Relocation

New Haven Cravin' is now at newhavencravin.blogspot.com.  Doesn't that make more sense?

With impunity

I've been yelling at Jack and Sam for four days about not eating my fern. I had just finished diatribe, when I turned around to witness this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgmfxZz3pqA&feature=plcp

Update

Looks like I'm closing in on a closing on the Kater Street house. The inspection produced a 28 page PDF.  Guess what? (what?) There are termites and termite tunnels. I know ... shocking. I have a question for all the termite inspectors out there. Let's say I'm thinking of getting termites treated every 20 years or every 5 years. I'll pay you either $1000 every 20 or $1200 every 5. Will you come inspect my house and give me your honest opinion on whether I should go with the 20 or 5 year plan?

Orioles Mania is at a fever pitch these days. If you can't get enough, stop in to camdenchat.com for your fix.

Here's a pic of me and O on the T platform on our way to Fenway last Saturday. Guess what? (What?) The ORIOLES WON!

do not adjust your monitors

I have no idea who those other guys are

 

 

 

Orioles fall to 0-2 when I'm in attendance

My trips to (and from) Oriole Park at Camden Yards have been epic this season....

On Mother's Day, I took advantage of a layover in BWI and trained it over to Baltimore. After arranging to meet Don at the Yard, we watched the O's dig a hole early and then claw their way almost all the way back for a 7-6 loss to the Rays. Lost in the excitement was the fact that the last Amtrak from B-more to New Haven had been sold out for hours. So, Don dropped me off at the Greyhound station.  Six connections and 5 modes of transportation later, I got home at 2 a.m.

 This past Saturday, I talked Julie into the drive down to Baltimore for the Eddie Murray statue unveiling in Camden Yards' Garden of Champions, followed by a 7:05 Orioles-Royals game. Things were going well: we made it to town early, munched on some crabs at Faidleys, checked into our kinda-nice hotel, walked around a bit. About 15 mins before game time, the skies opened up and the unadvertised rain didn't let up for 3 hours. And they didn't call the game!  Kudos to Julie for bringing our Newport Folk Festival ponchos, but even she had to throw in the towel at 10 p.m. I walked her back to the hotel and once I heard that they were restarting the game, ran back over. No way I was gonna let these seats go to waste (5 rows behind O's dugout). Well...the O's dug another early hole for themselves, but this time the attempted climb-out was even weaker: 7-3. Got back to the hotel at 115 a.m.

We've got 6+ weeks left in the regular season ... another Baltimore trip is probably out of the question but I think a trip to Fenway or ... gulp ... the new Yankee stadium might be in order.

I mean, I don't love spiders either but come on

Spider Belief Questionnaire (SBQ) measures "the strength of belief in various (irrational or unrealistic) ideas about both spiders and the self during confrontation with a spider....Examples of spider-related beliefs are 'the spider will attack me' and 'the spider smells that I'm anxious.' Examples of self-related beliefs are 'I will lose control' and 'I will become crazy'....The subject is instructed to indicate the strength of each belief as experienced during confrontation with a spider by filling in a percentage (0% to 100%). We obtained two scores: (a) the mean strength of the spider-related beliefs (0-100;...) and (b) the mean strength of the self-related beliefs (0-100;...)"

NFF 2012!

Another phenomenal weekend at the Newport Folk Festival...

Best number in my book was My Morning Jacket calling Brittany Howard, lead signer of Alabama Shakes on the main stage with them to cover The Band's 'It Makes No Difference' as the clouds gathered and lightning crashed all around. 

Seconds after MMJ finished their finale -- I'm Amazed -- the skies opened up and the show was shut down for the night. Problem was we had to wait 90 minutes in the downpour for our turn on the water taxi back to downtown Newport.

Special thanks to Momo for making it all the way from Peru to DC to New Haven to join us in the caravan to Rhode Island.

Whale watching

Having read many (OK... 3) a sea-faring tale of fright and having spent the entire 4 hours of a deep-sea fishing excursion curled in the fetal position with sea-sickness, I was scared to go whale-watching.

Every time I closed my eyes, I pictured this:

Reality was much more pleasant. Gorgeous blue sky, calm waters and Humpback and Minke whales everywhere we turned.

I saw one of the Humpbacks breaching but it was too far away to get a good pic. Mostly, they surfaced and dove right back down, giving the best view of their flukes:

Jeremy's here

Our furry friend is in his aquarium (with mesh top held in place by 2 heavy books) on Owen's dresser. He seems quite content in his new home. He enjoys fresh carrots and peppers and hopping to and fro. He does not enjoy his exercise ball or being kept in complete darkness 24/7 (In Julie's perpetual Battle Against Summer, she closed all the blinds and drapes in the house. Apparently, Julie had not heard that gerbils are so exquisitely sensitive to altered diurnal variation that there are reports of  solar eclipses precipitating global gerbil freak outs or that SADgRS -- seasonal affective disorder, (gerbil subtype)-related suicide -- is the  #3 killer of gerbils behind 'old age' and house cats .)

Archival maternity tips

These are from 1939, displayed at the Yale medical library. 31 in total but I'll give you some highlights

Well I guess that's true.... the modern era would probably advocate for more comfortable footwear in the process or perhaps none at all.

Look at Dad's body language!  Doc almost seems to be pleading with him. Three piece suit ... hat and paper in hand...Dad, why don't you grab a chair and chill for a bit?

And gossips are always b$tches in crazy hats....What kind of medical misinformation were gossips propagating in 1939?  "Now Edna, you know lead paint chips are the best thing to make your baby's bones strong."

Jeremy

Owen has reached that rite of passage of suburban child life: he wants to own a rodent. Lo and behold, our New Zealand friends need to give away their gerbil "Jeremy" because there is no way he could survive the 146-hour flight home. 

And so I am experiencing the suburban Dad rite of passage of considering the practicality of this adoption.

This is what we know about Jeremy so far:
He has to be handled with gloves because he bites.
You have to wash your hands after handling him because he carries disease(s).
He gnaws toilet paper tubes loudly all through the night.
Julie talks about him like he's a person, which is really unsettling, e.g. "When Jeremy's here ... " and "After you pick up Jeremy...."
His wood shavings have to be changed once a week.
Gerbils live about 2-4 years so Julie figures Jeremy will be dead in 6 months or so. ("After Jeremy's dead...")
But most important, Owen thinks Jeremy is "really cute."

So, yeah, come say hi to Jeremy but definitely some time in the next 6 months.

O nails it the second time

Video from O's latest guitar recital.  He is the only flat-picker in the group but  the most audible player.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLxGbOGXvNM

update

Tacocat took the internet by storm...

The Becker/Parrs took Disney by storm. I was at my conference for most of the good stuff. I also sat out Peter Pan's adventure because of a misunderstanding about how EXTREME it might've been.  Owen loved Soarin' and Mission Space and scuba diving.

Orioles fell out of first after an awfully familiar awful 3-9 stretch.

I have plants in my office, intentionally, thanks to Julie.

Julie has a FANCY new job!

Owen loves MineCraft.

Julie and Will loved Allagash Craft Beers in a 5-course pairing of local Maine foods at Mikro.

Flashback to a different era

Guess the year these conclusions were published

The authors stress the importance of the fact that sex differences in variability and specific mental functions do occur. They suggest that the superior rating of the girls in Mrs. Pressey's study is due to the fact that girls' development is accelerated from one to two years during the period between 9 and 15; and that the superior rating of the high school boys in their own study is due to the fact of selection—that more dull girls than dull boys probably remain in high school to graduate.

Hootenanny I

We bought a drum set and had our first hootenanny.

Look who we discovered:

Then we got Owen to sit in... (please focus on Owen and bear in mind this was our first run through)

Science Saturdays at Yale

For FREE at Yale, 10 am Saturdays, you can do cool stuff like this

and then listen to really smart professors for an hour. Last week was 'Game Theory,' which aligned much better with my undergraduate experience than this week: "Anti-matter." But of course it's about Owen who spends many an hour pondering the physics of black holes so is sure to be sucked in by this one.

Opening Day 2012

Here's an interesting tidbit: The O's are 13-4 in Opening Days at Camden Yards including yesterday's 4-2 victory over the Twins. How is it that a team that has had 14 straight losing seasons has a .764 winning percentage when opening at home? Sure, there's home field advantage, and there's also the fact that they're starting their best pitcher. But so is the other team ... and let me tell you that in many years, the other team's best pitcher was better than ours. Here's the best explanation: the 13-4 record reflects the true Orioles and the rest of the decrepit 14 seasons has been massive underachievement. Until 2012.

Relationship advice

Every armchair psychologist (and real one) gives out advice on how to prevent or defuse fights in a relationship.

Here's an idea on how to start fights:

Respond to *anything* your mate says by narrowing your eyes, raising your eyebrows and saying in an agitated fashion, "What's *that* supposed to mean?"

Example:
loved one: "What's the plan today?"
you: "What's *that* supposed to mean?"

Incongruity?

You probably can't see this but this mini van has a window sticker that says "THANK YOU LORD FOR EVERYTHING BE IT GOOD OR BAD"

and then!

the license plate frame is 2 golden buxom naked ladies in profile kneeling with their flowing hair and feet meeting in the middle

Augustus Gloop redux

Owen and Jonah took a solo trip to the Westville Market yesterday. There, Owen used his entire allowance to purchase an obscene amount of candy and chocolate, which he apparently consumed over the span of an hour. And so ends the Allowance Experiment. Any guesses as to how much he spent?

Come Fly With Me

I'm heading up to Portland, ME in a little while for a conference tomorrow. Four-hour drive, which, for anyone who knows me knows that's well within my 'flying out the question' radius.

My friend and colleague who I'm driving up with suggested Monday that maybe he would fly us up...in a 2-seater propellor plane. As soon as these words came out of his mouth, my feet started tingling and I got a little woozy. Then he said, "But I haven't logged enough hours to fly in overcast weather and they're calling for rain so it probably can't happen." So..lemme get this straight ... you can be certified to fly only in ideal weather conditions?? What, pray tell, happens should the weather change mid flight?? Naturally, these and other catastrophic ruminations led to 2 nights of dreams: Tues night, my brother and I were riding our bikes to the meeting; Wed night, I was flying solo to the meeting.

Vacation week almost over

Owen climbed out of bed close to 8 but claimed he had been up for a while. He was was hiding in his room thinking we had forgotten to wake him up for school.

Beautiful people fail, too

Tom Brady and the Pats lost another Super Bowl to the Giants. That, you probably already knew. But did you hear Giselle Bundchen -- Tom's supermodel wife -- was caught on video saying at the postgame conference (paraphrasing) "He's not perfect; he can't throw the f$cking ball and f%^king catch it, too," a none-too-subtle critique of the Patriots' receivers dropped passes.

On the one hand, kind of cool that she can get that fired up about it; but, on the other hand, much less cool that she violated the 'we win together, we lose together' code of the NFL. After all, her hubby almost lost the AFC championship game for the Patriots with a positively mediocre performance that was only rescued by a desperately lucky defensive play and missed chip-shot FG at the end of the game.

But the real question -- Did Tom chide her for the tirade? Walking on egg shells there a bit...

T: "Baby, you can't say that."
G: "What, tell the truth? Why are you always telling me what to say? you can't tell me how to feel!! you can't force me to come to all these games, make me sit through all these press conferences and then tell me I don't have a right to say what I think!!"
T: [stares absently into his diet Dr. Pepper]

Got hiccups? (or know somebody who does?)

here are 2 methods for curing hiccups, one self-administered (Parr style) and one non-self administered and thus a billable service (Becker style)

Parr style: take *DEEP* breath... hold it ... slowly count to 10 while holding ... swallow ... exhale *SLOWLY* (also called the *waiting to exhale* method. ps I snuck into that movie in what year for double bonus points?) Active ingredient: diaphragmatic retraining

Becker style (as treater): ask hiccuper to tell you *right before* they're going to have their next hiccup. Stare them in the eyes and wait with them. They may hiccup once or twice and say 'oh -- I just did.' Gently scold them and say 'no -- you have to tell me *right before* the hiccup.' Active ingredient: unintentional mindfulness

Score one for Dad

Owen was writing sentences using his spelling words last night. He told me to close my eyes because he was going to put me as the subject of one of the sentences. I got a little nervous because two of the words were 'naughty' and 'rough.'

He wrote:
"My dad is tough."

For the record, Mom got:
"My mom used to drink too much coffee."