the story about a cult of true believers who follow the old ways of the elder pagan gods.  Sort of a cross of Morte d' Arthur and H. P. Lovecraft.  It turned out that one of the TSA people was into the Caballa.   A ten dollar breakfast at Starbuck and a short flight on a small plane and I was back in Tulsa a day late and a dollar short.  Karen and Kate met me.  It was good to be home...

April:  "I do mind, the Dude minds. This will not stand, ya know, this aggression will not stand, man."
                            - from The Big Lebowski

So things have settled down into a little bit of a groove here, at least for me.  Karen is still trying to sort the motherhood thing out, but it is a lot harder for her.  As she was saying to my sister the other night when the baby is inside the mother gets all the attention and the hormones balance slowly as the baby grows.  After birth suddenly the baby gets all the attention, the hormone balance needs to readjust itself very quickly, and on top of that there are new demands and responsibilities that never let up.  She was given a good book by our friend Beth, Mother Shock, which she is wanting me to read.  I will as soon as I finish Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed , The Periodic Table, and The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of the Oil Age, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century. 

As you can see by this reading list, my outlook has been pretty gloomy recently.  I've developed an amateur interest in the Hubbert peak which predicts that world oil production will peak some time in the next thirty years and then begin an inevitable decline with profound changes to our lives.  More and more authors are saying we may hit the Hubbert peak this year.  We have drawn deeply on the bank account of our natural resources to fund a long vacation and soon the bills will become due.  I can't help but liken the gang of juvenile delinquents that currently occupies the White House to an irresponsible college student who just signed up for five credit cards in their sophomore year, each with a 25% APR. 

These gloomy thoughts had punctuated my day when the benefits office at OSU called me with some bad news.  It turns out they "forgot" to charge me for Kate's insurance in December.  Remember she was born December 10th.  So I am going to be charged an extra $293 for a month of insurance.  So I asked them is this was the pro-rated price since one third of the month had passed by the time she was born. The conversation went something like this:

Me:       $293 is the pro-rated price to December 10th, right?
OSU:    No, we don't pro-rate insurance.
Me:       But you guys were the ones who made the mistake, right.
OSU:    Right.
Me:       And I am paying for it.
OSU:    Well, you owe the money, we just forgot to deduct it.
Me:       So I owe ten days of insurance for the time the baby was inside my wife.  Are you sure I don't owe nine months of insurance instead of just one month?
OSU:    No, the baby's insurance pays only for the birth.  The mother's insurance pays for the rest.
Me:       So if the baby is uninsured it can't be born?
OSU:    Uh, no...  Then you are just uninsured.
Me:       What if the baby was born dead?  Would I have to buy insurance for a dead baby?
OSU:    Uh, I don't think that has ever happened.
Me:       Well, what if the baby died right after it was born?  Then I would have to pay insurance on a dead baby, right?
OSU:    Silence...
Me:       O.k., what if we had a miscarriage in the sixth month.  Would I have to pay insurance for that?
OSU:    No, that would be taken care of by the mother's insurance.
Me:       So what you are saying is that as far as my insurance company is concerned, life begins at birth rather than at conception.  If I have conscientious objections to this policy am I allowed to change insurance companies without penalty?
OSU:    Silence...  I don't  know...
Me:       Are you going to call me again and ask me for more money later?
OSU:    What do you mean?
Me:       Remember, you called back in January and told me that I had to pay an extra twenty-six dollars a month for the baby's dental plan because my wife and I had a dental plan and if we had dental plans our children had to have one too even if they have no teeth!
OSU:    Um, I don't remember that conversation.
Me:       That is a surprise.  So in summary you are going to charge me $293 for a full month's insurance so my baby can pay for her own birth and then another $26 a month to pay for dental work on a toothless infant.
OSU:    You really should look on the bright side Dr. Cheville, if you had the vision plan we would have to charge your baby for that too even though it wouldn't pay for anything until the child was three years old.

The semester has almost ended, just a little bit of grading to finish and grades to get in.  While the semester has been really successful, at least from a teaching point of view, I always feel rode hard and hung up wet around this time.  My semester of teaching Senior Design I was not as traumatic as I anticipated, but it was a lot of work.  Matt took over teaching Lasers, and did a good job at it, freeing up a huge amount of time for me.

Once the semester is over I'll finally get to see my wife again.  Her teaching schedule has made her absent most nights of the week, while I am at home taking care of Kate.  I enjoy the time I get to spend with Kate.  We hang out in the kitchen together while I cook dinner most nights, and she plays in her exer-saucer and watches the dogs.  But it would be nice to have a little more time together as a family.  Family time has also been eating into the time I usually exercise, and the lack of exercise is making me fat and lazy.  Luckily once daylight savings time gave more light in the evenings I have been able to make it out on the bike more regularly as well as almost every Sunday morning.  The other day only one other person showed up to the Sunday ride, so I sent out some bicycle haiku to the lazy bastards who should have been there:

5/24/05    "Surrender, surrender, but don't give yourself away"
                                                 - Cheap Trick

It was Saturday night in Baltimore, and things started to go south on the third pint of Guinness...   I was in Baltimore after three days in DC doing NSF proposal reviews on Thursday and Friday.  The NSF review panel had gotten out early;  all except for one guy the rest of the panelists were pretty familiar with the process and we worked well together.  I was planning on meeting some high school friends for dinner, but since I had a few free hours I went over to catch the new Star Wars movie.    The movie was no more than o.k., but I started thinking about Star Wars and how it has been one of those things that has been in my life for most of the part I can remember.  I don't dress in white plastic armor, carry around a flashlight attached to a piece of plastic tubing, or anything weird like that, but Star Wars has always been there...  Episode III was a set up for the original Star Wars and I was in a reflective mood when I met my old friends from high school, Molly Hoever and Erin Dawson.  Both live in DC and we had been planning to get together for some time on one of my trips up there to review proposals or otherwise beg for money from the federal government.  We spent a couple of hours catching up on people we knew, what had become of them, and the last twenty plus years since we left paradise and life got a lot more complicated.  I really miss Panama, more so when I have a chance to remember it with old friends.

The next day I checked out of the fleabag motel I had booked cheaply in DC around ten o'clock that morning.  Took the Metro to Union Station then caught the Amtrack up to Baltimore.  I was there to put together a THz system for a trade show booth for Thor Labs, a company I buy a lot of optomechanical equipment from.  It was a real long shot that I would get the system working, but more on this later.  After I arrived in Baltimore I checked into the really nice hotel Thor Labs paid for, and bummed around the harbor area for a few hours.  Got the latest Raymond Feist book for some mindless reading and rested until 8:00 pm when I started to get hungry.  Baltimore is where one of my big professional conferences is scheduled every other year and has always been a very ironic place for me.  It is where Patty Ingram lived during the year we tried to see if a relationship would work.  She was a friend from college and the first person who I fell really painfully in love with.  One summer when I was in grad school I had planned to visit her on my way back home from a family trip to Ireland only to find she had started dating an Irishman while I was in Ireland.  Another time, heading to the same Irish pub for dinner, I was taught a lesson in generosity by a pierced and tattooed couple who stopped to help out the bum I had walked out of my way to avoid, full of my own importance.

So it was Saturday night in Baltimore, and I had finished the second pint of Guinness with my dinner of bangers and mash, and was waiting for the band to start playing.  I was hoping it was traditional Irish music since trad bands never come to Stillwater.  They took a long time to set up, and my third pint arrived about the same time the first song did- "Whiskey in the Jar".  The song I listened to for a month after Patty dumped me.  That took me back to a painful time.  The second song was a Saw Doctors tune that reminded me of Patti Haan and another painful time in my life.  I finished the Guinness in record time and got out of there.  The rest of the trip was work.  I helped Thor Labs set up their booth and tried to get the THz system working, unsuccessfully.  Worked long hours on short rations, and got sick to boot.  Sometimes you get the bear, and sometimes the bear gets you...

For some reason the past has been intruding into the present in the last month or two.  I am getting the feeling a big change is coming to my life...  Obvious you might think since I have a daughter now, but it is something more than this.  Almost a calm before the storm...

6/15/05    And all the girlfriends that you knew, to whom you promised to be true, we'll have their sisters hanging from the rafters..."
                                                                        - The Pogues

Over the last few weeks I've been trying to get my life organized, mostly unsuccessfully.  What is it about life that makes it go to hell as soon as you turn your back for a minute.  Jesus, you would think the thing could look after itself for a week or two while you went on vacation or had a long weekend of sleeping in bed.  But it never seems to.  Bills pile up, the lawn grows and the neighborhood Nazi's start to complain, mail and phone calls go unanswered, and once in awhile things really go to hell like the time I left for vacation and came back to find my department head was on the way to prison.  If you haven't read David Brin's Kiln People it is a nice fantasy about one way to keep life under control.  His books hasn't been so great recently, but he's back on track with this book.

Anyway life gets dull when I actually focus on the minutiae that make up day-to-day living.  Working, managing students, trying to raise money, playing at politics, biking, and spending time with the family.  Not the type of stuff that makes up an interesting narrative, at least I am not enough of a writer to make it so.  Most of my stories in the last few weeks revolve around biking since I am going out three or four times a week.  Last Saturday Karen and I had a late dinner at the local Mexican taqueria- Los Vaqueros.  I had trouble sleeping that night and barely managed to make it out of bed for the 8:00 am ride.  The alarm clock interrupted the strangest dream.  I was riding through a town that was filled with brick Catholic churches.  I got separated from the group, and was riding through churches trying to find out how to get out of this town.  As I was making a break for the fence someone grabbed my saddle and held me back.  When I turned to look, it was Jesus, but he looked just like Thor from Adventures in Babysitting.  Jesus admonished me about my bad attitude and said I shouldn't be disrespecting churches by riding my bike through them.  I told this story on today's ride, and one of the guys I ride with asked me what lesson I took from the dream.  I told him I learned I shouldn't eat cheap Mexican food just before bedtime.  I should have told him that it meant that Jesus was really the Norse thunder god Thor, but that didn't occur to me at the time. 

Karen and I are preparing for our Belize vacation, and have all the details hammered out over where we are going to stay.  Three days in San Ignacio with Gonzo as our guide, three days in Plancencia, then three days in San Pedro.  I'm trying to get an appointment with some faculty at the University of Belize to see about establishing an exchange program for engineering students.  Baby Kate is not coming with us.  My folks are coming out for two weeks to watch the baby and the dogs.  We are already starting to worry how vigilant they will be.  Karen is having nightmares about them getting distracted and wandering off to Walmart and leaving baby Kate in the back seat in the July sun.

6/27/05  "And as the flames climbed high into the night, to light the sacrificial rite, I saw Satan laughing with delight, the day the music died.  And he was singing 'Bye, bye Miss American Pie'..."

They say time flies like an arrow while fruit flies like a banana.  I was cleaning out my office this weekend and came across some old photos that had been mouldering in the drawer of my desk for uncounted years.  Actually I know exactly how many years since the photo was dated to Christmas 1993, about the time I moved here from Houston.  It was a photo of my friend Anna and her daughter Dacia when they were living in New Mexico.  Dacia graduated high school this year, but I remember carrying her around on my shoulders in the supermarket.  I have to admit it was a little freaky finding this photo since I don't often think about just how long I have been here in Oklahoma.  Also it is amazing to me how fast my own daughter is growing up and how fast the time goes.

Karen was off visiting her relatives in Joplin this last weekend while I hung around at home watching the first--and only--season of Firefly on DVD's borrowed from my friend Matt.  I am skeptical about new television shows, but I have to rank Firefly up there with Northern Exposure as far as having quirky characters you start to care about too much.  The movie, Serenity, is coming out in September some time.  I also mowed the damn lawn again, got some work done, and went on a 75 mile ride.  It was too bloody hot and I suffered greatly from the heat.  Sunday afternoon we had a goodbye party for one of the few women riders who goes out with us regularly.  She is off to a faculty position in Oregon, I am envious...  Most of the people at the party were from the Red Dirt Pedalers, who are the local touring group.  I found out they call all the OSU cyclists "The Monster Children" which is really amusing and somehow gratifying.

Over the weekend Kate had learned to get up on her hands and knees.  She isn't very stable yet, but the crawling is going to start any day now, and we need to start putting up some barriers to motion.  I am thinking some styrofoam dragons teeth or maybe a nice moat or two filled with rubber crocodiles.  Karen will probably nix that idea and we'll spend some more money at WalMart for child gates.  She has also learned, just today, to sit up by herself.  She has been trying to do this for over a month, and I think her frustration at being laid down will drop a little as her mobility increases.  It seems like yesterday I bought her the nice battery operated swing, but she is already getting too big for it.  How soon in real time will it seem when Kate is ready to graduate from High School and I look back on pictures of my own family and think how quickly time goes by...

7/25/05    "The Sirens sing no lullaby..."
                                                        - The Pogues

Monday lunchtime.  Karen and I are back from Belize, and somewhat well rested and with a little more hardcore UV radiation exposure to add to our lifetime dosage.  We went down with John and Becky Carter, who we have known for quite some time.  Our trip was supposed to involve three stops, but we only managed to get two in since hurricane Emily managed to arrive on the Yucatan peninsula the same day we were supposed to.  Anyway, I'll put together a nice page on the vacation in Belize and link it here in a few days with photos.

One of the reasons I wanted to go back to Belize was to see if it was as appealing a place to spend more time at as it seemed the first time I visited.  The answer to that question is a resounding "maybe".  While the weather was nearly perfect in December, the last time we were there, it was a lot muggier in July.  I'd forgotten what humidity was like from Panama.  Also trying to accomplish anything serious would be quite an effort.  However the country is beautiful, the people are warm, and there are lots of interesting characters.  My dream is to establish a program that would take engineering students down for a month or two to build projects that would let people away from utilities live better.  I didn't get a chance to talk to anyone at the University of Belize about establishing an exchange program, so I'll just have to go down again. Bummer...

I guess one of the reasons I like Belize so much is that it reminds me of Panama was when I first moved down there in 1970.  It hasn't really caught on to this whole globalization thing, and that is,IMHO, good.  The food is fresh and prepared differently everywhere you go.  No-one really seems to give much of a crap about owning a lot of stuff.

Kate's grandparents (my folks) came out to watch the baby, dogs, and house while we were gone.  Both Karen and I were really worried that she would be o.k., but it turned out our fears were pretty much groundless.  I had nightmares that they would leave in the car on a hot day since she is so quiet and easy to overlook.  Karen had the idea that one of us always ride in the back seat with her (which we have started doing) to make sure we don't make the same disastrous mistake.  Despite our fears and a five day period during which we didn't get any e-mail messages, Kate did fine.  She started crawling forward while we were gone, and continues her efforts to try to stand up by herself.  It isn't going to be long now, and we need to start thinking about baby-proofing our old and dangerous house.

8-15-05  "...and if it doesn't work out there will be no more
                        doubt that the pleasure was worth all the pain."

                                                                                - Jimmy Buffet

It has been a busy couple of weeks.  After getting back from Belize we were in Stillwater for one week before I had to run off to the Conducting Rigorous Research in Engineering Education workshop in Golden, Colorado.  This was an all-expenses paid chance to learn how to do research in how people learn which is a big part of my job anymore.  Karen and Kate came along, lured in by my remembrances of the last time I had been to Golden, in 1980, and the beauty of the mountains as highlighted by the Golden Chamber of Commerce.  It was beautiful, but Denver has metastized and begun to surround Golden.  The workshop was good, if not what I expected and I made some good contacts. 

I had one afternoon off and we did the Coors' brewery tour, which was just a big advertisement for Coors.  Coors' is interested in portraying itself as a socially responsible company, and might be for all I know.  Web searches on Coors' politics turned up being rabidly right wing, being too gay friendly, and supporting a lower drinking age.  I can't make sense out of what the truth is anymore without conducting an in-depth research project.  However there is a good article in Salon... We were going to take Kate to Tiny Town, which is as the name suggests  a tiny town.  It rained so we went to the mall instead which was a chance to view teen angst in its natural environment.     

As seems to be usual with any type of National Science Foundation activity breakfast is a plate full of pastries, and the rest of the meals were equally rich.  Combine that with the lack of exercise and two ten hour drives and I felt like I was oozing butter out of every pore by the time I got back.  But a week of riding has helped get my physical systems back to their ordinary level of dysfunction.  While I was in Colorado I learned I received a $1M NSF grant I had been trying for very hard for several years.  While this is great and I really need the money, it does mean a big workload for the foreseeable future.  So much work, so little time for fun.

Kate was great in the car for the drive to Colorado and back.  She was quiet in her car seat pretty much the whole time.

11-13-05    "Where can you start to make your dreams all come true on the land or upon the sea?"
                                                       - The Village People

Wow, it has been a long time since I have found a free minute to update this web journal.  For some reason now that Kate is mobile and walking fatherhood is taking up a lot more of my time.  Since it was three months ago there is a lot to tell.

We got back from Colorado just in time to get the semester started.  The first month of classes are always a big time sink since I like to invest all my time for the semester early on and not have to rush to finish things at the last minute.  I have actually gotten pretty good at this, but it still takes time.  Throw in there the regular paperwork, research, and organizational stuff I have had to do for this new NSF project, and all my time is already overcommitted.  Karen is teaching three classes this semester, one of which is an on-line class.  The other class conflicts with my class MWF (academic short hand for Monday, Wednesday, Friday classes) and then she teaches two classes at night on Monday's and Thursdays.  The gist of all of this is I can't really roll in from home before 9:00 most mornings, and have to be home by 5:30 two days a week.  I used to keep up by working insane hours.  Time to play triage with my time.

To add insult to injury I got the following junk e-mail from Amazon just around the time I was stressing most about not having enough time to get everything accomplished.

Every minute counts...  What am I supposed to do, strap the defibrillator to my nuts and hit the button if I spend a minute on something that isn't crucial?

But the semester has gone rather smoothly all things considered.  Paperwork is becoming more of a nightmare.  As the university becomes more corporatized the bugbears of paperwork intrude more on my somewhat cloistered life.  I have a new contract (it started in July) and I haven't received a dime because the university and the company I am subcontracting for have been having squabbles over intellectual property.  Sigh.  Everything I do in this world is supposed to make money for someone else.  Where did we ever go wrong?  After not being able to pay my students for months, I finally had to write a nasty e-mail to the people squabbling about who was going to get the rights to make money off of my work to let them know that their actions (or lack thereof) have human as well as financial consequences.

The really bright spot in all of this has been Kate of course.  She is walking now and actually gets a little pissed if you won't let her go places under her own power.  We need to spend some time baby-proofing our house.  My one real fear is that she will take a tumble down the stairs and break her head open on the bottom.  I put a spring loaded hinge pin in the door at the top of the stairs  so it would close automatically.  It took me 45 minutes to get the cheap thing adjusted, then it stopped working right after a few days.  Sigh.  As it says on the main page of the web, "Every new possession loads us with new weariness."

Speaking of new possessions I have to gloat about some new geek stuff I got.  Bought a Kingston 2 GB memory stick.  I loved it until it broke on me.  Just up and stopped working one day taking some of my data along with it to whatever limbo data goes to when it dies.  I was supposed to get a new one a week ago, but they keep calling me to tell me they are backordered until "next week".  I wear those memory sticks everywhere I go.  Hell, they are amazingly useful.  You can always recognize the geeks since they are never without enough data storage to hold all written knowledge from the Middle Ages.  I call it Geek Bling.

Bling Bling	Geek Bling

I was having a conversation with Matt the other day about what it is like to be a father.  The conversation started on the topic of people who make their kids the complete and total focus of their lives.  This hasn't happened to me.  Sure, I bore people with Kate stories sometimes, and do spend more time watching Baby Einstein and Teletubbies that is good for my mental acuity, but I need a break from the baby pretty often.  No, I spend time with Kate because I want to.  Watching a new sentient being develop is the greatest show in the universe, and I have a front row seat.  These Christians and Muslims have it all wrong.  They are trying to please their God by doing what they think "he" wants them to.  Hell, "he" is probably just having a blast watching the human race slowly grow up.

11-21-05      "But they've turned the nature that I worshipped in, from a temple to a robber's den."
                        -Jackson Browne

This last weekend Karen, Kate, and I drove up to Joplin to visit her family.  It was just for the day, so her aunt and grandmother could see Kate.  Karen's great grandmother wanted to take her shopping at the mall, so that is where we spent a few hours on Saturday.  When I was a kid, we spent our family vacations going from mall to mall.  Remember that I grew up in Panama shopping at government stores, so malls were a much bigger treat than they were to someone who grew up here in the States.

The mall was jammed with families, teenagers, pushcarts, and hucksters.  It started to stress me out.  I don't like crowds.  I don't like the unfettered gluttony of American capitalism.  I don't like spending money.  So I got one of my first opportunities to practice being the stoic dad.  There were a lot of us stoic dads there, and I developed a better understanding of my own father and the times he would simply sit at the center of the mall with a book through this exercise of patience.  Kate didn't care much for shopping, but she loved the crowds, particularly staring at the other kids.  Every day she tries to make more sense of her world and her place in it.

Speaking of making sense of one's place in the world, I always seem lose my own place in the world around Christmas time.  For several years my Christmas letters have been depressing because it is hard to be optimistic about the future when you know you are drifting.  Something about the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas cuts my moorings, and I turn towards the inner dark.  Maybe it is the greed and desperation I see in people, maybe it is the crowds, maybe it is the dying of the light, or maybe it is the cold weather (to a Panama boy this white rass on the ground is just wrong).   I don't know.  But my own perceptions of what I perceive as wrong with the holiday season is being refined by the current state of affairs in America.  My view is shaped by the perspective I have gained (and perspectives I have lost) from teaching at a public university located in the "buckle of the bible belt". 

So I am cleaning out my e-mail this morning, half listening to the CD's I ripped to Windows Media Player when the song fragment  by Jackson Browne in this post's title caught my ear.  I googled the lyrics and started crying; it impacted me emotionally on a deep level.  This song, The Rebel Jesus, says better than I can what has gone wrong with Christmas.

All the streets are filled with laughter and light,
And the music of the season;
And the merchants’ windows are all bright
With the faces of the children.
And the families hurrying to their homes
As the sky darkens and freezes;
They’ll be gathering around the hearths and tales
Giving thanks for all God’s graces,
And the birth of the rebel Jesus

Well they call him by the prince of peace,
And they call him by the savior,
And they pray to him upon the seas,
And in every bold endeavor.
As they fill his churches with their pride and gold
And their faith in him increases,
But they’ve turned the nature that I worshipped in
'From a temple to a robber’s den',
In the words of the rebel Jesus.

We guard our world with locks and guns,
And we guard our fine possessions.
And once a year when Christmas comes
We give to our relations;
And perhaps we give a little to the poor,
If the generosity should seize us.
But if any one of us should interfere
In the business of why they are poor,
They get the same as the rebel Jesus

But please forgive me if I seem
To take the tone of judgment.
For I’ve no wish to come between
This day and your enjoyment.
In this life of hardship and of earthly toil
We have need for anything that frees us.
So I bid you pleasure,
And I bid you cheer
From a heathen and a pagan
On the side of the rebel Jesus.

                    - Jackson Browne

12-21-05    "But Jenny took my charges and filled them up with water, then called on Captain Farrell to be ready for a slaughter..."
                                                                   - Irish Traditional Ballad

Damn.  It is Christmas again!  How did the holiday season sneak up on me unawares again this year?  Well, I guess it is because the semester ran late this year.  Yesterday grades were due, and the end-of-semester rush caught me up and swept me along with it.  Once I get all my grading done and grades in there is the inevitable flood of e-mail asking me why I assigned this grade rather than that grade...  And of course now I am in the "oh no I put off my other work too long to get grades in now I have to get caught up" part of the semester.  So despite having a young daughter I let Christmas sneak up on me.

Perhaps another reason Christmas snuck up from behind like I had just dropped the soap in the prison shower is that I did most of my shopping on-line.  Despite all the complaining I do about the commercialization of Christmas, shopping does provide a rhythm to the season, and the decorations, lights, and crowds give a distinctive tone to the season.  It is awfully hard to feel festive sitting in the dark at a computer ten-keying in your credit card number.

Karen and I bought a tree, but it is still sitting in the living room, undecorated.  It seems like too much effort on top of the end-of-semester stress.  But I need to decorate it.  You see, I had a realization while lying awake in the pre-down darkness the other day...  Christmas isn't coming to me anymore.  I am bringing Christmas to Kate.  If I don't, no-one will.  And this, more that perhaps anything else, has brought home to me what it is to be a father.  It isn't working long hours to put your kid through college, or never getting to sleep in, or those moments of quiet joy watching your daughter discover a new universe in every opened drawer.  That is all part of it.  But the main thing about being a father is about making sure that you do your best to create the opportunities for sublime joy that come so naturally when you are a child, and are so hard to find when you are an adult. 

Other than Christmas, life, as hinted above, has been work.  I have a contract to develop a terahertz system for a company on the east coast.  As part of this I've been testing a series of lasers.  If you really care about this tech stuff you can read all about it on the website we put together for terahertz.  I just got done evaluating one laser built by an American company, and yesterday installed a new laser from a German company.  One of their technicians came out with the laser to install it (it took about 15 minutes) and brought good chocolate and wine.  We'll find out at Christmas if the wine is any good.  Turns out the technician knows one of the guys at a company we are designing the terahertz system with.  Despite its far reach into all aspects of our life I get reminded fairly forcefully just how small a world science really is sometimes.  And the intelligent design idiots got their collective ass kicked in court yesterday.  Chalk up another one for the age of reason.

Oh yeah, Kate turned one since my last post.  My folks came out to visit for Kate's first birthday.  We didn't do much.  After all the best parenting book ever- Be Prepared- warned us not to.  Went out to eat at Click's Steakhouse and got a few little gifts.  She is still at the age where she finds more entertainment throwing all the tupperware on the floor than she does with any type of organized toy.  The big hit was a stuffed Llama that she recognized from the Llama Song (which she likes almost as much as BadgerBadgerBadger).  Hung out with my folks, they got to interact a little more with Kate now that she is more fun.

5-19-06    "Going out to idiot America.."
                                    -Green Day

Wow, it has been awhile since I updated this!  Things have been crazy since Christmas.  The way the calendar worked out this year we got a week less of Christmas break, so I got back from vacation one day before school started up again, and I've been behind ever since.

Vacation this year was a trip to Orlando and a short, three day cruise to Nassau and a private island owned by Royal Caribbean.  We took Kate along and got tickets for our friends Matt and Beth as well.  You can see a lot of the pictures of the trip at the photos page.  Basically we flew in, left on a three day cruise the next day, then spent one day at SeaWorld on the way back.  I meant to give a great recount of the cruise and our adventures here, but once the semester started things just got completely out of control.  Lets just say we drank a lot of mojitos which turned into the drink of choice, had an o.k. time in Nassau and a much better than expected time on Royal Caribbean's private island.  Kate loved the cruise even if she was a little young to really appreciate the experience.  She also loved Sea World since she was too young to be turned off by the gross commercialism.

Even one year after having Kate I still haven't quite adjusted to the constraints a family places on my time.  Thins semester turned out to be hellishly difficult since I'd foolishly committed to a lot of little things that were not much taken individually but amounted to a Sissyphian task when lumped together.  But you probably aren't interested in these details which means I need to stick to the high points.

Karen was very pregnant this spring with all the mood swings, hormones, and assorted female things that go along with it.  Although she kept up with her classes until the end, the tiredness that goes along with being 7+ months along was difficult.  After getting back from the Christmas trip we had to do some serious rethinking about what two children would do to our lives and what changes we needed to make.  One of the changes was getting two decent cars.  My 1992 pickup truck that I'd inherited from my folks and they had when they were in Panama was just not safe enough for kids.  Since we're so enamored with our Subaru Outback another Subaru was definitely our first choice and I got an Impreza WRX.  Not since I drove a VW KuppelWagon in high school have I been so enamored with a car.  Room for a decent number of people and cargo, small and fast, and reliable so far. 

Had a conference trip to San Diego in late February, but for the most part stuck close to home.  Managed to get a decent amount of exercise despite the work and family obligations, but not enough to really be fit.  My folks came out in late March for the birth of #2 which happened April 6th.  Life has been crazy ever since.  The delivery went really well and Benjamin Aiden came out at 8 pounds and 10 ounces.  We didn't listen to the Lactation Nazis this time about breast feeding and, being old hands at this parenthood stuff, didn't have the same stress.  But after six weeks I think the second kid is harder.  For Kate every moment was a new experience.  The midnight feedings were, if not enjoyable, part of the experience of parenthood.  But for Aiden the midnight feedings are simply getting up at midnight to face a screaming baby.  In fact, we have nicknamed him "Screamy" for the annoying habit of going from dead sleep to full volume panic in less than a second.  He wants what he wants when he wants it, and won't take our feelings on it or need for sleep into consideration at all...  But it is bearable because it has to be and because we know what we're doing this time around.

Kate has been diagnosed with strabismus which means one of her eyes is weak and she needs to wear corrective glasses and a patch.  Nothing too serious unless we are bad about getting it treated, but for a 50¢ set of polyethylene frames the eye shop charged us $70.  What a scam.  It is a good thing I wasn't there when Karen bought them. 

Other than that life has been work.  Classes and proposals and papers and paperwork and meetings and...  I just got back from Annapolis and Washington then run off for three days in LA tomorrow.  Then to Chicago in June and a family reunion in August.  American Airlines managed to separate me from my luggage on both legs of the last trip and every time I get on a plane I feel like I'm going to end up like Gilligan but without the interesting company.  There is a reason the show wasn't named "Gilligan's Airport".

I sincerely hope to have more time and motivation to keep this irregular web journal a little more up-to-date since lots of things have amused, angered, or disgusted me in the last six months, but no promises.

5-26-06   "Every hour wounds, the last one kills..."

I started this post on the road.  I was lying in a flea-bag hotel room in Dallas that is a Ramada Inn only by name.  I had been on the road for over a week with only one full day at home in between trips.  Coming back from Long Beach my flight from LAX to Dallas was cancelled and by the time I finally got into Dallas the last flight had left for Tulsa.  The trip before we left Stillwater at noon and finally rolled into Annapolis around 3:30 in the morning.  They lost our luggage too.  On the way back American lost our luggage again and the guy they had deliver it couldn't find where we lived.  One of my students had to drive to McDonalds at midnight to meet the delivery guy.  The only leg of the trip that worked the way it was supposed to was going to LA.

So I am lying naked in a very questionable bed without luggage or a way to brush my teeth at 2:30 in the morning worrying about friends' marriage.  In five hours I have to get up to catch the shuttle to the airport.  The shuttle doesn't run very often as a cost saving measure.  I hadn't brushed my teeth that night although I made a good attempt at it.  A placard in the hotel room announced the front desk had complementary toiletries for the stranded traveler, but when I went down to ask all they gave me was a foil packet of Colgate and a disposable razor.  "Sorry, this is all we have, but there is a vending machine in the lobby..."  Crummy disposable toothbrush for $4.00.  An accurate commentary on life in America these days.

I could hear the guy in the next room watching that cop movie with Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte.  "Roxanne, you don't have to put on the red line."  Just try to get to sleep with that in the background.  So I decided to sacrifice warmth for sleep and turned up the air conditioner unit full blast to drown out the noise. 

I set the clock radio for 5:30 in order to get a shower before I had to catch the 6:10 shuttle to the airport, but the damn thing didn't go off until 6:04 to "Mother" from Pink Floyd's The Wall:

Mother, do you think they'll drop the bomb?
Mother, do you think they'll like this song?
Mother, do you think they'll try to break my balls?
Mother, should I build the wall?

No shower for me!  Throw on my clothes commando to catch the bus for the plane.  American gave me a $10.00 dinner voucher and a $5.00 breakfast voucher, but there was no way to spend $10.00 last night.   Stopped at Starbucks and spent the $10 voucher on a venti (large to normal people) mocha, scone, and OJ.  Told the woman behind the counter to use the $5 voucher for the next person to come in behind me.  Sat down at gate 10A in terminal B and opened the second book I had bought in LA (I'd already finished the first book), Neil Gaiman's American Gods.  Thirty pages in and I realized the old gods and not the angels had been riding on my shoulders the whole trip.  I got done what I needed to in Annapolis, Washington, and LA.   Build two THz systems, give a three hour talk, and defend our million dollar grant at NSF.  Somewhat of a miracle considering how many things could have gone wrong.  But this luck comes at a price and, unlike the angels, the old gods don't accept words for payment. 

I haven't put down American Gods since I've been back.  The book makes sense to me.  And Samantha Black Crow's soliloquy about what she believes midway through is also what I believe. 

7-23-06    "You say I took the name in vain, but I don't even know the name, but if I did, really what's it to you?  There's a blaze of light in every word and it doesn't matter which I've heard, the holy or the broken Hallelujah."
                                                - Leonard Cohen

Today I am hung over.  We had a dinner party last night for Rich and Shan, some friends who have found a faculty position up in Illinois.  Al (who I ride with) and his wife Val came over.  Caribbean themed and drinks to match.  Started off with Red Stripe, then moved through mojitos, pina coladas, caipirnihas, and tequila shots.  The only thing that saved me was the sheer amount of food and dinner ran from seven until after midnight.  Got up early this morning and went riding.  Surprisingly I wasn't very motivated to go fast.  The spirit was willing but the stomach was weak due to the spirit.

But out of physical misery has arisen spiritual bliss.  I've been working too hard lately and everything has become an effort.  Work is not a bad thing unless it feels like work all the time.  And that is where I have been.  A night of laughter and food and drink is better than all the universe's pharmacology.  As J. R. R. Tolkien said in the Lord of the Rings “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”

So what has been going on in my world?  Work obviously.  I had an education conference in Chicago in June.  It was sheer hell finding a hotel since I waited until the last minute to make travel plans.  After hours of searching I found a place within a long walk and at the borders of a safe neighborhood.  It was a fortuitous choice since I discovered an Irish Pub called Fado only a few blocks away that was my type of place regarding food, drink, music, and architecture.  I ate there a lot during the week.  Education is my nightmare right now since I got lucky with funding on a big project that forces me to be more responsible than I feel I am.  But that is work...

Both kids are doing great.  We've been going to swim class two days a week and Kate loves it.  Aiden just floats there blissfully.  Kate is a little OCD in how she focuses on an activity and can't be torn away, but I suppose that is better than being hyper with short attention span.  I meant to have some pictures posted, but one of the crummy computers our department tech builds from the cheapest of grey market parts zapped my USB drive (for the second time) so I have no way to easily move files from home to work.  I'll try to find time to post some of the cuter pictures in the next month.

We're off to a week of vacation at my folks house in North Carolina next weekend.  It will be nice to get away and sleep in.  Hopefully we'll get to see my friend Donnie while we're there.  There is also a family reunion but that should be bearable if the organization Nazis haven't gone overboard in making sure fun WILL be had by all.  It will also be nice to take a week off the bike.  I only get out three times a week on good weeks and rides hurt these days.  I did 106 miles in 98 degree weather on the annual 4th of July ride they have in Stillwater and really suffered for part of the ride.  I haven't hurt that much on a bike for years and years since I was racing down in Texas.

I'll sign off with some links to music that fits my rather fey mood.  I found a site that collects covers of well known songs.  Most try to recreate the original, but there are a few that are... odd

A sort of bossa-nova version of Blue Oyster Cult's Don't Fear the Reaper

Opera version of Rolling Stone's Sympathy for the Devil

Gregorian Chant Blue Monday originally done by New Order

Who knew Enya sang Don't Fear the Reaper?

And the song Hallelujah from which the post's title is taken...

8-9-06      "Hear the drum pounding out of time
                        Another protestor has crossed the line (Hey!)
                        To find, the money's on the other side"
                                                        - Green Day from Holiday

We got back from vacation two days ago.  It was an Orwellian lesson in the new America.  National Lampoon's Vacation brought to life with me currently playing Clark W. Griswold but I fear the middle class is being recast as Cousin Eddie as society evolves.  F#ck capitalism.  But these sentiments only make sense if the family vacation story is told in its entirety, from the beginning, with an eye for the absurd...

We planned to go to the mountains of North Carolina for a week that included a family reunion at the end.  Since both the kids are under two we used our frequent flyer miles on American Airlines.  I had to fly 50,000 %$*@#+ miles--twice around the earth--for this trip.  American Airlines couldn't get us to Asheville or Spartanburg so we had to fly into Atlanta, a three hour drive away.  We thought that since we had kids it would beat the 18 hour drive.  We did not reckon with the free market...

We left Stillwater at 5:15 am for a 7:30 flight.  We paid extra for curbside check in since we were loaded down with two heavy bags each since we had to bring the kid's car seats.  Struggled through security cursing Richard Reid (the shoe bomber) under my breath.  The flight left at 8:10 which meant our 50 minute cushion in the Dallas airport had dropped to ten minutes.  By running with two kids, backpack carriers, luggage, and a stroller we got to the gate just before they closed the doors.  In Atlanta we discovered that we were faster than our luggage and so had to hang around the Atlanta airport for three hours until the car seats came in.  A three hour drive and we got to my parents house at 6:15 in the evening, 12 hours after we started.

For the first couple of days vacation was relaxing.  Hung around, visited some relatives, went down to talk to the engineering department at Western Carolina University.  Wednesday Karen and I left the kids with my folks and went down to visit the Biltmore Mansion which was really cool.  Drove back along the Blue Ridge Parkway which I would love to bike some day.  Unfortunately we forgot to get gas so had to detour through Deliverance country.  Karen started feeling a little car sick before we got home and around 9:30 started barfing.  At 1:30 in the morning we went to the Emergency Room at the local hospital to get the vomiting under control.  Got to bed at 4:30 and then up at eight with the kids.  Around five I was just starting to pack for the hour drive to the reunion when Kate started barfing.  Karen was still feeling sick so we stayed at my folks house and took care of Kate.  Another night with little sleep and lots of cleaning up vomit.

Kate felt well enough to get to the reunion the next day but when we got there she threw up again and Aiden developed diarrhea.  Kate barfed on and off irregularly until Sunday when we left for home.  The last reunion event was a breakfast at my uncle's house in some gated community.  They live way up away from civilization in the mountains, why the fuck people want to live in a gated community there is beyond me.  Maybe they are afraid of bears.  Anyway Kate barfed again when we got there so I hardly got any breakfast.  My uncle assured us it was a three hour drive to Atlanta so we left at 10:30 to catch our 4:00 flight. We figured with two hours to spare we'd have time to get the vast amount of crap our children seem to require through security. It took about an hour and half to drive out of the mountains and hit the major highway, so at around noon we came across a sign that said:

F#ck Uncle Bob!  Three hours my ass.  I drove 80 - 85 the whole way to Atlanta trying not to think what a ticket for 30 above the speed limit would cost.  The security lines looked short, but that was for the first class and "priority" boarding crowd. When we walked to the more plebian lines they were immensely long.  Luckily TSA opened up a line for people with families so we got through in record time.  Some of my ire at the rich was dissipating.  Made the flight with enough time to spare to grab a snack in the airport and let my hands unclench from grasping the steering wheel.   Amazingly enough American took off on time and we were on on way to Dallas, no Austin, no Waco, no San Antonio, no Houston.  What the f#ck is going on...  There are storms in Dallas, we are running low on fuel and are getting rerouted to Abilene. 

BARF!  Kate pukes all over me.  All the french fries, breakfast, milk, water, and snacks she ate all day come up in a warm smelly waterfall of disgusting bile and stomach acid.  The guy in the seat next to me recoils in disgust as I head back to the restroom covered in vomit.  Crammed into a space about the size of a coffin I strip off Kate's clothes, strip off my clothes and do laundry in a sink the size of a large coffee mug.  Use the paper towels to wipe up the worst of the mess then feel guilty about the chunks all over the floor and toilet lid so clean those up.  Of course you don't have to scratch the surface too deeply to get down to a nasty crust of dried piss around the toilet.  They should be paying me to take this flight.  Kate finds the flight attendant call button but no-one comes.  Finally with soaking wet clothes we head back to our seat.  Eventually we are cleared to take off and our hour and forty minute flight ends after five and half hours. 

After we land we rush to the gate to catch the last flight home.  Overbooked.  Ran into a guy trying to rent a car.  As soon as flights started getting canceled the rental rate got jacked up to $169 to drive from Dallas to Tulsa.  After waiting for an hour to talk to someone we finally get attention.  Of course they can't get us to Tulsa until 8:30 the next evening, a full day after we land.  We have sick kids, can they do any better?  Oh you can put us on "priority standby" for earlier flights but it doesn't look good?  They'll be glad to put us up in a Comfort Inn overnight for the distressed traveler rate of $60.00 a night and the shuttle bus will depart downstairs in 20 minutes.   

Half an hour later in the 100 degree heat the kids are whimpering, the bus shows no sign of coming and the hotel says it will be awhile.  F#ck Comfort Inn.  F#ck American Airlines.  We head to the Grand Hyatt in the airport terminal and enjoy a night of luxury for $200.  The Hyatt people are very welcoming and bend over backwards to help with cribs and let us stay late.  Which is only fitting and proper since we forked out $200.  I wash the barf out of my clothes and rig the blow dryer to dry them out.  A night's sleep, room service, and a hot shower restores me enough to visit the American Airlines ticket counter to see about getting on a flight.  The agent assures me we can probably get on the 12:30 flight and she'll make sure we are "priority standby" so we'll probably make the flight.  A good thing since we are running out of diapers and formula.

Pack up the kids and all our stuff, go through security again, head to the gate and wait.  Finally the standby list comes up on the monitor.  The plane is one of those little jets and due to weight restrictions they are limited to 41 passengers.  The standby list has 36 names on it and we are 19 and 20.  It doesn't take an Einstein to do this math.  While I'm standing there trying to get my sick kids on the flight some suit walks up whose flight had arrived early.  Can he get on this flight?  Executive Platinum, certainly, let me find a passenger willing to give up a seat.  Would you like anything else sir? 

Back to the hotel.  Through security and rest in the room until 2:00 when we have to leave.  Maybe we can catch the 4:00 flight.  There are about twelve flights to Tulsa and American wants us to wander from gate to gate like a Bedouin nomad to see if we can fly standby.  Of course by this time Kate and Aiden are about ballistic.  The only way I can keep Kate quiet is to put her in the backpack and wander around the airport.  We rode the train around the loop (20 minutes) and looked in all the stores.  Came across an electronic parrot toy that repeats what you say to it.  Clever bird.  I taught it to repeat "American Airlines sucks a$$!"

In one of the glassed in gate waiting areas about ten bored teenage boys are playing baseball with tiny souvenir bats and Gatorade bottle cap as a ball while they wait for their flight.  We watch for awhile and then wander down to the end of the terminal.  On the way back we pass a TSA goon with a handful of souvenir baseball bats.  The baseball game got busted and the bats confiscated as dangerous weapons.  I ask them if they got busted by TSA.  "Yeah, that guy was an 8ss!".  I've owned pencils bigger than those bats were.

Karen goes off in search of a diaper since Aiden's diarrhea is not getting better.  She buys one for $2.50.  At that price the package of 96 diapers we get at Walmart for $19.77 plus tax would cost $240.  This is over a 1000% mark-up.  F#ck capitalism.  No-one at American Airlines tells us about the room for families traveling with kids that has games and activities Karen discovers by accident an hour before our flight leaves.

We finally get to the 3rd and 4th positions on the standby list on a 6:00 flight, only an hour before the flight on which we have assigned seats.  The standby flight is delayed until 7:15 so we head over to the gate for our confirmed flight.  Half an hour late we are paged.  They want to know why we aren't at the gate for the standby flight and do we want to give up our confirmed seats for the standby seats on the flight that will arrive at the same time.  Thanks for your last minute concern you douche bags.

We arrive in Tulsa to pandemonium as three American flights all arrive at the same time.  Our luggage is in the lockup but we finally make it home by 11 at night, 38 hours after we left for the Atlanta airport exhausted and very angry.  Next time we are going to drive.

It seems to me that something is seriously wrong with our priorities when people rely on for-profit companies for all the basic services.  Today money buys privilege and ease like no time since the turn of the last century.  We would have been home hours earlier if we had paid to be members of the elite "Executive Platinum" program on American Airlines.  All values are subsumed to money.  Make enough and you need not worry about anything but making more money.  Interestingly enough I am reading the book Theodore Rex and how Teddy Roosevelt struggled with these same issues.  The struggle between labor and capital is a recurring theme in our society and in many ways we are replaying the political script of a century ago.  George Bush is a pale imitation T.R. wanna-be and the Enrons and Halliburtons play the trusts of the by-gone era.  The anarchists of yesterday are the terrorists of today.  There is always some boogey man out the we need to be afraid of enough to confiscate tiny souvenir bats.  Wait in line for an hour to get your shoes, belt, laptop, and luggage x-rayed and it is such a hassle to leave the secure area you will fork out $2.50 for a diaper.  F#ck capitalism.

Illegitimi Non Carborundum!

9-14-06    "But at night I have these wonderful dreams,
                       Some kind of sensuous treat..."
                                                        - Jimmy Buffet

On my last post I compared our time to 100 years ago when Teddy Roosevelt was president- there are great similarities to the gilded age.  But we are much more dissolute than our great grandfathers seem to have been. Welcome to the Gelded Age. 

Who am I?  How did I get here?  I seem to be going through a period of self doubt after having drifted from my moorings…  Inspired by American Gods perhaps it is time for a soliloquy on my beliefs…

I believe that I got to this place in my life through a chain of decisions that made sense at the time, but I am damned if I can follow my own reasoning now.  I believe that I will always think this and while I still plan for the future it will always surprise me.  I believe the biggest problem in the world is too many people and although everybody knows this deep down inside, we are sick of talking about it.  I believe that religious fundamentalism will always be defeated by good sex and that if Jesus were here today he would be hanging out on a beach in Belize giving windsurfing lessons.  I believe that an education should be free, because an uneducated citizenry becomes extremely expensive in the long run.  I believe that college is a rip-off, but it is still better than the alternatives.  I believe the great evils of our age are corporations, land developers, street lights, television, and automobiles.  I believe the great goods of our age are instantaneous communication, books, and bicycles.  I believe the greatest evils of all time are caused by people who believe too strongly in one idea and that cold beer and fresh bread with butter are tied for the greatest good.  I believe the Panama Canal was man’s ultimate technological achievement.  I believe that we will never reach the stars because soon there will be so many street lights we will simply forget they are there any more, like in the Isaac Asimov short story.  I believe shopping malls are experiments dreamed up by space aliens.  I believe every natural thing has a spirit that it is our responsibility to take care of, that life is sacred, and if we continue to fuck up nature something inside us will die forever.  I believe that no God makes a lot more sense than the existence of one God, but that the existence of many Gods makes the most sense of all.  I believe people without faith are fooling themselves and people who base all their decisions on faith are being fooled by others.  I believe that if you don’t live your life looking out for yourself you are a sucker, and that is better to be a sucker than to believe in a world where everyone just looks out for themselves.  I believe that the best any of us can hope for in life is to balance our loves, hopes, fears, and anger but the world as it is makes it impossible to maintain this balance without  using humor to cope.  I believe Spiderman was the greatest superhero and that Dungeons and Dragons is the greatest game ever invented.  I believe in things I can’t see as long as I can measure them and that mathematics is a language we aren’t meant to understand.  I believe we are all unique and that deep down inside we are all the same.  I believe anyone who cares too much about one thing is destined to become a greedy evil bastard in the long run.  I believe that after we die access to the afterlife is determined by how good a story we can tell about our adventures in this one. 

7-10-07    "Puro tilin tilin y nada de paleta..."
                                                        - Shorty & Slim

It has been a long time since I updated this blog.  While this may mean I was not meant for blogging, it can also be interpreted to mean that the life I live gets in the way of  leisure time to sit back and be a spectator, which is not all a bad thing.  From the dates on the last entry it was mid September the last time I posted.  What has gone on since then?  Hmm... (pause for flashback)

I don't even remember the fall semester or for that matter much of the spring semester.  Too many classes to teach, too much stress, too little fun.  Odd how the times that are the most hectic in life can also be the least memorable.  There seems to be wisdom in this pithy observation that involves friends, one's personal history, and cold beer on a deserted beach...  Anyway, after the last post, I didn't travel at all last fall to stay home and help take care of the babies.  For awhile it looked like life was really going to be difficult l with two infants in the house, but Aiden finally lost his nickname of "Screamy" and has turned into an amazingly good tempered kid as long as he is fed.  He is developing more slowly than Kate did and is finally walking on his own at 15 months.  Spring was a little more hectic with trips to conferences and workshops.  But while all of this looks pretty good on a resume it makes for tedious reading.

The highlights:

My friend Matt left to take a job at GMA Industries, a small company in Maryland.  Read his site for details.  He and Beth also separated after many years together which has been pretty stressful for both Karen and I...

I had a pretty serious bike accident in mid-March and broke my hip in two places and also my left shoulder.  This is the worst wreck I've ever had and it hurt like hell for a long time.  After the wreck I lay on the pavement for about 20 minutes until the ambulance arrived unable to move without excruciating pain.  Cars would come by with a probability of stopping inversely proportional to their insured value.  Once a beater Dodge stopped to see if they could help.  It was a classic Oklahoma scene--four shirtless guys with cans of Busch in their hands driving around in the middle of the day with one of them eating a giant sausage of raw cookie dough.  It took about three months to get pain free and there was a lot of muscle damage...

We celebrated my parents 50th wedding anniversary in May with a seven day cruise to Alaska leaving out of Seattle.  Kate had a run-in with Cthulu in Seattle.  The food and service weren't nearly as good as earlier cruises I have been on but the scenery was fantastic.  Although sharing a small cabin with two little kids was really exhausting, seeing the family time was nice.  Did laundry in Juneau, took a train ride in Skagway, and walked around Prince Rupert.  Came home exhausted and with the intestinal cruise virus.  Of the cruise, not the results of the virus so don't worry...).

A week after I got back I flew off for a weekend at my 25th high school reunion which was once again co-located with the larger reunion in Orlando.  I wasn't very excited about the prospect since I had spent a lot of time away from my family.  However somehow through the toga party, live show by Shorty and Slim, and staying up drinking until four am I rediscovered a part of me that had been hidden away a long time.  What is the power of the reunion?  Basically there are parts of my life I share with a limited number of people.  I have family, biking friends, research friends, and gaming friends but with only a very few of these do I share my culture.  I am, and will always be, a Zonian deep down inside.  For years I shut down this part of me to fit in here, to be successful in this so-called American culture.  Overlaid Rice and Oklahoma (cholo-landia) and science to fit in.  Well, I learned last weekend this won't make me happy in the long run so somehow I need to reconnect...  Rass mon!

About This Site

The site is accessed through six different links:

• Home- Top level page on this site.
• Useful Links- These are hyperlinks that I visit often and are here for my own personal use.
• Current Projects- Some of the projects I am working on currently or have archived here if they are complete
• About Me- Contains both my professional and personal personas:  curriculum vita, personal information, writings, photos, etc.
• My Network- Links to my on-line presence and organizations I belong to.
• Thoughts-  Ideas and symbols that inspire me, links to my blogs, and other ideas that haven't made it to the project stage yet.