February 2004 Archives

I ran across 111...111.com today. How totally bizzare!

I'm apprehensive whenever Jennifer doesn't feel well. We went for a walk and she felt a little crampy. The rumblings turned out to be gas, but still, it freaks you out.

When she's in the bathroom longer than expected, I start to think that something's amiss. Maybe I'll move all the magazines out of the bathroom so that she won't have a reason to linger.

Mom's "fragile" description hits the nail on the head. I'm going to be glad when we've reached thwelve weeks and things become more solid. Right now it feels that we're vulnerable and there is nothing to do but let nature take its course.

When we got back from theater on Saturday night, we were greeted at Jfer dad's with Homer covered in blood. His right ear had two long cuts on it (one on each side) and he must have bled profusely, judging from his matted fur and the blood drops in the back yeard. We have no idea how he got it cut. It's possible that he got into a fight with Duke, but Duke didn't have a mark on him and I would like to think that Homer would have scored, too. come to think of it, maybe Duke was too clean -- he could have abused poor Homer and then washed away the evidence in the swimming pool. We suspect, though, that Homer's ear got cought on the fence or on something in the back yard and he tore it himself. Duke doesn't have a bad bone in his body and both dogs behaved as friendly as usual around each other when we arrived.

By the time we got home, his bleeding had stopped, so we tried getting him clean by sponging his fur off (not easy with dried blood) and carefully cleaning around his wounds. We then decided to put some hydrogen peroxide on the cuts. That would have gone OK -- Homer didn't flinch much -- but some of it ran into his ear, which he hates. Jfer let go so that he could shake it out, and shake he did. I don't know if it was the H2O2 or the shaking, but his wounds opened up again and he covered the walls and floor of the bathroom with a fine splatter of blood. Luckily most of the dripping blood ended up on me and the bathroom walls have tiles on them, so it wasn't a total mess.

As I was trying to clean the dried blood off the walls I had this image of CSI agents with their black-lights checking out the bathroom and contemplating the massacre. I tried to do some crime scene investigating myselft the next morning in the back yard, but despite the many blood drops, I couldn't really come up with anything. But I think that Zeus, the Great Dane next door, was off the hook since the passages under the fence had been blocked off.

Homer's doing fine and doesn't seem bothered by his ear. He may end up looking like a junkyard dog but I think it'll simply give him street cred among the neighborhood dogs. And if it gets infected and we have to amputate, we'll simply rename him Vincent.

We had a whirlwind traveling weekend and I'm beaten. We took Friday off to go to Wichita Falls and visit Grandma Karl. Rita joined us from Ft. Worth so we didn't do all of the driving. On the way she took us by one of the SBC central offices which was pretty cool. You can see several generations of telephone switching equipment working side by side.

The visit in WF was pretty neat. I'm glad Jfer is keeping up her intentions to visit her grandmother more frequently. I hadn't seen my grandparents very often once I moved to the US and I kind of wish I had had the opportunity to interact with them as an adult. My favorite parts was beating Jfer and her mom at Euchre. I'll take Grandma Karl as a partner any day.

On Saturday we hurried back to Ft. Worth to go visit Roger and Martina in Allan. For some bizarre reason we missed all our exists and ended up heading south on I35E through downtown Dallas (starting from north FW). We made it there only fifteen minutes late and spent a lovely lunch and afternoon with them. Roger's working at Nortel and they are doing some pretty cool stuff with the next generations of telephone systems. I'm not a big fan of the (North) Dallas (flat, windswept, not many trees) area but their house has a pretty cool location. They overlook a wooded creek area with a nice cliff and are walking distance from their community pool and playground. The only thing that's missing from their huge yard is a nice dog.

After our visit we headed back to Ft. W and made a mistake to take a "direct route" instead of sticking to the major highways. We didn't get lost but wasted way to much time we'll never get back in slow traffic and red lights. Made it back in time, changed in a hurry and met with everyone in downtown Ft. W at the Blue Mesa. The food was good, but despite reservation it took them half an hour to seat us and our food arrive with 15 minutes left to eat. Never again.

After dinner we saw The Exonerated at the Casa Mañana. It was based on interviews and court documents from six death row inmates that have been exonerated after having spent between 2 and 22 years in prison. Jfer wanted to go because it featured Lyle Lovett and Kathleen Turner. it was a bit underwhelming. Kathleen Turner was awesome as were some of the other cast members (not Lyle, though) but it didn't have nearly the impact of the "Dead Man Walking" opera we saw in Austin.

After we got back to Benny's we had an incident with Homer which took me out searching for a pharmacy. The first Walgreens I came across was already closed (as was the Eckerd's across the street). Figuring that any road in America eventually comes across another Walgreens/Eckerd's combo I followed the street and, indeed, found a store. However, on the way back I must have turned wrong (when I thought I was driving past the original Walgreens/Eckerd's I was actually going by yeat another set of pharmacies). So I ended up doing an extra ten miles before I found my way back. This homogeneity is one thing I really dislike about American suburbia. All the freaking Walgreens look exactly the same and they all have a freaking Eckerd's across the street from them. That's just wrong.

On for Sunday we had a brunch planned with Hanka and Ron so after church we hurried to east Dallas. While driving through downtown we got directions to a restaurant which started with a highway exit which, I'm convinced, doesn't exist. So we did another 10 miles before we called them again, turned around and headed back. We ended up with great breakfast and fine time in the park.

Once we left Dallas we had no problems staying on track and heading home. So I don't know if it's the construction, poor signeage or some weird radiation, my mental denseness or what, but driving around the DFW area trully sucks, as far as I'm concerned.

We took the opportunity of our trip to DFW to let the immediate family know. I wonder how much it's going to leak out before we're ready to announce in a couple of weeks.

When we met up at Jfer's dad's with both her parents, Jfer casually showed off her new cell phone. It took rita almost half a minute before it dawned on her what Jfer's cell phone implied. Both of them were very excited and happy. i know it's going to be very hard for Rita having to keep mum about it. We also told Grandma Karl and Matthew, but hopefully that'll be it for a while.

Since we hardly ever visit with Hanka, we decided to tell her during our brunch. Hanka looks great -- pregnancy really suits her and although she's got the belly, you wouldn't be otherwise able to tell how far along she is. Jennifer announced her pregnancy by casually mentioning that their son is going to be three months older than our baby. The Shell's said they were suspecting something, with us visiting so many people over a weekend. It's going to be nice for our child to have two cousins of almost equal age -- hopefully we'll use this to visit more often.

I called my parents to chat and let them know that we're expecting. I'm still apprehensive about the whole thing and I told my mom thta we weren't making it generally public yet. She totally understood. I liked the word -- "fragile" -- she used to describe the early pregnancy. My mom said that they were very happy for us and had been hoping for news like that.

My parents were so cool about not pressuring us about kids. I know how much they enjoy Martina's children and how they wish us the best with what we do. But they never did the "so, are you pregnant yet?" thing.

I tried to call Martina but they weren't at home, so I'll try again at some later point.

title="View from the Top of Säntis (320KB)" >I've found some time to stitch together the panorama shots I took on top of Säntis in Switzerland. The view was great, but there were all these people that kept getting into my way :-)

You'll need to have QuickTime installed in order to enjoy the view.

I missed the Superbowl on Sunday (slaving at work) but we taped it because I wanted to see the commercials. I finally had a chance to fast forward through the game and check them out. How boring and uninspired they’ve gotten over the years. Considering that they cost millions of dollars to air, you'd thing they'd put more effort into it. I really miss the days of the DotCom boom when all the startups, flush with venture millions, wasted all the money on great, entertaining commercials.

There were a couple good ones, though. The MasterCard "Priceless" commercial with The Simpsons was rather cute (looks like they can sell out to others beside Butterfinger) -- I especially liked Homer's disappointment when the two flying donuts fused to form the MasterCard logo. The Chevy Soap commercial was kinda of funny, but mostly because one of the kids appeared a couple of adds earlier in an IBM Linux commercial. That's kind of like two women wearing the same dress at the same cocktail party, isn't it?

I also finally got to see the Jannet/Justing "costume malfunction" on TV. I can't believe all the hub-hub that's been made of it. If was simply a crass ending to an otherwise tasteless halftime show. Nothing more, nothing less. And, at least on our TV, you couldn't really see anything and they cut away real fast (Jfer thinks this would be a good reason to buy a big HDTV, but she might as well go over here for gratuitous Janet boobie shots). I originally thought the excuse of "costume malfunction" completely ridiculous, but I can now actually see them planning to take off the leather cup and keeping the red lacy thing on. I'm sure more embarrassing things have happened on stage (although probably not in from of millions of TV viewers). The really obscene thing about the half show is how much is being made out of it. I am really not interested in FCC chairman's Michael "Media Consolidation" Powell's "investigation".

The funniest thing about the Superbows was the streak of Mark Roberts. The footage on TV and the subsequent commentary was simply hilarious.

After a long hiatus, we had another poker night at work -- sort of a farewell party for Jachin. It started off well with Ruby's and some drinkin' and for the first time I managed to finish the low-stakes poker game with most of my money intact.

Then we switched over into tournament-style, no-limits poker and I managed to win the tournament! I like no-limits poker -- it moves faster and doesn't require the level of poker skills that you really need for low-limit. Anyone with decent cards will call your bluff if it only costs them a couple of chips, but not too many will do it when you go all in.

When I arrived home after midnight Jfer asked whether "momma was gonna get some new shoes". For the first time I could proudly say that yes indeed, she would -- as long as she spends less than the twenty bucks I netted...