Project Miner

I recently bought a juicer.  I’ve actually been wanting one for a really long time, but my cheap ways kept me from pulling the trigger.  I still had Best Buy gift cards from the holidays (thanks Tom B and John) that I’d been sitting on and realized they sell small appliances, including juicers, and I can use the cards online.  Wooty-woot.  So, I finally pulled the trigger and bought the Breville Juice Fountain Compact and the juicing has begun.

The first experiment was fruit juices.  I love fruit juices, so I was highly confident this would be successful, and indeed it was.  It even won Katy over (she was very skeptical about juicing).  I’ve made grapefruit+orange+apple and orange+pear+apple+lime and they were both super awesome.

The second experiment was to try a veggie juice.  I started with stuff I really like… carrots + celery + 1 apple.  Surprisingly, the celery totally overpowered the drink and I didn’t like it very much.  I love celery, but apparently not in liquid form.  So, experiment #2 gets the failure tag.  Next time I will try no celery and a higher apple to carrot ratio, I think it’s going to be a while until I’m consistently making tasty veggie juices.

As for the whole process… I was worried it was going to be a pain in the arse, but it’s actually quite easy.  Wash and cut the stuff, throw it in, press down, then drink goodness (or celery foulness).  Cleaning it is much easier than I expected, so I do think I’ll use it a lot (hopefully for more than fruit juices, but that’s ok if it ends up just a fruit juicer).

The issue I really want advice on is where in my area to find fresh fruit/veggies (fruit is the #1 priority, though) that is good quality and affordable.  Anybody have good ideas?

I just went and picked up some medications for Katy (poor Katy had her toenail removed yesterday and is in massive pain and discomfort) and even though I was walking into a pretty gigantic “mega mart” style grocery store, the pharmacist said, “Hey Eric, how’s Ona? I saw Katy’s prescription come through, here it is”. Not only does he know us, but I was able to say, “thanks, Greg, you rock!” without looking at a name tag. Something about that is very cool to me. Maybe it’s just nice to be remembered by somebody? Maybe it’s comforting to be known by people in a position to help you out? Whatever the reason, it was pretty cool, and makes me feel a bit better about where we live.

Poor neglected blog.  I’m not feeling creative, so I’ll just push out a general update to get the blog juices flowing again.  It’s been a super busy month or so for us, and will continue to be so for a while.  Here’s a recap:

• Went to Reston, VA for business for a week – Katy recapped it here.  Was a good trip, I’m loving that I can take Katy and Ona with me.  Business-wise, it was pretty typical (meetings and more meetings), and "fun"-wise it was less than average for "DC area" visits, but would have been much worse without the family.
• The following weekend, Jol and Lee came to town for a visit.  Woot!  We don’t get visitors too often, so we’re always excited when we do.  We hit the aquarium, a Braves game and caught a movie ("Iron Man", which I thought was good, but not as great as most people seem to think… maybe it’s an expectation thing).  Jol took lots of great pictures, here are two of my faves:
    
• This weekend, Katy’s friend Colleen and her husband John are in town for a baby shower on Sunday.  I heart John, and am quite excited to hang with him this weekend.  Oh, and, hells yes, Saturday is Katy and Paul Frazier’s "Rib Fest".  mmmm, ribs.  It’s the second one we’ve been to and hot damn, that was some good pork last time.

On the upcoming agenda:

• I’m going to SF next week for a Google developer conference.  Geeks everywhere.  Should be fun.  I’m also catching an A’s game with Thomas’s boyfriend Matt.  Gonna be a blast, much the excited.
• That weekend, Scuba Steve is coming into town.  It’ll be awesome to see him and get him more properly introduced to Ona (he’s only seen her in the hospital)
• Later in the month, we’re invited to hang with Josh, Christy and Ellie at their lake crib.  That’s going to rock.

Ona also started day care this week.  She goes part-time, twice a week, and her school’s name is Kidazzle.  G-Fab.  She seems to like it, but Katy and I are feeling the guilt, even though we do really believe it’s good for her… and us. 

There it is, the update.

Ona is mobile.  She started barely crawling Friday and tonight chased a coke bottle (her new favorite toy) around the living room.  It has begun.  I think Milli (our cat) felt a disturbance in the force, she looks scared.  We’re all scared, Milli.

I finally changed out my IM/web icons after years of using the cat with a melon on it’s head to the pic of me as a kid with the giant afro.

That picture made me think about my personality as a kid.  Two things came to mind with that picture.  First, is the actual taking of the picture.  I vaguely remember taking it and remember the photographer saying "smile" over and over as I sat there doing what I thought was smiling until I finally barked at him "I AM SIMILING" and gave a huge over-the-top half grin/half grimace, which resulted in this beauty

The second was the conversation I had with Mom about that picture.  I said "Did you guys do anything to my hair?  Why’d you let me walk around like that?"  And she replied something along the lines of "Let you?  Do something to your hair?  Are you insane?  If we got near your hair, we’d be in so much trouble". 

So, I guess I had a "strong personality" as a kid as well.  That got me thinking about personalities and kids and such.  Will Ona’s personality stay the way it is now?  She’s super happy and friendly and LOUD right now.  She loves being the center of attention, and she loves talking, whether it’s her talking or you talking.  Definitely not like her old man, but much like her mom.  Will that remain?  She’s 8 months old, so that’s probably too early, right?  It’ll be interesting to find out.

I hate April Fool’s Day.  Hate, hate, hate, hate, hate it.  Why?  Because I’m gullible as hell and don’t get sarcasm.  In fact, sarcasm generally pisses me off because it comes across as "I’m smarter than you and proving it by screwing with you".  Insecure?  Yeah, probably.  Now that I’m thinking about it, I can probably go all therapist and say it’s Sean’s fault for playing prankster on me growing up.  Though, you’d think I’d get used to it.  At least Sean wasn’t lame enough to wait until one specific cliche day to do it.  I’ve digressed…

On top of my hatred for feeling like a sucker, I have to put up with the lame predictable shit people are going to try pulling all over the net.  You can fully expect some slashdot story about Bill Gates cuddling a penguin doll, a sports blog post that A-Rod was traded to the Royals for a bag of peanuts, sightings of martians, and [pop star of the moment] doing something donkey (or doing a donkey, for that matter). 

Today is lame.   Lame, lame, lame.  Maybe I’ll start a new personal tradition of taking today off and shutting out the world… just sitting in my PJs and reading a book.  Only 9 hours and 45 minutes of idiot prankster day left.

We finally got a cable for our camcorder so we can import movies to the computer and annoy family with DVDs and YouTube links.  Here is the first of many, which is great because it proves my Mom is nuts, and hilarious (pardon the bad lighting)…

Poor neglected blog.  It’s been a crazy couple of weeks – Katy did a nice job documenting Dad’s visit and the trip to DC.  After the trip to DC I went to Colorado with Scuba Steve and Troy.  It was a great trip, super fun to see the fellas and do some skiing and snowmobiling.  However, now I am a total wreck, sick, injured and way too busy.

Injured
On the ski trip, at the end of day 1 my ankle started hurting.  It was a familiar pain for me on skiing trips and reminded me of how my ankle would hurt when snowboarding.  When I got back to Atlanta, and it was still hurting I decided I should see a doctor.  The last time my ankle hurt, I saw my regular ole doctor and he basically said "rub some dirt on it", so I just walked it off and it went away.  This time I went to see a family friend who is an orthopedic and specializes in the foot and ankle area.  When I first removed my shoes and socks, the three physicians standing around all said "ooh, check that out".  Never a good sign.  Apparently my ankles protrude out a lot more than they should.  After an x-ray, they all noticed a mark on a bone and said "at some point you broke your ankle and didn’t get it set".  Yeah, I rubbed some dirt on it.  Sigh.  So, that break made the tendon not sit in it’s groove properly and it moves way up my ankle bone when I move in a certain direction.  When said tendon is restricted tightly by boots, it gets inflamed  and causes much pain.  Unfortunately, I still can only "rub some dirt on it"… or get a cortisone shot.  Yikes.  I passed on the shot since it wasn’t really hurting anymore, but now I know what the deal is (and they said anti-inflammatory meds would be very helpful).  They also said "one day, the tendon might jump over the ankle bone and then you’ll need surgery".  Future ouch.

Sick
I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t have a sinus infection, would I?  Double sigh.  About 10 days ago I had an allergy attack (not pollen related) and spend the next several days teetering on the edge of sinus hell, finally jumping off the cliff on Saturday.  I spent Sunday, some of Monday and most of Tuesday in bed hacking up nasties and generally wanting to be shot in the face.  Got some meds Tuesday afternoon and am on the mend, but still fell like I’m 40 feet under water.  I hate sinus problems.  Hate is a pretty wimpy word for what I feel.

So, there it is, the doom and gloom blog entry.  I really don’t mean to sound so terribly down in the dumps, but it’s been a rough week (the joy of vacation went away too quickly).  Really I’m just whining – other than being sick (which is on the down swing), things are great – Ona is doing well (has two teeth now, is an inch away from crawling, is sleeping better, and so on), Katy is rockin’, etc. 

Non baseball nerds, stop reading now. 

I’ve entered a fantasy baseball league for the first time in years.  I played with Mahan and some of his friends in 2000 or 2001 (think it was 2001) and it made me never want to do it again.  It was so bad, it made me hate myself for being a part of it.  Back then, we did a real draft in some dude’s basement (which I think was in my sister-in-law’s neighborhood) and it took 8+ hours.  Yes, more than a regular work day.  And yes, worse than a regular work day.  These people would call "time out" and pour over stats and information and then think and think and think and then start a bidding war…. and then somebody else would call "time out" and blah blah blah.  After that horrible draft day, it didn’t get much better – just nerdy to the extreme and kind of made me hate baseball (which is really hard to imagine if you know me at all). 

So, this year, Jol and his co-workers created a yahoo fantasy league and I got roped in.  I got anxiety about it because I have no idea what I’m doing in fantasy baseball, even though I know a ton about the real game.  Finally, I just go with yahoo’s pre-set picks of who the best players are, take some advice from Jol and around the net and go for it.  I think I did "ok", though I’m not super happy with my team (particularly my outfield).  Here is my roster (it’s only a 6 team league, so every team has superstars all over it, which did remove some of the anxiety… I just hate feeling like a donkey)…

C – Russell Martin (one of the players I really wanted on my team)
1B – Prince Fielder (not sure I like that, though he had a monster ‘07, I’m worried about his ‘08)
2B – B.J. Upton (dude can play, though Brandon Phillips was who I was hoping for)
3B – Miguel Cabrera (even though I worry about him changing leagues, I think he’ll do quite well if healthy)
SS – Derek Jeter (solid)
OF – Curtis Granderson (so underrated)
OF – Hunter Pence (worried about sophomore slump)
OF – Corey Hart (gotten better last two years, could bust out… or bust)
Util – Carlos Guillen (I love this pick)
Bench – Chris Young (I don’t like this pick, I poured over it and hated it instantly)
Bench – Adrian Gonzalez (a monster, but where do I put him?)
Bench – Stephen Drew (hate him on a non-baseball level, but he can play)

SP – Johan Santana (woot)
SP – Dan Haren (move to NL should be good, rather have Webb, but he was gone)
RP – Joe Nathan
RP – Bobby Jenks
P – Carlos Zambrano
P – Fausto Carmona
P – Daisuke Matsuzaka
Bench – Joba Chamberlain
Bench – Matt Cain

Ok, so my pitching staff is insane.  I should record a trillion strikeouts and wins, quite a few saves and have a low WHIP.  I wanted Rich Harden as one of those last bench players, but he got snagged.  Injury risk, sure, but I’ve gotta have love for an A’s player. 

I drafted guys I hate and want to do poorly – Santana, Zambrano, Matsuzaka, Drew.  I also drafted guys I really like – Haren, Guillen, Upton, Martin, Granderson.  No A’s, three Tigers, no Braves.  Weird and sucky that I ended up with a Met and no Braves or A’s.  Oh well.  I almost took K-Rod instead of Joe Nathan (K-Rod is the better choice, I think), but I loathe him waaaaay too much for that.

I kind of want to try a league with more teams now, just to see how I’d do.  Though, I’m just too lazy to join some random league… and it’s probably too late anyway.

What’s the point of making resolutions if you don’t follow-up on them and evaluate your progress?

1. Read more. 

   I said I wanted to read one book per month.  I’m almost finished with “The Wind-up Bird Chronicle”, though there are almost two months down.  I started “Summerland”, but for some reason just wasn’t into it (I got about 70 or so pages in when the library said Wind-Up Bird was available so I switched gears).  I’ve also skimmed a nerd book on PHP and one on EJB3 as well as actually read one on Spring 2. 

   It’s been hard to find the time to read having a day job, a couple of side gigs, a baby and a wife battling a cold for a few weeks.  My reading times are on the bus and the rare times I crawl into bed with enough energy to do anything.

   I’d say I’m doing an ok job reading so far.
    

2. Finish software projects. 

   I am full-fledged into a project with two friends, so if that counts, then I’m doing OK.  Outside of that project, I’ve gotten very little done in the way of side projects.  I’ve done some work for another friend, but it’s only been a tiny amount of work so far.  The good thing about that is this guy will do some work for me as well, so I can get the hater site going.  If I do that, then I’d say I’m on track, but otherwise, I think “five projects in a year” is in jeopardy (overly ambitious, maybe, but I wanted it that way).
    

3. Play baseball or softball in a league. 

   Well, it’s still winter and there are no such leagues out there.  I’ve talked about it with several people – Tom E, Tom B, Troy, etc.  But, I haven’t searched out the league to play in, which is what I really need to get on top of.  Just added that to my Remember the Milk list (if you haven’t tried that app yet, do so, it’s awesome times 10 and integrates into GMail wonderfully).

Almost two full months in, I’m doing ok with one, not so well with another and the final one hasn’t really been able to happen yet.  I’m not disappointed with that, nor am I particularly happy – I’d give myself a grade ‘C’ (haha, poor kids when I’m a teacher someday).  I do see the value of making resolutions, as it’s reminded me to focus on reading and such, and I seem to need goals to drive myself.  I’ll do another update in a month or two.