Plague!

Whatever bug Susan got has laid me low since Friday evening. Yesterday was extremely unpleasant, as was this morning. I'm not a big fan of colds that invade your sinuses, and am thankful that I've not had too many of them... but is there anything worse in this world than when you get all worked up to sneeze and the urge subsides?

The Weakly Standered

Soren just pulled himself from a sitting position to a standing position in his crib. Oh, goodness. He's been doing great going from prone or supine to sitting position and then back, crawling a bit and rolling with intent... now he's bouldering in his crib.

Time Machine or Decapitation Hazard?

Right now I think I'm just glad that gull-wing doors are rare. I was biking in to campus this morning at a fair clip--in order to keep with traffic--when I was hit with a door.

A delivery-type truck-door popped into my field of vision, it's edge barely far enough out to catch me. Had it been a passenger car, I'd have cleared it easily. Instead I was thrown around/over the door, rolling out towards the sidewalk so I didn't damage myself in the landing.

Even so, it really wasn't great. I'm bruised and scraped and was very, very startled at the speed with which crap happened. I'm okay, but I don't want any part of that again, and my bicycle is the worse for the wear. The two lower-geared drive sprockets are bent--the lowest-gear bent dramatically--presumably from impacting the door. The cross-post has a big streak of the door's paint. Poor bicycle.

Vote!

I filled out my absentee ballot the other day. Good times. California is quite odd.

Walter in the West Wing

Well, Walter Mondale was the first Vice President to have an office in the White House. I certainly understand that the active role is new, but c'mon! That's insane!

Whoa

If Google's weather reporting is to be believed, it's going to be ten degrees cooler tomorrow than it's been the last few days, and thirty degrees cooler by Saturday. Awesome.

Tom thinks starfish are creepy

Max: Do you like starfruit?
Tom: It's all right. It's not the five-fold symmetry that bothers me.
Max: That quote totally has to go up on the blog.

The Osmotic Governor

I'm thinking a list is in order

• Idaho's Butch Otter: legislative, executive, and military experience, a Catholic.
• North Dakota's John Hoeven: very popular, nation's longest serving gov, former CEO, a conservative Catholic.
• Minnesota's Tim Pawlenty: legislative and executive experience, a former executive of a company, Evangelical. Interacted with officials from India, China, Mexico, Canada on matters of trade.
• Vermont's Jim Douglas: political wunderkind with legislative and executive experience. Established a sister city in Russia, fluent in Russian. No doubt deals with Canadian syrup poachers. A Freemason!
• Florida's Charlie Crist: right there in the name. Methodist swing-state gov.
• From the former Republic of Texas, Rick Perry: long-serving gov, former Air Force officer, legislative experience, social conservative. On the other hand, Endorsed Giuliani.
• Hawaii's Linda Lingle: long-serving Jewish gov. Mayor, council-member, high approval rating. Hawaii is very close to a number of other countries... compared to a lot of states.

So, I'm not sure... but do you think one of these border-state governors might have more experience than the one up for VP? Maybe even useful experience? No? Seriously? Alaska?

Soren Stats - 4 Months

Length


Weight

Ruud the Day

Shoulda read my blog, Ruud.

Read This One Rich

The book I couldn't recall was The Calculus of Consent:Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy, by Gordon Tullock and James Buchanan. It enumerates the cases pretty convincingly, and points out that in determining the optimal decision-making procedure one has to consider the increase in coordination costs vs the imposition of external costs.

Ultimately, I was not happy with their assumptions, though--I can't recall which, exactly, though, unsettled me.

Another book I couldn't recall was by Michael Pollan, and called The Botany of Desire:A Plant's-Eye View of the World. It talked about the coevolution of humans and plants.

Little Flyer

Soren came through the flights with ease and as much aplomb as a baby can muster, much as he seems to come through everything.

In order to facilitate logistics, we asked Susan's folks to front us a car seat that we'd buy from them as we left. We came away with a very nice Britax Marathon carseat. It should be good for Soren up to 49 inches standing height and 65 pounds. Hopefully that won't be, per our friend A.M., at 17 months old, or whatever her extrapolation was. The very nice thing about this seat is that the straps are padded a little, and don't come as close to the rapidly growing neck of the little 'un. Also, we have a "blowout protection" pad, to catch any runaway poos.

It was really only a matter of time, wasn't it?

Wookieepedia

Carrot Salad

We had a salad-themed dinner last evening. Potato, fruit, pasta, carrot, and cucumber salads were on parade. M and D made the potato and fruit salads, Susan made the pasta salad, and I made carrot and cucumber salads. I made a pretty normal cucumber salad that we all know and love, though I made it undersweet, much to my chagrin. The carrot salad I got from Mark Bittman, and it was delicious.
More or less, it goes like this:

• peel and grate 1 1/2 lbs carrots
• combine juice 2 oranges, 1 lemon and 2 tbsp olive oil
• add 1 tsp cumin to liquid
• toss the carrots in the liquid, salt and pepper to taste

It was delicious.

My Ties Are Cooler Than Me

I don't know how that happened. Well, I do know how I got them and I'm painfully aware of my level of coolness, but it still seems somewhat of a mystery how these cool ties got into my closet.

Shaky

That was exciting.

Magnitude 5.4 - GREATER LOS ANGELES AREA, CALIFORNIA

World War Z

So, on my way to work at night, I've been listening to the audiobook version of World War Z, which Tom got and read a while back. It took a little while to get into it - the format is just a series of interviews - but by the end of the first disc I was pretty engaged. In addition to the author, Max Brooks, a whole cast of actors is involved in reading the book (Alan Alda, Mark Hamill, Carl & Rob Reiner, and John Turturro, to name a few). I was frustrated at first by the guy who read the part of the Chinese doctor; his accent was distracting and really poorly done. But once I got past the first few segments, the actors did a better job, and it's pretty interesting how much detail Brooks put into his work. His interviewees are quite varied in their backgrounds - military, civillian, government officials, medical personnel - so you get a sense of how the Zombie War played out from many different perspectives, and each one moves forward chronologically just a bit from the last.

Anyway, I'm not quite done with the book (almost 4/5 of the way through), but I think I've heard enough to say that it's worth a read/listen. It's a little creepy, a little slow in the beginning, but entertaining overall.

Intolerable Cuteness

Soren is wearing his little University of Oregon one-piece and hat. I cannot stand it. It is cuter than anything I've ever seen in my entire life.



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Soren Weight at Three Months