TeamSax

Family Update

2012-01-26T17:44:00.000-08:00

December and January have been busy months for the Sax family!

In early December my sweet sister came back from California to visit and to celebrate Christmas. Karl hadn't seen Lee in over 6 months, but still knew who she was. Having pictures of Aunt Lele helps a lot. We say goodnight to Lee's picture as part of Karl's bed time routine.

Karl wearing the awesome hat that Lee knitted for him this Christmas. Being at Grandma & Grandpa's house was pretty great because some of the nutcrackers were at Karl height; he staged many battles.

Braving the cold and playing at the park near Grandma & Grandpa's house. Thank goodness for this hat!

The 16th of December brought a big milestone for Erik- his 30th birthday! I surprised him with dinner at his favorite Thai restaurant with 10 of our close friends. It was great and we got to try a huge variety of dishes.

Happy birthday, Papa!

A few days after Erik's birthday the Sax family moved houses and dog/house sat for some good friends. We were there for about two weeks and Karl got pretty used to his new digs. Here he is eating a banana and watching MASH with Erik.

Lucky for us our house wasn't deserted while we dog sat. Our wonderful cousins, Marc & Cynthia, were in the area doing a window/roofing job. They happened to be here over Christmas and joined us for Christmas Eve & Christmas Day! It was so nice to have everyone with us and Sheila had plenty of delicious food for us all.

The best gift of the season turned out to be musical bells that I bought for Karl.

Cynthia & Mom try to play 'Jingle Bells' with some success.

Merry Christmas!

After the holidays Karl and I got back to our usual routine of heading to the library to check out new arrivals. Karl loves to sit with his puppy and read books while I peruse the stacks.

Karl has started calling relatives and having conversations with them. He especially likes to make calls while Erik or I are on the phone talking. We hear "Gand ma. Hi. What choo doing? Yeah. Ok. Bye"

Erik has been on baby duty a lot lately as I have been off at births or doula meetings. After a recent meeting I arrived home at 8:30pm to my boys both asleep on the couch.

Here is Karl with his favorite Pooh Bear having a snack of apple & milk.

Mimicking Mom by reading a book on the couch after dinner.

The Sax family met some friends at the Air & Space museum in Virginia recently. Karl found all the planes and the space shuttle fascinating.

Karl with Ross Perot's helicopter that made it around the world in 3 months. Karl thinks he can do it faster.

After the museum & dinner we went over to ride a carousel. Karl held on for dear life and then started crying. He didn't really love it. I'm not sure his goal to fly around the world in a helicopter is a reality if we can't handle a stationary fake horse.

Most of our weekends are spent at home playing & making music. Erik is learning the trumpet, violin and playing the piano again. Karl loves sitting with us while we play.

We'll fill you in with what February brings!

The Gorilla (continued)

2012-01-04T18:49:00.000-08:00

Erik here. Back in March I wrote the first post about my health in which I threw down my own gauntlet. I have to confess now that I'm the same weight I was then. This post is why that isn't a bad thing though, aside from the fact that with the onset of winter, I have until spring before I can get the kayak into the water.

In April I switched jobs, and started to drive to work again instead of bicycling. From my high of 240 in 2010, I came down to my present weight of 220 primarily with the bicycle. Going back further, when I was 18, I bottomed out at about 140 at this height. I was borderline undernourished. I lived a normal western lifestyle after that, gaining 8-10 el-bee's a year as a matter of course. I credit the bicycle with turning things around; I needed an excuse to shed weight faster so it would be easier to ride.

I look back on the last 6 months as mildly successful. I still have an "overweight" BMI at 29.8; which is really .2 away from "obese". That's a pretty narrow margin to hang my hat on. At the same time, my outlook on food has changed dramatically, and 2011 saw no weight gain for the second year in a row. So even without exercise, my weight has become sustainable. Everyone likes lists, so here's a list of things I need to double down on, and maybe something in the list will help you as well. Chances are, if you're reading this, I like you, and I want you to live longer so we can hang out.

1. Food is medicine. We think of them in separate ways, but food can have a much bigger impact on your health than medicine can. One of my prescriptions is "meatless" sandwiches for lunch at work, usually a 12 grain bread, honey mustard, and a huge handful of spring mix lettuce, spinach or kale. You don't need a big lunch, stop paying for one! (Breakfast is coffee and a nutri-grain bar).

2. Plant based is best. Just today I again heard the myth of humans and animal fat from someone. Don't fool yourself, there are plenty of genius vegans out there, and they are more likely to live to be nonagenarians than people getting meat at every meal. Homo-Sapiens has always had a plant based diet.

3. If you're eating meat, eat really good meat. This means spending more money, which should help with cutting back.

4. Make your own bread (or pizza). Bread is kind of difficult to make. As many loaves as I've made, I still screwed up one really badly at christmas because I was in an unfamiliar kitchen and getting nagged to death by my mother. At the very least you'll appreciate other bread more and have less mindless eating.

5. Find a fruit that you can snack on, and then snack on it when you're not hungry. I go with Craisins, or maybe pistachios. I'd go with a banana a day if I wasn't allergic to them.

6. Drink organic whole milk instead of skim milk or whatever percent, opting for "pasteurized" instead of "ultra-pasteurized" where possible. Since I was a kid, I fooled myself into thinking milk was ok if it was 1% or skim. This way I drink less and enjoy it more. Again, it's more expensive, and it's got a lot of that medicine stuff going on, hydrocarbons that are no-doubt useful to organisms such as yourself. If you're going to put something into your body, go for the gold or go home. You're a huge investment as an animal.

7. Drink more water. My mom shocked me last year when she turned her nose up at water. I didn't know that she just plain didn't drink water, instead opting for diet sodas or a daily iced-coffee from Mcdonald's. She was recovering at my house because they pulled a tumor the size of a golf ball out of her gut. I think the anecdotal correlation between her beverage choice and her tumor is sound; it has been confirmed by legitimate studies. If you want something else, drink coffee, tea, or Bolthouse Farms' Carrot juice. The ingredients are "carrots."

7a. Your trash is soup stock - AKA tasty water. I've made soup stock out of asparagus ends, carrot tops, brocolli and brussel-sprout branches, pineapple heads, aging veggie trays, potato peels, bones and fat. I've put things into stock I can't even recall. I bet you could even use bean ends and maybe even corn husks. After an hour of simmering, these bits can be pitched into your compost heap (see #8) instead of the trash. This is a much tastier alternative to store-bought stock, and you can hold the salt. One box of stock in our pantry has almost 3 GRAMS of sodium.

8. Grow your own food. We were very successful deck farmers last year. I recommend getting a basil and rosemary plant from a nursery if you have any sunlight at all. We've had a ton of both since we started growing them, and we've been more apt to cook for ourselves and choose healthy recipes. I calculate we harvested over 60$ in basil last year. The other bonus comes from being in touch with where your food comes from, I definitely appreciate each bite more if I had to do the watering and other care to grow it. These herbs have another bonus, they have more of those awesome hydrocarbons, in this case "essential oils" that are vital for human health.

9. Throw away cookies. I'm into throwing away or giving away at least half of any cookies I might otherwise eat. If they are "gross" cookies, made with high fructose corn syrup, throw them away. If they are "good" cookies made with flour, sugar, nuts and stuff, try to give them away. It's better to throw away calories than vitamins.

10. No soda, diet or regular. Replace with coffee/tea. Don't dump a bunch of sugar and milk into them. Agave nectar or honey are ok. I calculated that I'd had almost 2 million calories worth of soda in my 20's. These calories did not replace anything or sustain me in any way, I know because I eat the same after cutting them. My body had to process hundreds of pounds of essentially body fat (3500 kcals per pound of fat). It's really amazing I'm not much fatter.

The underlying theme here is to spend more money on the food you're putting into your body, and compensate for the increased cost by cutting back on tonnage, and on eating out. I will predict that for each one of these items on this list, you get a free year of life (you're welcome!) an untestable hypothesis, but one well rooted in proven science. Also, watch Dan Buettner's Ted talk, which I helpfully embedded below on how to live to be 100. Walk. Drink Argiolas Costera or other granache spanish wines. Eat fish, durum wheat, cheese from grass-fed cows, fresh fish and as many plants as possible. The longer you live, the more friends I'll have, and apparently that's good for you too. There it is, my confession: wanting you to be healthy and live longer is for my own selfish ends.

Don't forget about the gorilla.

Affordances

2011-12-26T20:19:00.000-08:00

Today I got my last gift of the holiday season, the gift of time. I had enough time today that I had a chance to get to the movies, which parents of very young children can only dream of unless they can afford a sitter on a regular basis. I saw the "silent film" a movie called "The Artist," about the decline of silent films in favor of the "talkies." While I didn't have time to get popcorn - I was 5 minutes late - I did have time for the delicious irony that took place in between when the movie was scheduled to start, and when the previews were through. The final preview was for the re-release of "Titanic" (in 3D). No, I am not even shitting you.

"The Artist" is fundamentally a movie that will hit you over the head with the philosophy behind Tom Wujec's TED talk. By the time you see someone give the 'finger' early on in the movie, I already had the feeling that if I were to hear someone talking, it would be obscene and droll. Later on, when the main character gets an early showing of the first "talkie" he laughs at how ridiculous it is, and I'm right there with him. When the fourth-wall of movie-audience is toyed with and he starts hearing the sounds of the world around him, you almost fear that you might hear the main character, and mentally beg him to wake up from his nightmare. When there finally is foley-voice work in this movie, it's a well placed relief. No, it's not an entirely silent film, but it is entirely in that style, with audience script cues and lip reading when appropriate.

If you have time to see a movie soon, it should be this one. If you are so afforded by modern technology, you should check out the movie "The General" a 1926 movie with Buster Keaton first. Apparently, it's available online here; although if you can get a dvd or something you'll like it better than the crappy streaming on that site. Anyway "the general" is really cool in that you can get a sense for what kinds of things they used to try in these movies in the way of special effects, or as they used to call it, "creativity." Old movies used to be shot on a 4x3 aspect ratio onto rolls of proofs and edited together into a master. The prints made off the master might be toned in various hues and sent off to the theaters. I was delighted to see all the sliding transitions and toning, cigarette burns and dodged transitions put to work in "the Artist," subtle, but still there as an homage.

With "The Artist" you get a sense that these concepts of editing together proofs in a darkroom have become more refined and appealing, but you also get to experience what we've lost. Sure, talkies and modern movies have brought us all kinds of great things, but the silent films gave us certain affordances, and it's worth understanding what those are. It's relaxing, like getting a haircut, but thrilling like reading a book, and you get to fill in the voices and intonations in your head. You're afforded the opportunity to use your own imagination, and connect more closely with the story and it's rendering. For those of you who have ever intoned "the book was much better" you just might have your doe-eyed faith in the motion pictures restored after seeing such a film - no doubt shot on black and white safety-film to reduce risks from fires...

Frankensink and friends

2011-11-26T15:33:00.001-08:00

Erik here. Just eating some cheese and adding some pictures. Sadly, I've had to sideline the boat project. For one thing, I missed the deadline for getting it into the water by winter. I'll get it done for the spring though. Since then, just about everything stopped working in our master bathroom, so I started scouting for materials to gut and redo the whole thing. It all started when I found this funky chest at the Habitat Restore:

And used my jig-saw to convert it into a sink!

A craigslist find: a 5' claw foot iron tub. Some white enamel cleaned up the rustiness nicely.

In order to fit this into our bathroom, we required a slightly radical change to the layout of our master bedroom. This wall was moved from left to right about 3 feet, making room for a tub in addition to our shower.

Since that picture I've ripped down the wall with the door to out tiny "toilet room" to the left. Then I found a 2nd hand faucet and drain to complete FRANKENSINK!

Claire doesn't really like Frankensink. Yet. Once the whole thing is together, I think she'll like it. We're also pulling the old laminate and putting down tile, not to mention a full size shower stall.

Here are pictures of Karl acting out various "moods."

Thoughtful:

Incredulous:

Humble:

Surprise:

Nefarious:

Happy:

Recalcitrant:

Menacing

Frustrated:

Which Karl are you?

Claire has confirmed that I am not allowed to use these as a collage for a Christmas card. Too bad.

Happy Belated Halloween

2011-11-20T12:26:00.001-08:00

I thought some of you might like to see Karl in his Halloween costume this year. Karl went as a Chicken...in honor of Grandpa's recurring '3rd Friday' Hens of Renown characters. I think he looks pretty great.

Our little chick of renown

Ready for candy!

Found the stash for our trick or treaters...might as well take some.

I wonder if I can sneak this upstairs?

With the best costumer in the world, my mom!

Old MacDonald

2011-11-01T11:57:00.000-07:00

The past month has brought new revelations to Karl; most intriguing is that animals make sounds and he can imitate them. In our area there was a fall festival which included a petting farm. Karl thought it was pretty neat to hear them in real life.

24 day old piglet!

Karl and his fellow cowboy, Tobin

Yeehaw!

Down the slide we went. It was much faster than I expected.

Cows! We're incredible!

Off to pet some goats. This little guy managed to get a piece of Karl's bread.

Baby goats were more to Karl's liking.

Just checking out the scenery with his buddy, the goat.

Happy October!

2011-10-18T20:05:00.000-07:00

April used to be my favorite month. For selfish reasons, it's my birthday month. However, in the past two years I have come to love October more than any other month. It's cool weather, the changing leaves, and the abundance of pumpkins makes it wonderful. October is also special to our family. Erik and I married on October 7th in 2006 and in 2010 we had Karl on the 10th.

As this year marked the 5th anniversary of our wedding, Erik and I thought it would be fun to do some camping. We left Karl behind for his first overnight at Sheila's house and then we headed out to Prince William Forest Park. We spent the evening around a campfire with wine, scrabble, smores & champagne. It was wonderful! Wonderful until about 1:30 in the morning when our neighbors got a little too inebriated and enjoyed their own shennanigans loudly. We were happy to head home at 7am the next morning. Thank goodness Karl wasn't with us as he didn't have to hear the loud laughter or feel the hard hard ground digging into his bones. Or the cold. As Erik says "It was an anniversary you will never forget". How true that is and how much it makes me smile when I think about our crazy adventure.

The next morning we headed out to Sheila's to pick up Karl and celebrated his birthday. Sheila got a little cake and after lunch Karl was very excited to taste it.

After cake it was present time! Karl got some books, puzzles & a nativity set. This was the first time we've seen him understand that there is something under the wrapping paper.

On Monday, Karl's actual birthday, we went to the playground with a friend and had lunch out. That evening we cut his hair. It was getting a bit long as you can see from some of the playground pictures. He looks like a little boy now. I'll admit it makes me a bit sad.

This past weekend we had another adventure: apple picking! We went with our good friends Megan and Chris. Karl filled his belly with apples. By the time we got him into his car seat he was exhausted. It was a great day.

Happy October, everyone!

The Wingmen in Action

2011-10-12T19:41:00.000-07:00

When Karl was just a few months old I was introduced to a woman who was planning a homebirth with the midwives we used. We had a friend in common and she ended up joining the book club I was starting. When Karl turned 6 months old her little guy was born. Since his birth, we have had numerous play dates and his mom, Melinda, is kind enough to watch Karl while I am off at a doula meeting or birth.

Here are the boys wandering around the various playgrounds in my neighborhood.

I suggested they could hold each others hands instead of holding mine and off they ran to the playground. Isn't it sweet?

I know Karl is a bit too young to value his friendship, but I am so happy to have Melinda and her family in my life. Without her support and frequent visits I am certain I would be a much more boring woman. Plus...she got me hooked on historical romance novels. If that doesn't equate friendship, I don't know what does!

I hope as they get older they continue to be friends and come to count on each other.

The Hull

2011-09-14T17:12:00.000-07:00

Today is a banner day for my little project. I've completed another large step in the process of building my kayak, a 14 foot "Great Auk" of Guillemot Kayaks' design, a company which consists of a couple of brothers with a lifetime of boat-building experience. My copy of Nick Shade's "the Strip-Built Sea Kayak" is showing some real wear, as I've soaked up just about every paragraph. If you're going to try this for yourself, you need this book. The only thing I think could be improved is that they recommend "finger joints." As I've worked I realized that it would have been better to use a bow to stern keel piece as an internal stem piece, and by better I mean easier and faster. So that's for the next boat, the "Little Auk."

I bought a book about the Great Auk, a north Atlantic penguin that infamously went extinct in about 1844. It was an interesting creature, and I'm hoping to incorporate some of the biological concepts in my design. Their eggs are particularly beautiful, since they didn't build nests they needed unique patterns so they could pick them out from the group. For now I'm pumped to have the hull completed. Until now the dream of this project has lived only in my head, but now the bottom of the boat is tangible; something fun to brag about.

Also I have a little helper that might be more obsessed with "daddy-boat!" than I am. I think it's funny to theorize that his understanding of a "boat" is this giant scheme I have going on in the basement. I can't wait to see his reaction when it goes onto the water.

The piece he's holding is the very last strip I'm going to put into the hull. On the boat itself most all of the tools needed for this project. Glue, sandpaper, a pencil, a staple-gun, razersaw, and finally some shims/clamps. I'm waiting for the glue to dry on the penultimate strip right now.

So now I get to proceed to the next "step" in this project.

Set up stands
Lofting step 1 (paper forms)
Lofting step 2 (wooden forms)
Attaching/aligning forms to strongback
Glue hull strips together and staple to forms --- DONE!
Glue deck strips/ staple to forms
Cockpit opening shaping, coaming strips, lamination
External stem piece lamination for bow/stern
Remove staples
Fair exterior surfaces (plane/sand)
Remove from forms
Fair interior surfaces
light Epoxy coat/fillers
Fiberglass outside
Fiberglass inside
Join deck to hull with glue and fiberglass tape
Varnish exterior
End pours
Seat/Trimout

I've got maybe 120-150 hours in this project so far, and I think I'm looking at 200 or so more. I think that depends on how difficult it is to strip the deck out. I think it will be easier than the hull because it's less surface area, and there's a large section in the middle where I don't need to fit strips to length, because I can leave the hole for the cockpit open. Wish me luck!

Late night edit: finally glued the last piece into place. They weren't kidding when they said it'd be the hardest. Since it doesn't bend into place, it has to fit the gap perfectly. This picture only shows a little of the mess from the plane and sandpaper. And yes, the hammer was part of that procedure...

Orchard & Monterey

2011-08-29T06:12:00.000-07:00

With all the births I have had lined up for the summer Karl and I haven't gotten to spend as much time in Monterey as we wanted. However, last week I was able to go and we are hoping to go again soon when I have another break.

Driving to the cottage equals a little over 3 hour trip and Karl generally naps the whole way there. This trip, however, I decided that we'd leave earlier than nap time and stop at an orchard an hour away. It was wonderful and we wandered around eating peaches, apples, and berries.

Here are some highlights from the orchard

We headed down to the mountains after a quick trip in Waynesboro to see Mom & Dad. Karl loves Monterey because we walk everywhere and there is a stream that runs through the town that we can follow. Banma (grandma) look him on long long walks and introduced him to everyone in town. Besides the walks Karl played in the back yard, watered plants, and climbed all over the playground at the Highland Center.

It was a wonderful trip and I can't wait to go back!

Screw-you Yankee Workshop!

2011-08-28T08:03:00.000-07:00

So I was doing some brainstorming today about how to finish my bow and stern with stem pieces ( probably with Jatoba, a really hard purple Brazillian cherry ) and how I'd finish the keel when I run out of Spanish cedar, which will be soon. I saw that the New Yankee Workshop with Norm Abram was on and thought I'd get some inspiration. They still show it a lot on PBS even though it's only reruns now, it ran from 1989 to 2009. There was an interesting bit where he made a jig to make a long angled cut with his tablesaw...

But the whole show was totally ridiculous. Even the guys I know that have enormous home woodshops don't have the tools at this guy's disposal, and probably some professional shops would love to have some of this stuff. It still took him 2 days to churn out a crappy table even though he's got drill presses, band saws, table jointers, mortise chisel presses and what looked like at least 2 industrial table saws. Even the mitre-saw he used had like a 20 foot extension on either side with perfectly measured out stops. How about some tips for how you'd do this without 30K $ worth of equipment and 2000 sq foot of floor space?

That's all well and good. I guess if I had a 20 year show and an annual budget for tools that was probably 5 figures, I might get a little lazy too. But then this jerk goes to attach the base of his table, and makes a big deal about how smart he is for not lining up the bias of his joints, but doesn't center it before attaching it! By the end of the episode he was polishing a table that was clearly off-center. For some reason I found this offensive. Maybe it's because us Joe's have to make do with a 40 year old hand jig saw and a 20$ table router to build a freaking boat.

Don't be discouraged from starting this project on your own though, those tools were really the most heavy duty things I needed for this project. Mostly I'm using a razor saw, sandpaper, glue and a staple-gun. Meanwhile looking at this guy's project gives me both inspiration and a feeling like I'm a curious george run amok with some wood-glue.

The Keel

2011-08-22T17:43:00.000-07:00

I decided to take a day off work for a little three day weekend. I've been working a lot lately, and I'm starting to think I won't get my boat done in time to use it before winter hits. So I convinced Claire to let me move it back into the basement. With the extra room I was able to put 15-20 hours into it since Saturday. I'm proceeding very slowly with the work now, and it's gotten very painstaking. The good news is that I've started to form the keel of the hull on the stern. I'm only a few strips from the keel on the bow, which is taller so the boat can cut through waves an keep water off the deck.

Here it is before I started work on Saturday. I pulled it off the supports for the trek around to the back of the house, a tricky job in it's own right..

It looks so cool already. I finished the angle section of atlantic white cedar and switched back to the red spanish cedar. This is an upside down view from the stern to show off the color contrast:

And for good measure, the bow, which is all spanish cedar. The clamp on the bow is for the latest finger joint, which needed a bit more coaxing and glue drying tonight.

The cedar is really starting to deal with some pretty severe curves, so it's really challenging to measure, cut and fit everything, and then even more challenging to glue, clamp and staple. A 14 foot bead of glue into a 1/4 inch cove is starting to be more challenging now that my strips are starting to lay horizontally. I haven't quite figured that one out just yet.. Any suggestions?

Of course, "measuring" a curving piece of wood is just not going to happen. This work is so painstaking because every piece is specially fit into place, often sanded for a perfect joint. Even then, I'm going to need some filler or cheater pieces before I cover it with fiberglass. Here is one of my scarf joints.

I needed more of these around the shear line, since the curve of the boat meant my 14 foot strips weren't long enough to make the trip from bow to stern unbroken. I've found that I can now use a single piece for the length now, but curving a piece into place along the length of the boat is tricky work too. This clamp on the stern is due to the hard angle putting stress on seam.

These are the stern finger joints. It looks pretty rough, but it'll eventually get trimmed down and capped with a stem piece. I haven't decided what type of wood to use for my stem piece, probably the spanish cedar?

Sax Family Update

2011-07-26T17:55:00.000-07:00

Erik:

Our garden is finally coming to fruition and we've had quite a bit of delicious luck with our basil & tomatoes. We have picked over 30 tomatoes! Erik enjoys an appetizer of bruschetta often and is proud that all the ingredients, minus the mozzarella, is home made.

Our first haul of ripe tomatoes!

Proud Sax men with their tomatoes.

Erik is also working on his skills as a baker. He has most success in baking bread, though he recently tried his hand at an unusual cupcake recipe to enter into the 4th Annual Cupcake Swap. His blue cheese/dark chocolate cupcakes were pretty disgusting.

The face Erik is making is one most people made when tasting this concoction.

Caraway Rye Bread. Erik's been enjoying it as the outer layers of a homemade Reuben.

Besides all these wonderful things Erik has been bringing to our house, he also surprises us with an amazing sense of humor.

...his most recent joke...

Don't worry, the mustache is gone and he no longer looks creepy.

Claire:

I've been trying my hand at canning. It is much harder than I thought it would be. I stewed & diced the tomatoes before canning. We also canned some peaches that were on sale at Harris Teeter (a whole bag for $1.50!). They look great, but I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the peaches. Maybe a crumble?

I've also been to 18 births now, since Sept 2010. All my certification material has been sent to DONA and I am awaiting approval as a certified birth doula.

July 18th baby (home-water birth)

Karl:

Little Karl isn't quite so little any longer. He recognizes many animals and can tell you their sound. He loves saying 'night night' and 'bye bye' to anything and everything. Before bedtime Erik walks around the room with Karl and says goodnight to most things including the picture of Aunt Lele, a wooden bear Erik made in middle school, the light, robot quilte, etc...

Karl also loves reading books. Right now he is reading his favorite 'Animals' book on the floor in our kitchen. I took a picture of this exact same sight a few days ago.

Karl has graduated to a front facing car seat. I've had less luck with this car seat in transferring him, while sleeping, to his crib.

Karl is now big enough that we don't have to carry him everywhere. It's a great way to work off some of his excess energy.

I don't even mind going shopping with Karl any more because he entertains himself by hiding in the racks of clothing. One problem, though, is his desire to play with the manequins. He even went so far as checking to see if they were wearing unmentionables.

Charlie:

He's such a good dog. Besides his penchant for jumping and barking at people, he has calmed down a lot. He even lets Karl sit on his back for as long as he wants.

Poor Charlie. He does love when I hold Karl upside down and he is free to lick his face without stopping.

That's all for now :)

Wee!

2011-07-12T20:18:00.001-07:00

Karl loves to 'wee'. That may sound gross, but to his parents it simply means that Karl loves swimming. We head to a local water park at least 3 times a week and Karl gets his fill of fountains and slides. He also joins me on the lazy river in an inner tube. It's great to get out of the heat. The season pass was well worth it this summer!

I don't take my camera into the water park with us, but my friend did snap a shot of Karl playing in a kiddie pool this summer. Doesn't he look different this year than last?

2010:

2011:

Karl at 21 months

2011-07-03T20:54:00.000-07:00

In just a few short months our little baby will be a two year old! We haven't done an update on Karl in a while, so here goes!

1. Karl is talking a lot. We've figured out what all his words mean. We love that when he sees things that are ours he will say 'mama' or 'dada' followed by the word. Example- "mama. beder" (Mama's computer)

Here is a translation guide for you:

manana- banana

Mun- more

wader- water or plant

e.b.- ice cream (we have no idea)

key- quiche

muck- milk

wee- swing

gorla- gorilla or granola

side- outside

pho- phone

beder- computer

dipe- diaper

peegown- playground

2. Karl loves Charlie. He thinks all dogs are named Charlie. Unfortunately, the past 3 dogs we have met have actually been named Charlie, so trying to convince him that dogs have other names will have to wait. He loves trying to put the leash on the dog and will often try to open the door so we can take him for a walk. Karl has discovered that patting Charlie or holding his feet will get Charlie to lick him. He does this often.

Our blur of a dog running around the tennis courts with his faithful Karl.

3. Erik and I continue to have trouble getting things done without our helper. Every time Erik goes outside to water the plants Karl yells "wader!" and grabs the watering can to follow in his footsteps. We've also noticed that Karl is great at closing doors after himself. I've been shut in the basement or bathroom more times than I care to note.

Karl also helps me with craft projects, especially when I want to take a picture of something I have made.

4. My favorite part of the day coincides with Karl's. When Erik walks through the door after work Karl charges towards him and yells "pee gown" (playground) and demands to be taken. He loves the playground with Daddy.

5. Karl surprises us with how much he can eat. A good portion of my meal goes into his stomach. He especially love pancakes, rice & beans, and granola. Not all at the same time :)

6. Karl's new independence also comes with consequences. We have graduated from crawling up stairs to walking up them. This usually proves no problems, but when you are 20 months old and try to do this new found skill while holding banana bread and sunglasses, you can be guaranteed a tumble.

We're lucky to have this little guy in our life!

Crafting

2011-06-20T05:55:00.001-07:00

My sister and I wanted to let you know that my crafts by claire blog has been erased and now a joint blog: www.calmelm.blogspot.com has taken its place. CALM- me and ELM- Elizabeth is up and running, so visit the website if you want to keep up with us!

2011-06-17T12:15:00.000-07:00

Per the request of my mother in law I am putting up a new picture of Karl.

He hasn't quite figured out how to use the tricycle, but loves sitting on it and eating a snack. Charlie stands on the alert for any crumbs that might fall his way. Smart dog. This morning he got 1/2 a banana and some corn flakes.

My little secret.

2011-06-04T17:37:00.000-07:00

I have always commented that I am my father's daughter in many ways, but lately I have come to realize that I share many attributes of my mother. Most recently, I have discovered I share a love of an author who writes romance novels. It's not something I am proud of...especially since the author we love, Betty Neels, is utterly wholesome. The most racy it gets is a kiss and a marriage proposal. It's pretty pathetic, but I can't stop reading them!

You may be wondering why I am writing this post. It's mainly to apologize to my mother for all the years in which Elizabeth and I made fun of her for reading old lady books that weren't even racy. I'm sorry. You are right; they are great!

Family Time

2011-05-20T09:42:00.000-07:00

...or "how we learned to love life"

Lately, most of our evenings are spent making dinner together, playing with Karl, and then reading books before bed. We haven't watched "real" TV in months, except for the occasional PBS Create Channel that inspires us with various cooking shows. We have been so occupied with other interests that we are even considering doing without the television and internet at home. We'll of course, instead, get one of those fancy phones with wireless. Maybe they make a cell phone that is rotary? Probably not.

Karl is also enjoying our family time and as most of his electronic toys are car toys (placed specifically in a vehicle for maximum entertainment on long trips) he spends most of his time playing with blocks, balls, and books. He also loves this little toy I bought for $1.00 at a yard sale when I was pregnant.

Erik continues to garden like a crazy man and much to my chagrin the 'Topsy Turvy' is producing amazing results with our tomato plant. Our traditional potted & staked plant is falling behind in growth. 1- Erik 0- Claire. Erik gains another point because he has started making sourdough bread at home. Every day I am blessed to get a delicious smelling house and then I get to try the results. I'm sure he will post on this sometime soon.

Erik also recently convinced me that we need to stop buy microwave popcorn because it's full of chemicals. We rarely indulge in popcorn any way so I wasn't too sad not to eat popcorn again. THEN! He informed me that we can still have popcorn, but we'll just have to pop our own with our brand new Air Popper! It's pretty awesome and the popcorn is perfect with just a dash of salt.

Needless to say, family time beats out all others. I hope you have found a life that makes you happy as well :)

Hey Nasa!

2011-05-16T17:58:00.001-07:00

Or, "how I learned to stop worrying and love the railgun":

Everyone today in nerd world (where I live) was talking today about the penultimate US space shuttle launch, trying desperately to save their 'end of an era' chatter for the final launch of Atlantis. It's days like this that I often think of the scene in "Phenomenon" with John Travolta, where he is frustrated that he's got ideas with no outlet. Little does he really know at that point that the more frustrating thing is not even getting other's to listen to your ideas, but making them believe in them enough to contribute time or money, or making them happen before someone else gets to it, or in a cost effective way if at all. All those bits are much more tricky and frustrating. Ideas are a dime a dozen.

Well in the spirit of American manned space exploration - or global manned space exploration, here's a free idea for America, and for the world. The problem with rail guns, you see, is the acceleration. Even Jules Verne knew that unless we could overcome that, it would kill us, or damage whatever components we need to transport. Ballistic technologies are limited to the softly accelerating oxidizing fuel rockets, expensive as they are. But we get to use words like "turbopump" so that's cool.

But there's another dimension to this - the part where we accelerate out of low earth orbit, LEO, and head for the stars. Here's how we could make that part cheaper.

Start by launching a slug into space. The slug is a metal jacketed piece of ice or liquid water. The slug goes up into leo and is captured by an unmanned satellite. The satellite unfurls it's big 'ol solar panels, and gets to work turning water from the slug into gas - H and O - using solar energy. When I was a kid, I asked my dad "how did you breath on the submarine?" He said that they used electrolysis and split the water up with electricity from the nuclear reactor, and dumped the hydrogen overboard. I asked why they would dump perfectly good hydrogen overboard when they could burn it for electricity, and I'll never forget the look on his face. "Well then we'd just have more water again."

We'd still need to get people and equipment into leo the old fashioned way - rockets and stuff. But we wouldn't have to wait for something exotic like a space elevator to bring some of the costs down, and we'd finally have a use for that kick-ass rail gun technology that we've been working on since old Gerald Bull tried to sell his supergun to the Iraqis. People have been talking a lot today about America and manned space flight, and maybe what we really need is for us all to open up our intellectual wallets a little and reach for the stars.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/Cool-Astronomy/2010/0914/NASA-considering-rail-gun-launch-system

Happy Mother's Day!

2011-05-08T18:11:00.000-07:00

Today marked my second mother's day and we celebrated it in style! Delicious pancakes, flowers, a nap, and dinner out with Erik's mom. Karl has even been letting us watch a movie tonight while he plays in the dog crate. What a nice evening!

Here are the two mother's ready to head out for dinner:

A family evening :)

Also, we thought you might like a to watch a video of little Karl talking.

Sunday Pancakes!

2011-05-01T08:41:00.000-07:00

Probably the main thing I inherited from my dad is a pancake recipe he made every weekend. When he was dying I was pretty much in denial, so I had to be prodded to go ask for the recipe. It was a surreal experience, to admit to myself that I didn't know the recipe, and that I was desperate to preserve it. He didn't seem surprised that I asked.

So it's not really the recipe that I've inherited after all, but the will to simply make pancakes that we all inherited from DOD (he often styled himself as Dear Old Dad in emails as a bit of humor @ the department of defense). I've been horrified to learn that my brother and sister often use a box mix - Bisquick, and I prayed dearly for their lost souls. But honestly I can't blame them, my dad's recipe is kind of a lot of trouble and isn't as good as I somehow remember it. People are often disappointed in in their blandness in comparison to the high-salt, high-fat affairs found at breakfast restaurants.

I've been especially suspicious lately that the recipe is partly based on his sense of cheapness, for which he was renowned. For instance a split of olive oil and canola oil? Chemically these act on the final pancakes in the same way, but the olive oil is better for you and the corn oil is cheaper. A tablespoon of each is a bit of a cut corner IMO. Also, I grew up eating pancakes made out of cheap flour while taking flintstones vitamins. In my adulthood I sort of see something perverse about eating food lacking some of the vital ingredients of "food," like without the flinststones we'd all be at risk for rickets or scurvy or something.

After experimenting with ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg for the last year or so, I finally decided to try some more extreme experiments. It helps to imagine Christopher Kimball is in the kitchen with you when performing these experiments. Claire and little K were so pleased with the results yesterday that I was asked for a repeat, and today I doubled down on my change. The problem with buttermilk pancakes, is, in my considered opinion, the buttermilk. It's never around, and if it's in the fridge, it's usually bad. But how can you even tell? It smells terrible in it's original state. And the pancakes get a bitter aftertaste from it (which I usually cut with a bit of ginger) making it almost unpalatable with a strong cup of coffee. Cultured buttermilk... what else is "cultured..." wine, cheese, bread, beer.... yogurt!

Whisk together:

1 egg (God's eggs aren't uniformly white)

4 oz of fruit flavored yogurt(yesterday pear/squash, today apple/sweet potato)

4 oz of 2% or whole milk (whole milk is like 3% milkfat. If you can get milk that's not ultrapasturized, I think that's better because more protein is intact, but this is hard. Also 8oz of yogurt and no milk will work too, but I had to keep my dad's sense of cheapness in there somewhere...)

Almost 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil (you can probably use as little as one)

1 heaping tblsp full of granulated sugar

1/4 tsp of koshering salt (that's 1/8th tsp of small grain table salt!)

1 teaspoon of baking powder

1/2 tsp of baking soda

1 cup of AP king arthur flour (1/2 cup at a time)

Cook on medium heat - an iron skillet is best but pretty much anything works - use spray olive oil that smokes in the pan before making 6in diameter pours, and flip when you get more than 1 or 2 bubbles that pop. I use two pans at once so the process doesn't drag out forever, and stick them on a plate in a 170 degree oven until there's a respectable stack to serve. In case you didn't know about the salt thing, bigger grains have more air between them so if you want to cut the salt, start by using koshering salt in smaller amounts.

Top with the same fruit as your yogurt flavor, and stay away from syrups with HFCS (good luck with that!). Chronic consumption of fructose is bad for you, so don't eat it!

Karl- 18 months

2011-04-18T06:46:00.000-07:00

Does it even seem possible than in 6 months Karl will turn 2? Here is a run down of some of the things Karl is now doing as an 18 month old.

1. Karl likes to feed himself with a fork & spoon now.

We usually give him a kid spoon :)

2. Karl loves being outside. If you say the word he is at the door in mere seconds. Sadly, he has figured out how to open our glass front door and if you leave it unattended he will push it open and waddle outside. It doesn't matter if he has shoes on or not!

These are pictures of our weekend in Monterey, VA. Karl loves being able to play in the yard there.

3. Karl is talking more than ever. He now likes to mimic what we say. I said "do you want to go downstairs" and Karl said "downstairs". We just taught him a few new words including: walnut ('walney'), banana ('manana'), and birthday ('birda'). I expect in a few more weeks that he is going to be copying a lot more of our speech. It's really fun to see him expand his vocabulary.

4. The love of buttons is still going strong. Karl has recently discovered that the front car seats are fantastic. He likes to sit in the drivers seat and press all the buttons. The Prius is the most fun, but Erik's new car isn't bad either. He also really loves pushing the caps lock button on our computer since a little green light comes on when you do. It's a pain when you're trying to type something and every other letter is capitalized.

5. We have hit the stage of development where Karl likes to figure out where things go. Karl loves playing with the box that has cut outs for wooden shapes to fit in. At church he runs through the aisles taking the pens an then putting them back carefully in the little drilled out holes for them. He is now sitting next to me with a wine bottle stopper as well as a candle and is taking turns putting them in the candle stick.

6. Our current worry over Karl is this strange rash he has on the bottoms of his feet, his big toes, one palm of a hand, and his forearms. It doesn't bother him at all so we are trying to rule things out before we do any testing. This week is a no gluten week for Karl. He was very upset yesterday when he couldn't have a cracker at church fellowship. Good thing he loves yogurt for a snack!

We don't have a great picture.

7. Karl is very mommy centric right now. When I drop him off at church nursery or leave him with Erik he cries and cries. If I don't distract him with other things (say a candlestick holder and wine stopper) or give 100% of my attention to him he gets very upset. He hates when I cook dinner because I can't pick him up and play. I wonder if this is a common problem for stay at home parents?

8. In the picture above you can see that he has almost all of his teeth. We are just missing his bottom canines (and his 2nd year molars which will come in the next 6 months or soqa). His bottom canines are very swollen and we can see the teeth under his gums.

9. Karl is getting more handsome each day. Here he is modeling a garment brought back from India by our next door neighbor. It's a little long, but it's perfect for this weather.

10. Overall, Karl is a very happy kid.

Messy

2011-04-01T19:25:00.000-07:00

Lately Karl has been very interested in feeding himself. Yesterday, he ended up with yogurt and granola all over his face. The camera wasn't around to capture that mess, but we did manage to get some pictures of his messiness while eating some rice and beans. Rice & beans is a meal we can always guarantee that Karl will eat a ton of. I'm always surprised by how much he loves beans.

I feel like he looks so big in these pictures, especially compared to the photo at the top of our Team Sax blog.

The Tiny Chimp- 17 months

2011-03-16T12:25:00.001-07:00

Baby Karl is not much of a baby any more. He's turning in to 'TK'- toddler Karl. He loves climbing, chattering, playing, messing, eating, laughing, and running. Gone are the days of snuggling in bed for hours at a time with wonderful skin to skin contact. Now, I'm lucky to get 5 minutes of rest! Enjoy the updates about our on the go little guy.

1- Karl is SUPER helpful! I'm sure I've said this before, but Karl likes be underfoot helping out in anyway he sees fit. When I sweep the floor Karl is happy to stand in or walk through the pile of dirt- making sure I know where it is. When I rush to get the dustpan and leave the broom unattended Karl makes his move. Before I know it he is sweeping my neat pile of dirt all around the floor. When I vacuum Karl helps direct me by standing in front of the vacuum so I can't move until he does. He also helps by turning the vacuum on and off when I am not paying attention. Charlie really loves visits from 'Mr. Bissell' and Karl helps me out by chasing Charlie and yelling "DOH"(in baby that means "No!").

Karl does his best to fix any problem that he sees. These pajamas are quite fitting :)

Mr. Fix-It

2- Karl has started mimicking certain activities that he sees us do. He loves brushing his teeth and cries when we say "All done" and make him put the toothbrush down. If he gets his hand on a hair brush he will do his best to brush his imaginary long locks. One of the funniest things he does is when he picks up something that is or looks like a phone he yells loudly "WEE!". We're not sure why he thinks this sounds like "hello". We suspect that he is actually French and picking up the phone and yelling, tersely, "YES!?".

Another favorite thing Karl pretends to do is blow his nose. He loves finding napkins or tissues and saying "phoo" instead of blowing. It is much funnier than it sounds.

3- Karl loves reading. He gets very upset at night when we aren't reading to him all the time. If you tell him to go find a book he eagerly complies and then shoves it in your face until you read it. If you don't respond immediately, this is what happens (there is major whining going on in this picture):

4- Karl can open doors! My days of going to the bathroom alone are gone. This morning I was taking a shower while I thought Karl was dozing on our bed. A few minutes in and I heard the door open and the curtain was flung aside. It's like having our own version of 'Psycho', but less scary.

The other evening I was playing the piano downstairs while Karl was getting a bath. I heard the water draining and then heard tiny footsteps running towards the hallway upstairs. A naked baby was heading down for me!

Look at those nice curved fingers! Good technique, son!

6- Karl has a few words in his vocabulary now. He says 'book', 'ball', 'dada', 'doh' (no), 'ya ya ya' (yes), 'zoc' (sock), 'phoos' (shoes). Karl also understands quite a bit. You can give him a sentence such as "Do you want to ride your zebra?" and he will find it and sit on it. Or you can say "Let's read 'Happy Birthday Maisy'. Can you find it"? He searches through all of his books until he finds the one that you mentioned. It's a great way to keep him occupied if you are in the middle of something (say a blog post...)

We love our little guy more as each day passes. I can't wait to share the skills he develops this month :)

The gorilla

2011-03-14T15:51:00.001-07:00

I am fat.

I came to this realization some time ago - when I realized that I'd gained 8 pounds a year for 10 years. In 1999 I weighed in the 140's, and in 2009 I topped the scales in the 230's. Like most of you, this stunning realization taken on it's own may not have much of an impact on day-to-day life, especially since I'm not an extraordinary specimen in my peer group.

When researching my boat, I used a lot of different criteria for selecting a design, and one of the important factors was the "power curve" which demonstrates the friction of the boat in the water vs. its speed. This also shows you where hull speed is. A longer boat will have a higher hull speed, the point at which it becomes a lot harder to row.

When comparing different designs, I found that the graphs are dependent on the weight of the rower, and so each boat gets 3 different curves to represent 3 different sized people, small medium and large. Large topped out at about 190, and at 230 I knew I was in danger of sinking or damaging the boat I built. That brings me to my next point.

You are fat (you know who you are).

So I thought some of you might benefit from what I've been going through lately in working to get myself back down to 190. But it's not really about the number for me, because that attitude leads to unhealthy compromises and continued unhealthy choices made for unhappy reasons. I hope that I can convince you of the same.

That brings me to the gorilla. I came up with this philosophy while reading "good night gorilla;" those of you with small children will appreciate the subtle nuances of this book, like the banana, and the balloon, especially if you have the large format version of this book and can see the tiny balloon on some of the later pages.

For this mental exercise the gorilla is hypothetical, literal, and metaphorical, all at the same time. First, the literal. In 2005, a 21 year old gorilla named Brooks died of heart disease, attributable to his "western" diet. Gorillas in a zoo can live over 50 years, so this was a shock to the system for America's zoos. As of today, here is the diet of gorillas at the national zoo:

"The morning diet is generally made up of vegetables, which may include kale, celery, green beans, carrots, and sweet potato. Evening foods include more greens such as romaine, kale, cabbage, or dandelion along with the fruits and vegetables du jour. Bananas, apples, oranges, mango, grapes, melon, and papaya are often included. Onions, broccoli, turnips, white potatoes, squash, cucumbers, and beets are also staples."

There are several reasons for the sea-change in the diet of America's captive gorillas.

it just seems damned inhumane to be subjecting these creatures to our diet.
gorillas are expensive capital investments
captive gorillas are valuable as revenue sources and academic research subjects
some number of people really like the gorillas they work with for decades at a time
gorillas have non-linear recurring costs (handlers, space, things like that). Two gorillas aren't twice as expensive as one, so it pays to keep your gorillas around as long as possible.

Nowadays if you were to accidentally drop your fast food bag into the gorilla cage you'd probably be lambasted by the handlers, and they'd need to call a special vet in after the poor gorilla that ate your nasty food was lethargic and unsociable the rest of the day. It would probably be a week before he was back to normal after 30 seconds of happily wolfing down a burger and fries.

Now for the hypothetical gorilla. What would you feed a gorilla if you owned one? Lets say you could make 100K$ a year giving a home to a gorilla so that jane goodall could study how it interacted with your family. It would cost you 50K up front, and a yearly cost of under 20K for food and shelter and vet bills. This is a hell of an investment, and this hypothetical gorilla, much like the real thing, could be an emotionally valuable addition to your family as well. You only get one, so you're hoping it will live into it's 50's, so you can retire comfortably. If you're like me, you're probably thinking that the national zoo diet is looking pretty good for your imaginary friend.

Attention people! To hell with the gorillas! What are we doing to ourselves? We're worth way more than a gorilla. This is about the metaphorical gorilla, it's you. Not even 30, I've got another 30-50 years of working and millions of dollars in earnings still to realize. Even in your old age, you could add years onto your life by eating better, and you'll feel better too. Food isn't the important experience in our lives, and if you believe it is you have mentally abused yourself by not recognizing your own value, to yourself and to others. As a result, you've physically abused yourself with food. You deserve better, and we deserve to keep you around.

For me the spotlight is now on kale and other cruciferous veggies. Kale is the reigning champion of nutrition, with more protein per calorie than sirloin steak. It's also known for being a cancer prevention food, by helping your liver remove toxins, reducing oxidative stress and providing more vitamins than a multivitamin pill. We also know that a compound in Kale binds with digestive bile, preventing you from reabsorbing the bile as cholesterol; over time your cholesterol will go down!

There are lots of ways to eat it, and while I prefer a mustard/kale sandwich, you can find kale chips and kale juice, and last night we made a downright bland mix of Kale and chicken in stock with cabbage, onions and spices. I'm also a fan of carrot juice, this new bread they've got with "ancient grains" and pretty much any other "healthy" food I can find. Try carrot juice. If you can stand it, drink it by the glass. Eat roasted/unsalted peanuts or fruit as a snack. Experiment with smoothies and juices. There's no explicit need to cut out anything from your diet. I think the important thing is to think about what it means to eat something, and what it accomplishes for your body and your long term nutritional goals, instead of mindlessly cramming what might taste good down the hatch while counting calories and endlessly making compromises.

What put me over the edge toward becoming a health nut was a combination of things; biking to work, having a son, starting a garden, building a boat. My mom's recent brush with death at the hands of a duodenal tumor was a big red flag, as is the memory of my Dad's esophageal cancer. We also read the other day about a billionare planning his 125th birthday. I think he'll make it. The crazy thing is that what he eats isn't out of reach for us thousandaires or even those of you who are debt-indentured servants. Or even gorillas. Think about it the next time you put something in your mouth, and maybe some day it will have saved your life, and you won't even notice.

The workshop

2011-03-01T19:45:00.000-08:00

I promised my mom that I would include Karl if I posted pictures of my boat, so below you can see the little guy in the doorway. He likes to open and close the door to the garage while I'm working outside.

Oh yeah, I'm out of the basement for this project now that the weather is nice enough that I can work outside. I've been getting the garage more organized so I can route strips and things without a lot of hassle. Also I set up a dolly so I could roll the whole boat assembly in and out of the garage, and my friend picked up his motorcycle that was garaged here for the winter.

Here you can see it getting wheeled back in at the end of an evening with the fifth row of hull strips stapled, clamped and glued in place.

Last time I posted a list of questions people have been asking me, and I forgot about one in particular, "where will you store it?" For some scale, here are 14 foot strips in our foyer with Claire and Karl:

We have 4 options for storage, and Claire and I have debated about them at length. Cast your vote with a comment!

In the garage
Under the deck (like a neighbor does)
the long basement wall
diagonally on the wall above our main staircase

I'm gunning for that giant empty wall above the steps, it's like a blank canvas to fill with cool boats. That or the nice long basement wall... hiding this in the garage would be a tragedy! Right?

There is finally sleep :)

2011-02-22T14:28:00.001-08:00

It looks like Karl is officially a 'sleep through the night' baby. I can't believe it. I never thought this day would come. It only took one tough night of us soothing him back to sleep without nursing him. The next two nights he woke up once or twice, but since then he has been sleeping from about 10p until between 7a-830a. Amazing! I haven't felt this energized in a while.

I am still nursing Karl quite a bit during the day, but as of last night he doesn't need to nurse before bed. Erik was able to get him down last night. I missed rocking him and nursing, so I don't think Erik putting him to bed will become a regular occurrence.

After Karl gets sleepy rocking with me I put him down on one side of the crib (both ends have pillows). When I put him down he sits up and kind of scuttles to to other end of the crib and grabs the pillow with both arms extended. It's so goofy that I took a picture for you. This is generally how he falls to sleep for both naps and bedtime.

Back to reality

2011-02-20T18:04:00.000-08:00

I took the week off work after finishing a big project, because I was feeling burned out. It was a great week, the only thing I missed out on was a bike ride on Friday when it was 70 degrees. Now it's ready to snow outside, and I'm heading back to the mines.

Some questions have popped up as I've been writing about the kayak project. These were different than I expected. I expected "how will you clamp on the cove side without breaking the sharp edges of the cove?" Well, hypothetical-rhetorical reader, I'll tell you. I put a dowel in the cove and clamp away.

The questions I do get are listed in no particular order

"Where are pictures of the baby?"
"Do the forms stay in?"
"Will it float?"
"Are you an avid kayaker?"
"Where are you planning to use that?"
"Can you get it out of the basement?"
"Claire is letting you do what?"
"Are you crazy?"

One thing I haven't explained is that after the wood is all glued together, the forms come out, and fiberglass is laid over everything making a shiny, rugged, watertight and lightweight boat. I added some masking tape so the glue doesn't stick to the forms, and I got a special staple remover from office Depot. Ironically, Staples didn't have one.

Also, yes, I can get it out of the basement, I've kayaked before, there's lots of lakes and rivers (and the Atlantic) in this neck of the woods, and Claire thinks it's really cool (there's no real way for a person to evaluate their own sanity, but I think I'm ok). As for Karl, we're pretty much dealing with this kind of thing right here, all the time.

The question I do get that I did expect is "why." And I thought about that a lot this week. Ten years ago today, my dad lost his battle with cancer. I've had a hard time with this ever since because I felt like I missed out on a lot; in particular I always felt disconnected with him. Half the time I knew him he was in his fifties, and other than the significant generational gap he was retired from the career that would be defining for him. He retired as a naval officer when I wasn't yet in kindergarten. I grew up in the part of his life spent in calm suburbia, when a few years before he was conducting missile drills with the crew of a nuclear submarine off the coast of a large, asiatic country. The only hint of this life seemed to be funny plaques, a faded anchor tattoo, and a particular way about stacking the dishwasher.

When I would ask my dad "what do you do," his response was that he was an Engineer, which is about as nebulous as you can get, even if you're old enough to know what the words engineer even means. So I never really knew what he did. I even went to his office a number of times and helped out with paper work on 'take your brat to work day,' but I still have no clue what any of it was about. M. Rosenblatt & Son, his employer was styled as "naval architects and engineers", and I vividly remember a large model of the Arleigh Burke taking up valuable Crystal City office space. If I was cornered I might say that he did things like planning and engineering calculations for destroyers in this class, or talk about how he was helping out with the engineering for repairs to the USS Cole when it was hit.

For hundreds of years now shipbuilding and repair has been the affair of the military industrial complex, and it dawned on me that no one can really call themselves a boatwright or shipwright anymore. They're all part of a larger team, even the people at the yard are just welders or carpenters or crane operators. They probably don't tell their kids that they "build boats" because adults don't see that kids need things to be a little less abstract to understand them, and there's a bit of lost humility for even a welder to say they were a shipwright. I could be wrong.

Anyway I sort of find that building my own sea-going boat is a good way to connect with my dad. Besides, it's cheaper than buying one!

"The sea will grant each man new hope, as sleep brings dreams of home." -Columbus

Stripping the hull

2011-02-19T17:35:00.001-08:00

The last two days have been chock full of [boat/wood]-wright learning. I bought a router from the habitat restore last year for 20$, and had never used it before yesterday, so it took some time to get it set up with the router bits I bought to mill my cedar strips. To strip-build a kayak or canoe you start above the water line and fit the strips together with a cove and bead (sort of like tongue and grove) working your way to the keel. The cove side points up and you fill them with glue for the next course, stapling everything to the forms. Here's the last picture I took before I started with the "sheer-strips" (the first course with just a cove milled upwards, the deck of the boat gets stripped right against the sheer line so it will all fit together).

It's sort of a shame to cover this up, it looks pretty cool in it's own right. You can also see that in order to do the hull first, it gets flipped upside down once the forms are all set up.

There are some big challenges with this which I'm feeling a lot better about now that I've made all the major mistakes the book talks about, and fixed them. The strip method of building is very forgiving of mistakes since there's very little you can screw up that fundamentally ruins the whole thing.

The first challenge is scarfing pieces together with a diagonal cut, which is trickier than it sounds. The other tricky bit is the bow and stern, which have some severe angles for the wood to bend along.

In addition to the staples, I needed to drive a couple of finish nails hold things together with some clamps. Below is the stern section, You can see in these pictures that I'm using a "finger joint" to weave together alternating pieces so they'll make a nice edge.

I'm finding that a handful of tools are all you really need (other than my router and saws and stuff). The block plane does a larger part of the work than I'd expected, and other than that I'm mostly reaching for my staple-gun, glue and clamps. I'm really impressed with the people online I've seen that don't use staples. As the book says, yes, they'll leave tiny spots in the finish, but only if you look really close, but who cares? Just staple it and get on with life. It will still look amazing. I'm down with that philosophy.

I'm pleased to have the first two courses done on either side tonight. Hopefully I'll get through a lot more of the hull tomorrow, the second course went a lot faster after I figured out a lot with the first course of sheer-strips.

Bow and Stern

2011-02-17T21:43:00.000-08:00

Today Claire gave me the gift of time. In other words, I got out of all kinds of baby duties, and all kinds of diapers. It's nice to be home though where I can hang out with them whenever I like.

I have completed boat forms to show for my time, which means the next step is to start laying out the hull. I'm really looking forward to this, because to finally be doing that is to make this dream a reality. Now the real work can start.

Attaching the forms to the strongback was tricky work at first, since I had to figure out through some hard knocks that I needed a tighter grain for the "cleats" in order to prevent cracking from driving screws. You can see them in this picture; I used drywall screws to attach them.

As you can see from above, I flipped the forms around for the stern of the boat, because the paper has reference lines on it used to sight along for alignment. Here's the bow, which shows off the job I did tapering the bow.

Both the bow and stern have a taper, and there's no fence, jig, form or line to follow with a saw or anything. First I used a chamfer bit on my router and cut both sides, then I used my block plane and rasp plane to clean the angle, an finally a bit of sanding brought it to a point. Many thanks to Marc and Cyn for the awesome plane, it really works great.

The tiny forms at the ends are attached with hot glue, which worked like a charm. Here's the completed stern:

In order to take a picture of the whole thing I had to stand way back.

This 14' boat is about 7 feet less than the width of our townhouse. The black panel in the background is where our double french doors are, so you can see better how I'll be able to get this out.

Forms!

2011-02-16T18:03:00.000-08:00

Today was a father-son day, which meant this morning Claire left Karl and I to hang out till after lunch time. He's a happy baby so he played on the main floor of the house while I worked in the garage (with the door open of course). By "play" I mean he went back and forth from reading books and watching what I was doing. I felt a little bit like Silas Marner, except I didn't tie him up with a ribbon.

After lunchtime I got to sit in rush hour traffic since I had to deliver the papasan chair we sold yesterday. I don't know how you people that have to commute do it without going nuts.

During Claire's voice lessons, we were supposed to have a babysitter, but she was a no-show, so I got to hang out with my little buddy some more, so there was very little progress today. I still have something to show for it tho: here are the completed main forms in a dry fit!

I still have 6 forms to do, the end forms are small and tapered a lot so it's finer work. It'll probably take all day tomorrow to get the forms all finished and attached.

Since I finally have all the forms spaced out, I knew where I could connect to my supports without hitting any of them, so I started to make dowel pins like this one below.
I found a lot of problems with this. First, it's way more work than zipping in a screw. It also makes a big mess to bore out a 1/2 inch hole. Finding the exact center of a 2x4 with a drill bit is not super easy, since they aren't exactly 3.5 inches, and this needs to be able to flip over. So this was the only one I made.

Lofting

2011-02-15T18:53:00.000-08:00

So far, Claire is neither sick of me, nor my crazy project. I think she's pumped that we're clearing out our basement; it's a step towards the eventual renovation. Lots of old furniture is going for free, but believe it or not, the ancient papasan chair is going for 50$ (with delivery).

More than one person has commented that they're concerned I might not be able to get my kayak out of the basement. Rest assured I've measured the space provided and can get it out through the double french doors I installed in the fall. I think Gibbs from NCIS is responsible planting this idea. As several people have pointed out, he's hell bent on building boats in his basement with no clear escape plan. I guess they just accumulate. No, I plan to enjoy the result of this project, and I'm looking forward to building the "little auk" for Karl, and another boat for Claire. But that's for another day (or year!).

Here's a picture of the lovely Claire happily working away behind my freshly built stands. I used the wood from the truck frame to build them and rabbited slots for what's known as the strongback, a 12 foot board used to hold the forms. I'm going to put dowels through these rabbits in order to hold it all together.

My kayak book included the dimensions for these stands, and they work out perfectly; very easy to build. I had them done around lunchtime. The cool thing about them is that they can function as perpendicular stands after the hull is stripped.

After lunch with the fam, I cruised up to the Depot and sifted through dozens of boards to find the perfect strongback. I'm getting some weird looks and questions given some of the idiosyncrasies of this project. Looking for a perfect 12 foot 2x4 in the middle of a Tuesday is unusual enough on its own to draw a few questions.

Skipping ahead, here's a picture of the bow forms dry-fit onto the strongback.

The savior of the day is loctite spray adhesive. I had rough cut my forms based on a trace of the paper cut-outs (lofting!), but glueing them to the wood helped me to get the shapes perfect with nothing but my dad's decades old jig-saw, no band saw needed. This was cool because I can recall him showing me how to use it when I was 8 or so.

Here's a sneak peak of the stern forms. By tomorrow night I hope to have it all ready so I can start stripping the hull on Thursday.

This project is super fun, interesting, and easier than you think, and when it's over, you get a boat you can take fishing, exploring, get exercise etc... If you've got an inkling to try it, I highly recommend it.

Day 2

2011-02-14T17:09:00.000-08:00

Claire helped me make some great progress on the basement today, and we've got a place cleared out in the basement for me to start building. Our basement has enough room that the forms will sit off to the side and not take up much space. Also I picked up my cedar strips today, which was very exciting. The owner of the mill told me that it was more than he'd sold in 2 years; it's really rare for people to want long pieces of clear (free of knots) cedar. I'm really glad I built a frame to hold the strips, they are so light they would've blown away, and the longer ones needed to go into the cab of my truck so they didn't flop out the back of my 6 foot bed.

Believe it or not, this isn't the first time I've done something like this with my trusty old ranger. That dashboard is on there real good. It's a bit nerve wracking when you accelerate uphill though.

Oddly enough, Claire agreed to let me keep this in our upstairs hallway, which is exactly 14' long (the house smells nicely like cedar now). I think maybe it's because I surprised her with V-day gifts, like a massage-abacus thing that Karl helped me pick out, and a piece of red velvet cheese-cake. If you know Claire, you're nodding right now. (She just hit me and pointed out that she's lost 6 pounds! :)

Here's Karl helping us clean up the basement. After making sure every marker was on the floor instead of the box, he decided to run around making a REAL mess. You can also see my plywood forms in this picture, and the 12 foot 2x4 I'm going to use as the "strongback" where the forms are mounted.

Karl wanted everyone to see the present he helped me pick out and wish you a happy valentine's day.

The Great Auk

2011-02-13T15:32:00.000-08:00

As far south as new england, there used to be a penguin sort of animal called the Great Auk. Some people say there might have been a sighting in 1852, but as far as we know, the last of these birds was strangled 3 July 1844 by some jerks named Jon and Sigorour or some such. Their good buddy Ketill stomped out the eggs they'd laid. I'm not sure why someone would have done that since apparently the eggs were insanely valuable; the wikipedia page claims that they would go for 11 times a years' wage for a skilled worker. In today's money we're probably talking about million dollar items.

I'd never heard of this animal until last year. For some reason (unknown even to myself), I decided I wanted to build a boat- a kayak specifically. Some research online led me to realize that such a project was within my reach, and I ordered plans for a 14 foot boat called the Great Auk, after the bird that used it's wings for swimming instead of flying. This is a strip built kayak, with a 24.5 inch beam (that's width), and a 4 inch draft. Even though it's only 14 feet, I should be able to make 5 knots without much effort. The shape of the hull will allow for 45 degrees of heel before it wants to capsize, which is great for a boat like this. The only thing it won't do really well is racing, for that I'd want a 19 foot boat. The longer a boat is, the faster you can go because you can make a longer wave in the water and go faster before you make more than one wave per boat-length.

Here's a guy on flickr who built his own great auk.

Here's step one: buying the lumber. Since I found a mill with 14' planks of spanish cedar, I built a stand for my truck so I could support the strips through the window of my truck. I got a call yesterday that they'd milled my strips, so I'm off to pick it up tomorrow. Here's a picture of the build so far.

We also made good progress on step 2 today, in which I get an area of the basement to work on this project. I started to do this in the garage when I got it cleaned out last summer, but after the accumulation of tools and such from the deck project, there's just not enough room in there. We'll see if Claire tolerates this takeover of the basement!

Karl @ 16 months

2011-02-08T08:09:00.000-08:00

Karl is growing like a weed. Erik came home last night and exclaimed that he was much bigger than when he left in the morning. Maybe not quite that extreme, but Karl is now able to grab things off of countertops and table tops.

Let's say you decide that you'll outsmart him. You'll put your important thing in the MIDDLE of the table. Wrong. Karl is a climber. All bets are off.

He has figured out how to climb up on our bed, climb into his highchair, climb onto the couch, and climb up a dining room chair onto our table. Last night he was having a great time sitting in the middle of the table. This morning I took a picture of him standing on it. Our kid is fearless. (Please ignore his little hiding place under our table for his toys)

Sleep training has started. I am always reluctant to talk about sleep on our blog because there is such a stigma attached to co-sleepers or children not sleeping through the night at 6 months. We have had no problems letting Karl nurse through the night and join us in our bed after his initial wake up. However, as my previous post relays...I am TIRED! I think this is exacerbated by Karl's nighttime nursing. Even when we cosleep he still wakes up quite frequently- about every 90 minutes- to switch sides, nurse, and go back to sleep. I haven't slept more than 5 hours in a row since October 10th, 2009. This takes quite a toll on ones body, if you can imagine.

Last night it took quite a bit of convincing to get Karl to sleep. Finally he was out. Two hours later, like normal, he woke up expecting to be nursed and brought to a bed. Sorry, little guy! Not tonight. I tried my best to get him back to sleep without nursing, but he associates me so much with night nursing that it was impossible. Erik went in there said "hush, hush, it's bed time" and 20 seconds later Karl was out. Same deal an hour later. I asked him "do you want Daddy?" and he signed 'yes'. Heart broken, I returned to bed and sent Erik in. 30 seconds later there was no more crying. He slept another 3 hours. Same thing. But then, he slept for 5 hours until 9. I couldn't believe it.

We've got another few hard nights in front of us, but I think it's for the best. I don't want Karl to get much older before I night wean him as it will just continue to get harder. I also don't want to keep up this pattern of not sleeping. I might feel differently if he were a completely baby today, but he is just as happy and sweet as usual.

Here is out sweet boy waking up from naptime

Karl also has quite a strange sense of humor. He laughs at the weirdest things. Last night we heard him playing his xylophone and then laughing. Not too weird, right? Then we looked down and saw what he was playing it with. His head. He was whacking his head with the xylophone and giggling. I took some pictures.

What a weirdo.

Karl still isn't talking much, but is signing fairly often. His favorite sign is still 'grandpa'. I am looking forward to hearing new words besides Dada and Doggy.

Here is Karl signing 'grandpa'.

Here are a few more pictures where I think he looks so much like a little boy holding on to the top of his pants. What happened to my little baby?

Time to blame my Father

2011-02-07T14:15:00.001-08:00

I think in every life there comes a time when you look at where you are in life and say "well, this is clearly my mother's/father's/parent's fault". Today, I have come to realize that my penchant for being overly social and active is my father's fault. Sorry, Dad. Never did my parents truly push me to do a myriad of activities, but by example I followed suit.

Dad has always been busy. Even now that he should be 'retired' (we'll use that word lightly) he works 40+ hours a week raising funds to restore a theatre in the town where they live. Not only that but he is always doing something for various committees or editing plays or going to a meeting, or working on the house. Generally speaking, he is just a busy bee.

I, too, have always been busy. In high school I joined the choir, joined the tennis team, joined the soccer team, was in a community orchestra, took cello lessons, joined the swim team, joined the track team, was part of the musicals, babysat, etc...

Now, as a stay at home mom I feel busier than I did when I had a full time job! It has just hit me in the past two weeks that I am doing TOO much. However, I like every thing that I do. How do you decide what is most important?

I guess there is only one answer to that:

Karl @ 15 months

2011-01-24T06:39:00.000-08:00

Karl, our little baby, is turning into a toddler. Sometimes I have to stop while I try to remember what he looked like as a newborn. It's amazing how quickly they grow and change. The pictures that I will post in this entry make him look like a little boy.

In addition to getting older Karl has a love of books and wants us to read to him all the time. It is especially pitiful when he does the 'more' sign after thrusting a book into your lap. Like his cousin Max, Karl gets very upset when the book ends and grunts/whines until you read it again.

Karl knows a ton of sign language, but has gotten lazy in his use of it. He recently realized that whining and waving his arms got him the same thing as 'more', so often he will just do that when he sees something he wants. The rest of the signs he takes or leaves. There is one new sign that he is loving lately...'grandpa'. He signs it any time we ask and then finds it hilarious if we pretend to be moose afterwards. We hope that Grandpa is no longer referred to as Grandpa, but instead by Moose or Grandpa Moose. Sorry, Dad, but it would be a great nickname for you :)

The weather has been cold and I've been bundling Karl up so we can play outside. He doesn't really care for the mittens I put on him.

Karl is learning that he does not care for certain food.

When Karl does eat the usual pattern goes something like this.

"I guess I'll taste it. Not bad. Oh! Hey Charlie! You want some? Ok! Here you go. What, mom? Don't feed the dog? I'll throw her off and take another bite. It worked! Ha! One for me, one for Charlie, one for me, one for Charlie."

Karl is currently cutting 2-4 new teeth. I'm not sure exactly how many because he isn't very fond of fingers prying his mouth open, but I did spy at least 2 teeth coming in. Hopefully that doesn't disrupt sleep too much for him.

Not much else to report. Send healthy thoughts your way as the Sax house has been taken over by the flu.

Family Updates

2011-01-19T11:51:00.001-08:00

The Sax clan continues on with life in these cold & icy times.

Erik rode his bike a few times so far this winter, but it has been awfully cold and slick outside. In my opinion, the lack of bike riding has made Erik seek new projects. We currently are growing a basil plant and trying to get tomato seeds to bud. Erik also bought a Topsy Turvy (one of the tomato upside down planters). The only problem with this? He wants to hang it INSIDE our house...in our living room next to the fire place. Um, no.

Erik is also going to get started on his strip built kayak in the next few days. So, maybe that will buy me some time before he starts screwing in a hook to hold up the Topsy Turvy.

I have been working more and more on music and being a doula. I have 3 regular voice students, with two starting next week. I have four beginner piano students starting lessons next week. Also, I've been asked to work at the local retirement home and lead a group of residents in song.

This past weekend I attended a doula training workshop, which is one of my steps in the certification process. I made it through the two days of doula workshop, but didn't make it to the breastfeeding class on Monday because I was called to a birth at 5:00 in the morning! Good news about finishing the doula class was that I could use this birth as one of the three I need for certification. I am feeling a bit overwhelmed with all the women who want a doula. I already have one client for the end of March and have been contacted by two other women about my availability for the same time. I need to figure out fees once I am certified to make it worthwhile with driving, time & paying for childcare.

Karl continues to be as sweet as ever. He has started doing the sign for "grandpa" and is looking forward to showing it off when we see Grandpa soon! He also has started shaking his hands in the air and saying 'yea yea yea yea' when he wants us to give him something (usually a snack). It is slightly annoying because we hear it all day long. He still loves books and will bring them over and do the 'yea yea yea' thing until you read it to him.

He has also taken to running around and giggling if you say the words 'I'm going to get you'. It is hilarious.

Lazy Sundays

2011-01-09T15:38:00.000-08:00

After sleeping in and watching True Grit and U571 on TV this morning, I was in the mood for some culinary experimentation. This led me to start making my own salmon benedict.

English muffins are an easy recipe for someone already capable of plucking their own pizza dough, maybe even easier since they seem to be more forgiving. There are two ways of doing it, one is a gooey batter, the other a rolled dough. Either way it seems, a culture of yeast eats sugar and craps carbon-dioxide in order to help make those nooks and crannies.

Here's my first batch!

The main difference from pizza seems to be the use of milk, and no oil. Similar rise time seems to work though.

They came out looking exactly like Thomas's, and in fact that's exactly how they tasted, leaving Claire a bit disappointed that they weren't somehow much better. The fresh taste is great though, I think they're worth the effort.

I'm totally pumped, because now I get to use it for salmon benedict, Yeah! Claire doesn't like salmon, nor benedict, so she missed out tonight. :(

My next adventure was in hollandaise sauce, which required watching several videos to get pumped up, since the only other time I've tried that resulted in some strange looking egg drop soup of butter. I found a cool video online which showed me some tricks- like using your hands to separate yolks, and how to double-boil them. The other key was using water if the emulsion stiffened up too much. Also, "hollandaise can sense fear." I might get the t-shirt.

Success! I've also mastered the art of poaching eggs, which don't seem any worse for the wear when I have to use apple cider vinegar since we're out of white vinegar. Now the only thing I need to achieve the "total culinary mega challenge" of completely scratch salmon benedict is a smoker, so I can smoke my own fresh salmon.

In related family news little Karl tried his first bite of smoked salmon. He seemed to like it!

A New Adventure

2011-01-03T11:47:00.000-08:00

As you may know, the Sax clan is always up for an adventure! Especially when some of the outcomes include saving money and learning new things. For the month of January we have decided that we will not spend any money eating out for dinner or lunch. We have taken advantage of a Christmas gift from my father- America's Test Kitchen Cookbook for 2010- and have planned many of our meals around new recipes found within its pages.

Interested in coming over and knowing what is on the menu? Well, you are in luck! We've already planned out each meal and how much we think the ingredients will cost us. Erik and I won't mind a bit if you decide to steal our meal ideas and make them yourselves this month!

January 1st: Chicken Noodle Soup (with homemade noodles). There is an entire blog post dedicated to this on Crafts By Claire

January 2nd: Dinner with Sheila. Sheila was so nice and watched Karl while we went to see "True Grit". After the movie we headed to a new restaurant near her home and had a great dinner. Thanks again, Sheila!

January 3rd: Homemade Ravioli & Salad

January 4th: Beef Teriyaki

January 5th: Homemade Pizza & Salad

January 6th: Slow cooked beef brisket

January 7th: leftovers

January 8th: Roast Chicken, rice & peas

January 9th: leftovers

January 10th: Lasagna with homemade noodles & salad

January 11th: leftovers

January 12th: leftovers

January 13th: Homemade Pizza & Salad

January 14th: Spiedies (grilled chicken sandwich of sorts)

January 15th: Stew

January 16th: leftovers

January 17th: Pesto spaghetti with homemade noodles

January 18th: Eggs Benedict (minus the ham) & Asparagus

January 19th: Veggie Wontons

January 20th: Pot Roast & roasted vegetables

January 21st: Quiche & Salad

January 22nd: Leftovers

January 23rd: Grilled Chicken & Spicy Rice & vegetable side

January 24th: Corn chowder

January 25th: leftovers

January 26th: Stir fry

January 27th: Curry Chicken

January 28th: MeatBall Subs

January 29th: leftovers

January 30th: Vegetarian Chili

January 31st: leftovers

So, when can we expect you for dinner?

Christmastime :)

2010-12-28T13:39:00.001-08:00

We had a wonderful Christmas this year. I wish I had taken more pictures, but all the opening of gifts seemed to get in the way! Mom and Dad came up to join us and Sheila traveled over from her house in the morning. We started the morning with coffee and a Potato Basil Fritatta. It was delicious (an Ina Garten Recipe)

Erik and I received many wonderful gifts including a vacuum from Sheila. I have now vacuumed the entire first floor and underneath every possible piece of furniture. It has never looked so clean in here. I love having a clean house! Sheila also gave me a lovely sweater & jacket. The best gift from Sheila? The pasta boat! Just kidding ;) I got the NEATEST casserole carrier. I realize that last sentence probably makes me sound very domesticated, but I don't care; it is really cool.See how the casserole dish matches the exterior!? Cool, huh?

Mom gave Erik some great pizza making ingredients and metal pans that help crisp the crust. He was really excited to use it last night as he doesn't have to worry about sliding the pizza on to the pizza stone any longer. It worked perfectly. Mom gave me some a Praise Vocal Music & another music book that will come in handy when I have to sing solo's at church. I'm also very pleased by the gift of a teeth grinding night guard she gave me :) I've used it every night since Christmas and my jaw is much less tense.

Karl received wonderful books, cds and more from Mom & Dad, a set of lego's & talking kangaroo from Sheila, and an awesome sweater & hat set from Aunt Lele. I really love the hat.

Lee also knit me a gift! I got this awesome mustard yellow purse. The inside fabric is so 'me' & she included the leftovers :)

One of the best gifts, though, was purchased with gifts from Dad & Sheila. We were able to buy a new dishwasher! Hallelujah! Thanks to Erik for installing it yesterday. It works perfectly and my glasses are gleaming.

You'd think that was it, right? But no, there was so much more! Too much to list. Though, I do want to tell you that Erik gave me a wonderful pasta maker attachment for our kitchenaid. I am itching to make some homemade ravioli or lasagna with fresh noodles!

From my last post I mentioned that I had gotten a gift for Erik that requires a party. Here it is! A Beer & Chocolate Tasting Kit. It includes the chocolate and a guide for which beers to buy. I am looking forward to inviting Erik's friends over and giving him a fun night.

Karl is exhausted still thinking about presents. Merry Christmas!

The Sleeper

2010-12-20T16:17:00.000-08:00

I got some delicious Belgian beers from my madre for my birthday - a solid indication that adulthood has set in. Apparently she got them at the traditional store for Belgian beers, "Costco" (pronounced "Coas-a-co").

But that's not why we're in your google reader, you're here for pictures of the cutest baby this side of the Mississippi! We do not disappoint.

First he thought it was hilarious to try on Daddy's shoes...

Then he decided to make a seat out of a pack of paper towels...

After falling off of those several times, he decided the coffee table was safer.

Then he fell asleep in his high chair. Check out the little foot kick as he has a dream, and the video below...

Christmas Tree :)

2010-12-18T12:22:00.001-08:00

We gave in and decided to get a tree this year. Erik says having a tree "...is the work of a drunk man. Ok guys, let's cut down a tree and put it inside our house. And we'll decorate it! YEAH!".

Anyway, we bundled up and headed out to find our tree. We picked a small 5 1/2 footer and I think it looks great!

We don't have a tree topper (I wish we had a sweet little angel like the one I read about at the Conlin's- you can click on the link to the right to see it). Though, I found one today that was just beautiful. It was a silver and glass star that was made in India and was sold at the fair trade store. Because it's fair trade it usually costs more and I just didn't have the ability to spend $28 on a topper. Also, Shevitz' I almost bought you this great cd for your kid's that had different Jewish songs from around the world, but I didn't. Let me know if you want it and I can go back :) And, Lee, I was going to buy you this really soft baby llama wool from the same store, but it was so expensive and I didn't know how much you would need to make something.

...It's the thought that counts, right guys? haha!

I did get Erik something really cool that I hope to post about after Christmas. We'll probably have a party to use it :) And Karl is getting a noise maker from Africa. I bet Charlie will eat it in a week or two. Expect a post about THAT, too.

OK, back to the tree. We brought it home and Karl was very curious. Even more so now that we have ornaments on it. We've had to convince him that he doesn't need to pull on them or put them in his mouth. Instead, he has decided to unwrap presents under the tree. They are now safely on our kitchen counter. The joys of a little one :) :)

Picture time!

Holiday Party!

2010-12-08T14:08:00.000-08:00

Karl and I went to a holiday party hosted by the midwives who delivered Karl. It was a great time and so nice to see how much their practice is expanding. They are even thinking about opening a birth center! Very exciting. More exciting is the possibility of me working with them as a doula.

Lately, I have been feeling so blessed in my life. I love singing and have found a joy in teaching. My voice studio is expanding and I am even taking on a few beginner piano students from church. I don't make much doing it, but it is a lot of fun. This bit of income should allow me to finish my Masters degree sooner than we thought. Hoorah!

I also really find that I am addicted to births. I wish that they were all on the weekend so I didn't have to worry about Erik taking a day off, but I am only doing one a month, which is working out well.

Anyway, the real reason I am posting is because I took some pictures of Karl at the Holiday Party and wanted to share them. Here he is!

Here Karl is eating a crayon, a new favorite thing to do. I don't know where he finds crayons, but he ends up with wax around his mouth. I'm glad they are non-toxic. This picture was taking a few moments after I found him eating a cookie he found on the floor. Awesome.
Being a boy and 'playing' the xylophone with a truck.
Pushing a baby stroller around the room. The stuffed snowman behind him was a casualty of the stroller wheels. Poor Frosty.
Trying to take off all the ornaments on the tree (just one reason Erik & I are on the fence about getting a tree this year).

Look at this profile! THE CHEEKS!
Still eating part of the cookie.
Talking to himself.

Love this one.

Thanks for the sweater vest, Nana!

More Updates :)

2010-12-05T06:34:00.000-08:00

Karl: Lately, I feel like I have been living in a sitcom. Between Erik, Charlie & Karl there is always something amusing going on. Karl has been getting in to all sorts of mischief at our house and has hit the phase where we 'put things in' and then 'take things out' of whatever container is around.

I found in the bottom of an empty laundry hamper a tiny baby hanger and a stuffed teddy bear. Clearly, the adults in the house didn't put that there. Last night, after a shower I came out to our bedroom where Erik informed me that Karl had been working like a madman pulling my dresser drawers open and pulling out all of my (now unfolded) pants.

Erik: Still has been riding to work, but is talking more of the cold on his way to work than ever before. I wonder how long this will keep up. Part of me hopes he makes it through the entire winter just so I can brag to my friends "Oh, my husband? No, he doesn't warm the car up before he gets in it. He gets on his bicycle and warms himself up on the way to work".

Erik also appears to have perfected pizza dough making, even if there is little time for the dough to rise. It's delicious, cheap, and faster than ordering. Plus, we also find that we eat significantly less pizza since we are making it ourselves.

Erik has lost 10 lbs since riding his bike and making pizza. I have lost 4.

Claire: I feel ever busy with life. Karl loves being with me and recently started running up to me and hugging my legs. I think it is the cutest thing in the world. However, it makes walking difficult.

I am waiting patiently for a woman to go in to labor (she was due Dec 1st) and was hoping that it would not happen last night as this morning I had to direct my 5 year old bells ringers at church for the 8:15 and 11am service. After church at 2p I have a dress rehearsal for all of my singers who will perform next weekend at the retirement home. It should be a busy day.

Karl waiting for Cherub Choir to start;

Erik has been so kind to give me breaks from the baby to do all of these musical extra curriculars and I was even able to go see a screening of the movie "Consuming Kids" through the Holistic Moms Network in VA. It was a great film and has me even more up in arms about the commercialization of childhood. If I could convince Erik that we need to homeschool Karl and throw out or TV's I would be a happy woman.

I want Karl to have the opportunity to be a kid and grow his imagination. Electronic toys take away active play and do it for him, so as much as he seems to enjoy them I think I will slowly get rid of them when the batteries dies.

I am also hoping that all of Karl's toys, clothes, bedding will not be associated with a tv show or movie (like Winnie the Pooh, Charlie Brown, Clifford, Elmo, etc). I want to promote active play without having characters already established for him. If he has a bear I don't want him to assume that it talks and is friends with Eeyore. I want him to decide on his own and use his imagination.

If you want to give Karl and gift and don't know what to get him, here are some ideas: books, blocks, balls, a generic doll or stuffed animal, wooden toys, bubbles, bath toys, piggy bank.

You might think this is a bit crazy, and maybe it is, but it's what I feel is best for Karl. (And, ignore the fact that Erik decided on Simpson's characters to portray us)

Dino Day!

2010-11-25T07:08:00.001-08:00

When I was growing up, it was common knowledge that the dinosaurs were extinct. As an adult I find that a bit misleading, in the sense that Homo Habilis or Homo heidelbergensis is extinct. I think it's more accurate to say that they are just dead. Homo Neanderthalis is extinct for sure, but those other guys were eventually us. Similarly, the Trex is extinct, but probably the velociraptor is a progenitor for the main course today. Dinosaurs are everywhere, and they are delicious.

Karl got ahold of our camera, and now we have no idea where it is. It's possible that he fenced it to pay for some of the new toys I see him playing with today; I have no idea where they came from. So there's no pictures for Dino day. We may have to buy a new camera, which will be an exercise in will power, lest we buy a D-SLR to flaunt at the people of Kuwait.

In other news I've officially lost 10 pounds and ridden at least 400 miles since I started cycling to work. I've also outfitted my ride with lots of new accessories

- My bell is a "Bell" bell. Come up with your own abbot/costello routine (5$)

- a basket for my backpack is attached to a rack on the back (20$ & 15$)

- two red lights for the back (10$ & 15$)

- Nite Rider LED 3 hour light (109$)

- Orange safety vest (12$)

The first safety vest I found was 15$, a one size fits all Nathan reflective vest. It turned out to be for children or something, and it looked ridiculous. At Dick's they had a 'cycling' orange safety vest for 50$, but I found a 12$ safety vest in the "Hunting" section instead. Now I'm ready for the zombie apocalypse with my handy shotgun shell holders in my snazzy vest!

Unexpected side effect of bicycling to work in cold weather, I get cold at work on days when I don't ride in. I'm used to having a lot of extra body heat.

Anyway have a happy thanksgiving, and take a moment to remember the real history behind the holiday, that the white man steam-rolled over the native american tribes leaving little behind. The Algonquians probably never had a "thanksgiving" with the puritans. Histories victors are its authors after all.

Family Updates

2010-11-09T18:49:00.000-08:00

Karl:

In the past month it seems like Karl has changed from baby to toddler. Crawling is non existent, tantrums are being thrown, and he is communicating with us more and more.

A week after his first birthday Karl started doing sign language back to us. We have tried to be consistent with our signs and it has paid off! Karl does the signs for 'more', 'mama', 'water', 'milk', 'book','all done', and 'dog'.

Karl is turning into a climber. Just this morning I found him sitting on TOP of the piano. He pulled his little green chair in front of the bench and climbed right on up. Looks like I've got some work on my hands.

Erik:

Erik is still biking to work despite the cold weather. He is now layering a lot of clothes and having to wear a warm knit cap under his helmet. I think he plans to keep biking through the winter until snow or ice hits.

Progress on the strip built kayak is being made as Erik is researching and contacting lumber yards finding the perfect pieces for his boat. By Spring we hope to have a finished boat to show you!

Me:

My voice students have their big recital on December 12th at the senior home near our house. I am looking forward to hearing them and seeing them perform. If you're in the northern virginia area and want to come leave a comment and we can get you details.

I have now attended two births, the most recent one being yesterday! I really love being a birth partner and helping women feel comfortable during labor. It is incredible seeing a mother have the birth she wants.

...now for pictures of Karl at a playground in Alexandria from this past weekend.

Happy Halloween!

2010-11-01T10:58:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween, everyone!

We had a pretty busy weekend, but managed to find time to dress Karl up as a lion and take him trick or treating.

I do have to admit that I'm surprised Karl only came home with two pieces of candy. If I saw this little lion saunter up to my house I would fill his basket with candy. Perhaps Karl was gipped because we didn't take a basket, so his hands could only hold two...and we only visited two houses :)

Check out that little tail!

The Team

2010-10-25T18:38:00.000-07:00

A new change has come to the family blog. We've always had a problem of author ambiguity, and for the most part context clues are probably enough. It makes sense to make this a bit easier to follow though, so we've chosen characters from the "Simpsons" to accompany each post. I've applied these to some of our earlier posts going back to the summer.

I'm Hank Scorpio, a Bond-style supervillian from the episode "You only move twice," voiced by Albert Brooks. Note that I think in Albert Brook's voice, and that some of my logic follows a similar path as that of Scorpio.

Claire is Lurleen Lumpkin from "Colonel Homer". Lurleen, a country singer, is a blond, but I've made her a brunette using the gimp to match Claire more closely. I think it's really funny that she's voiced by Beverly D'angelo, best known as the mom from the Grizwald movies with Chevy Chase.

Karl will be played by Bart's satire of the Nirvana album "Nevermind".

Charlie, if he ever writes a post, will be icon'd by Santa's-Little-Helper, obviously.

Three quilts, two days

2010-10-23T19:08:00.000-07:00

I finished making quilts for a charity project in which blankets are going to be given to a children's hospital in Colorado. I had been working on another quilt, but just didn't like it and wanted to have three to send.

This Friday, I started a pink- bird quilt and a blue-star quilt. I finished the binding of the blue one last night and the pink one this morning. During Karl's nap this afternoon I decided I wanted to try a "tree" quilt, which I hope is gender neutral enough to be for both a boy or girl. I really love them all, but especially the tree quilt (maybe it's because the flannel is argyle?). I know they will find good homes at the hospital and I hope they bring some comfort to a child and their family.

More birthday pictures

2010-10-21T11:37:00.001-07:00

Karl here; now that I'm a year old, I get to use family blog in the 1st person!

Why are all these people singing to me?

Oh! A cake! I'm going to put my finger in this stuff. Why are you blowing on my cake, Mom?

Hmmm...what is this? I better poke it.

Let me poke at it some more.

I guess I could try it.
Here goes nothing!

WOAH! This is good. Really good. Have you people tried this? Hello? ATTENTION PEOPLE. THIS IS AMAZING.

Nom nom nom

Well, that hit the spot. Time to PARTY! Yay sugar!

The Facebook

2010-10-19T14:22:00.000-07:00

When I was in college, a girl I liked sent me a link, and before you know it, I was on "thefacebook.com". I graduated in spring of '05, so this was pretty early on in facebook history; which was started in 2004. Anyway as time went by I found facebook more annoying than it was worth, and eventually got rid of it. Here's my post explaining why.

Eventually facebook became more ubiquitous, and I started to consider re-opening an account. Instead of my earlier impressions of voyeurism and narcissism, a tool for communication has emerged, and feels much more useful to the "discussion."

One night recently I was itching to see a movie, and by chance decided to see the "the social network." It was that or the stupid owl movie. Anyway I'm a sucker for a few key things in movies, and this movie has a big one. Real computer stuff. Several times in the movie you get to see Mark Z's screen, and it's not the kind of crap you might find ripped up and crapped out of a movie director's butt. It's just like my screen at work every day. Apache2 webservers, wget, Perl, Linux, MySql. To most people it's probably mundane, or a jumble. But for me: seeing your day-job onscreen is really cool.

So that pushed me over the edge, and now I'm back. I wonder for how long.

MPG

2010-10-13T16:16:00.000-07:00

My total cost of ownership post was lacking in data. I felt the need to rectify the situation, so when I got home tonight I wrote a little program to aid in calculation, and started entering data. Bicycle rider efficiency is 500mpg (maybe closer to 1000mpg if I wasn't so fat), but since I don't drink gasoline the calculation gives a value based on calories per dollar. Enjoy!

First, regular milk again to verify my earlier results:

Milk (1% milkfat)
%perl calc_mpg.pl
Enter rider efficiency: 500
enter units per package: 16
enter cost per package: 3
enter cals per unit: 110
Assuming gas has 31000 calories at 3 $ per gallon..
You need 17.61 packages for a gallon of gas
You're getting 28.38 equivalent to automotive mpg

Great! now for chocolate milk, which has more calories for the same money...

Chocolate Milk:
Enter rider efficiency: 500
enter units per package: 16
enter cost per package: 3
enter cals per unit: 220
Assuming gas has 31000 calories at 3 $ per gallon..
You need 8.80 packages for a gallon of gas
You're getting 56.77 equivalent to automotive mpg

Cinnamon Toast Crunch:
[esax@finch:~/bin]%perl calc_mpg.pl
Enter rider efficiency: 500
enter units per package: 12
enter cost per package: 2
enter cals per unit: 130
Assuming gas has 31000 calories at 3 $ per gallon..
You need 19.87 packages for a gallon of gas
You're getting 16.77 equivalent to automotive mpg

Cheerios:
[esax@finch:~/bin]%perl calc_mpg.pl
Enter rider efficiency: 500
enter units per package: 14
enter cost per package: 3.79
enter cals per unit: 110
Assuming gas has 31000 calories at 3 $ per gallon..
You need 20.12 packages for a gallon of gas
You're getting 31.37 equivalent to automotive mpg

Tomatoes:
[esax@finch:~/bin]%perl calc_mpg.pl
Enter rider efficiency: 500
enter units per package: 2
enter cost per package: 3
enter cals per unit: 37
Assuming gas has 31000 calories at 3 $ per gallon..
You need 418.91 packages for a gallon of gas
You're getting 1.19 equivalent to automotive mpg

Eggs (2)
[esax@finch:~/bin]%perl calc_mpg.pl
Enter rider efficiency: 500
enter units per package: 6
enter cost per package: 1.29
enter cals per unit: 199
Assuming gas has 31000 calories at 3 $ per gallon..
You need 25.96 packages for a gallon of gas
You're getting 8.28 equivalent to automotive mpg

Dollar menu double cheeseburger from Macdo's
[esax@finch:~/bin]%perl calc_mpg.pl
Enter rider efficiency: 500
enter units per package: 1
enter cost per package: 1
enter cals per unit: 440
Assuming gas has 31000 calories at 3 $ per gallon..
You need 70.45 packages for a gallon of gas
You're getting 2.36 equivalent to automotive mpg

Pizza!
[esax@finch:~]%bin/calc_mpg.pl
Enter rider efficiency: 500
enter units per package: 8
enter cost per package: 12
enter cals per unit: 300
Assuming gas has 31000 calories at 3 $ per gallon..
You need 12.91 packages for a gallon of gas
You're getting 154.83 equivalent to automotive mpg

Butter
[esax@finch:~]%bin/calc_mpg.pl
Enter rider efficiency: 500
enter units per package: 4
enter cost per package: 1.19
enter cals per unit: 810
Assuming gas has 31000 calories at 3 $ per gallon..
You need 9.56 packages for a gallon of gas
You're getting 20.72 equivalent to automotive mpg

Granulated sugar
[esax@finch:~]%bin/calc_mpg.pl
Enter rider efficiency: 500
enter units per package: 10
enter cost per package: 4
enter cals per unit: 770
Assuming gas has 31000 calories at 3 $ per gallon..
You need 4.02 packages for a gallon of gas
You're getting 165.59 equivalent to automotive mpg

-----

Remember, this is an efficiency comparison with respect to dollars per calorie. That's why it's surprising that Macdo's is so low on the totem, Milk is just super cheap and has tons of calories per dollar. I'm not sure you get 8 slices that are 300 calories for 12 dollars, but pizza might be the most efficient food of all.

Sooo... the lesson is to eat cheerios with chocolate milk for breakfast, a cup of sugar for lunch, and pizza for dinner. This may have a negative feedback on your efficiency though...

Notes:
-Rider efficiency is at 500mpg, or 500 miles per 31000 calories. When I lose weight this may approach 1000mpg, so for a healthier rider, double all my final mpg calculations.
- I'm cool! Promise! Please be my friend on facebook. :-/

Karl's First Birthday and dancing

2010-10-10T17:13:00.000-07:00

I have to admit...I am EXHAUSTED! It was worth it , though, as Karl had a wonderful birthday party with friends and family. I only have a few pictures right now because our camera died right before cake eating. Friends promised to email their pictures, so expect those in a few days.

The birthday boy opening presents:

Little guy wandering the house:

Birthday boy!

Also, here is a funny video of Karl dancing that we took tonight. Enjoy!

Karl is a year!

2010-10-09T19:08:00.000-07:00

As I write this, exactly one year ago my husband was filling up our birth pool. Labor had started around 6pm and from the beginning contractions were about 3 minutes apart. Little did I know that I would have to labor until the next afternoon. It was such a strange feeling after Karl was born. Part elation, part exhaustion, but mostly I felt scared. Scared that the midwives were leaving and soon after that my sister (who had come up for the birth) and shortly after that Erik to go to work. How could I ever get through a full day with this needy, grunting, pink baby? I did, as all mothers and fathers do, and I can honestly say that this year has flown by. Our little newborn that smelled of spit up and sweetness fell asleep tonight smelling like meatloaf and mischief.

October:

November:

December:

January:

February:

March:

April:

May:

June:

July:

August:

September:
Happy Birthday, dear Karl!

TCO

2010-09-29T17:39:00.000-07:00

In Karlos news, he's super talkative and laughy lately. When you say "yay!" he claps and laughs. I'm watching him do it right now. The cuteness factor is way off the charts. Videos to follow.

It's been raining a lot lately, which has put a damper on my bike riding. I decided to do some cost comparisons, because science compels me to actually measure, rather than assuming that I'm saving money on a bike. Plus I'm a nerd that way.

So to start off, how much energy is in a gallon of gas? About 31000 Kcals - which we think of as "Calories." I think this is because if they called them KiloCalories, people would feel way fatter.

Now we just need to figure out how efficient I am on a bicycle. After some wikipedia clicking today, I figure I burn about 10-20 extra calories per minute - lets say 1000 calories per hour. At this rate I average maybe 15 mph on a good day. So in order to burn off 31000 Calories I would ride for 31 hours, which is 465 miles per gallon. While this is wayyy better than any car you could buy, it's not apples to apples, because I don't run on unleaded petroleum gasoline with 87% octane hydrocarbons.

Instead I run on milk! As many know, I have an affinity for milk, so it's easy enough to assume this for this thought experiment. At 3$ a gallon, 1% milk contains 110 calories per serving - 16 servings total - or 1760 Calories per gallon. This means there's almost 18 gallons of milk energy in a gallon of gasoline energy. So on an equivalent amount of energy, I'm spending 18 times as much (gas and milk are both about 3$ nowadays).

How does this compare? It turns out, not as well as you would have thought. Since I get 465mpg on a bike, I need to divide that by 17.6, which is 26.42 the equivalent milage a car would need to be more cost effective than me! This is dismal indeed; it's sort of weird to think that this was the last mpg I calculated for the old Echo before it died (I do a lot of city driving to commute). Of course, I don't produce other things like sulfur, mercury, nitrise oxide, or carbon monoxide, and I make about 18 times less carbon emissions, which is really nothing to sneeze at.

The other part of this equation that isn't apples to apples is the capital cost of a car vs a bike, and the opportunity cost of a bike vs a car. I figure that a car costs a minimum of 2000$ a year to own and operate. A bike: maybe 50$ is the minimum - depending on how much the bike cost. I could also expense out a gym membership to make this look even better.

Things become murkier with respect to opportunity costs. Whenever I've interviewed for a job they've asked me about transportation. Also with a bike you have to live closer to work, which could mean paying a lot more for housing - depending on your area. You could easily add 10,000$ a year to the cost of only having a bike given these factors.

Lastly there's days like today, where I bummed a ride home from work due to the rain. While its' unclear from a purely economic perspective if riding a bike is "better" I'm also deriving a psychological benefit, which is priceless.

Fun Facts:

Cutting one pound off of a 15 pound bicycle is the equivalent of getting rid of an aerodynamic drag the size of a pencil.

The "draisine" was invented by Karl Drais. It was the first thing you might consider to look like a bicycle. He was from the same town as Karl Benz, the inventor of the car. The town was called Karlsruhe.

Charlie is another name for Charles, which is an anglicization of Karl. Charlie likes to run alongside us on our bikes for exercise. Karl rides in a trailer.

Fairfax County apparently requires cyclists to have a bell on their bikes!

Where is Karl?

2010-09-27T13:55:00.000-07:00

Karl is growing so fast and getting into things left and right. With his walking comes new confidence which often ends in crashes and crying.

Last week I heard Karl talking, but could not find him anywhere. Suddenly, I discovered him hanging out 'hammock style' in his folded up stroller.

Then he somehow managed to get stuck in between the body of the stroller and the canopy that shades him from the sun.

After pulling him up and out numerous times, Karl decided it was probably just best to stand in the stroller.

Since Saturday he hasn't been seen much in the stroller, which had been Karl's favorite spot mulitple times a day. Mom & Dad brought up a plastic green children's chair on Saturday that we find Karl sitting in whenever we are on the first floor.

Velocipedes, or how I learned to stop worrying, and love my job

2010-09-20T18:43:00.000-07:00

This velocipede is the DiamondBack Kalamar LX 7 speed, my new ride into the office - 8-12 miles of biking every weekday. The story of how this came to be starts when Claire and I figured out how to make ridiculously good pizza a few weeks ago: pictured here:

One of the first things you realize when you try to do this is that you need a way to get the pizza into the oven without smushing up the pizza into a big ball of goey ingredients. Our first pizza "peel" as they call them, was a red-baron pizza box. This is not really a permanent solution so I went to check out a restaurant supply store after work. I was turned away by the owner, who had just had his showroom floor painted. Dejected, I turned towards home, and was smashed into by a Chevy. My 10 year old Toyota Echo was totaled.

We have two other cars, a Prius and an old Ford Ranger, so we decided to bank the settlement for savings and buy new bikes, since we're going to need a way to work off this pizza. Google maps now has a feature that allows you to select a bicycle instead of a car for directions, and it takes into account different bike trails, which is pretty cool. It takes about 30 minutes each way.

This has a lot of positive repercussions, one of which is mental. As anyone in the field of software development knows, there are often clashes of personality and culture between the "hackers" and the "suits" as I call them. This can be especially frustrating as a project grows in scope and success. Riding to work, I find that I just don't get as worked up about it all, no matter how dumb the suits are, even if they don't bother reading my emails. It's a zen thing.

But the story doesn't quite end there. Today I rode my new, previously unused, 1977 Miyata Frontier 10 speed into work. My kalomar was defective, and the pedals kept getting loose causing the chain to come off the gears. I probably put the chain back on a dozen times since getting it. Since Dick's sporting goods are jerks about taking back a bike that's been "ridden around" they said I'd have to leave it with them to fix it, FOR A WEEK. That meant driving to work again during the nicest time of the year, just when I gotten into riding.

Craigslist to the rescue, with a vintage bike that had been in a guy's basement for the last 30+ years, when he bought it, and hung it there by a hook. He had the bike tuned up a few days ago, and like new it got me to and from work today. It really felt a lot like the Kalomar, except that it's a racing bike, and the seat is harder.

On the off chance anyone out there knows anything about this bike, let me know. I know very little beyond the Miyata bicycle page on wikipedia, but apparently their bikes are somewhat prized by collectors/enthusiasts, and this thing is mint-condish. Anyway when the week is up, I plan to try to sell it. :)

Karl- 11 months! (almost)

2010-09-02T13:14:00.000-07:00

Only about a month left until Karl turns one! He is growing like a weed and keeping all of us on our toes. He is such a happy kid and we feel very blessed. Next month we'll have a really big post with a look back on Karl through the year :)

1- Karl is loving his new walking ability. In the past few days he has chosen walking over crawling more often than not. I would estimate that he spends only 20% of his time on his hands and knees. This makes me slightly sad as it means my little baby is turning into a toddler. Erik and I decided that we should probably get him some shoes and of course Sheila was there with bells on hopping to go shoe shopping! We headed over to 'Stride Rite' and bought Karl his first pair of shoes. They are really soft soled and perfect for a new walker. Karl was a size 5 for his first shoes! Even the saleswoman commented on his cute chubby feet and toes. We expect him to outgrow them in the next 3 to 4 months.

Thanks for the shoes, Nana! (Here he is walking with Aunt Lele and Cousin Hannah)

2- Food, glorious food! Karl still doesn't like to be fed by spoon, but is happy as a clam to feed himself. This afternoon he chowed down and ate 1/2 an apple. Karl is pretty much eating any thing these days- though we won't try peanut butter or honey until he's older.

Here is a picture of Karl after enjoying some homemade stuffed shells. He couldn't quite figure out what to do with the ricotta cheese. He treated it like he does most fruit- by squeezing it all over his hand an then taking a tentative bite.

3- Karl is a mischief maker. I can't tell you how many times we've found him taunting the dog with a piece of food or hiding underneath the kitchen table. He loves going through cupboards and discovering what the doors are hiding. Karl has also been known to take our cell phones and hide them. One can only hope they are charged and will ring when called to be located.

In this picture he is discovering what lies beneath the carpet in the Monterey cottage.

Here Aunt Lele stopped him from going through the trash can:

4- Climbing is one of Karl's favorite things to do. It doesn't matter whether it's stairs or in and out of laundry bins or boxes. Last week a friend commented "wow, how did he get in there?" and lo and behold he was sitting in the middle of his toy bin. It has a pretty big lip, so I'm not sure how he got in it!

5- In the past few weeks I've noticed that Karl is really interested in other children. Especially those his own age. I still babysit on Tuesdays and Karl really likes having another playmate to get into trouble with.

This is one of their favorite spots. They love crawling through the door frames (we're installing french doors on the first floor) and under the table.

6- Karl is starting to love Daddy just as much as Mommy. The other day Karl bonked his head and when he began to cry he went over to Erik! You can imagine my shock (and a bit of jealousy) when that happened. He also allowed Erik to put him back to sleep early one morning when I was downstairs. What a lucky baby to have such a good Daddy.

7- Karl is going to be a talker. Almost every one that has met him has said so. He loves to jabber on and on through out the day. Karl certainly has his own thoughts and makes them known through all sorts of sounds.

8- Whining and crying when things don't go his way continue. Karl is excellent at giving a heart wrenching wail after we close the door to the bathroom or the hallway- which he is always trying to get to. It is very difficult to say no to this little face.

9- Karl is definitely not people shy. He doesn't mind being passed around and takes easily to others. This weekend he became very attached to Grandma and his cousins Hannah and Adam. It was pretty great having lots of hands to play with Karl.

10- We have such a nice happy and sweet boy.

Flat is beautiful (pt 2)

2010-08-31T16:58:00.000-07:00

We saved half the dough from our last attempt, and left it in the fridge overnight. We learned two important things. #1, there's no substitute for allowing dough to rise in the fridge for 24 hours. 2, heating the pizza stone to 550, and then cooking for 8 minutes at 425 made the perfect pizza.

My theory is that by refrigerating the dough, the yeast out-gasses co2 at a slower rate, which I would speculate allows it to dissolve more evenly which means loads of tiny bubbles. A soft flaky inside with a nice crunchy crust.

As a result, we have no pictures tonight.

Flat is beautiful!

2010-08-30T17:17:00.000-07:00

We've been experimenting with making our own pizza lately, based on this episode of Alton Brown's "Good eats." It was on a while ago and I've been fantasizing about it ever since.

This is a two part video, here's part two

As so many others who've tried this have discovered, the mechanics of making a pizza from scratch are not that much of a challenge. The difficult part is in making soft, flaky crust, something that still eludes me with attempt #2.

There are only a handful of ingredients in pizza dough, a bit of olive oil, sugar, bread flour, yeast, salt and water. The yeast is typically the same kind of flora that gives us beer, Saccharomyces cerevisiae (sounds a lot like "cerveza," the Spanish word for beer, no?). The dutch used to make enough beer and yeast to be a major exporter of both. Anyway bakers used to get yeast from beer makers. Modern yeast is a bit more of an industrial process, but beer makers can still sell their yeast to bread makers.

Anyway the deal with dough is that, as Alton points out, for the right consistency you need a bubble-gum effect to happen with the wheat gluten (a complex carbohydrate) and the yeast, which outgases co2 as it chows down on the sugars and stuff in the flour. This is actually kind of tough to figure out, and there are some basic calculations bakers do to figure out the right amounts and timing for everything.

Fleischmann's is the modern brand of yeast you find in the supermarket, and recently they came out with a "pizza" yeast. We found that since it has "no rise time" it come out fairly dense, but we may not be preparing or cooking it correctly. We're going to give it time to rise a bit in our fridge, which alton says is the best way to let pizza dough rise to give it lots of tiny bubbles.

Here's a gratuitous action shot of Karl chowing down on some of our homemade pizza crust:

Not pictured, Charlie chasing close behind in case of dropped food items.

Who You Gonna Call?

2010-08-29T06:09:00.000-07:00

Just a typical Sunday night

2010-08-22T18:15:00.000-07:00

Well, we finally met Sheila's boyfriend. About time! I had no idea she was so into younger men, but who am I to judge. Karl was kind enough to let Sheila and her new beau take the bike for a ride.

Just joking. This is Erik's friend, Paul, who has an awesome bike! Though, if you're his mother and reading this...he doesn't have a motorcycle...at least not until Labor Day when you see it for the first time.

Here's a video of biker babe Sheila taking a ride this evening.

Also, by request of the Shevitz clan...here is a longer video of Karl walking

Growing up

2010-08-21T20:28:00.000-07:00

Karl is growing up too quickly. It seems like our infant is turning into a toddler at an alarming rate. Just last week we announced he was starting to walk. As of today he takes off whenever it suits his fancy (which is quite often).

Not only is Karl walking, but he just bought a motorcycle!

We tried to talk him out of it, but no use.

Bench, Part B

2010-08-17T18:10:00.001-07:00

Tonight I finished the other face, and the bottom of my bench. Once both faces are done, the bottom begins by cutting two mitered 2x4s so that they are about 78 inches long on the long side. As with the other cuts I'm making for this, these are a pair, so it's good to "transfer" the cuts. This means that instead of measuring the second one, you use the first one as a template right on the saw. I find that things fit together better this way.

So anyway, I turned my faces upside down and cuntersunk several 3 inch wood screws into each board. Here they are sitting on their new bottom pieces.

There's an inside seam there, and I filled it with more construction adhesive after I dry fit my bottom piece of plywood in there. When you buy a 4x8 sheet of plywood, it's not actually 4 feet, it's usually 47.5 inches. That means the sides of my box are 16 inch ply, and the bottom is about 15.5 inch ply. Dry fitting everything let me ensure they were spaced correctly and squared up.

The plywood goes right down into the adhesive, and another block of 50 nails tack it in place.

Now to cut the miter ends, which end up being 21.25 inches on their long side.

I like to measure miters by the long side so it's easy to check as above

And that's all for tonight. There's no reason to do anything to connect this up until the sides are in place, so this is just a dry fit for now.

Hmmm. This is starting to look like a coffin....

Karl news

2010-08-16T19:01:00.000-07:00

Little Karl is walking! He has taken a number of steps on his own and looks so proud of himself when he does it. At the moment crawling is still significantly faster, but I have a feeling that we will see more and more steps in the next months. We are working on getting a video.

Here is a picture of Karl I took this afternoon. Doesn't he look just like Erik??

Storage Bench: step 1

2010-08-16T18:30:00.000-07:00

Well, this weekend I wasn't able to get the garage clean enough to lay out the forms for my boat, but I did make enough room for another project, a bench for our deck. I want to eventually make two of these, six feet long to go with a table I'm also planning to build. So HGTV style here's the steps for making these benches.

Step one. Clear an area for working. When you struggle with garage hoarding in a 16x12 space, this can be quite a project.

There we go! This space is easily augmented by a workbench I like to call, my truck:

The next step is to cut down a 4x8 sheet of OSB (6$) to 6ft x 16 inch pieces. The hardware store was nice enough to rip the sheet into three pieces, so I need to make them 6ft. A lot of people would bust out a table saw for this kind of thing, but I find that you get a straighter cut with a circular saw and a clamped fence.

As you can see, most circular saws have a flat base and simple measurements to either side. I usually clamp down my level as a fence, but a 2x4 will work great too.

Here 'tis after the cut, note that the fence has to be the correct spacing from your cut line.

Step.. uh, 4? Is to cut down some 2x4s - 2x4x8's are about 4$ a piece. The "header" here needs to be 6'4", so that the sides fit underneath correctly. I cut two pieces 12.5" to go all the way to the bottom, and then a piece to fit between them was 64.75". This bottom piece doesn't add any real structural advantage, but it will keep the OSB from being exposed at the bottom.

This is a dry fit in the bed of my truck. By doing this I could measure for a center 2x4 exactly 9".

Step 5 (I think) is to lay out the frame on the floor. As seen below I've used a laser square to make this (more or less) true.

Now that the frame is layed out, hit it with some huge globs of construction adhesive or liquid nails.

Now, if you're like me, you're not a total perfectionist. At this point I slapped down the OSB right onto the glue. Finally, I used my compressor and nail gun to drop about 5o nails into this thing, careful to make sure the nails went into 2x4s. Between the adhesive and the nails, this thing is solid.

The trick is to remember that the "good" face of everything is face down.

All set! Now I need to make another one of these identical to this one.

There are several advantages to this design.

Super easy to build.
Reworked for different sizes easily.
Super cheap. These materials total less than 50$.
Tool cheap- no need for jigs or exotic tools. I used my compressor and a nail gun, but drywall screws or a simple hammer would work too.
Since the OSB is inset into the 2x4s, there are a lot of things you can with it later. You can paint the OSB, stain it, drop in inlays (which I'm doing with the top where you can sit) or put in carvings or moldings.

Still to come: how to make the bottom/top/sides.

Me and Marc

2010-08-13T09:55:00.000-07:00

Playing "Fast and Furious" the other day:

Jk jk. Everytime I watch this video it makes me laugh so hard I cry.

Marc was up earlier in the week to buy a 2+2 Monte Carlo so he can "mutate" one of his El Camino's with a bitchin front end.

Fun projects are coming our way again too; hoping to post some pictures of my boat building project after the weekend.

Outlaw

2010-08-11T19:41:00.000-07:00

Outlaw stars Jimmy Smits as Cyrus Garza, a U.S. Supreme Court justice who quits the bench and returns to private practice. Hardin will play Claire Sax, a powerful senior partner in an elite law firm and love interest to Garza.

Hey! Claire Sax's love interest is supposed to be me!

Also, in my last post, it totally escaped me that it's also summer in Alaska, and that it's not perpetual winter there. In my head it's basically one big episode of "Deadliest Catch" up there.

I can't wait...

2010-08-11T07:32:00.000-07:00

For the Daily Show tonight...

Best line: "Do you expect anything on the state budget to be on the chopping block?" This might be funnier than the fake Sarkozy call during the 08 campaign. My favorite quote still is

"...ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the - it's got to be all about job creation, too.."

9.5 months!

2010-07-31T15:59:00.000-07:00

Karl turns 10 months on August 10th- time is flying!? In keeping with our random posting of updates here is his 9.5 month update.

1. Karl loves to talk. He jabbers all the time (mostly to the dog). We haven't formed any word associations, but he understands us more now than ever. If we ask him 'where's Charlie' he looks all around with a goofy grin on his face until he sees him. When we tell him 'no' he stops what he is doing...if he goes for the bait again you can tell that he's concerned he will hear 'no' again. This concern usually is enough for him to move on to something else.

Erik took this picture of Karl when he heard him talking away to himself. We discovered him under our dining room table!

2- Karl is almost walking. Karl walks along any edge with great assurance and is now even walking with just the holding on to one of our hands. Yesterday, at Sheila's, Karl was holding onto the table and took an official step on his own to meet my hands. He hasn't done it since, but we are close. Usually, he will kneel down to the ground and crawl to whatever it is that is out of reach. Here is a picture of him standing on his own at my legs.

3- At our 9 month appointment Karl weight 20lbs 9 oz. He is 50th percentile in both weight and height. His head was in the 75th percentile. Our doctor commented on what a healthy, happy and laid back baby we have. Indeed!

4- Karl and Charlie continue to hang out together. Karl chases Charlie from room to room and into his crate. Charlie tries in vain to escape Karl. No such luck. Often we hear Karl giggling in his nursery only to discover that he is being licked or entertained by Charlie.

5- Bath time is Karl's favorite time. He squeals with delight when Erik turns the water on. If one of us turns on the shower Karl will crawl quickly to the door and try to get in.

6. Karl still hates pureed food, but loves to feed himself finger food. My family can attest to the mess that can be made when you hand this little boy a piece of food. 90% of his nutrition still comes from nursing, but we're working on that. In this picture he is chowing down on some banana nut bread made by Uncle Marc's father.

7-Anything that is in reach of little hands is instantly Karl's. He stands on the tips of his toes to pull things off of our bedside tables. I have, more than once, discovered that he grabbed a pen or fingernail clippers off of our table. In this picture you will note than he is not only reaching for something that I have, but he also has ink on his cheek from a pen he pulled off the table and marked himself with before I grabbed it.

8- Hysterical crying begins if you should close a door that Karl wants to go out of. When we shut our bedroom door to the hallway we are always guaranteed fake wails. The days of temper tantrums are not far away.

9- In the past few weeks I have noticed that Karl is interested in interacting with other babies. He usually just wants to bite their hands (a favorite past time) or pull their eyes out, but he also smiles and goo's at them.

10- Toys that make sound are Karl's favorite. I wish that the noises weren't so annoying, but it is a great distraction to Karl if #8 (above) happens. Karl has also discovered how much fun books are when we read to him.

We love our little guy and look forward to more milestones!

The never ending project

2010-07-21T17:36:00.000-07:00

Daniel Kahneman on happiness

I made Claire watch this video tonight. She only made me pause it once to watch the food network, but also asked that we finish it after she saw who won the show she was interested in. If you don't already know about it, TED is a resource online in which different experts produce interesting lectures that you can watch for free. Tip: don't start watching videos on TED unless you have several hours to kill.

This video is particularly interesting to anyone over 25 as you naturally start to evaluate whether you're spending your most precious resource wisely. I'm by no means over the hill, I haven't even seen my billionth second, but I think it's important to remember that any day could be the last.

At around the same time the Sax family welcomed it's newest member my little nephew Jakob, one of it's eldest, Kathy Sax (this family has a thing with K's) said goodbye. The recent death of my great aunt Kathy reminded me for the umpteenth time that our mortality is the opposite of infinity. It reminded me most of the year after we lost my dad to cancer, when doctors told me I had a calcium deposit that could just as easily have turned out to be testicular cancer. There's nothing quite like looking death in the face to get you thinking about how you're living you're life.

So it's interesting to think about happiness, and how we might maximize it for ourselves and our loved-ones. This is not so straightforward as it seems at first glance. So you go and do the thing or things that it was important you always do. Now what? This is where the long-term goals of the remembering self come in, and where projects end up getting prioritized and maybe eventually completed.

Once kids are brought into the mix the equation begins to change, radically. JorEl said it best I think:

You will travel far, my little Kal-El. But we will never leave you... even in the face of our death. The richness of our lives shall be yours. All that I have, all that I've learned, everything I feel... all this, and more, I bequeath you, my son. You will carry me inside you, all the days of your life. You will make my strength your own, and see my life through your eyes, as your life will be seen through mine. The son becomes the father, and the father the son. This is all I can send you, Kal-El.

I was particularly terrified one day after Claire told me she was pregnant, when I realized that I had not yet gotten life insurance, and here I was in what had seemed like a perfectly acceptable risk-reward scenario - freeway traffic in Northern Virginia. Suddenly the risk had become overwhelming, because I was no longer the sole consumer of my own life's experiences. Life insurance is great for alleviating this paralyzing feeling. Term life has the most bang for the buck.

Back to happiness. When I imagined myself as an adult, I imagined the kind of guy capable of building things. When we bought this house, I looked at the poorly constructed deck bolted through the siding, and I said, "I can build a better one."

There's lots of things going on in and around this picture. There were a lot of things that made the old deck dangerous. And it was obvious from our cursory inspection of the structure that it hadn't been seen by a building inspector. This picture sealed the deal and got us a 10K $ deal on settlement costs.

The original aluminum siding of the house was compromised by lag bolts from these rim joists. In order to replace it, we'd have to tear the old deck down. That's what we did in 2008. During this part of the project, our AC compressor exploded in an unrelated HVAC failure. We discovered that our natural gas fired heat exchanger was rusted and was letting flue gasses into our house. Luckily the hole in the roof, the drafty sliding doors, and the old aluminum siding was letting enough CO out that it never set off our detector.

It would be 2 years before we had our savings back to the point where we could think about building a deck again, and that process started while it was still springtime. Recently, it was completed, and we passed our final inspection this week!

This is actually a picture from over a week ago, since then I trimmed the balusters flush and added a 2x6 railing.

This picture is the ultimate expression of the conflict between the experiencing self and the remembering self. The things that stand out in my memory of this project are not the endless days of heat and sweat - I think there's a small dry spot on the shirt in this picture:

Well to some extent they do, with pictures like these:

What stands out are the things I got to do when I learned something, and the people nice enough to help that I got to share the experience with. I've lost track of how many people have come out to lend a hand over the last two years. My sister in law helped steady a couple of posts so I could bolt them in place, and my brother helped me lift the remaining 12 footers into place. Several of my friends helped demolish the old deck, including people who I don't even know any more. I think it's probably better not to try to list out credits, I wouldn't want to forget anyone, but my biggest help was Marc, so we'll christen our new deck "Mount Augustine."

The remembering self won out, as now I get to remember different aspects of days gone by and people otherwise forgotten, as I point out different features or small errors and tell their stories. Here's a few random pictures to show some of these bits so I can brag to people more easily.

This picture shows several things, my posts come up out of the decking - sandwiched between two joists- instead of being stuck onto the side. Also Claire had many chances to help, and of course, Marc's fast-work ethic helped us bang this thing out from frame to finish in just a couple of days. Using 2x4's and 4x4's for spacing was great because it meant even spacing and followed building codes.

Here's the end result:

Here's the last shot of the frame without any decking - this shows our flashing, trusses, headers, diagonal reinforcement, bridges, and the cement mixer that Marc let me borrow - more than once!

Marc turned me on to DBT1Z's, which make the surface of the deck a clean, splinter-free proposition. It turns out they are extremely hard to find. Finally at almost 9pm we found the last 3 boxes we needed at a home depot in falls church.

Here's one of the boxes coming out of the ground to form concrete around our 3 outer posts. This deck is freestanding (which is safer) and needed a little more stiffness, which you don't get so much from the new style out-of-ground bolted hardware. 600 pounds of concrete 16x16 goes down 2 feet, and comes up 16 inches out of the ground with 8 pieces of rebar. I also cast in place a drainage tube of 2 inch PVC pipe so the post won't rot and the hardware won't rust. We're planning to put some kind of stone around these boxes and maybe put planters on top.

Finally I used my router to put a "roman" curve on either side of the rails, which gives you something to grab onto and puts a little extra detail where there's usually just a 2x6. My old battery powered rotozip couldn't take the heat on this one, and the motor caught fire, so I had an excuse to get a new RZ10 and add a huge amount of sawdust to the equation.

This post is getting ridiculously long, and there's so much more I could write and more funny pictures I could post, but after all, it's just a deck. Now I can get back to work on my boat.

The Sax's July!

2010-07-19T07:19:00.000-07:00

We have had a busy couple of weeks and I have been remiss in updating our blog.

Deck Update:

Erik has been working steadily on finishing the deck and has scheduled our last inspection for today. We were lucky enough to have Uncle Marc (our awesome cousin) come up from North Carolina to help us finish it. I was so impressed with their work ethic and how quickly they got things done. Erik was hoping to just get some concrete poured that weekend, not finish the whole thing!

Last row in!

Nailing in balusters with Marc
Mom & Karl standing on the deck for the first time! (note the bathing suit I am in...we were just about to head out for the pool to cool off!)

We haven't taken a picture complete with top rails, but here it is complete except for that:Two days later we held our 3rd Annual Cupcake swap! I am pleased to announce that I won for best taste and Lee won for best presentation. My good friend, Melinda, won for most unique. There are more pictures & text on the swap at my craft blog.

Two days after that Karl and I left for Monterey. Mom, Dad and Lee were already there enjoying the cool breezes. It was such a nice departure from the hot weather in Fairfax. We slept with the windows open and the fans on. Most nights I would wake up to close the windows and turn off the fan as it got too chilly. What a problem to have in the middle of July!

This past weekend a group of friends from church choir joined us in Monterey to stay at the back cottage and explore the town. They helped the town's economy by shopping and soaking in the sulfur baths. On Sunday morning we took a long walk (3 miles) to the Lohr homestead. It was a beautiful log cabin which has recently been gutted and renovated. We all headed out of town Sunday afternoon and this morning I woke up pretty sore from our walk and not stretching afterwards. Lesson learned!

...you can't see Karl in the picture below, but he's in an Ergo on my back!

8.5 months!

2010-06-29T07:17:00.000-07:00

Karl turns 9 months on July 10th. I can hardly believe my little baby is that old. I remember my father saying to me at the age of 6 or 7 "I wish I could put a brick on the top of your head and stop you from growing". I feel the same way! Karl is such a sweet and happy boy. Here are some Karl updates.

1- Karl is close to walking. He can pull himself up like a champ and is now letting go with both hands and standing on his own for a second before falling to the ground. This is a fine thing to do most times, but Karl has been known to stand on our first step, smile at me, let go and then fall straight back and whack his head. He also did this at the bottom of his highchair and fell forward knocking his forehead into the base of the seat. Poor boy. He's fine, just a little bruised everywhere. From all the standing his big toes have started to feel the wear. They are red and sore.

You may have to click on this picture to enlarge it.

2- Vampire baby now has 5 teeth (almost 6). Since his incisor came in next to his canines he has unknowingly begun biting me while nursing. It hurts, but usually only happens when he is half asleep. Here is a picture of Karl in true vampire form. Also, note the bruise on his forehead from the highchair incident mentioned above.

3- Karl sure hates to be away from me when we are at home. He especially hates when I hand him off to Erik because it usually means that I am going to do something for a while. If we are out at church or somewhere that toys or new faces can distract him he doesn't mind if I am not in sight. Strange baby. This is usually the face that Erik gets to handle at home when I am not near.

4- If I am at home and just not paying full attention to him I generally hear crying/whining getting closer to me. In the kitchen I will feel two little hands on the back of my legs and if I am sitting on the bed I will see the top of a head at the end of the bed shuffling along until he reaches my side.

Sadly, in this picture Karl walked all the way around to my side of the bed to discover "DADDY!?! Noooo"

5- Karl is getting the hang of eating- still won't eat purees- but is happy to chomp away on things he can pick up with his hands. Charlie has also discovered that the highchair is a magical place just waiting for his nose and mouth to find tasty treats. After dinner our dog is very helpful and cleans up any remaining crumbs underneath the highchair.

6- Karl loves reading books. On our way to a pool party we discovered he had fallen asleep while reading. It must have been some intense plot line!

7- Karl loves shaking things. Anything you put in his hands will get a good shake. He really loves rattles. Oh boy! We went to the pool yesterday and Karl found many things to shake- a hat & goggles!

Incidentally...I just noticed Karl shaking one of Erik's socks while I wrote this.

8- We should have named him Karl Empathy Sax. If Karl hears another baby crying he will chime in with his own wails until the other parent attends to their baby. It is awfully sweet, but can make for trouble in densely baby populated areas.

Overall, Karl is a wonderful child. He is happy most of the time and loves being with people. I look forward to seeing him take his first step and say his first word...but I also wish that he would be a baby for longer.

Flashing pics

2010-06-28T17:23:00.000-07:00

Erik here, blogsphere. Today's lesson, flashing! It's important to flash properly so that our children can enjoy the same things we do. Without flashing, our load bearing members can become fatigued and rot. Today I capped my posts with aluminum flashing.

This flashing will protect my posts from water, and coupled with the new way of bracketing the bottom of the posts to concrete instead of burying them, this deck could potentially outlive me. I also added yet another longitudinal truss in this picture, it's flush with a joist so it doesn't need to brace against a bridge, but I do have a bridge on the next gap which should help keep things pretty stiff. Hehe... stiff...

TeamSax

Family Update

The Gorilla (continued)

Affordances

Frankensink and friends

Happy Belated Halloween

Old MacDonald

Happy October!

The Wingmen in Action

The Hull

Orchard & Monterey

Screw-you Yankee Workshop!

The Keel

Sax Family Update

Wee!

Karl at 21 months

Crafting

My little secret.

Family Time

Hey Nasa!

Happy Mother's Day!

Sunday Pancakes!

Karl- 18 months

Messy

The Tiny Chimp- 17 months

The gorilla

The workshop

There is finally sleep :)

Back to reality

Stripping the hull

Bow and Stern

Forms!

Lofting

Day 2

The Great Auk

Karl @ 16 months

Time to blame my Father

Karl @ 15 months

Family Updates

Lazy Sundays

A New Adventure

Christmastime :)

The Sleeper

Christmas Tree :)

Holiday Party!

More Updates :)

Dino Day!

Family Updates

Happy Halloween!

The Team

Three quilts, two days

More birthday pictures

The Facebook

MPG

Karl's First Birthday *and dancing*

Karl is a year!

TCO

Where is Karl?

Velocipedes, or how I learned to stop worrying, and love my job

Karl- 11 months! (almost)

Flat is beautiful (pt 2)

Flat is beautiful!

Who You Gonna Call?

Just a typical Sunday night

Growing up

Bench, Part B

Karl news

Storage Bench: step 1

Me and Marc

Outlaw

I can't wait...

9.5 months!

The never ending project

The Sax's July!

8.5 months!

Flashing pics

Karl's First Birthday and dancing