(no subject)
Dec. 31st, 2011 01:04 pmI'm a little late in posting it, but here is evidence that Oscar basically gets spoons (with mashed potatoes in this case, which is about as close as he ever got to eating pureed stuff willingly).
Samuel Smith's Winter Welcome Ale
Dec. 27th, 2011 11:20 amMy cousin-in-law Jay gave me some tasty beer for Christmas. I tried it at the end of the drive home yesterday, slightly chilled (20 mins in the freezer from room temperature), in a beer mug, with some pita pizza.
The beer is a nice coppery colour, not cloudy or thick at all, with a fine head that dissipates quickly down to a little trim around the glass. It's got a nice aromatic whiff of hops and sweetness before tasting, and then an almost honey-like flavour. There's a noticeable bit of bitter at the end, but not enough to overwhelm the malty/honey sweet. If I didn't find it tasty, I might have found it a little medicinal (Elizabeth found it had a hint of soapiness and didn't like it, but I think I read it as interesting English hops). I sort of expected a winter ale to be heavier or spiced, but this one is surprisingly aromatic and delicate, and I don't think it has any unorthodox flavouring. If you like hops and are having it solo or with something not too overwhelming (the pizza was white — mayo, mozzarella, fresh tomato and olives — and it was about right), this is a flavourful and surprisingly delicate beer for you.
The beer is a nice coppery colour, not cloudy or thick at all, with a fine head that dissipates quickly down to a little trim around the glass. It's got a nice aromatic whiff of hops and sweetness before tasting, and then an almost honey-like flavour. There's a noticeable bit of bitter at the end, but not enough to overwhelm the malty/honey sweet. If I didn't find it tasty, I might have found it a little medicinal (Elizabeth found it had a hint of soapiness and didn't like it, but I think I read it as interesting English hops). I sort of expected a winter ale to be heavier or spiced, but this one is surprisingly aromatic and delicate, and I don't think it has any unorthodox flavouring. If you like hops and are having it solo or with something not too overwhelming (the pizza was white — mayo, mozzarella, fresh tomato and olives — and it was about right), this is a flavourful and surprisingly delicate beer for you.
So, this evening on the way home with Oscar strapped to me and laden down with bags, my shoulder popped out (this is a chronic thing that just happens to me sometimes). I was talking with some friendly woodgie-ing people on the #2 a little before 6, and reached to put up his sleeping hood and felt it go. It wasn't too bad, so I thought I'd see if it just slipped back in if I relaxed it as much as possible. No such luck, and so at the end of the route, I told the driver my shoulder had popped out and I might need a little time and maybe a hand with my stuff while I put myself back together.
The driver pulled over to the time-stop around the corner, called in, offered an ambulance (I wasn't quite ready for one), asked if I could stand (I managed), and was sort of reluctant to do any sort of manual intervention (there must be a "don't touch the rider" policy, which is probably a good thing most of the time). He phoned in again to tell someone he would be running a little late, and helped me get buckles and straps undone on a messenger bag, a backpack, a coat and a baby, stood around and talked to me while I popped my shoulder back in (it's a lot easier when I'm a little distracted and when I'm not wearing 50 pounds of gear and baby). Oscar slept through the whole thing — pop out around Preston, ride to the end of the line, chat, unload, sleep on the cooperative seating, let me pop in, put him and everything back on. The driver was patient, methodical and friendly through it all, and fended off a possibly grumpy dispatcher all the while. So, for all the unhappy or odd OC stories out there, I thought I'd add this to the Internet. Thanks, Mr. Driver, and happy holidays!
The driver pulled over to the time-stop around the corner, called in, offered an ambulance (I wasn't quite ready for one), asked if I could stand (I managed), and was sort of reluctant to do any sort of manual intervention (there must be a "don't touch the rider" policy, which is probably a good thing most of the time). He phoned in again to tell someone he would be running a little late, and helped me get buckles and straps undone on a messenger bag, a backpack, a coat and a baby, stood around and talked to me while I popped my shoulder back in (it's a lot easier when I'm a little distracted and when I'm not wearing 50 pounds of gear and baby). Oscar slept through the whole thing — pop out around Preston, ride to the end of the line, chat, unload, sleep on the cooperative seating, let me pop in, put him and everything back on. The driver was patient, methodical and friendly through it all, and fended off a possibly grumpy dispatcher all the while. So, for all the unhappy or odd OC stories out there, I thought I'd add this to the Internet. Thanks, Mr. Driver, and happy holidays!
Short D.C. entry
Sep. 20th, 2011 05:01 pmI made it, through the full-body scanner and a flight above the clouds, to Washington D.C. I mixed Metro (mostly) and walking (from L'Enfant Plaza across the National Mall to Chinatown, so get a sniff of the air, get a look at the monumental-ness, and grab some tasty Thai food) to get me to the University of Maryland, where I'm staying and taking a course on disclosure control. Today was the ins and outs of releasing aggregated data, which is the end of things I've worked more in. Mostly for myself: I should e-mail Dr. Cox about where methodological transparency grants the intruder extra leverage in estimating sensitive cells: his problematic findings on feasible intervals, and Dr. Karr's recent conference papers on the topic in general. I think I'm getting some good review and some connecting details that I was missing so far.
Tonight I'm probably going to drop south from Foggy Bottom into the western end of the National Mall and try to see the giant statue of Lincoln and the Vietnam Veterans' monument. Tomorrow: microdata, dynamic queries, and then the rush to the airport to get home.
Things happened, and happening
Sep. 18th, 2011 02:02 pmSo, Monday after I left for work, Oscar managed to face-plant into the dresser upstairs, tooth-first. Elizabeth brought him in to our dentist office, who is just across the street from work, and a nice dentist and technician took a look at the damage and decided that the (90-degree-tilted) tooth would need pulling. I got to hold Oscar (due to slightly less flappability with respect to other people's blood than Elizabeth, i guess). After a little bit of futzing around with topical anaesthetic, the dentist went for the quick approach and plucked the tooth out with gloved fingers. Oscar was highly disconcerted for a few minutes, and I was a little woozy from watching, but by the time we'd walked a few blocks to get some air and acquire some lunch, Oscar was almost back to normal.
Here's Oscar with seven teeth, down from eight:
Elizabeth and I were planning on having a date night on Monday, but having had surprise dentist dealings, we decided to put it off by a few days. In the end, we left Oscar with ![[personal profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
random and fairestcat Friday night, and went into Little Italy for supper, beer and creamy desserts. Pub Italia is tasty, gloriously decorated and very busy on a Friday — we had a nice meal, some good eavesdropping and a little walk in the chilly autumn air. Some couple time was really nice. Yesterday, Elizabeth's cousin came by for supper and I fired up the Turkish grill (now safely on a pad of a few inches of gravel in a dug hole) and grilled veggie burgers in an attempt to extend summer into September. It was the first time I really got to meet her, as meeting anyone at your own wedding never counts. She seems nice and fun — she had a daughter at 18, and one thing she mentioned struck us both: her daughter will probably be out of the house by the time she's 36, and she mused about "starting again" with another kid. It's unlikely we consider having another kid when Oscar is likely launched and I'm 48.
This week, I'm off to the Washington, D.C. area for a couple of days to attend a short course on disclosure control. It'll be my first time in the U.S. since 2004. I got a fresh passport, I'm partly packed, and I'm looking forward to my more-or-less-annual work-related trip. My mission is more or less to get the big picture and soak up best practices at the course, and meet other people working in the field. I'll try and explore a little bit, too: fairestcat suggests wandering in the National Mall, and if some fellow guardians of respondent privacy in released data decide to see something cool in the evening, I'll probably see what they're excited about.
Even when I'm not on the road, work is pretty stimulating lately — building and disclosure vetting small-geography cancer incidence tables, welcoming new people, agitating to get the computer infrastructure set up to do record linkage better, trying to prepare to help teach a one-day course in November. Part time — the reduced time and the paperwork — is a bit stressful, but for now it gives Elizabeth a bunch of margin to work, take on new students, and have shorter days holed up with Oscar on a regular basis.
Oscar at one
Sep. 11th, 2011 09:34 pmIt was Oscar's first birthday today. We gathered together some friends and family in the park at the end of the street and celebrated and took some photos. Here's a very short synopsis of the day:
( in three acts )It's been a pretty intense year for me with Oscar: assisting at his birth, toughing it through baby sleep cycles, figuring out travelling with him, — being off work to help care for him, seeing a lot of his firsts (or first-time-we-spotteds), starting to be able to do stuff that really counts as interactive play, jumping into balancing work and baby… he's a fast developing creature, so in some ways I'm figuring him out and in others he'll be a few steps ahead of me for some time to come.
Oscar's latest tricks have been dancing to music, backing up to and sitting down on raised things (like me) and going for light switches and the telephone in the kitchen — and in the case of light switches, turning to look and make sure the light has changed.
I think the next thing for Oscar will probably be the beginnings of words. Any guesses what his first recognizable ones will be?
Oscar Fan Club mini-gallery
Aug. 6th, 2011 10:27 amOscar has been enjoying his 20-year-old garage sale rocking horse:
Oscar is stepping along more or less until he spots something interesting on the ground or there's rough terrain (like a pillow). He's also figured out high fives and tent zippers!
It's been almost two months since I've written here, probably in part due to adding work back into my schedule. I still feel sort of freshly-back, too: summer at the office is always kind of unreal with so many people gone on vacation and most serious planning put off until the fall. This state of affairs is pretty good for the one project I'm on that hits high, sometimes-frantic production mode over the summer, though. I've been grinding out tables today from the pre-release test area to make sure nothing got damaged in transport; so far things are looking good.
With the emergence of Google+ and less time, I've been thinking a lot about which online services are the most fun and best to keep in a streamlined routine. Twitter is out for being too junk-foody for me, Google+ doesn't feel quite right (too much drag-and-drop and weird scrolling in addition to the real-name debacle), and Facebook, while still good for reaching people by name and maybe still good for inviatations (although who trusts "yes", let alone "maybe", to plan event head-counts), needs some tuning and trimming to make its good points outweigh its annoyances.
I like Dreamwidth and Livejournal more than my posting frequency would indicate, though!
Lunch break is over, and I'm back to turning the verification crank, but as I pop onto the Internet, I do think how I use it is going to evolve pretty fast in the coming months.
With the emergence of Google+ and less time, I've been thinking a lot about which online services are the most fun and best to keep in a streamlined routine. Twitter is out for being too junk-foody for me, Google+ doesn't feel quite right (too much drag-and-drop and weird scrolling in addition to the real-name debacle), and Facebook, while still good for reaching people by name and maybe still good for inviatations (although who trusts "yes", let alone "maybe", to plan event head-counts), needs some tuning and trimming to make its good points outweigh its annoyances.
I like Dreamwidth and Livejournal more than my posting frequency would indicate, though!
Lunch break is over, and I'm back to turning the verification crank, but as I pop onto the Internet, I do think how I use it is going to evolve pretty fast in the coming months.
random, metawidget, ![[livejournal.com profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
rottenfruit and sleepy baby Oscar are pulled over on the roadside in Renfrew for a routine-ish traffic stop. random has one of those fun Ontario graduated licenses that requires a fully-licensed driver in the front passenger seat (which happens to describe metawidget).
- Nice OPP officer
- I'm going to need to see your license, as the driver's license is a G1.
- metawidget
- (pulls out license) Here.
- Nice OPP officer
- Hey, that's a female's license!
- metawidget
- No, that's me with long hair.
- Nice OPP officer
- (blushes)
Things of late
Jun. 2nd, 2011 12:02 amThis post is in reverse-to-random chronological order.
First, some promised Oscar pictures:
This one is gracing my desktop at work.
Here's a recent indoor one. He needs only a little hand contact with something sort of stable to stay upright.
Date night!
Last night, fairestcat came by, loaded us and Oscar up in her car, drove us all to Zen Kitchen, let us out, and kept going. She, random and the other people at fannish night took care of him for the night while Elizabeth and I got to have a fantastic meal and some time to ourselves without checking baby position constantly or worrying he'd wake up. Toward midnight, we were starting to miss Oscar (or at least wanting to put him to bed and call it a night), but it was definitely refreshing. We should definitely do that sooner than the eight months it took us to get around to that.
Raven’s Knoll work
Raven's Knoll, the campground that hosts Kaleidoscope Gathering among other pagan and pagan-ish happenings, is kept running in part on volunteer labour. The three of us went up with random on the weekend. Moving and stacking wood and brush was the main activity for random and me, and Elizabeth took care of Oscar and helped out in the kitchen. Working out there was fun both for the satisfaction of working (and stacking wood with proper ends on the stack — thanks, Dad, for teaching me that!) and for the universally pleasant company of the other workers. I was quite happy to get a better sense of Brendan, who led things and is there full-time keeping the place running.
Mum Update
Thursday and Friday, we headed up to my parents' place to see my mum and give my parents an Oscar fix. Mum's looking great and despite being a little out of breath occasionally, had lots of energy. Oscar also got to meet Jeannie the cleaning lady, who I think has been looking forward to meeting Oscar for about eight months now :)
Back to work
I went back to work on Monday. It was a little surprising how quickly work felt sort of normal to me; I guess it hasn't been that long. Most of Monday was spent getting things re-activated and catching up on what I was supposed to start work on, and yesterday and today were pretty meeting-heavy, but there looks to be imminent actual work, and a variety of it, with clients that I either know I like or get a good vibe from. I feel like it'll take a couple of weeks to say hi to all the people that make up the complete work experience, and thus be completely back, but I'm feeling good about the transition so far.
Pixel Update
Pixel had her stitches out yesterday, and looks much less scary and a bit happier today. I think she lost some weight when she was stressed and not eating in the cone, but not a scary amount as the vet weighed her and didn't worry. She's got a vaccine booster appointment in a month, if she's still skinny then we'll see what else needs doing. She was a little grimy looking after the cone for a while, but she's groomed herself back to her usual elegant coat.
Pixel update
May. 21st, 2011 06:37 pmcon_girl and foms dropped by after cyclist-spotting today, and in addition to being good company on a lazy Saturday afternoon, I think it was con_girl that suggested that if anything would get a cat to drink fluids voluntarily, tuna water was a pretty reliable choice. Pixel snarfed it down in about 30 seconds, and ate some tuna as well, and is keeping it all down so far. Noisette got some of the leftovers, too. I hope a feeding or two like that, plus the freedom from the cone, will kick-start kitty systems and get us a smoothly-recovering cat.Pixel update
May. 21st, 2011 10:46 amPixel only seems to like treats at the moment, so she is getting mass quantities of them. Talked with the vet this morning: we're going to take off the cone collar and see if she's nice to her stitches; the collar may have been cramping her style enough that she went off food. We have a kitty buffet set out for her, and she's looking a little more interested in it. Also, I now have our vet's cell number if we need it.
Mum update
May. 20th, 2011 12:08 pmTalked to Mum this morning on the phone; she's been out surveying the garden for the first time since the surgery, and has her support network of CLSC nurse, friends and family swinging through to help out and take care of her and of home. She sounds a lot less tired than last time we talked, and pretty happy. Owen's planning on making it out on Monday, and I'm hoping to get out there before I go back to work at the end of the month.
Do not catch the sick baton, cat!
May. 19th, 2011 11:01 amSo, Pixel went in for corrective eyelid surgery on Tuesday to keep some ingrown hairs from scratching up her cornea. Since then, she hasn't been eating or drinking a whole lot. We've tried tempting her with wet food and cat treats, and she eats dainty little portions of those, and seems a little offended by the water bowl. She's acting a little extra-clingy and low energy, too, like sick cat.
A few more hours of this, and I guess it's time to call the vet.
I called Chantal around lunch, and she was just trying to find parking so she could give Mum a lift home. Seeing she was trying to find parking when I called, that's all I know for now, but I'm guessing it's part of good health news.
Mum update
May. 13th, 2011 08:35 pmI talked to Mum this morning, she's sounding a bit tired, but doing okay. She's had a transfusion due to some blood pressure issues, but is still in the step-down unit. If all goes well, she'll be in a more relaxed hospital room tonight or tomorrow, and home by sometime next week.
Bare-looking earth
May. 12th, 2011 05:55 pmLast week, I took some photos of our bare-looking but largely planted garden.
( here they are, with hoverable tool-tip things )Mum update
May. 9th, 2011 09:09 pmMy mum discovered she had angina late last week, and went into the hospital in Montreal on Thursday. We went down for Mother's Day in a hospital room on Sunday — she was pretty positive and still looked really healthy. They decided to keep her for bypass surgery, and today she had her surgery and is now in recovery, with my dad and sister keeping her company. The really scary stuff is past, and she should be out before next week.
