Dylan Does Transatlanticism

Moving

2010-04-19T08:46:00.000-07:00

After 4 years and 250+ posts, I'm moving this blog to a new home: http://www.transatlantical.me. All of the existing content has been migrated, albeit with a few missing comments and a little odd formatting here and there. I hope you continue to follow my online musings.

Appreciate Technology

2010-04-12T11:44:00.000-07:00

This is really funny and of course thought-provoking.

Easy Rider

2010-04-11T10:38:00.000-07:00

Lyra and I went for our inaugural ride yesterday. I just got a new commuter bike so that I can put the iBert child seat on it rather than the fancy carbon fiber frame of my road bike. It's a forward facing one that does not have a trailer or other attachment so it's good for chatting with Lyra while we're tearing up the streets rather than constantly having to turn around to check on her. I think we'll actually get a trailer one day, but not just yet.

BUT FIRST...here's a gratuitous picture of Lyra doing her best impression of a fashionista. The shades are a birthday gift courtesy of Darin and Jonathan and Masha's first comment was a wistful "I wish they were my size".

From Drop Box

Back to cycling! You can see here how it straddles the cross bar, and it keeps out of the way of my knees too. The seat is actually attached to the handlebar stem so it rotates with the front wheel. We didn't actually go too far - just a couple of blocks - as we wanted to see how Lyra coped with the new thrill of two-wheeling it. She wasn't too sure, but eventually started pointing to things and loosening up a bit. Big plans for the future now!

From Drop Box

After a quick spin the inner tube on the new back exploded with a loud 'BANG!' so we ended our ride there. Typical of new bikes, they put the cheapest tubes and tires on it that they can get away with, but I replaced it immediately and as soon as the rains stops today we'll try again.

From Drop Box

Score one for precise and accurate language use

2010-04-09T09:26:00.000-07:00

I love xkcd. I'm pretty sure I've wanted to do that a million times. And don't even get me started on "like". It, like, drives me crazy with, like, frustration. It's like a totally lazy word.

Happy Birthday

2010-03-30T14:54:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday, Lyrusha

I can't quite believe I'm stuck in yet another Chicago airport delay for the big day, but there is literally nothing else on my mind other than you. Well, maybe your Mama, but that's a given :-)

Hello Mama

Hello world

Lyra, you're almost there

2010-03-27T01:43:00.000-07:00

Lyra turns one year old on Tuesday. I'm actually going to be out of town until late that night but I know I'll just have to wake her up and give her a big hug when I get home. This has been hands down the best year of my life, and I'm pretty sure the best year of Lyra's life too. Masha is a wonderful mama, and Lyra is a great little girl. We're all just so darn happy! The breakfast brunch for the grown ups is this next weekend - Babushka Luba will be present, and so will many of our friends who welcomed Lyra home to Duncan Street on her fifth day back from the hospital. Can hardly wait to show her off again.

Here she is with Mama looking for all the world like a little devochka ready for a glass of tea.

And here she is with papa enjoying the sun in Healdsburg up in Sonoma Valley.

Manic Street Preachers

2010-03-25T20:09:00.000-07:00

I just came across this while trolling through Spin Magazine's site for a while. What a great, great song. The lyrics are about as visceral as it gets for someone who has become a father within the last 12 months.

...and if you tolerate this then your children will be next

Apparently the Spanish Civil War was decidedly un-civil and the Manic Street Preachers had something to say on the topic.

Urban Rule #1

2010-03-18T05:01:00.000-07:00

You know you love city living when...

The car horn on your street starts honking at 4:00am and you simply mutter something bitchy then stick a pillow over your head and sleep some more

Of course, I then had dreams about monosyllabic, monotone camels for the rest of the night. Meaning they sounded just like car horns when they spoke to me. I guess I should have seen that one coming.

Doodle Maps

2010-03-13T06:16:00.000-08:00

This is a great series inspired by the visual style of a certain famous online mapping site. You can find more work on Christoph Niemann's website. These are my two favorites:

A perfect summary of life.

© Christoph Niemann
I think someone should have shown the three amigos (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld) this map a few years back.

© Christoph Niemann

The Good Life

2010-03-07T21:32:00.000-08:00

Well the San Francisco branch of the Thomas family took another step towards The Good life this weekend. Yes, your intrepid trio of sleepy father, down to earth Russian mama, and very cute but useless-with-a-garden-implement 11 month old girl decided to plant a vegetable patch.

In deference to long and surprisingly socialist stories about weekends at the dacha raising potatoes and beets from seed to vodka, the Thomas's constructed a vegetable box from rough hewn lumber (Home Depot store cut), good earth (Chicken shit manure and some organic mixer soil), and the sweat of our own brows (we're unfit so that equates to approximately 15 minute's work). To put it in much less poetic and pointed phraseology: we put some radish, carrot, and other mixed seeds in to some dirt this weekend. It was great fun to get dirty. Lyra was sleeping through most of it, but Masha and I already have plans to tell her how she was raised on purely home grown organics in the hippy dippy Bay Area. Totally untrue but the family legend has to start somewhere.

Of course, the birds in the area scented the freshly turned earth in short shrift and decided that it looked like a free meal. So I'm guessing that another part of the burgeoning legend will be our battles for the rodina [motherland] against the 'evil flocks' and 'wicked little birdies' who will attempt to kidnap out carrots in the seedling phase. Should be an interesting few months!

P.S. This should be in no way interpreted as a serious effort to raise foodstuffs from our back yard. For two reasons: (a) we'll probably forget to water it by next week and (b) the Dickerson's have already posted an impressive tally that we cannot hope to compete with. But we'll try anyway: it's personal this time, Bryan!

Almost 11 months ago...

2010-02-25T16:57:00.000-08:00

Almost eleven months ago a little girl made her first appearance. Now Lyra is a miniature person in her own right. She has opinions, she has preferences, and she just keeps on growing. Here are some recent highlights:

Her volume control now goes up to "11", not "10". You know how dogs respond to extremely high pitched sounds, as from a special whistle used by trainers? Well Lyra can now express herself to her parents in very much the same way: we just can't ignore it! Actually she is really trying hard to say words now and I had a bona fide conversation with her a couple of weeks ago. It was a very proud moment.
One-handed cruising. Lyrusha can now stand up and totter about the edge of objects like a coffee table using only one hand for balance. She also has bruises and cuts on her face from the learning process but it's astonishing how quickly she went from an inanimate lump of (admittedly very cute) baby fat to a lean mean cruising machine.
Two real teeth.
Absolutely gorgeous blue eyes. They're really quite piercing in person.
Two parents who truly cannot get enough of her. I was out of town a couple of times in the past few weeks and she literally changed between my departure and arrival back home a couple of days later.

So, my little girl, please keep on surprising us. I can only wonder what will happen before your first birthday :-)

The Annotated First Email

2010-02-02T20:58:00.000-08:00

A letter to the future Mrs. Thomas. This really brings back some great memories from the day after I first met Masha. I don't mind admitting that I was giddy. Of course I was playing it totally cool by waiting at least twelve whole hours before breaking down and sending the ‘can I see you again, can I see you again, please, please?’ email. And of course in her response she basically said ‘Will you marry me please?’. Well almost anyway, since she said "Yeah, OK". So I added the subtext [in brackets] to make my intentions clear.

Hey Maria,

I wanted to say thanks for an enjoyable evening. [Holy Cow! You're smoking hot] It was fun to chat with someone who has traveled as widely as you have [I'm foreign too], and to learn about Cooper, aggressive tennis coaches, and how it translates back to the work environment ("Sit! Stay!", "Attack the problem!", etc) [Here I'm proving that I listened attentively to your every word]. Oh, and thanks for adding to my arsenal of American phrases; I'd never heard the one about Fruit Loops before [Because it was a Russian mistranslation of a real phrase...it was so adorable how you flubbed it. I think I love you, or maybe that white wine spritzer went to my head]. I'll have to try that on my Mum when she comes to visit. [Or better yet, why don't you meet my Mum in person? She arriving in 6 week (actually happened!!!)]

Obviously I don't know what your take on the date was, but I would like to meet up again if you are interested [...in dating a stud]. Let me know either way and I'll (a) give you a call [if you know what I mean] or (b) vanish in a puff of smoke [and diss you on Match.com so you have to date me anyway given that nobody else will go near you] :-)

Look forward to hearing back from you. [Mrs. Thomas]

Dylan

I absolutely recommend meeting your next spouse (?!) online. Sure they may be, in the words of David Byrne, a Psycho Killer. But then again they may be the love of your life.

Tunes from 2009

2010-01-31T20:33:00.000-08:00

It’s been two years since I did a year end music compilation. I think I have enough good stuff saved up now to share some excellent tracks and maybe a new band or two (to you, at least). Also, rather than burn and ship CDs I'm doing the online thing; if you want the CD then download the tracks and burn them yourself.
You can listen to the entire playlist or download the individual tracks below. I encourage you to listen to it in the order that I’ve shown them.

Song	Artist	Album	Notes
Losing Touch	The Killers	Day & Age	Because it does’t suck :-)
The Way I Are	Timbaland	Shock Value	‘I ain’t got no money’ How could I not put this on the list? S.F. is expensive, but in 2009 I gained riches that I only dreamed of.
Growing Old Is Getting Old	Silversun Pickups	Swoon	I’ve loved these guys ever since I first saw them in Seattle. Their latest album is the best one yet. In fact, I listened to their older ones Pikul and Carnavas and it’s gratifying to hear marked improvements in the song writing and sound engineering over the past few years. And I get to see them live again in April 2010. Should be a great show; I'll be the annoying dude singing along to every single song.
Ode to LRC	Band of Horses	Cease to Begin	I honestly can’t remember the first time I heard this album but many of the songs are catchy as hell. I picked Ode to LRC just because I listened to it a bit more than others in 2009 but both of their albums are well worth a listen. I just wish they'd release a new one – it’s been a couple of years now!
Killer B	Low vs Diamond	Low vs Diamond	An old college buddy from the University of Reading told me about LvD during a Facebook exchange. I basically asked ‘what’s worth listening to these days?’ Tim (my buddy) has had excellent taste in music and while I have only stayed in touch with him on and off over the years, I bought the album based on his recommendation. It’s similar to Editors, Interpol, and a handful of other artists that I like so predictably I enjoy this too.
DLZ	TV On The Radio	Dear Science	In the true measure of a bleeding heart liberal, I caught wind of these guys on the NPR show Fresh Air. Masha and I subsequently saw them at Open Lands in Golden Gate Park. Very interesting mix of influences and a dark mood with a driving beat. Good for driving fast around a crowded city.
Map of the Problematique	Muse	Black Holes And Revelations	I’ll be seeing Muse as headliners to the same show where Silversun Pickups are opening. I'm torn on Muse: part of me loves the bombastic approach and crazy over the top guitar sound. But they’re also total Queen wannabees and it can be a little awkward at times just because they try so hard to be over the top. I’ve watched a few of their live show video and it does seem like a great time though. And if you have’nt seen the video to XXXXX then you owe it to yourself to do so. It’s hilarious.
Icky Thump	The White Stripes	Icky Thump Single	Jack White rocks. He is so freaking good at brutal, raw blues guitar that his whiny voice can be forgiven. He’s one of those play-until-his-fingers-bleed guys. Yes!
Blind	Hercules And Love Affair	Hercules And Love Affair	No idea who they are. Masha loves this song and I heard it enough times under duress that I actually started to hate it less. Then I sort of liked it. Then I actually played it when she was’t even around. And finally, it made the 2009 list. Sometimes repetition is the friend of music that you don’t quite get the first (or forty-first) time through.
When Your Minds Made Up	Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova with Marja Tuhkanen and Bertrand Galen	The Swell Season	You need to see the movie Once. I cannot stand musicals and musical films are almost as bad. But this is different. Watch it and you will understand why I can’t get enough of these duo.
Knocked Up	Kings Of Leon	Because Of The Times	Another one of those artists who I’m in two minds about. Of course they are the hot hot new thing, and that’s nice for them. But that generally just puts me in a contrary mood when it comes to the music. But I cannot argue with this track: nice rolling rhythm that matches the mood of the lyric perfectly. And the light wailing whistle in the background just sends a chill up my spine. Turns out these Southern boys can write!
Reckoner	Radiohead	In Rainbows	Yes, I’m one of those people who actually paid full price for the In Rainbows album even though you could name your own price on the Radiohead website. I like them that much. We saw them live at the inaugural 2008 Outside Lands show and in spite of two power outages they totally rocked the...er...field! Yes, Thom Yorke has the absolute weirest vocal style but he can actually sing when he wants to. And once in a while the mumbling fades in to intelligble lyrics. Whatever - I just love Radiohead.
Just Dance	Lady GaGa & Colby O’Donis	The Fame	Currently the oddest person in pop. These lyrics are like reading my brain during Masha's and my first six months in San Francisco. Obviously we had a totally irresponsible good time checking out the clubs, hot spots, and slightly wackier dives with the host-with-the-most Darin. And this song makes me smile for two reasons: I’m now a father who knows (ahem!) that swaying onto the dance floor comes second to crawling on the floor with Lyra, and that San Francisco is a totally f#@king amazing place to hang with friends.

Travel Food

2010-01-27T17:51:00.000-08:00

I'm in Oklahoma for the first time ever this week. So far Tulsa is not too shabby. Good hotel, nice client, surprisingly well appointed airport (which may turn out to be a really good thing if the ice storm hits that they say is heading this way).

I have had three meals here so far. The first was in the Embassy Suites and was an excellent filet mignon. The second was BBQ at Bill Sim's - tasted good going down but absolutely killed me all the way until morning. And I just got back from this place - the Stonehorse Cafe

View Larger Map

I had some good mussels in white wine and garlic. But the main event truly is worth mentioning: broiled pork belly in soft polenta with a lightly poached duck egg for extra creamy goodness. Wow! Definitely would recommend visiting the Stonehorse if you're ever in Tulsa, OK.

Happy New Year

2010-01-01T13:57:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year to you all. We just got back from Mexico (more on that later) to a big pile of mail with lots of Christmas cards and gifts in it. Thank you all for your generosity and for thinking of the San Francisco branch of the Thomas and Sumin family. I hope your 2010 is excellent. And now, more of the amazing Lyra as she turns 9 months and 1 day old.

Muse and SSP in one show

2009-12-17T13:33:00.000-08:00

Chris just hooked us up with tickets for Muse and Silver Sun Pickups in April. They're both playing in Oakland. I'm very, very excited about this since SSP are basically my favorite group at the moment. I know I sound like a 15 year old girl talking about the latest heart throb but I'm OK with it - they're that good! And Muse are pretty good live by all accounts: a little overblown and pretentious but that's acceptable in a rock band in ways that would be plain foolish for, say, a software engineer.

So roll on April. Can hardly wait. And thanks, Chris, for getting this organized. Who knows...we may even pay you back for the tickets if the show lives up to expectations

72 hours in Stockholm

2009-12-14T11:42:00.000-08:00

I'm cleaning out a bunch of receipts on my desk today so that I can get reimbursed for business trips. Mixed in with all of the car rentals, hotel summaries, and cab chits were these two receipts. Unlike many of the business items--Applebees in suburban D.C., anyone?!--these absolutely summarize my trip to Lola and Urban's wedding in Stockholm to perfection. 72 hours of absolute open ended fun and games in the capital, punctuated by the odd 20 minutes of calm. Seeing this made me smile and remember how much fun I had with a great group of people. And it also reminded me of gaining entry to the most exclusive night club in Sweden with Rick by using Masha's name. Either there's a very rich and shady character known to the doormen as "Maria Gennadyevna Sumina", or expensive hourly entertainment by the same name. Either way, we were on top of the world for about three hours after using the magic Russian name to get in. Turns out it was a pretty low key but hip young crowd. But the cool kids graciously permitted a couple of old geezers to hang. What a wonderful town and country.

The life of an immigrant

2009-12-08T15:29:00.000-08:00

I saw an article in the New York Times today about immigrants: Census Finds Increase in Foreign-born Workers. The thing that really caught my eye was the large percentage of U.S. residents who are foreign-born. That is, not just people who call themselves immigrants, but who were actually born outside the U.S.

Nearly one in six American workers is foreign-born, the highest proportion since the 1920s, according to a census analysis released Monday.

The article continues to talk about specific states where the numbers are even more surprising:

In 2007, immigrants accounted for more than one in four workers in California (35 percent), New York (27 percent), New Jersey (26 percent), and Nevada (25 percent).

Doesn’t that just blow your mind? Over one quarter of the people earning a wage in California were born somewhere other than the U.S. Wow. The Census has also remarked that second generation immigrants, i.e., little Lyra Sofia Thomas, are overwhelmingly more driven to succeed than their parents, as seen in higher levels of educational attainment and income. That means Lyra will get a Ph.D. and earn enough to keep Masha and I in the style to which we’ve become accustomed once we are too old to work. I am so looking forward to retirement now that the U.S. Census Bureau has confirmed that my child-related retirement plan is going to happen (with a 26 percent level of confidence...I knew there had to be a catch).

Babies: The Movie

2009-12-05T17:28:00.000-08:00

Charlene just sent this link to a movie that is coming out next year. It looks like an absolute riot. Masha said ‘we watch all these nature shows with cute little baby animals but we never really watch kids like that’. Well I guess now we can.

Milk

2009-12-05T08:41:00.000-08:00

Wonder food

I try not to go on ad nauseum about any of my crackpot ideas, especially if they are related to the enormously sensitive issue of how to raise a child. God knows we scored a 2 out of 10 last week while trying to have a nice dinner in Tucson: Lyra reduced us to quivering wrecks over the course of about 60 minutes. Poor little bugger was just so tired and since she can’t talk yet she used her wails of frustration instead. Let alone how to get them to crawl “on schedule”, how to expose them to all the right cultural influences from an early age, and what to feed them. So of course the purpose of this little diatribe is to share one of my ideas: milk is good for babies.

There, I said it. Take that you parenting magazines and overly opinionated Noe Valley mothers! I'm super happy that Lyra has grown up with real milk from her Mama; it appears to have given her everything she needed until she discovered pureed sweet potatoes. We were recently at a friend’s house in Tucson and ran out of the good stuff—breast milk, that is—so Lyra got her first taste of formula. She appeared to really enjoy it and it satisfied her hunger to the tune of a long and deep night’s sleep. It really got me thinking about the stuff we put in to our bodies, and I picked up a copy of Michael Pollan’s book In Defence of Food when at the book store after this little episode because I had heard it goes in to this topic in some detail. If you aren’t familiar with Pollan he is also the author of the wildly popular The Omnivore’s Dilema which apparently does for the food industry what Rachael Carson did for pesticides in The Silent Spring.

I'm on a plane right now as a write this and finally got around to starting In Defence of Food. Within the first few pages I'm already very interested in what Pollan has to say. The catch phrase “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly vegetables” kind of covers it, but then he starts to explain that “Eat food” really is a comment on the fact that much of what is in our grocery stores these days is not really food at all but engineered food like products. Enter milk. Here's where Pollan starts to describe how Nutritionism misses the mark:

Another potentially serious weakness of nutritionist ideology is that, focused so relentlessly as it is on the nutrients it can measure, it has trouble discerning qualitative distinctions among foods. So fish, beef, and chicken through the nutritionist’s lens become mere delivery systems for varying quantities of different fats and proteins and whatever other nutrients happen to be on their scope. Milk through this lens is reduced to a suspension of protein, lactose, fats, and calcium in wanter, when it is entirely possible that the benefits, or for that matter the hazards, of drinking milk owe to entirely other factors...or relationships between factors...that have been overlooked. Milk remains a food of humbling complexity, to judge by the long, sorry saga of efforts to simulate it. [emphasis added] The entire history of baby formula has been the history of one overlooked nutrient after another...and still to this day babies fed on the most nutritionally complete formula fail to do as well as babies fed human milk. Even more than margarine, infant formula stands as the ultimate test product of nutritionism and a fair index of its hubris.

Obviously there are many, many good reasons to use formula to feed a baby—inability to produce enough milk, allergic reactions to lactose, a busy mother’s work schedule—and I’m not nearly so naive to believe that formula is an evil forced on us by the ‘industrial food complex’. But it really does make me believe more firmly that we eat pretty well at the Thomas household. It turns out that the milk Lyra has grown up with so far and the excellent food that Masha cooks at home from simple ingredients like butter, peppers, olive oil, chicken thighs with the fatty skin still on them, and the ever present kartoshka, is the real thing: Food.

Diatribe over. If you somehow misinterpreted my thought here I'll make it easy for you. We eat food. Not too much. Plenty of potatoes and probably more meat than we should. And good old fashioned mother’s milk.

And now for something completely different

I'm randomly flipped on a sound on the iPod. I forgot how good R.E.M.'s Green album is. It's probably an indication of my musical selection that the random mix on the playlist has their Untitled song followed by Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down) by Nancy Sinatra, then Trust Me by Jesus Jones. Masha just reminded me that I once said ‘I'm culturally confused’. I think it is still true, and I like it

8 months and counting

2009-12-01T07:47:00.000-08:00

In the "not another baby video" category, here is Lyra celebrating her 8th month on the planet. The smile is amazing :-)

Because I can never remember The Hills

2009-11-21T17:46:00.000-08:00

Not the seven hills of Rome, or The Hills Have Eyes, or just plain The Hills. No, this is because when I'm driving around San Francisco I can never remember the name of any of the hills beyond the three I stare at all day: Twin Peaks, Bernal Heights, and Potrero Hill. So here is a nice map showing the various and sundry high elevation points in San Francisco (click on it for the hi-res version). The ridiculously steep hill that I know most intimately is not marked, but is known as "the block of Duncan between Sanchez and Noe". Now that's a steep freaking hill.

Autumn Christie

2009-11-21T00:13:00.000-08:00

My sister, Autumn, got her website up an running and is now officially open for perusal and business on the Internet. She took the long road to fine art by first studying art history, and is now making a living in London as a working artist. It's a pretty ballsy move—if that isn't just the most inappropriate turn of phrase to apply to fine art—to create art after having studied it in so much depth. In my own professional life I equate it to trying to write a search engine after having used Google for a few years. In other words it's a tall order. Luckily for Autumn she has the chops to pull it off. Here's a beautiful new piece called Expression of a Beach:

And here is one of my favorites. A quick glance at this piece shows a quirky and whimsical edge, but read the text on this enamel toilet bowl more closely and you'll see the dark side:

fat fat fat fat fat
stop eating!!!
stop breathing stop living
why don't I look like these women?
no one will have sex with me
no one will love me
I want to die...

So if you're in London in January head over to Hang Ups in St. John's Wood for a ganders. And bring your cheque books you rascals! This is family we're talking about.

And BTW - on a purely professional note I have to say that the web design is pleasing to the eye. A quick ganders at the HTML source reveals a couple of dodgy practices like using a table for layout, but I'm in a forgiving mood and the result is well worth it.

Lyra nears the 8 month mark

2009-11-20T17:38:00.000-08:00

Here she is—you’re favorite mini-half Russian. Looking absolutely gorgeous in pink cardigan and blue pant, she demonstrates her dexterity at the keyboard. She must take after her great grandfather Sidney Thomas the concert pianist. Well, assuming that he playing a piano that barked and squeaked.

Phone call home

2009-11-04T21:17:00.001-08:00

I'm in Washington D.C. all this week. The clocks went back but nobody told Lyra to sleep an extra hour, and then I got to go three hours in to the future the next day. Needless to say it's been a jarring experience. But the great thing about traveling now versus 5 years ago is that technology can make the distance seem a little less. I spent 10 minutes on the phone home with a wonderful view. No, not the Washington monument or the White House or anything else like that. I got to look at my little girl on her way to bed in her space pajamas. Thank you, Skype.

Variations on a theme. An orange theme

2009-11-01T20:06:00.000-08:00

In the popular vein of vegetable-oriented holidays, we celebrated Halloween with a pumpkin carving with Darin and Johnathan. Lyra was dressed as a dragon fly and Maria and I were dressed as tired parents, and we all had a great time. Lyra turned seven months old on the 30th so Masha uploaded a big pile of recent photos, including the aforementioned legume slashing. I really like the series of her sitting on the bed because we noticed that she looks exactly like every member of our respective families within the space of about 10 seconds (fast camera). More on the way once I get 2 months of videos off of the camcorder.

ABBA

2009-10-26T17:42:00.001-07:00

Lyra just discovered ABBA. Dancing around the bedroom to "S.O.S." and "Fernando". Next time I'll try to get a photo.

Pumpkin Sighting

2009-10-12T21:01:00.001-07:00

Masha, Anastasia, Lyra, and James went to Half Moon Bay today in hot pursuit of Haven. That could sound bad, except that Haven is a reporter for the Associated Press. When he’s not covering big stories like typhoons in the Pacific he gets to hang out at Pumpkin Weigh-Off competitions in California. In the admirable pursuit of 15 minutes of fame for our burgeoning media star, Masha got our baby dressed as a pumpkin and on TV for approximately 2 seconds.

And I must say, with her head in the 95 percentile, she pulls off that orange skullcap-cum-pumpkin top pretty nicely. If I know Lyra and her mama, she’s thinking “I bet they injected that pumpkin with water.”

Thanks Haven for making Masha’s year. You can check out the report on Yahoo!.

Pacific Baptism

2009-09-22T22:00:00.000-07:00

On Sunday we spent the day at Half Moon Bay south of San Francisco. It was a bit gray but being on the Pacific was great and we were with a lot of friends to celebrate Lyra's baptism in the Pacific Ocean. Polina and Darin fulfilled their roles as godparents admirably and there is more video of the actual event on the way. But for now, here is a quick tour of the group, beginning with Lyra. She is teething right now so you'll hear all kinds of variations on her name being spoken in an attempt to get her to smile. Lyrachka, Lyrusha, Lyrushnik, etc. But at least we can smile at the teddy bear jacket and the fun we had mixing mojitos and mimosas under the table out of sight of the park ranger. Thanks to everyone for celebrating with us.

Old School Music

2009-09-15T20:35:00.000-07:00

I just downloaded the latest version of iTunes on the Mac because it told me to. Honest! The computer just say I had updates. Anyway, I installed it and fired it up and was underwhelmed by the usual tweaks to the UI. White background instead of black. Yawn. But then I noticed the new Genius Mixes section. I've been enjoying Genius since they added it; basically it figures out what you've been listening to and makes suggested playlists using your other music. It's a nice way to revisiting tracks you haven't listened to in a while.

Anyway, so the Genius Mixes section is the next logical step whereby genres of music are collected. Check out iTunes first attempt at my genre-specific mixes:

It completely nails it. I keep making and remaking my classical playlist in particular but now I can just click "Play" on the classical list. Nice. Oh, and if you've wondering what the golf thing is with Moby and The Chemical Brothers, it's actually a hindi dance track that keeps getting misclassified. You almost had me there!

But what really caught my ear was hearing an Incubus song from years ago. I fell for the Apple grand marketing plan and clicked the little link next to the artist name. I thought it would should me all of the Incubus songs I own but actually it sent me to iTunes Store to buy more stuff. Being a proponent of economic stimulation for struggling companies in this economic downturn I downloaded Make Yourself and am currently reliving my past glories as a struggling GIS programmer-cum-guitar god. The songs Clean and The Warmth are particularly memorable. That guy can really play the guitar. Even if it turns out it gave him carpel tunnel syndrome. His use of dynamics is truly sublime.

So thank you Genius Mix and marketing folks at Apple. You just made my evening more pleasurable.

Coffee shops and etiquette

2009-09-07T14:59:00.000-07:00

I was working in a coffee shop last week just as the local middle school wrapped up for the day. I can categorically say that children and caffeine do not mix. God help me if there are puppies involved next time.

Five Months

2009-09-02T22:08:00.001-07:00

Little Lyra turned five months old over the weekend. She’s really looking more human now and less little-bundle-of-chubby. Well, I suppose it’s all relative but we are noticing huge differences. Skills and interests:

She can now just about sit up in a high chair at the dining table and she can giggle a little bit, and smile a lot.
She is also fascinated by faces: we took her to the zoo and she just looked at other kids!
Making Papa read Russian books very slowly
Making an amazing game out of putting trousers on in the morning.
Chewing her toy giraffe Sophie.
Sleeping quietly while Mama and Papa enjoy dinner in a restaurant.
Oh, and she just started teething! So drooling is a new “skill”

Her eyes are exactly the same color as Masha’s.

She is is definitely looking more like me on top (eyebrows, scowl!) and Masha on the bottom (cheeks, lips, smile). This photo was taken today in Anastasia and David’s garden with Khalima the nanny. The hat is not hers—I know because it’s not pink—but she’s stylin’ anyway.

Retro Hour

2009-09-01T22:45:00.000-07:00

I just reread this post from August 2006. Mentions a girl called Maria, $5 door for a country music club, and the unspoken undercurrent that I might be on to something good. Turns out I was right.

"Literally!"

Stockholm Photo Mania

2009-08-26T12:50:00.000-07:00

I'm waiting for the IT folks at work to get my PC running again so in the meantime I'm doing something useful: posting photos from Lola and Urban's wedding in Stockholm. I plan on writing a post about the event in the next day or so but suffice it to say that the couple looked great, were gracious hosts, and everyone I spoke to was a combination of one or more of the following:

hilarious
interesting
tipsy
dancing

Thank you for a memorable trip. I now I'm back in San Francisco having spent last night celebrating my second wedding anniversary with Masha and the surprisingly drooly Lyra

Stockholm or bust

2009-08-18T21:57:00.000-07:00

I'm having a hard time focusing on work or anything else right now because I'm leaving for Stockholm, Sweden, on Thursday morning for the wedding of the century. Well, my two weddings to Masha in 2007 were the weddings of the century, but you know what I mean :-) Lola and Urban are getting hitched after celebrating their nuptials in traditional Nigerian fashion a couple of months ago. Apparently Urban almost lost some fingers to a particularly aggressive ceiling fan but still managed to go through with the big event, and now he's back on his home turf to make an honest woman of Lola. Quite the challenge, I'm sure!

Jokes aside, I'm extremely excited about the whole trip. Not only will I get to see a small corner of Scandanavia for the first time, including a boat cruise and an ice vodka bar, but connecting with a big international crowd already gets my juices flowing. There's simply nothing like talking with people from different countries, different backgrounds, and different cultures to realize that we're all just the same. I'm sure I'll have some photos to share come Tuesday. And my girls will be spending the weekend in Seattle at Mary and Ted's wedding so it'll be a point of beginning for multiple families.

Speaking of which, Darin and Jonathan just got engaged as well. We just had a home cooked meal and several bottles of wine with the happy couple. The current plan appears to be Cape Cod in October 2010 but I'm sure there will be plans developing over the next months. The important thing is that they're committed and happy. Life is good.

Freaking politicians

2009-08-15T12:31:00.000-07:00

I swear I want to punch the next politician or less-that-upfront special interest group in the chops over the health care reform "debate". Why is it so hard to be honest about what each party wants from reform, or lack thereof? I am really sick of the state of the health care business in this country. I actually have what one would consider to be excellent health care coverage through my employer (thank you - I really do appreciate this benefit), and yet I have been out of pocket a couple of thousand dollars in the last 18 months alone. I don't mind paying my part...but I thought I already was paying my way in monthly insurance deductions, taxes up the wazoo, and co-pays for doctor visits. So the system doesn't work for me. I can wax poetic about how it doesn't work for the many uninsured, under-insured, and even fully insured people in this county but my real contribution to the debate would be my personal experience.

Playing off of this emotionally charged topic and the high stakes involved, various groups have really been muddying the waters with patently untrue "facts" about the proposed health care reform plan sponsored by the President and the Democratic majority in congress. It's absolutely scary to me that people would believe that "the Government" (big G) would have the power let alone the willingness to put old people out to pasture in a hospice to avoid providing them health care. And that's just the most recent ridiculous B.S. that I've heard on the news.

I'll say it publicly: I'm a proponent of a national health care system. Call me a leftist or socialist if it makes you feel superior to me, or that I'm just a bleeding heart liberal. But I've lived in a country that has such a system and have seen my father go through that system to the end of his life and my mother is still benefitting from the same. Is it perfect? Of course it isn't you freaking idiots!!!!! It's got government involved - which is a guarantee that it's less than 100% efficient. But you know what? At least the basic driver behind a nationalized health care system is actually health care and positive patient outcomes rather than making obscene profits at the expense of people's health. "What's wrong with making a little profit?" I hear you say. Nothing at all is my response. But when my taxes are through the roof to pay for the de facto health system of poor people, i.e., hospital emergency rooms that suffice in lieu of real patient care, and my own insurance plan premiums aren't enough to cover things, I can only surmise that one or both of the following are true: (i) either the health industry is trying to squeeze too much profit from it's users, and/or (ii) the health industry is about as disorganized, incompetent, and unable to provide a good level of service as a nationalized plan would be.

So why can I express myself in a few paragraphs in a truthful, fact-based, and honest way, but those dick heads in congress and the industry cannot do the same? Obviously because they are highly motivated by the need for change or a need to maintain the status quo. But you know what? You elected officials work for me, not the f'ing health care industry, so get a grip, quit spreading disinformation, and make a decision already.

Oh, and make sure the decision is for nationalized health care :-) Because I'm a bleeding heart socialist who actually has experience in both systems.

Public Transit

2009-08-11T13:12:00.001-07:00

I just got back from a pre-bid meeting at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. I looked up the directions on Google and realized it’s a pretty short drive. Then I clicked on the Public Transit option and saw these beautiful directions. I must say, I really do like living 2 blocks from the Muni J line. Two dollars covered it because they let you transfer back (return ticket) within 2 hours. And I got to read a book on the ride too. I wish more cities in the U.S. had a viable system like this.

Acrobat

2009-08-03T22:06:00.000-07:00

Cirque du Soleil has competition...from a four month old. That's right, little Lyrusha has been up to her antics again. This time she has completed her rigorous training regimen and shows off at around minute 6 of this thrilling performance.

The lucky streak continues

2009-07-26T21:57:00.000-07:00

Bryan did it again with another bicycle related hardware failure (look for Cycling). It's been a while since I saw a frame just break in two like that. Luckily he's OK, but I'd start to carry a big roll of the ultimate repair job miracle tape if I were him.

STP summary from Bryan

2009-07-15T22:13:00.001-07:00

Bryan just posted his thoughts on the STP ride as well, including some photos.

STP: The Lost Video

2009-07-14T22:46:00.000-07:00

Seattle to Portland - Poetry in Motion

2009-07-14T22:03:00.000-07:00

Or was that "potty in motion"? Judging by the digestive discombobulation caused by numerous peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, sport drinks, anti-chafing butt paste, and a healthy dose of multigrain sugar and salt snack bars, it's up for debate!

But, Dear Reader, you will be glad to hear that the STP ride ended in victory for We few, We Happy Few (thanks Shakespeare). Bryan, Greg, Elizabeth and your truly steamed across the Portland finish line with just enough time to dismantle our bikes for shipping and to catch a cab for dinner at the airport. Here are some highlights:

Dinner on Saturday night - Actually it was a total low point because it was so shitty. Imagine a pizza that tasted like flour and water with 2 pounds of cheap ass cheese and meat thrown on top. That was dinner. But then Bryan added his usual eloquence to the occasion after I finished up dinner with a double espresso: "It's like you blocked the pipes with cheese bricks then threw down a C4 charge of espresso. Look out bitches!" Needless to say it was rather crass, and absolutely accurate. Note to self: do not sleep in a gymnasium with 200 other people after ingesting large quantities of cheese and coffee. It could get embarrassing for eveyrone.

Bryan waking up at 11pm, freezing cold under the air conditioning, and seeing a guy in just a cycling bib (shorts with shoulder straps) lying next to him trying desperately to sleep. I was freezing my butt off as well: cold air, cold wooden floor, aching muscles, and there is this clown so dead tired that he simply laid down in the chilled air in sweaty cycling clothes. All I can think is that we was beyond exhausted and the simple act of laying down was luxury enough to him. And in case you were wondering, he was gone by the time we woke up

A cheeseburger with extra onions and a side of coffee at 7:00am on Sunday. Honestly I've been dreaming of that moment for 3 years since I did the last STP. There is something absolutely blissful about throwing junk food down the hatch and knowing that you've already paid for the calories. And a view of The World's Largest Egg to boot!

Endless (and I mean endless) miles of rolling Washington and Oregon countryside. I am already conditioned to the northern California climate and vegetation so it was a joy to mozy on through emerald green fields. The crazy freaky lightning storm of Sunday was a bit over the top, but if that's what it takes to make green, I'll suffer through it.

Massage at mile 175. Oh God! Jesus help me! Mary, Jehosophat, and Joshua preserve me!!!! Yep, it was that damned good. Let me tell you: getting a light leg massage after 175 miles of cycling is about as close to Heaven and, dare I say it publicly, the big "O", as you are likely to get legally AND in public. The lactic acid just evaporated and the IT band (still don't know what it is but apparently mine was in bad shape) was...I don't know...re-banded?! The best $25 I've ever spent. Including that time in Amsterdam when the cops found the...you get the picture. Cycling. Massage. Good.

Seeing Masha at the finish line. I've become such a homebody since little Lyrusha arrived. I can say unequivocally that seeing Mashenka and little Lyrushka at mile 208 in Portland was amazing. I was overjoyed at actually finishing the ride but honestly I was looking forward to giving them both a hug more than I was looking forward to stopping the pedal action. I was sore, gritty, maybe a little grumpy, desperate for a beer, but most of all I missed my family. And if you know Masha, you know there are some equally funny stories about her trek in "The Civic" from Seattle to Portland. But that's another story

Major props to Chris and Julie for putting us up. To Jeff for letting us crash at his place and helping Masha to strap the stuff to the roof. To Mary and Ted for the great reception (yes, I know that sounds self-centered but what the heck: it is all about me after all!). BTW - they're getting MARRIED! The rest of the Seattle gang for hanging. And to Greg and Elizabeth for dealing with the Thomas Family in all sorts of ways: that whole crazy granola hippie thing doesn't fool me for a minute! I love you guys.

And last but not least Bryan. I must admit, if my legs were as messed up as yours were I would I quite at mile 80 and whined until someone gave me a ride. But somehow you kept going for another 120 miles. You're a tough MOFO, my friend. Cannot wait until 2010 when we do it all over again. In France. On Alpe D'Huez

Sparkle

2009-07-09T13:13:00.000-07:00

Here is Lyra in repose on a bench in St Petersburg. She's wearing her favorite Sparkle shirt and showing her Mama some love.

Fear and Loathing...of Hills and Flat

2009-07-06T22:21:00.000-07:00

It's official: I'm worried about the Seattle to Portland ride on Saturday. To quote my riding partner Bryan in a conversation with Jeff, another partner in crime:

We'll be taking it nice and easy - I've done centuries before but never back to back and the wanker (Dylan) has been doing nothing over the last 2 weeks but smoking unfiltered Russian cigarettes and drinking vodka. So you'll be in good company!

Obviously I'm not in tip top condition. After 3 weeks of "enforced inactivity" I took the bike out for a quick post-vacation spin today. Twenty miles, nothing to it. Except it took me a freaking age and my average speed was 13.9 MPH. In case you don't know, that's pretty slow. At this rate each of the 100 mile days on STP will take 8.5 hours: that equates to a really sore ass. But on the positive side I can still crank up a hill (as long as the hill is about 5% grade and no longer that 100 meters) and cruise on a flat at 26 MPH (with a strong wind at my back). Still, both the hilly bits and the flat parts were both a struggle. I can't say I really enjoyed the ride one bit, but at least I felt better about deep drafts of red wine this evening to celebrate a birthday.

Actually I'm really looking forward to the event. I'll be posting photos of the ambulance ride or the finish line, depending on how my aging body copes with the abuse.

Perfect Russian Meal

2009-07-03T17:57:00.000-07:00

Here Gennady and I share the perfect Russian meal, prepared by Olga at enjoyed at the dacha. The whisky bottle contains an absolutely divine vodka, homemade in Ukraine from sugar beets and having a flowery taste. The dark bread is paired with salo that Gennady had salted himself. It is essentially smoked and lightly spiced fat that has been chilled and sliced. Finally, the borsch which is a sort of beet soup with meat in it, also made from scratch by Olga. The idea is to take a sip of vodka and follow it with the very fatty salo on bread, and then dig in to the soup. Repeat as often as necessary.

Needless to say, this lunch was followed by a deep and dreamless sleep. And if I was dreaming, it was probably about fields of sugar beets in Ukraine! My favorite meal in Russia.

Russian AND Orthodox

2009-07-03T13:54:00.000-07:00

Little Lyra just after being admitted, indoctrinated, and christened in to the Russian Orthodox church. Tons more photos of the trip to come but I would feel remiss if I didn't post at least one showing the rosy-cheeked star of the show with her very proud Mama. Lyra's official name in Russia is recorded in the church registry as Sofia Dominikevna Thomas. Some day she can come back to Sankt-Peterbourg and confirm that her parents forced her to dip her feet in a bath and have smelly oil dabs on her feet and knees. The next christening with the godparents Poli and Darin will be in the Pacific Ocean. And that, I can assure you, will be accompanied by some rather loud yelps of shock as the chilly waters are administered.

Date line: St Petersburg

2009-06-23T07:16:00.001-07:00

Privet! Just so you don't think I dropped off the face of the Earth, the San Francisco branch of the Thomas and Sumina family are currently in Sankt Peterbourg. Lot's of photos to follow but so far:

Peter and Paul Fortress

Summer solstice on Neva River - you would not believe how light the White Nights are unless you are living in Stockholm

Long weekend at Gennady's dacha eating beautiful food, playing guitars, and dressing in pirate hats

Major walks around the city to get little Lyrachka/Lyrusha/Poo-pushkin to sleep

Crazy good Russian soups

The occasional beer but still NOT ONE DROP of vodka -- update -- Masha just told me I was drinking copious amounts of vodka and bitter lemon at Poli and Jim's party. And yes, we had a babysitter, you judgemental buggers.

Still to come:

Symphony Thursday

Baby sitter and crazy night on the town Friday - time to beg cigarettes off of 15 year olds at 4am when unable to form a coherent sentence...wait...that was the last trip. We have a child now!

Boat ride

Another palace or two

Maybe a different dacha

As of today I'm officially on vacation too, so no more work for the rest of the trip. I can now completely empathize with Lola's working hours when 8 hours ahead of my home office time zone and 11 hours ahead of the Pacific.

Lola does it again

2009-06-07T13:42:00.000-07:00

Friend and work colleague Lola has just got another piece published. Congratulations, albeit for well deserved attention.

The cost of birthing a child

2009-06-07T13:10:00.000-07:00

Just to prove to Bryan that not every post here is a photo or video of Lyra, he's a scan of...ahem...the bill for Lyra's birth. Masha just walked in with her mouth hanging open absolutely amazed at the bill. Thank heavens we have good insurance through her employer ($100 for us), otherwise we'd be looking at $30,000.

Isn't that just the most ridiculous thing you ever heard? Thirty grand for two nights in a hospital. No caesarian. No emergency. One hour of the doctor's time. When I had my emergency appendix removal last year with two hours of surgery, 4 days in the hospital and constant checkups I think it was about $18,000. How does it cost so much to pop a baby out? Not to say it doesn't happen without effort, but surely most of the effort is on the part of the mother.

Makes you wonder about the health care system and what we're actually paying for.

Proud Papa

2009-06-01T21:41:00.000-07:00

It's been entirely too long since this page was graced with news of little Lyrushkin-kot. And yes, we actually call her that sometimes. Apparently it's a cross between koshkinkot ("kitty cat" in Russian) and Lyrushka ("little Lyra"). Very cute. Kind of weird. But better that Pupushkin. Which is a mix of Pushkin and Pooh (pre-Disney Pooh a la A.A. Milne that is).

So here are the latest shots culled from a collection of literally hundreds:

Lyra learns to smile:

Lyra takes a bath:

Lyra in Autumn's outfit. My sister sent a little shirt and trousers. The puffy sleeves are a big hit with "the girls". The crazy part is how big Lyra is now. Her lungs are well developed as well judging by the black rings under our eyes, but she's a sweetheart and we're still happy parents:

We've got some good smiling video on the way too.

Bay to Breakers

2009-05-19T13:22:00.001-07:00

A quick lunch time post to share video of our little family outing to Sausalito just north of the Golden Gate in Marin County, plus some footage of Bay to Breakers 2009. Obviously we took it very easy during the event since little Lyra was along for the ride, but it didn't stop it from being quite the people-watching opportunity. What a great city we live in :-)

It was hotter than hell so we canned the Snuggie Blanket Outfit theme and went with comfortable clothes instead. But Charlene didn't get the message until after she started sewing her outfit. Check out the blue garb she's wearing: that used to be a $16 blanket! Excellent job.

Birth of Venus, Redux

2009-05-08T20:13:00.000-07:00

Of course Boticelli had his version of the birth of Venus. All weird left shoulder, long neck, and fully grown. I prefer Lyra's version: popping up from a spray of pink roses and looking suitably enigmatic (or bewildered depending on your interpretation of her expression).

And then of course there is Lyra wearing the little pink dress that I bought her for Christmas while she was still in utero. She looked incredibly adorable.

In other news we took her to the U.S. passport office today and got her all signed up. She was the youngest applicant there, and next week we'll all get our Russian visas. Looking forward to the trip.

Political Thoughts

2009-05-08T08:07:00.001-07:00

I was just reading that bastion of sound journalism, Rolling Stone magazine, and came across a couple of paragraphs in Matt Taibbi’s story The Class Clowns (April 30th, 2009) that resonate. I’m a pretty liberal guy, but that doesn’t mean that I am without any worries over the massive federal spending to combat the recession. The one that really gets my goat is the auto company bailouts since it’s common knowledge among everyone except the people running GM, Chrysler, and to a less extent Ford that they’ve not built a car worth a damn for about 10 years. Good money after bad in my opinion. So while I’m not a Republican with a big ‘R’ or even a conservative with a small ‘c’ I like the fact that in politics you have to convince the other side that what you are doing with tax payer money is a good idea: it keeps the crookedest crooks out there honest to some degree.

And here’s where Taibbi’s writing made me chuckle, then made me sad. He has described how the Republican party has got a new change in the tax law pushed through to exempt couples getting up to $10M in inheritance from paying taxes on that money, then this:

Throughout the budget process, the pattern has repeated itself: The White House, with its telegenic president, asks for populist initiatives only to have congressional Democrats smother then with the pillow of bureaucratic wrangling. The Senate recently voted 94-3 to kill Obama’s proposal to reduce tax deductions for the rich, even though it would have raised $318 billion to pay for Obama’s health plan – which makes one wonder how serious the Democrats are about providing universal health care.

The vote serves as a reminder that the worst gridlock in Washington occurs not so much when the two parties loudly oppose each other in public but when they quietly agree behind the scenes. “It just makes me aware that Americans have to put pressure not only on Republicans but on congressional Democrats",” says Sanders.

The real tragedy is that, at such a desperate moment in our history, true conservatives have a vital role to play. Add together the bank bailouts, the stimulus package and the Obama budget, and what you get is a massive borrowing plan destined to impact the lives of every taxpayer for a generation. What the country needs from the opposition is an intellectually serious attempt to rein in unnecessary waste and spending. But the Republicans pissed away their credibility on fiscal conservatism over the past eight years and then monstrously compounded matters this year by leaning on their shovels and generally half-assing their way through the budget debate, saving the few bullets they had left for a fucking estate-tax exemption. Way to take your jobs seriously, you assholes. And you wonder why you lost the White House?

A bit crass, but I couldn’t agree more with the concern that we continue to throw truly astounding amounts of money at the problem (imagine if a company did this…Microsoft? Oracle? They’d be bankrupt in a month), and also the barely concealed disgust that the Republicans are in danger of becoming completely disengaged from meaningful discussions and instead falling back on the usual Washington bickering. Get a freaking clue, people!

STP training kicks up a notch

2009-05-02T18:07:00.000-07:00

Renee and I went for a good training ride for today in preparation for the 30th annual Seattle to Portland event in June. We got 62 miles in with a couple of short but good climbs. The real event was the rain though; having moving from Seattle over a year ago I almost forgot the added interest that a good downpour can lend to a bike ride. Nothing like the feeling that one has a couple of ounces of road dirt up your but crack! But in all honesty it was good to get wet - it reminded me how to dress appropriately for 55 F temperature and soaking. That data point will be handy when we head up for the ride itself. And yes, I really wish that I'd put my shoe covers on today. My feet were absolutely soaked after 8 miles.

You can find the Slacker Tracker here and notice that Elizabeth rated a 3,000ft climb as a 2 for difficulty while Greg said 3. I think all of that running is paying off! The basic idea is to cajole and embarrass us all in to doing at least a few training rides and it's working for me. I think I would have caved in and just lay in bed this morning if I didn't get cold sweats at the thought of a blank weekend on the scorecard.

No long a new born, not yet a toddler

2009-04-30T21:30:00.000-07:00

Lyra hit the 30 day mark today and we looked back at some old video of when she was 12 hours old for a comparison. Of course I use the word "old" in the sense that it's not from today or yesterday :-) She is officially no longer an new born and will be henceforth know as "the infant". Actually Masha wanted me to write "la femme infant" but I told her to get her own blog with suggestions like that. Jeez! So here is the little tyke at 12 hours followed by the most tranquil video you'll see this year. Yep, that's right, it's a baby post-feeding and pre-sleep. Just watching this takes the edge off even the craziest work day. Not to mention the amusement of seeing every possible human emotion cross our daughter's face in response to a single stimulus: gas.

Warning—This may once again bore the heck out of anyone who is not a grandparent, uncle, aunt, cousin, or second cousin. But it's still cute.

She is such a comedian

2009-04-29T17:50:00.001-07:00

Man oh man...all I did was let Lyra near the iMac and the next thing you know she's taking photos, making comic books, and reorganizing my music collection. I think that career as a cosmonaut is already in jeopardy. Look out Andy Warhol.

(click for a bigger version)

Lyra learns to look at stuff

2009-04-25T21:24:00.000-07:00

In yet another thrilling episode from the Life of Lyra, here is a collection of videos taken in the last couple of days to highlight her growing skills. She has now progressed beyond just pooping, burping, farting, crying and sleeping. Now she has added looking, grunting, recognizing her parents, and ignoring lions to her repertoire.

Warning: If you are not in the the family this may induce stupefying boredom and/or nausea. If you are in the family, prepare to be amazed!

Cycling with a Light Head

2009-04-18T14:22:00.001-07:00

After laying in bed too much with the chills and shakes the past couple of days, I really needed to get out and ride so I hit mostly the same route as last weekend. The difference being I knew where I was going this time:

Noe Valley to Hayes Valley via Valencia
Hayes to Haight-Ashbury via “the Wiggle” – yes, that’s the official name of the bike route there!
Down the panhandle of Golden Gate Park then around the northeastern corner to Fulton and Stanyan.
Up Arguella all the way through Presidio and on across Golden Gate Bridge.

The cool part is my innovative (!) use of patterned breathing (sometimes known by the name of the originated of the labor management approach Lamaze), i.e., counting my breaths. As you may recall from last week I got my ass kicked by the Marin Headlands (pictured) just north of the Golden Gate. It’s very steep climbing and barely a place to catch your breath, hence the lightheadedness. Actually I found all of the riding right up until I got to the base of the big hill pretty draining, particularly since there was think fog over the Golden Gate and I could feel my nipples about to freeze off!

But as soon as the serious uphill started I religiously counted slowly from 1 to 10 and breathed a regular breath in between each number. Couple that with a fixed start at the road a safe 10 yards in front of me the entire way up, and not even a ripping wind around the corners could stop me. I can’t say that I exactly flew up the headlands but I was pleasantly surprised with how good I felt at the top. Usually I want to puke, this time I was just knackered and I think that is called progress. Thank you labor training! Thank you to the numbers one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine and ten! I love every one of you.

Just to mix things up I went home a different route back through the old neighborhood and what do you know? A baseball game, so the traffic was really heavy which turns out to be the safest kind of traffic in S.F. because nobody is driving fast.

My only complaint – I was slow as heck. A measly 13.1 mph average speed. I absolutely need to work on that.

Time: 2 hours 5 minutes
Avg: 13.1 mph
Max: 37.4 mph – downhill at the Headlands. Yeeeeeehaaaaa!
Distance: 27.3 miles – kind of a short ride but I console myself with the fact that a good portion of it was ridiculously hilly

On Visualization

2009-04-18T09:12:00.001-07:00

I'm rereading Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman by James Gleick this week. Incidentally he’s written another one of my favorite books, Chaos: Making a New Science which was originally written in 1988 and just republished last year. If you enjoy popular science writing Chaos is a great read. Anyway, back to Genius.

One of the things I frequently find myself doing when I’m at the early stages of a software development project is staring at the wall for an hour at a time. Literally an hour plus. I read up on the “literature” which entails a ton of blog posts, maybe some best practices described by the software vendor or open source folks that who’s package I’m using, and then talking with my colleagues. After that research I try to internalize what goals the software has to achieve and then the wall-staring begins. If I were to try to describe what I “see”, it’s like a collection of boxes of different colors floating around and forming connections with each other. The connections have different thicknesses and sort of pulsate with light when I feel there’s a good link between two things, or when there are signals or messages between them. Finally, as things settle down and I get closer to a starting point (where I could write a little code) the boxes start to crystallize like the water-to-ice phase transition and a more rigid structure emerges. And then I crack open my coding tool and start typing frantically before I forget what I just thought out…only to discover it was crap and I begin the process again but with a slightly different set of beginning assumptions.

Can you believe what I do for a living? :-)

Anyway, I am always interested to hear how other people deal with this visualization issue for things that don’t really have a physical, visual representation. This morning I re-read a great quotation of Feynman, the Nobel winning theoretical physicist and bongo drum player as he attempts to describe his approach to visualizing the impossible:

“What I am really trying to do is being birth to clarity, which is really a half-assedly thought-out pictorial semi-vision thing. I would see the jiggle-jiggle or the wiggle of the path. Even now when I talk about the influence functional, I see the coupling and I take this turn—like as if there was a big bag of stuff—and try to collect it away and to push it. It’s all visual. It’s hard to explain.”

Chaos, p 244

Isn’t that just the best description ever of a visual thought process? It completely captures the indescribable nature of how we intuitive think about complex processes that really are difficult to describe. For a physicist it’s the way that you think about E- and B-fields and electron paths; for software developers it’s the admittedly much easier design process. The end result is something concrete: a set of equations or a class diagram which are blueprints for reproducing what’s going on inside our heads. But what I love about it is the leveling of the playing field because I think all of us go through the visualization process when we’re working on something that is hard to put down on paper until we have the final answer.

The Cavalry is Coming!

2009-04-17T14:49:00.001-07:00

And by cavalry I mean relief in the shape of Babushka Luba (emphasis on the Ba-, not the -bushka for you non-Russian speakers). Luba arrived from Seattle yesterday and has already proved to be an authority on swaddling, gas, and disbelief at me putting Lyra on the kitchen table during bath time ("It's so cold!"). We're glad to have her here for the week.

Outside Lands 2009

2009-04-16T20:53:00.000-07:00

Outside Lands is coming back to Golden Gate Park this year. Last year we saw a few bands including Beck (sort of lame actually) and the ever-amazing Radiohead. So now I'm completely thrilled that the Silversun Pickups, Band of Horses, and Mars Volta are on the lineup in August. Speaking of which, SSP just released their third studio album this week. If you get a chance, check out The Royal We, Sort Of, and Panic Switch for some fuzzy, hard rocking, alternative SoCal tunes. Absolutely worth the $3 it'll cost you on iTunes or Amazon. Or you can head over to their MySpace page for a teaser.

Gratuitous Baby Photos

2009-04-16T20:34:00.000-07:00

In direct response to Amy's specious remarks, here are some recent pictures of Lyra. Lack of photos is directly proportional to lack of sleep! Hopefully I'll have time to post more now that Бабушка Люба is in town.

Oh, and this is Amy with Masha on a very long night one New Year's Eve - see what happens when you give me grief? That's right, young lady: you turn mostly blue!

And now my sides hurt from laughing

2009-04-11T15:53:00.000-07:00

My sister just sent me a clever advertisement for condoms. Don't worry, it's not skanky, but it is really funny. Check it out:

It's uphill all the way

2009-04-11T15:01:00.000-07:00

Oh boy is this new neighborhood hilly! I am trying to get at least one good bike ride in each week in preparation for the Seattle to Portland ride in July and rather than be a wuss and drive to the start of a ride on some flatter terrain, I decided to be a man and start from home. On a big hill. With a single bottle of water.

2 hours and a measly 25 miles later I feel like I've been dehydrated like freeze-dried coffee and had my legs whacked with rubber bats until I can't feel them...and I'm not even going to describe what's going on inside my shorts apart from one word: chafing. As a frequent cyclist I know that undulations in the terrain that you don't notice in a car are most certainly noticeable on a bicycle. What is pretty obvious but easy for forget until you're in the thick of it is what the big hills are like; the hills you see in cute photos of with cable cars and tourists smiling. Turns out if you drive on a hill that crests so abruptly that you cannot see over the hood of the car, the chances are it will just about burst your heart on a bicycle. If you drive on a hill so steep that your gas gauge says empty on the uphill and 3/4 full on the downhill, chances are you will sincerely regret thinking you have a bicycle gear easy enough to tackle it.

And guess what? I'm completely exhilarated by having made it through the ride, apart from the aforementioned chafing. Starting in the Noe Valley neighborhood I headed north through Duboce Park, the Haight, then up to Presidio. After a really nice rolling section through the old military base, I popped across a really windy Golden Gate Bridge and thence up Marin Headlands. Honestly I almost turned around on the Headlands because it is balls-to-the-wall uphill for a good couple of miles. But a poxy mountain biker threatened to pass me and that steeled my resolve; in fact I fell back upon my recently discovered ability to county slowly and steadily from 1 to 10 while breathing deeply and it kept me oxygenated and focused (yes, Masha, that's our birthing training kicking in). Of course the best part of the whole ride was tearing back down that hill at 35 mph and scaring the shit out of tourists on the way. Hee hee.

I must say, though, that the 35 mph days were short lived (5 minutes maybe). The remainder of the ride was quite hard because I still don't know the neighborhoods that well. Just check out the map to see my local area. Obviously one wrong turn can mean a very steep climb or the false sense of security of a nice downhill...followed by the payback of a steep climb on the next block.

In closing: Bryan and Jeff, you'd better bring you A-game to Seattle because I'm on fire! No wait, that's just the burning in my bike shorts. I think what I really mean is, I'm really enjoying the training rides and am going to kick San Francisco's ass in the hill department before I'm done.

In which Dylan is out-disdained by a dog

2009-04-08T10:33:00.001-07:00

This is such a funny photo of Cooper and me. He’s obviously thinking “I pity you and your miniscule brain and feeble attempts at playing mind games with a Whippet!”

Can anyone guess what I’m thinking? :-)

Bobble head

2009-04-07T18:49:00.000-07:00

We're having real fun watching the development of the neck muscles. In fact, we learned yesterday that a rigorous program of training is required if the baby is ever going to be able to look around like a normal person. Well, that may be overstating the advice just a tad but we're attacking the training with our usual gusto. Which is to say, the next thing we'll have Lyra doing is cosmonaut training:

The many expressions of Lyra

2009-04-02T20:17:00.000-07:00

Here is a series of shots on our new Nikon D60 - we can take a large number of pictures in quick succession. This feature was designed purely to capture the ridiculously cute shifting sands that are a baby's expressions. They're funny as heck:

And for the first live action footage check out the BabyCam™ (my birthday present). She's not really too exciting and interactive but you get to see a sleepy baby being rudely awoken by her parents:

Hello World!

2009-03-31T19:23:00.001-07:00

Maria has given birth to a gorgeous baby girl named Lyra Sofia Thomas. She was delivered at 8:04pm on March 30th in San Francisco. Here we are on day one of the grand adventure:

Masha is doing well but as I’m sure all of you ladies out there can attest, things are going to be sore “down south” for a while. She put in a solid 18 hours of labor including a knotted umbilical cord, which was also wrapped around little Lyrachka’s neck (and arm!). Basically she’s a star. I don’t mind admitting having a few tears in my eyes as I held my daughter for the first time. No matter how many times Bryan, Scott, Chris, Dominik and others tried to explain it to me I now understand why I didn’t get it: you cannot describe instant and unadulterated love, you have to experience it.

What’s in a name?

Lyra? Really? Lyra?! Yep. It’s Greek for lyre player – a lyre being the harp-like musical instrument and is the name of a constellation. You pronounce it “lie-ruh”. It isn’t a family name but many months ago we just both decided we liked it for no good reason. Well, actually it’s short to stitch and write in to all those school clothes, but honestly that had nothing to do with our choice (honest!). It’s kind of hard to say in Russian (because “y” is more of an “ee” or “oo” sound) so the middle name Sofia is a nice second name that will actually be useful when the eastern Europeans meet her.

More to Come

At the risk of sounding patently obvious, we have plenty more in the audio visual department to share but we’re focusing on our new parenting skills first (turns out I can swaddle like an S.O.B., and diaper like a demon). Thank you so much for all the kind words via phone, email, voicemail, and Face Book. It’s been great to hear from you all and we’ll be in touch just as soon as we get home from the hospital which should hopefully be tomorrow.

What are we doing Monday? Nothing…except having a baby.

2009-03-27T13:12:00.001-07:00

After a couple of visits to the doctor this week the decision was finally made to help move things along a bit for the mama’s sake. The baby is doing absolutely fine and Masha is too, but close monitoring reveals Maria's high blood pressure and that she’s “ready to pop” (that’s a technical term) and waiting is not going to help anyone.

I’ll drop her off at the hospital on Sunday night to get the ball rolling, then I get to come home and get a good nights rest (literally on the orders of the doctor…although I may crash at Brian & Mariana’s new pad and have a glass of wine to cool my nerves). So if everything proceeds according to plan, we’ll be sharing some photos on Monday or Tuesday. Now of course we’re just worried that the poor girl is going to have Masha’s cheeks and my nose.

New Digs, Older Dylan

2009-03-22T19:01:00.001-07:00

Housing Update

Now that we’ve settled in a bit I wanted to post a couple of pictures that Masha took over the past couple of weeks. We live a block off of Noe Street in the Noe Valley (“No-ee”, not “No”) neighborhood, which is also called Stroller Valley for the vast number of little rug rats in the area. First off, here’s a view to the southeast in which you can see Bernal Heights:

It’s definitely urban still, but a lot less busy than our old place by the AT&T baseball stadium. And to give you an idea of how steep the hill is, check these two shots out:

We have just about finished unpacked boxes and this weekend moved on to assembling baby stuff. The crib was done a couple of weeks ago but I discovered the joy’s of car seat installation, and the baby stroller “user manual”. Who knew it could be so difficult figuring out how to attach the wheels, let alone strap a kid in! But we’re thoroughly enjoying the new place. It’s just great to have a real house; in particular the kitchen is making us feel like we’re on a permanent vacation. Lots of room to sit at the (very) retro table and drink tea and eat bread and cheese for lunch. Nice!

A Year Older

Mrs. T also arranged a really fun birthday party. I think the real reason was to get me to clear up moving materials and unpack boxes, but still it was great to see the usual gang around for many glasses of wine, beer, and vodka. Heck, I even got to wear a crown and not be ridiculed for it (to my face). On Dickerson’s recommendation I got a nifty little device called a Roku to sit in the living room – it streams radio and music files from our various and sundry computers and then pipes them in to our speakers. Essentially a way for all of our media files to magically be available in the living room. I’m in love with it :) Masha also got “Dad” an idiot proof digital video recorder so that I can capture every second of the baby’s progress through life. Of course, being an “idiot”, I managed to screw up charging the battery so she sent me out to buy a backup one just in case I am in danger of missing any moments of the first few days. Anyway, thanks to everyone who showed and reminded me that I can still party like it’s 1999…literally!

But the real piece de resistance was the special activity planned for Sunday morning. We went to a drizzly Golden Gate Park and got a private archery lesson. It was hands down the best birthday gift ever – in fact we both really enjoyed it. Turns out GG Park has the largest public outdoor archery range in the state (and one of the biggest in the country). We weren’t exactly on the long range setting, but eventually worked our way up to…ahem…about 50 paces away! But what a great time. We are definitely going to be doing that again.

Apart from all that fun, we’re basically in a holding pattern. The baby continues to kick her mum in the guts about once every couple of minutes, and I continue to read all kinds of “what to do with a baby once you leave the hospital” books and pamphlets, i.e., we’re never going to be ready, but we’re excited and nervous.

Painting and training and moving, oh my!

2009-02-26T22:24:00.001-08:00

We have a new place to settle in to next week: moving to a house in Noe Valley on a rather steep hill in San Francisco. After looking around at what our money could buy in the city we decided to hold off for a couple of years and squirrel away a down payment for something nice. The interim plan is the rental. And can you believe it; after 5 years of living at most in a 1 bedroom apartment and occasionally in much tighter circumstances (loft, basement “apartment”) we will actually be in a real house with a back yard, an office, a garage, and two whole bedrooms. We’re positively giddy with anticipation of having real doors between separate rooms and a place to park both cars without having to fight the parking tickets once a week. Heaven has found a place on earth on Duncan & Sanchez!

View Larger Map

And yes it’s steep! Walking two blocks to the light rail is a piece of cake. Walking back is a whole different story. I think we’re both terrified that the baby stroller will run away from us.

Painting

So the first order of business in this 1950’s house was a thorough paint job. I enjoy interior painting, which is surprising since I’d rather nail my hand to a wall than do other home improvement like kitchen installation or tiling. Masha picked out some very nice colors after consulting with the future godparents Darin “Queer Eye' Morgan and Polina “Jack’s marrying our daughter” Sakrison on color combinations. I spent the past couple of weekend and few evenings getting the paint on the walls and it looks phenomenal. Really please.

Until Masha came around with the gang on Sunday morning and saw the gorgeous baby yellow paint on the walls…in the wrong freaking room! Aaaarrrrgggh! But actually it looks good in the master bedroom as well so not all is lost. I just had to repeat “Lacy Yellow” in the real baby room.

Training

And tonight we got 3 hours of training on how to deal with a new born child. I can swaddle like a mofo now. I can diaper. I can put clothes on. Caveat: this all applies if the baby in question is plastic, doesn’t move, doesn’t poop, doesn’t cry, and doesn’t complain if fingers are broken in the process. So we’re feeling pretty good basically. Now if everyone would just quit telling us how miserably tired we’re going to be for the first 4 weeks; we get it, we’re going to look like shit, probably smell bad, be eating terribly, and totally engrossed with “the wriggler”.

Just do me a favor: if you are in town while we’re in this phase, feel free to drop by with a prepared dinner, and a big freaking cafe Americano. And pretend you’re just as interested in the baby.

Oh, by the way, Masha is really getting a big tummy these days. She’s tired, eating cheese and blackberry jam sandwiches, but looks phenomenally healthy and still has her sense of humor. What a marvel :-)

I <3 Daddy

2009-02-04T20:59:00.000-08:00

Thanks to the Cattran's for a package of cute little girl clothing. My particular favorite is a one piece than proclaims which is the best parent.

From Blogger Pictures

I can speak Русский

2009-01-31T15:56:00.001-08:00

I just made an amazing discovery. Or at least found a feature in Google Talk that is going to be very handy indeed: the translation robot. You can add an automated contact to your Google Talk account that responds to your typed messages with your text translated in to a different language. One of those languages just so happens to be Russian so now if I need to know how to ask:

When is dinner, Masha? And why aren’t my shirts ironed yet, woman?

I can ask her in Russian after communing the with the magic Google bot:

Когда ужин, Маша? А почему бы не мои рубашки устранены еще, женщина?

Jokes aside, it’s a very powerful concept. I’m going to be “learning” Spanish next so that I can bargain for cheaper tamales in the Mission neighborhood. Well, as long as I’m sitting in front of my computer while I’m doing it, that is.

Wow. Instant Feedback

Of course Masha just said this:

“Well, I understand the part about dinner, but the rest of it makes absolutely no sense. I mean, I can comprehend what you are trying to say, but really…”

I think she just doesn’t want to do any ironing.

Big changes, they are a’comin’

2009-01-28T21:16:00.001-08:00

It’s been quite a thrilling week for the burgeoning Thomas family. Well I suppose if you ask my ancestrally inclined Aunt Joyce there are probably good things happening to a related Thomas (or Fetterley or Vivian or…) somewhere in the world pretty much any day of the week. But for now let’s narrow our scope to the San Franciscan Thomas branch, a.k.a. me and моя жена. I give you:

Exhibit A—A bloody great kick in the ribs from our ever-growing daughter. Masha still looks amazing (check these out and tell me I’m wrong, I dare you) but the young’un is definitely making her presence known. The doctor says that her head it in Masha’s…well, pointing down, and that her feet are firmly in the the ribcage. Sounds pretty gosh darn uncomfortable if you ask me. But it means there’s more room in my tummy for apply crumble so I’d better keep my yap shut.

Exhibit B—A real live person not only made an offer on our place in Seattle but appears to be serious about following through on the deal as well. That’s right, in the shittiest economy this side of 1939 we actually might be selling the condo. Of course it’s a little lower than it was originally listed for but we’ll still be making a little bit vs. loosing our shirts. It remains to be seen what the results of the house inspection are, but unless they find the dead body stuffed next to the water heater (dammit—I’ve got to remember to just think that, not say it!) I think we are home free. The relief is palpable.

Exhibit C—Going on some house tours of Friday with our realtor. If anyone tells you that house prices are coming down, then they should look at San Francisco. Sure they’re coming down: from the ionosphere in to the troposphere. In other words they’re still sky high however you want to slice the numbers. We’ve seen some absolutely shit for $600,000, but we’ve also seen some great stuff too so I’m hopeful that we’ll be on the move soon. If not we’ll just have to share our single room dwelling space with a ~~noisy~~ sweet little baby. Not. Going. To. Happen. So we’ll be moving soon :)

There you have it; all sorts of happenings. Oh, and the baby shower is this weekend. Thankfully Darin is having an “after-shower-party” that involves no food, plenty of booze, and probably a nightclub or two. Yay, Darin!

Sound advice from out former Soviet friends

2009-01-28T21:07:00.001-08:00

I was looking for some good Russian art this evening and discovered this wonderful public health poster from 1940:

And I quote:

“Our children must not have diarrhea!”

I was just excited that I recognized one word in the text! There is a great blog dedicated to Soviet posters that I shall be subscribing to for more of these great images.

“Your sphincter?!”

2009-01-17T08:26:00.001-08:00

My mother-in-law is visiting from Seattle this weekend. We were just joking about the cover story on our newly arrived first issue of Parenting magazine that says: “Make Peace with the In-Laws”. The joke is that there’s nothing for us to figure out: Luba is a great lady with, as we will find out, a great command of the English language.

Masha was just saying that she had bad [pregnancy related] heartburn last night and had to sleep propped up on her back. Luba piped up with the description in her accented English:

“It’s because the diaphragm is moving at the same time your sphincter is opening.” I about snorted my coffee through my nose I was laughing so hard.

Insert bellyaching laughter her between us all

Dylan: “I don’t know how many assholes people have in Russia but I’m pretty sure I’ve only got the one!”

Luba: “No, no, it’s the muscle above the stomach.”

Of course I failed to let you know that since moving to America 5 years ago Luba put herself through college and is now a qualified medical translator for a host of Ukranian and Russian clients at the hospitals in Seattle. So she doesn’t just speak good English, she really knows medical terms inside and out. What was I thinking even questioning her!?

So of course I checked the MediPrimer web site and sure enough I do have at least two sphincters. The one in my bum, and the Lower Esophageal Sphincter (LES):

Heartburn occurs due to relaxation of the Lower Esophageal Sphincter (LES) muscle allowing stomach acid to come back up the esophagus. There are several causes of heartburn / acid reflux. There are several that are the most frequent causes of heartburn. Finding out what these are can help you make changes in your lifestyle and habit so you can prevent the acid reflux from happening.

But at least I still only have one asshole. That’s a relief to discover.

This is the stuff that keeps me going

2009-01-14T22:10:00.001-08:00

I absolutely love this piece and it just popped up on my listen-while-I-work station on Pandora:

Concerto No. 5 in E-flat Major for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 73 "Emperor"/II. Adagio un poco moto

Believe it or not I first heard it on the soundtrack to Immortal Beloved but have since come to appreciate it way more than a bit of background music to Gary Oldman doing his best Beethoven impression.

Sounds for the Week

2009-01-14T17:59:00.001-08:00

Been listening to some new music this week and some way old tunes. But first, the big announcement that new content on iTunes will be DRM free, plus a little cheaper. That’s good news: I have basically given up on iTunes entirely having instead found music on iTunes and then switching to Amazon.com for cheaper and DRM-free versions of the same items. So I guess now I can still comparison shop but go with iTunes as an easier option if the price is right.

The Killers – Day & Age

I was actually prepared to give this a quick listen with low expectations after hearing the shit that was Sam’s Town. After their stunningly good debut with tracks like Mr. Brightside and On Top I figured they were one of those bands that would produce a great first album and then run out of things to say. Day & Age dispels that concern with quite a variety of sounds. From the horn section on the opener to the soul (yes, soul) feel on many of the other songs it’s obviously a departure. Of course it all starts to sound the same but that’s what makes it such a good album for working to – it’s predictably in a positive way.

TV On The Radio – Dear Science

I don’t know where I’ve been for the past couple of years that I missed these guys but you have to buy this album. That’s right, I did it…I put part of a sentence in bold text to grab your attention because I mean it. From the geeky white dude who writes many of their lyrics to the black guys who make up the rest of the band, their sounds is really unique. You can of course detect the whole pantheon of influences but the result is uncanny in sounding not much like anything else…except for maybe a post-punk James Brown with a tinge of Bloc Party on the vocal side (although without the screeching). For me that absolute stand out track is DLZ. It’s one of those songs that you couldn’t sign to someone as in “it goes like this: whistle, hum, hum” but it’s unmistakable. You can check out most of the album for free at their My Space site.

That’s It?

Yep, I don’t have time for too much flowery rhetoric to spare these days. My mind is full of T-SQL and C# to have big words rattling around in there. On the bright side, I get to try my hand at Java for the first time starting in a week or two. And a project in Los Angeles…I’d better start trying to buff up my body and slathering on the fake tan so that I fit in to some degree.

P.S.

The “old stuff” I was referring to is the superduper album Disintegration by The Cure. That is undeniably a classic album.

Diversions are saving my sanity

2009-01-12T21:03:00.001-08:00

I’m going absolutely f#@king nuts right now looking at some work stuff. Don’t get me wrong, it’s definitely a mental challenge which beats the pants off of mindless boredom but Jesus, a little break would be nice. I sat in front of my computer screen for about 3 hours today and typed maybe 20 lines of “stuff”. That’s indicative of some serious thought going on. Why am I boring you with this drivel when you could be spanking the monkey?

Well I found a diversion of course (and no it does not involve choking the chicken!): World of Goo. For exactly $20.00 I have this absolutely awesome time waster of a game. On the face of it we have a kids game involving little balls off goo that you can connect with gelatinous strands of, well, more goo. But the fun most certainly does not stop there. You see, these two genius independent game developers (who happen to work out of a San Francisco coffee shop among other places) have captured the basics of real world physics in the World of Goo. You’ve got gravity, elasticity, combustion, convection, you name it. It’s not boring though. The balloons you use to make thing go up make hilarious squeaky noises: imagine rubbing a web party balloon up and down your…you get the idea :) And Masha and I have started saying “Weeeheee!” (high pitched) and “Kanuckle!” (low voice) in imitation of “the Goo”. So if you want some blessed relief from mental activities that might earn you a paycheck and do something way more interesting and entertaining go download yourself a copy. All for the price of a pizza. Heck, it even runs and Mac and PC and it’s totally kid friendly. Except for the part where I couldn’t figure out how to use the little water droplets to get over the windmill: then I was cursing up a storm until Masha fed me some sympathy and wine.

OK. Back to T-SQL. Kanuckle.

Seattle to Portland, Round Two

2009-01-10T16:37:00.001-08:00

If you've been reading my blog for a while you may remember my first STP back in 2006. It's a 200 mile 2 day ride organized by the Cascade Cycling Club out of Seattle. Well, I got a new bike last year and my conscience (Masha) did me a huge favor a got me a registration for this year's ride as my Russian Christmas present.

I just went on my first official training ride and it was a little rough around the edges. My gears were a little out of sync so I was skipping cogs and crunching the chain frequently which was extremely frustrating. If you ride you know that applying too much pressure on dodgy gears just causes things to seize up, so I was trying to get up some of the steeper streets in the City while simultaneously trying not to peddle too hard. Not exactly a winning combination! On top of that I'm pretty out of shape after a pretty lazy Fall and early Winter. But enough excuses! Having this registration already purchased really makes me want to get back in the saddle...literally...and ride a good ride. Bryan has already agreed to fly out from Charlotte to participate and I really can't let him show me up, and Jeff is thinking about it too so we can replay some of our classic Seattle rides (coffee included).

The good news is that the bike shop is going to install a new computer on Wednesday. I really wanted a cadence indicator on it but frankly could not afford it. I settled for the very respectable Cateye Micro Wireless and am looking forward to once again knowing how fast (slow) I'm going and, more the point, how many miles I'm putting in each week. I was getting around 100 miles / week before the last STP so I've got to really get my act together before July.

Santa Cruz for the Day

2009-01-03T21:46:00.001-08:00

View Larger Map

We checked out Santa Cruz today; it’s a really nice spot on the north side of Monterrey Bay. Highlights:

Being so intent on watching surfers ride some nice waves that I ended up standing to mid-calf in the Pacific Ocean. For the record my “water resistant” shoes purchased in Seattle didn’t stand up to total salt water immersion. Luckily Masha had a spare pair of socks in her car and I could get a cheap pair of shoes in the town to wear for the day.
The 30 foot square Surf Museum – preposterously small given the importance of the sport and surf culture in this part of the world, but still worth a ganders.
Seeing the migratory resting spot of the monarch butterfly in a grove of Eucalyptus trees. To paraphrase my rotund wife (a.k.a. “Preggers”), it’s good to know that we live in such a beautiful place that butterflies choose to spend the winter here. That’s quite a recommendation from the animal kingdom.
A Napoleon pastry so good from a bakery in Capitola that I barely shared any at all. Well that’s not entirely true: I did transplant a smidgen of cream on to a nearby fruit tart
Seeing sea otters and dolphins while walking on a city street. Now that’s what I call wildlife. Sure, there’s some “wild life” in San Francisco (I’ll describe our New Year at some point….whew!) but it’s hard to beat seeing a cute furry sea otter on a Saturday walk in a seaside town.

I’m still not a big enough fan of California to want to call myself a Californian but places like Santa Cruz and Capitola are starting to work their magic on me. Now if we could just find a neighborhood in S.F. that has sea otters, amazing restaurants AND affordable housing, I’d be home free.

Hap-hap-happy Holidays

2008-12-25T08:54:00.000-08:00

Quotes so far:

"Easter is like Christmas without the porn"
"I'm celebrating Christmas through interpretive dance"
"Cooper really likes that ball"
"Hot-dogs, potatoes, and our last egg for breakfast"

Have a great Christmas everyone. We'll be doing the Russian Christmas on the 7th as well

Fried pickles

2008-12-14T13:45:00.001-08:00

Wow, what a trip. Masha and I just got back from the big pre-parenthood blowout extravaganza trip to the southeastern USA. More specifically we visited North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. As usual the two of us travelled well together apart from the first two hours of the vacation; I have an extremely annoying habit of wanting to get to the airport “in plenty of time” at the start of a trip. I don’t give a crap about connecting flights or the return trip because, well, I’m already on vacation. But my late great Father (we all joked) like to get to airports extremely early—he was a pilot—and I am afflicted by this condition when it comes to departing flights. So let be say we had an excellent vacation, with the first hour or punctuated by “Hurry up!” said by me every 5 minutes or so. I need to work on that!

So where did we go? Check out the map to see, but basically we spent a couple of days with Bryan and Susanna in Fort Mill (just south of Charlotte, NC), then headed to Greenville, NC, to visit Matt and Heather. After that we zipped down to Charleston, SC, and Savannah, GA for the touristy bit of the trip.

Highlights

“Greenville NORTH CAROLINA??????” – This was absolutely hilarious. As Masha has been telling me, her memory has been adversely affected by pregnancy hormones. She did a great job of booking flights, getting hotel rooms, and organizing an itinerary. Our first inkling that all might not be completely OK came as we left Fort Mill to stay with Heather and Matt in Greenville. We tootled around the NC/SC border for the day while taking in some historic sites. Towards 3PM-ish we worked our way over to Gaffney, SC, and then decided to plug Heather’s exact address in to the GPS. Hmmmm. No E 14th St in Greenville. We called Heather to double check and then I noticed (while driving) that Masha had two Greenvilles on the GPS screen. Greenville SC (20 miles away) and Greenville NC (about 250 miles away). Sinking feeling. I say “Hey Masha, are you sure it’s Greenville in South Carolina?” Awkward silence, then I hear Heather saying “North Carolina” through the cell phone speaker. Needless to say we had a good laugh, some frank conversation about hormone-related memory, and then a 5.5 hour drive to Greenville, NC, where we were supposed to be. So if you’re wondering why there’s a red triangle on the map, now you know.
Singlewides – Had fun explaining the whole singlewide vs. doublewide issue to Masha.
Fried pickles – We met up with an old ESRI colleagues of mine, Paul G, in Charlotte. His two boys joined us for a wickedly good burger in Charlotte where, of all things, they had breaded and fried pickle strips as an appetizer. Needless to say we were all over them :-)

Not walking – We actually did a lot of walking around the various historic sites and cities that we visited, but I really enjoyed doing the tourist bit in both Charleston and Savannah by sitting on a hop-on-hop-off tourist trolley around town. Each tour was 90 minutes and we got to see a lot. It reminded me of the first time I actually saw a lot of London; it was just 1.5 years ago when I got on the open air tourist bus around the City. Turns out these are popular for good reason.
Off season travel – On two occasions we were the only people in a museum. Personal tours of historic mansions are pretty cool. Plus zero lines for anything we wanted to do, and off season rates on hotels. We almost didn’t realize how much this reduces stress until about the 3rd that we didn’t have to
Lots more – There was a bunch more that I’ll remember eventually, including some really funny conversations that you just don’t have unless you’re on a long car ride. My wife makes me laugh, and I make here crack up (both in a positive way, mind you).
Getting home in time for a party – As shitty as we felt getting off the plane yesterday around midday (see this post for details), we had time to sleep, clean up and go to the Intuit holiday party at the San Francisco City Hall. Absolutely beautiful buildings, excellent entertainment, and strong martinis taken for purely medicinal reasons. It was a nice, if tiring, way to bookend a great week and a half off.

Lowlites (not a word, but you get the point)

Getting sick – Yeah, we both ended up with stinking colds which led to us taking a sick day from our vacation. Bummer. The good news is that it forced us to quit zipping around all over the place and just chill out. A big Thank You to Bryan and Susanna for putting up with a couple of invalids for 2 days.
Freezing our asses off – Forgot that it is rainy and cold in the southeast in December. Luckily we kept moving south during the trip so it got noticeably and progressively warmer.
Having to work again – Going on a week long trip to Ohio tomorrow. Sometimes work trips are fun. In fact most of the time they are—I really enjoy what I do—but sometimes you just know it’s going to be intense. Not bad per se but just hard work. I’m allergic to that.

More to follow on this vacation, but I’m about done for now. I’m obviously out of practice with typing having been away from the keyboard for 10 days! Until then…

"Insert into left nostril..."

2008-12-14T08:53:00.000-08:00

We just got back from our East Coast vacation (more on that later) and brought back some unwelcome freeloaders: cold germs. I've had a stuffy head I don't know how many times in the past, but this is the first time that I had a full on my-head-feels-like-it's-going-to-explode sinus headache. I'm pretty sure my right eyeball was popping out of my head and scaring kids with the crazy look...at least that's what it felt like. And then we got on a 5.5 hour flight from Charlotte to S.F. and the pain really began.

And all I could think about was my Neti pot. This is the most bizarre device that anyone (Nat!) had ever shown me and you know what? It works better than any cold medication out there. Seriously. The second I got home I put some lukewarm saline water in it, stuck the little spout in my nose and started pouring. Basically it goes in one nostril, through the sinus cavities, and out the other. It pulls all of the crud out, and loosens up the tough stuff so that a couple of good blows later, your head is clear.

It's a Christmas miracle! You should buy one for everyone you care about. I'm leaving on a week long trip to Dayton tomorrow and will take my Neti pot with me. Use it once in the morning and once in the evening and I'm sure I'll be fully functional. God bless wacky nasal inserts :-)

Giving Thanks

2008-12-01T22:57:00.001-08:00

Oh, by the way, had a great Thanksgiving week with my Dad’s sister Joyce all over the Bay area. Recent photos are online, including some amazing action (at least 5 m.p.h) shots of my new bicycle.

Pictures here.

Activites:

Beach Blanket Babylon (thank you Christian for excellent seats)
Muir Woods
Baby shopping (for baby stuff, not real babies)
Massive waves at Half Moon Bay
Golden Gate Park
Legion of Honor
Wonderful lamb for Thanksgiving
Cycling up a big hill then screaming down it on the Red Menace (or Ladybug depending on who you ask)
16 stories underground in a cave
A few wineries
Dinner at Bar Tartine in the Mission

This is getting pretty real, folks

2008-12-01T22:47:00.001-08:00

I suppose it’s inevitable, but my posts are all about the little Thomas girl these days. We went for another check up today and got to see the pipsqueak in action while all kinds of measurements were being taken. The important thing is that she’s doing well and now has broken the 1lb (0.5 kg) barrier, i.e., perfect for this time. She is also visible outside of Mama, having booted Masha quite heartily in the diaphragm this evening and making the tummy skin jiggle (that’s the thoracic diaphragm, not the other kind!).

We also were amazed to see a 3D video image in real time in which our little girl’s face was clearly visible. Deep sighs of relief were audible from the mother-to-be (and, truthfully, from the dad-to-be) as we realized that she already has Masha’s nose. Mine is gorgeous of course (!) but suits a man better than a little girl. And while the nos kartoshechka will mean a slight more eastern European look for the baby, it fits nicely in to my retirement plans as we shamelessly push her towards the well paid but tragic life of a Russian supermodel.

Jokes aside…for once…seeing all of the wiggling and hearing a healthy heartbeat sort of makes work, cleaning the house, traveling, bank balances, and choice of stroller fade waaay in to the background. I’m a lucky, lucky man.

Look here for the pictures and video.

It happened…pregnant food

2008-11-20T23:16:00.001-08:00

I am watching my wife eat a box of chocolates with a fork. Yes, the whole pregnant food urges have finally hit. At least that’s Masha’s story.

Actually I think the chocolates are just warm and soggy and a fork is probably the way to go. So maybe she’s just being extremely logical in her approach to chocolate consumption.

It’s pretty funny either way.

The 415

2008-11-09T18:39:00.001-08:00

Totally forgot to mention this. I am now a fully fledged resident of San Francisco since I got my new 415 area code phone number. I’m not going to post it online obviously, but if I haven’t emailed it to you yet and you need it, just ping me at dvhthomas at gee-mail dot com. I only have one number so if you don’t have this one then I can’t talk to you. Well, I’m on Skype but that’s a different story.

Nighty night.

With A Name Like “Love”…

2008-11-09T18:27:00.001-08:00

I tried to go to the California Academy of Sciences today. It’s an old institution founded in 1853 but just last month reopened in Golden Gate Park in a phenomenal new building just opposite the De Young art museum. I was totally dissing Masha by going it alone, who was going out for lunch and fun with the girls anyway, so I hopped on my bike and headed out.

Uphill Both Ways

A measly 5 miles, one f#*king huge San Francisco hill, and an extremely elevated heart rate later, I arrived to discover a huge line. If you visit the website listed above you will see a graphic on the home page with tiny little people moving around. Image how many people were in the line to make it extend from the main entrance all the way to the green at the very bottom of the image. A lot!

So, being the upbeat and resourceful patron of the arts that I am – basically I wasn’t capable of biking home immediately without popping an important artery – I went to the de Young instead.

Fine Art

The de Young is a fine art museum. Which unfortunately means that about 20% of it was crap. I’ll add “In my view, 20% of it is crap” just to be politically correct since Abigail (fine art sister number three) points out that it’s all a matter of understanding and perspective. Unless it’s cubist, at which point perspective doesn’t help and it’s just understanding. Anyway, I digress.

I was in the de Young, and even checked out the Yves Saint Laurent exhibit which was actually very interesting. And now I’ll get to the point of this post: I saw a painting in the museum that really reminded me of an album cover from years ago. The painting (and album cover) have a pair of wings spread out with some odd symbols. No, I’m not talking about wings like the ones Tom Hanks obsesses over in Cast Away, but more like Egyptian wings. I couldn’t remember the album, but it finally came to me: “Love” by The Cult.

Music

“Love” was released in 1985 right around the time when an impressionable young English chap was heading off to boarding school in Oxford. I clearly recall hanging out in the study of one of the 6th Formers (that’s a high school senior to you Americans…and a reprobate to you Russians) and being mesmerized by the crazy cool sounds emanating from the turntable. Yep, this was before CDs, so the album cover was freaking cool to look at. As you can probably tell this is “one of those records” that we all hold close to our hearts when we’re 14 or 15 years old and trying desperately hard to figure out (a) why we have terrible zits, (b) how to impress the opposite sex (and it isn’t a zitty face), and (c) what is the right music to listen to. Luckily a bloke called Mark – whose album this was – took a few of us hapless 4th years under his very cool wing. Heck, the kid wore suede boots with cuban heels in an English boarding school…we were obviously on to something here. And so we listened to The Cult.

I downloaded the album this evening from Amazon, where the quality is just as good as iTunes but they don’t put security on each MP3. And now? Oh joy…I’m blasting tracks like Rain, Nirvana, and the eponymous Love and just wallowing in memories. And you know what? It has absolutely stood the test of time: this stuff rocks. Judicious use of flange and waa on the guitar, a little bit of synth, completely deep [hilarious] lyrics. Everything a young man or 30-something rocker needs to feel like a million dollars.

My sage advice for the evening? Think carefully about the LP/tape/CD that absolutely changed your life in those formative and awkward years between 14 and 17 years of age, and go download it. You’ll be so glad you did.

P.S. For my sisters: I still remember the records you played constantly when you were older than 14 and younger than 20 (that makes me very little) and I have yet to thank you all for a priceless early musical education. I still love "Dark Side of the Moon” by Pink Floyd, “2112” by Rush, everything by Rainbow, and a good chunk of early Metallica. Not too keen on the Osmonds but you can’t win them all :)

Addendum

I just had a good idea. If anyone is reading this, why don’t you leave a comment naming the album that you downloaded or dug out from your music stash.

Democracy in Action

2008-11-09T11:55:00.001-08:00

I’ve been a little late to add my inevitable opinion to those of the media and the blogosphere. Never one to miss an opportunity to wax poetic about things that I know nothing about, here goes…

First, I’m very please that Barack Obama is the new President Elect of the United States. I am reasonably liberal these days so his policies most closely match my own thoughts on how to govern when compared with the alternative McCain stance. I hasten to add that while I am left leaning I am not necessarily Democratic with a big “D”; frankly I feel that most politicians and political parties are full of shit and Obama has yet to prove that he isn’t just the same old politico from the same old broken mold. He’s been given a chance to prove that “Yes we can” is fact a statement of his belief rather than a catchy campaign slogan. Indeed, I hope that he ends up being largely apolitical when it comes to party affiliation. I think the fact that there is a definite Democratic (big “D”) majority in Congress is going to make it tough for his administration to be de facto independent of the Democratic House and Senate even while being de jure a Democratic White House. Interesting times ahead indeed.

Having caveat-ed my way through that last paragraph (ever the peace maker, politically correct Pisces as Masha would say), I am thrilled that the idiot that is Bush is on the way out. I’ve been equally embarrassed, dismayed, and infuriated by the insidious politics of the last eight years. I honestly, truthfully cannot think of anything the Bush administration has done for me other than pursue an initially good policy in Afghanistan and send me a few hundred bucks in a tax credit some years ago. And I actually didn’t agree with the tax credit: sure I could always use some “free” money, but expected me to kick start the post 9-11 economy by giving everyone a little cash seems short sighted in the least, and a reckless economic policy in the long run. Kind of makes you wonder how the world economy ended up in the gutter, doesn’t it?

So hopefully (audacity, hope, and a politician?) Obama will set a new tone for US national policy. But more than that, I believe the primary mandate of a president is to deal with international issues and relations. I do not want to be an embarrassed, half-hearted U.S. citizen because of international policy. I chose to become a citizen and I did not take the decision lightly. My fervent wish is that the U.S. is once again seen as a democratic world leader, not childishly reckless dictatorship of an idiotic few. In other words, I want to live in a home country of which I can be proud. That’s a tall order for Obama’s administration. Let’s see how he does.

DemocracY in History

On a slightly tangential note, I was reading a great book called Imperium by Robert Harris. It’s primarily about the Roman politician Cicero who lived in the years straddling the fall of the Roman republic and the beginning of the empire. Turns out a chap call Gaius Julius Caesar wanted a little more control that a mere consulship could provide, so he took matters into his own hands.

Anyway, it was really interesting to learn about the Roman approach to politics and democracy. Lot’s of voting blocks, plenty of backstabbing (literal as well as figurative – rough times indeed!), and yet somehow a functional democracy. The author describes voting day when the majority of Roman citizens would leave the city and line up for hours on the Field of Mars beyond the city walls to cast their ballots. In a world where this is all too often a luxury, I was reminded that the ability to have one’s vote be counted is what Martha Stewart would call “a good thing”.

My primary takeaway from the recent U.S. presidential election and this book is this: beware the centralization of power to a small group of people who come to expect rather than earn the privilege of governing. And don’t forget that the people can pull the rug right out from under you if you abuse power and generally get too big for your boots.

Here’s hoping Obama understands that he has been given an opportunity, not a blank check or an empty canvas.

P.S. For Non-U.S. Citizens

If you’re wondering what the heck that was all about, it can help to understand how the U.S. system is set up. It’s all about what they call “checks and balances” where each branch of government is supposedly kept from gaining too much power by devolving that power to the other branches of government. Briefly, it looks like this:

Executive branch – The president and his administration
Judicial branch – the courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court which is the ultimate decider of legal matters. One of the contentious parts of the current system is that the courts have an annoying tendency to “legislate from the bench”. Congress and the executive branch are supposed to make laws, and the courts are supposed to decide whether those laws are legal, ultimately comparing them to the evolving meaning of the U.S. Constitution. The politicians have found a great way to circumvent this little check-and-balance: put judges in the courts who make legal decisions based upon political wishes. I was recently bemoaning this fact with Bryan, and was initially surprised but eventually agreed with his Libertarian vote because of it.
Congress – Made of of two parts:

The Senate – 2 senators for each state of the union
House of Representatives – Lots of them (can’t remember the exact number), and these are elected from population-based districts meaning that more populous parts of the country send more representatives to the house.

Here endeth the lesson.

Girl…Interrupted…By a Tummy Probe

2008-11-05T18:38:00.001-08:00

From 4.5 Months

Masha and I went for the 4.5 month ultrasound today and saw our gorgeous little girl in glorious color! Well, black and white actually but the 3D scan was in a sort of brown color so I guess I’m already bragging about how wonderful my daughter is!

We were both remarkably nervous as we headed in to the doctor’s office for the obvious reason that we wanted to be sure that the baby was healthy. The doc gave her a clean bill of health and after a couple of wiped eyes later – Maria got a piece of dust in hers, I was just relieved – we settled back for a good look at the little tyke.

That’s about it for now. Presumably you will find this news either mundane or exciting depending on (a) your interest in the grand plan to populate the world entirely with Thomas’s, and (b) your current exhaustion due to parenting of your own rug rats. I’ll just assume you really meant to be excited and call it even.

As for me, my grand plan to be a remote father figure just collapsed in a heap of soppiness. I’m emotionally involved, dammit!

Hell Explained by a Chemistry Student

2008-10-31T11:59:00.001-07:00

I don’t usually pay much attention to the various jokes and stories that fly around the Internet. In fact I usually just delete them from my email without reading them. Ever the Popular Scientist, I think this one is worth the read. Or maybe it’s just a comment on my particular brand of (non) humor. Either way, it’s Halloween so Hell is on my mind.

The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid term. The answer by one student was so “profound” that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well.

Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added. This gives two possibilities:

If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it? If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, “It will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you,” and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number two must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct…leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting “Oh my God.”

Now that’s what I call deductive reasoning.

Fantastic podcast

2008-10-10T23:40:00.000-07:00

We were at the Libra-palooza last weekend (if you have to ask you obviously weren't cool enough to be invited...luckily Masha was organizing it so I got to go) and Darin played some really, really excellent music. Absolutely seamless and transitioning from good techno to waaaay laid back emo remixes of my favorite band du jour, Radiohead. Turns out he was playing episodes of the New Balearic podcast which is out of Vancouver, Canada.

You owe it to yourself to check out a few episodes. I'd recommend Episode Twenty Five; about half way through there's a transcendent remix of a Kylie Minogue track. Yes I did just use the word "transcendent" and "Minogue" in the same sentence. Kind of gives you an idea how good this stuff is. Enjoy.

http://www.thenewbalearic.com/

A fine weekend

2008-09-28T21:21:00.000-07:00

In the grand tradition of men trying their darnedest to please their woman, I took Masha up to Sea Ranch, CA, this weekend for some birthday-related fun and games away from the usual rigors of modern life. Translation: we goofed off for a weekend in a hotel without cell signal, TV, or (gasp!) the Internet.

The Sea Ranch Lodge is about 3 hours north of San Francisco on the Mendocino coast and it's truly a beautiful spot. The coastline is just as you might imagine: rocky, rugged, being eroded in to the Pacific, and very quiet. On the drive up on the windy coast highway (the famed Highway 1) we suddenly both spotted an old looking cross. The Russian in the car pointed out in excited tones that "It's an Orthodox cross" and sure enough we had stumbled across the first Imperial Russian settlement in North America outside of Alaska at Fort Ross. It turns out that Ross (remember to pronounce the rolling R in Russian, folks!) is an older word for Russia so of course the name makes perfect sense if you're from St. Petersburg. It was founded in 1812 when a certain Monsieur Bonaparte was having his ass handed to him by the Russian winter in Moscow. The most fun was having Masha point out all of the little Russian touches in the old wooden structures -- "Ooo ooo it's just like Novgorod" or "These little holes in the side of the stove are where people warmed their shoes" or "We all used to sleep on benches set around the edge of rooms rather than in separate bedrooms". Pretty cool.

After we got to the hotel we did the usual relaxing, snoozing, walking and eating (food was good but not amazing, the wine was great but don't tell the missus since she can't drink right now...but she can look daggers while I enjoy a nice Pinot Noir!). The best part though was after dinner: we walked out in to the almost pitch black and got our first unadulterated view of the Milky Way and the rest of the sky for about 3 years. Ever the educator, I described how the Southern Cross was not visible in the northern hemisphere. Having thoroughly killed any kind of mood I realized the error of my ways and we spent the next 30 minutes pointing out (or making up) constellations. Highly recommended activity.

Words for the weekend (Masha's indoctrination into real English continues):

Codger - "A somewhat eccentric man, especially an old one". Actually I would typically always add "old" before "codger" but since I'm 17 years removed from everyday usage I suppose I should just trust the dictionary. Sort of like "grumpy [old] bastard" just doesn't sound right without the "old". Oh well.
Todger - Any list of English words used in one weekend must of course include a synonym for willy, which is itself a synonym for John Thomas, which itself is a synonym for dick, which is... You get the point. Masha is getting very concerned that there isn't a single noun-like word in the English language that doesn't actually mean penis under certain circumstances. I'm afraid I have to agree.
Geezer - man / bloke. As you can tell, we were talking about older men.

Wiggle wiggle

2008-09-26T17:40:00.001-07:00

I hate to admit it, but that little thing already has my nose! Oh sweet Lord please don't let it happen!!! Actually Masha and I were chatting about the perfect schnoz and if it can have the top 1/2 of my nose and the bottom 1/2 of hers then it will be a beauty. Who knows, maybe we can reassess our retirement plans in the wake of a terrible economy and dwindling investment savings; the newest idea is to have a really cute baby and put it on T.V. selling milk, diapers, etc. What do you all think? Are we looking for the financial break-even point a little too soon? :-)

But of course, we we're absolutely thrilled and not a bit relieved to see the little thing wiggling around like crazy (we both like music so the dance moves are a good sign) and with a very strong and normal heart beat. I find it hard to be serious on this blog since it's something of a comedic outlet for me, but needless to say, I am looking at this picture in absolute wonder. My sisters have been pointing out the obvious mechanics of the situation ("We knew you had it in you, Dom, and now it's in Masha") but it pales in comparison to seeing movement inside your wife. Cue miraculous tinkly xylophone-and-bell music.

Hang on a sec...did I just say that a T.V. picture (black and white at that) is better than sex? Hmmm. I must be getting soft in the head, but in this case I suppose it's warranted. Anyway, more to follow no doubt. Especially when we remember to ask about the gender next time. We were so darn relieved that all was well that it completely slipped our minds.

Once upon a time...

2008-09-16T21:51:00.000-07:00

...there was a man and a woman. And they "did stuff". And "something happened". And "they couldn't believe what they'd done". And "there was much rejoicing in certain circles". And the Angel of the Lord said "Oh, Christ here comes another one...". And...well just look at the picture.

We are extemely happy. Options:

Slartibartfast

Agnes

Mama Mia

Matilda

Anyushichka

Best music video ever

2008-09-11T14:56:00.001-07:00

It's still work time but I've been going since 4:30AM and I'm kind of punchy. I took a break to listen to some music in Songbird and it referred me to this video. You may recall from an earlier post that I've just discovered Muse and they've packed every single cool thing ever in to this:

My precious

2008-09-10T21:30:00.000-07:00

How can you deny the allure of English beer after seeing an Kansas corn boy lusting after a pint like this?

Oh, and the funniest quote of the week comes from a waiter at Triptych restaurant in San Francisco: “Oh, I'm on fire”

Whales and music

2008-09-07T10:36:00.000-07:00

Two completely different miniposts in one - what a bargain!

My Mum is in town for the week and we fulfilled a lifelong dream of hers yesterday. And that's no small feat for someone in their 70s. We took the 2 hour ride down to Monterey Bay and hopped on board the 4 hour afternoon whale watching tour. The weather was beautiful, with a slight breeze to keep the heat down. We mooched out of the harbor while having a giggle at the cute sea otters and chubby sea lions(they have visible ears...seals don't...who knew?), and headed out in to the broader bay. It turns out that there is a large underwater canyon in Monterey Bay that means deep sea animals can get quite close to the coastline. Plus at this time of year there is a good amount of nutrients and associated whale food (krill - small crustacea like little shrimp) being brought up from the ocean and pushed to the surface along this canyon. Anyway, the end result is that the Bay is an incredibly good feeding spot for gray, humpback, and blue whales.

I'll cut to the chase and report that my Mum can now die happy: she saw a "baby" humpback whale playing in a bed of kelp while waiting for its mum to come back up from feeding. It was a truly amazing sight to see a 30 ft long animal literally playing with no agenda. Must remember to do that once in a while myself :) After about 20 minutes the mother whale showed up off in the distance and apparently called the calf over. So the boat puttered along after them and we watched them diving to feed a number of times (this is where the tails are visible). Truly, truly an amazing thing to see. I hear that it's a bit old hat for residents of the California coast but believe me, seeing a whale is no common thing for English and Russian town and city dwellers!

And the second little "post"? I was listening to my station on Pandora.com while working the other day. I plugged in Radiohead as a seed artist and they started to push similar sounding artists to my playlist. I heard a song that really caught my ear by a band called Muse. Apparently they're a big deal in England but I'd never come across them before. By this time it was about 1:00AM on Saturday morning and I was still working (long story, not very interesting, and hopefully over soon) so I popped on to Amazon and bought a couple of their albums. Wow. They are seriously like a mix of the best big-stadium operatic pompous Queen and Radiohead circa The Bends. The falsetto can get a little much after a while but no doubt the lead singer/guitarist has both an amazing voice and wicked guitar skills. I encourage you to listen to Map of the Problematique on their Black Holes and Revelations album.

Kartoshka

2008-09-01T22:04:00.000-07:00

Funniest quote of the month from Masha: "The ultimate 'fuck you': overcooked potatoes by a Russian wife" We laughed soooo hard. You have to understand that it's a culturally ingrained thing. She is absolutely unable to not have a pot on the boil.