Project Miner

Ah, vacation.  Katy and I were in Vegas last week for a much needed three-day getaway.  I was actually a little worried it wouldn’t live up to the expectations – our first Vegas trip in 2004 was probably our best trip together.  Well, it totally lived up to it.  Katy set the tone for trip by ordering a midnight snack of filet mignon and eggs the night we got in.  We did all the same stuff we did last time – pool, drinks, gamble, eat, nap… repeat, but not always in that order.

Food
Other than the surprisingly great filet mignon and eggs, the highlight for me was, get this, the sushi restaurant.  Not because I ate any fish, but because they had a roll I could eat and loved.  It was a veggie roll with soy paper wrapping.  No water creatures to make me gag.  And the veggies were of a “stir fried” consistency and delicious.  Was awesome to finally get to participate in the sushi fun.  We ordered a lot of good room service and I ate way too many chocolate covered almonds.  All the food was great, as usual.

Pool
We hit the pool every day from 8:30′ish to 12′ish.  We’d go down and grab a croissant and coffee and then grab a spot at the pool.  Once awake, it was time for the Mai Thai’s and the occasional dip in the pool to cool off.  Was great.

Gambling
We only played blackjack this time.  I usually hit the craps table as well, but stuck with blackjack this trip.  Ironically, I came away up about 21 hands.  I do the “slow and steady wins the race” routine and place the same bet all the time, follow my typical rules and only stray a bit from time to time.  Katy, on the other hand, is more risky.  And she paid for it the first day, but then rocked it out and might have come close to breaking even when it was all done.  I consider gambling worth money, so even losing is fine with me, so this was hugely successful.

Drinks
My drink of choice this time was Mai Thai at the pool, Baileys on ice at the tables, whatever comes to mind in restaurants.  Katy also did Mai Thais along with Bloody Marys, Vodka Tonic and her usuals.  I only barfed once. 

Other Junk
We saw Jay Leno.  Was pretty good…. nothing spectacular, but still a fun break from the booze and cards.  We also rode the NYNY roller coaster, which was fun as hell.  Katy did her usual anxiety attack as we went up the first incline, but seemed to enjoy it enough.  Great views of Vegas from on the coaster.

We took about three pictures, I think.  If I find ‘em, I’ll post ‘em.  Was a great vacation.  BIG, BIG LOVE to Momma D and Big Papa Ken for watching Ona while we were gone.  It’s so awesome to have people nearby who we know Ona loves and will have a blast with while we’re away.

Haven’t been on the bloggy in a while, so here goes random updates…

• Was in Mobile, AL this week with the government project.  Mobile, errr, isn’t the most happening place in the world.  Good meetings, but was quite ready to get home.  Amazing how good I realized my life is after being away from it for a day.
• Katy and I are going on a vacation!  Crazy.  We’re going to Vegas next week.  At least we’ll be too drunk to worry about Ona?  My Mom is going to watch her, and I’m more worried about Mom than the kid.  Though, I guess if Mom lived through “Eric the spawn of hell baby”, she should make it out OK.
• Ona is almost 14 months old, but still hasn’t reached what should have been her first birthday.  That’s crazy.  She’s still not interested in walking, and that’s just fine with us.  She has some sort of pseudo pink eye right now.  Yeeek.  Poor kid.  She’s still happy and cute and fun, though. 
• I’m still running.  I don’t even know myself anymore.  I love it.  Though, my body still hates it… still getting numb foot at about the 2.5 mile mark.  It’s time to consult a doctor.  I’m scared.  It seems that’d be just my luck to finally start getting in-shape and enjoying running and my body reject it.
• Read “The Final Solution” by Michael Chabon on the plane to Alabama.  Fun book.  I dig Chabon.  About to start the Yiddish Police Union book.
• Been watching The Wire on DVD.  Am half way through season 2 and hot damn that’s a great show.  Much the fun.

I guess that covers it.  I’ll recap Vegas next week!

Rant alert…

Lately I’ve run into several error messages that were smart enough to know exactly what I wanted to do, but just called me an idiot and offered no help.  The one I consistently get is from our stove when I try to use the timer.  There are two start buttons on the oven, one is “start timer” and the other is just “start”, which tells the oven to start heating up.  To use the timer, you must hit “timer”, enter the time, and then hit “start timer”.  If you hit “start”, it beeps and a little message scrolls by saying “press ’start timer’ to start timer”.  If it knew enough to beep and scroll the message, why didn’t it just skip they annoyances and start the friggin’ timer? 

I hate it when a system knows enough to tell me exactly what I was trying to do, but just calls me a donkey and irritates me.  If it knows that much, it should just go “ok, I know what you meant, lemme go do that for you”.  It’s different than asking “did you want to do a?  or b?  or…” because there are options for what you wanted to do.  I refuse to believe it’s easier to develop a system for displaying the detailed appropriate error message than to build the system to fire off the operation for you.  Sigh.

One of my best friends, Josh Netherton, is the kind of person who “goes for it”.  He’s been that way since I met him and it’s something I really admire.  Not only does he go for it, but I’ve never seen him fail.  Years ago, he proclaimed “I’m going to do a triathlon” and I quickly learned to not doubt Josh – even though his training food of choice was Taco Bell (which caused most of my doubts), I was there to witness him cross several finish lines.

In the last two years, he’s gone for it again, this time with his career.  He was running biology labs at Spelman college and growing increasingly unhappy.  So, he decided to pursue a career in web development and design, and went for it.  With little “traditional training or experience”, he quickly built a portfolio and landed a job at Ketchum.  Now a year or so later, he’s decided to go even further and do freelance full-time.  I have absolutely zero doubts he’ll be successful with it.  In fact, he’s working on re-designing my company’s website and so far, I’m loving what he’s come up with.

Now for the plug… If you need any web development or design work done, give Josh a shout.  I promise you’ll be happy you did.

It’s more like a “slight jog”, but I’ve been at it lately.  I started about four weeks ago, missing one week while I had the plague, and only jogging twice a week.  I’ve always boasted that “I hate running”.  And I really have hated it.  However, this time, I’m enjoying it.  A lot.  Weird.  So, what’s different this time?

• I’m running at night.  Typically around 8:45-9:00.  I’m going this late because the Atlanta summer is unbearable until the sun goes down, and because Ona goes to bed around 7.
• I’m bringing a water bottle with me.  I only take a half-dozen or so pulls from it, spitting most of it out, but it’s been a nice safety net.
• I’m concentrating on breathing more than I used to.  I thought about it and realized breathing is key to my athletic activities.  I remember learning that in baseball… breathing helped me hit, catch, throw, etc.  Imagine that.  So, when I run, I count steps per inhale and exhale – starting with 5, moving to 4 or 3 when winded. 

The original plan was to swim 2x per week and jog 2x per week.  Swimming is awesome, but hard for me to find the time to do.  It’s at least an hour, more like 1:15-1:30 round-trip.  I’ve been able to get to the pool twice (both times waking up at 4:45).  Jogging, I just put shoes on and go out the door.  So, for now, running wins out (I’m considering biking in place of swimming, though).

A couple of questions for the few runners who read this (hi Dan and Josh):

1. My left foot tends to go numb near the end of the run.  Shoes too tight?  Running funky?  I loosened them up tonight and it still happened.  Maybe it’ll end (the first few runs I was getting a runner’s stitch in my side, but Jol pointed me to stretches that made that vanish).
2. I “hit a stride” at about a mile in and take off and feel awesome.  Why does the first part suck so bad?  The last 1/2 mile of the first mile (follow that?) is uphill, but I don’t think that has much to do with it.  Is there something I can do to get loosened up (or whatever) earlier?

I just tonight went as far as 2.5 miles (started around 1.25 was at 1.75 most of the time).  Minus the numb foot, I felt great.  Katy is lobbying for me to run a race with her, but I’m not feeling that for some reason… prolly scared…. yeah, definitely scared.

I’ve decided to no longer write the tech blog from projectminer/techblog, and instead make it a blog off my company’s site.  So, bu-bye to old techblog (and the picture of Ona that I loved) and hello new tech blog:
http://www.versiteconsulting.com/blog

Just a quick update… last week was Ona’s first birthday!  And to celebrate, the whole family had the plague.  Good times.  Ona brought home some kind of stomach bug and Katy and I both got it also.  We were one super sick house last week and through the weekend.  Nice way to celebrate the baby girl’s first birthday.  Thanks to Mom/Ken and Jamie for coming over the weekend and taking Ona out of the house for a few hours so Katy and I could sleep and recover.  Those were true acts of love, and were MUCH appreciated.

I’ve got a ton more to write, but have to catch my train.  Hopefully I’ll get the ole blogging juices flowing again soon and write more in the next week (upcoming posts: “So much for October, or  how I’ve learned to worry and hate baseball”, “My ‘little’ sister is TEN years old, which makes me, like, older than 10″, “Eric 2.0 has begun again, aka ‘mid-year resolutions’”, and so on… plenty of stuff to bore my friends and family in the coming days).

It’s amazing to me how great baby food seems to be.  Not necessarily in taste (though, errr, some of it is actually pretty great), but that it’s actually made from what it says it is.  For example… if you want strawberry jelly that actually has strawberries in it, you have to go to a hippie grocery store or to a farm and make it yourself.  Not with baby food – the ingredients for regular ole gerber’s strawberry banana baby food is, get this, strawberries and bananas (and water).  No partially hydrogenated heart attack juice.  No artificial flavorings or colorings.  No something-or-another funky preservatives to keep it on the shelf through the next millennium.  Why is this?  Do we care more about what goes into our kids bodies than our own?  Do we just not care about shelf life for baby food?  I’ve not done any research on this, but I’d be willing to be government regulations are more strict on baby food (in regards to shelf life, and maybe even amounts of garbage allowed in it).  Whatever the reason, it’s crazy to me.  And kind of sad, and stupid, and upsetting.

And, errr, if you ever see gerber’s strawberry guava baby food…. that’s some good stuff!

Katy’s friend Michelle got married this weekend in the N. Georgia mountains. The wedding was a low-key outdoor wedding, with the reception under a big tent and everybody camping afterwards. Not the kind of event that Ona would be happy with (she’s… ehhh… addicted to air conditioning), so I got to stay home and have Daddy weekend. Saturday afternoon we went to the hardware store and had a blast looking around. So much fun that I ended up buying a swing and all the fixins to attach it to the tree growing through our porch. Katy and I decided last week that we needed to get Ona outside more than for just walks around the hood… we wanted to actually go out and play with her, and I saw the swing and thought “hey, that’d get us outside”. I asked Ona what she thought and she said “eeakekejahd”, which I took to mean “hells yeah, buy that swing” (am I justifying this purchase enough?).

So, even though Katy and Jodi came home from the wedding last night (it started storming and that put an end to the city slickers night in the woods), Ona and I got up early this morning for daddy/daughter weekend and hung the swing. We’ve actually turn this into a reclamation project for our outdoor area – we bought a big umbrella for the table and a fan to help with the heat and bugs. Hopefully we’ll be outside using it more often.

Here’s what Ona thinks of it so far (click for the larger version)…

Tonight while Katy and I were cleaning up the kitchen and getting ready to start Ona’s bed time, she did something I’ve been waiting quite impatiently for.  She got her groove on.  She was playing with a magnet barn toy that is on the fridge (it’s actually hilarious… you match two animal shapes and it says "Congrats, you made a pig!" or "You made a… pig-cow" if you mix up the animals).  Anyway, it was playing "Oh, Suzanna" (or whatever that song is) and Ona laughed and started doing "the hydraulic"… basically bouncing up and down.  Ona has moves, people!  I thought it was just random bouncing, but she kept doing it every time the music would play.  It lasted about 10 minutes and totally made our night. 

Of course, donkey dad has an uncharged camcorder AND camera, so there are no movies to show of Ona getting her groove on.  I’m sure there will be plenty more of that to come, though.