Dispatches from a happy Hullian

I've been carrying around a list in my head of things to do while I'm 32 years old; now I'm committing it to the Internet. I've seen bucket lists and life lists, but the time horizon doesn't speak to my procrastination-prone and tactical nature, and I of course see New Year's resolutions, but I think going by my years rather than calendar years is more personal, and protects me a little from the list elements being fresh when the invariable collapse of many resolutions happens in late January. Also, some elements of the list were really dear and salient to me in the summer, so it made sense to hang them on my birthday (even if it's taken months to post them here). So, here are the things I would like to do or improve significantly this year:

• Floss more days than not.
• Make a conscious and courageous-when-necessary effort to improve my relationships in ways that make me happy.
• Make deeper use of this journal, as part of trying to be less guarded with people that I trust.
• Wear through multiple massage bars.
• Get the deposit back on beer bottles at smaller intervals and more reliably.
• Wipe out the mortgage and direct the resulting savings to a mix of responsible and fun things.
• Replace the chain-link fence with a durable, attractive, Oscar-resistant one.
• Get a check-up this year and renew my vaccinations; it's been too long on both counts.

In general, I think I have more guiding values than long-term specific goals, but here are some things (somewhere between values and goals) on a longer time scale.

• Have fewer secrets.
• Be entrusted with more secrets.
• Raise competent, well-adjusted kids. Do so with good humour, love and trust in them.
• Make our house more comfortable, energy-efficient and adjusted to us.
• Take care of my body and try and make my list of aches and pains not increase monotonically.
• Get family doctors for all of us in the household.
• Continue to like my job, be good at it, and be worthy of the respect of my co-workers.
• Keep learning new things, and consolidate dabbling into competent in new areas from time to time.

So, 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 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.

It's been a little while since I've summarized what's up in point form.

commodorified is already jonesing for Oscar pictures, so here is a new one my mum sent me (from our visit this weekend):
( Oscar and his grandpa )

fuzzyila

1. What is your favourite vegetable? To grow, kale. To eat, asparagus.
2. What do you believe will be the most rewarding part of fatherhood? I'm sure my understanding of fatherhood will change drastically once I'm there, but from where I am now, watching our kid get good at things I've taught them, and branch off in new directions, will be pretty incredible.
3. When you're sick, do you prefer to be left alone or do you want company and babying? I prefer to be stoic and cocoon for the most part.
4. If you were in a museum and it caught fire, and you have the choice to save either a Van Gogh painting or a small yipping poodle with an overbite, which do you choose? I think I can run faster from the flames carrying a small poodle.
5. Have you ever stolen an object larger than your hand? What was it? When I've stolen things, they've been small, intangible and/or debatable.