Daydreaming

It's funny. I've got an always-connected phone. The stupidity of the internet, the libraries of the world, all at my fingertips. What do I do on the bus? I stare out the window and daydream. Perhaps it's me not wanting to get motion sick, but it's nice to do it sometimes. I can let all the voices in my head have a quiet conversation. Or think about space ships. Or giant robots. Or giant robot space ships.

Apparently downtime is a good idea to do and let your brain recharge. That's one of the things that I loved about biking into work - I'd be about 10 minutes into my ride and then (just like running) my brain would hit a groove and things would feel so smooth and fluid. Thoughts would be like a smooth flowing creek rather than a dog playing in a puddle. Perhaps a poor visualization. Think smooth and everything in it's place but moving with speed vs flow from all direction and chaotic.

So if you see me walking along and watching the clouds or the wind in the grass, just know that I'm recharging my brain and coming up with brilliant ideas. Or thinking about Star Wars. Actually it's probably best to just assume I'm thinking about Star Wars.

Headaches suck

Stupid stupid stupid.

I get headaches. I treat them with coffee a lot of the time. I've been upping the coffee as time goes by, especially lately. Apparently there is such a thing as rebound headaches where if you keep on upping the treatment, it provides short term relief followed by a worse headache. So I've been told to cut down on the coffee. The glorious, glorious coffee. I was told that cutting it down "is going to hurt. A lot." Well, that's one prediction that was true. Not only does it hurt, but it means that I have shit for concentration and focus. Oh, don't forget irritability. I've got that in spades.

Where will this lead? Hopefully to a happier, healthier and less caffeinated Jim. Where are we now? In a dark place with something something lack of focus oh look a puppy.

*sigh*

About an hour

For picking up Alice from daycare, we've been trying different ways depending on car need and now, weather. The listings below are from my work to home.

• If I walk to Laura's work, take the car and crawl through stop and go traffic? It takes about an hour.
• If I walk to the bus, take the bus to a transit hub, get onto a local bus, pickup Alice, get on another bus to take us back to our stop (which I passed after taking the local bus), then then walk home? Provided I catch the connections in a reasonable amount of time? A bit over an hour. Maybe an 1.25 hours.
• If I change into my bike clothes, bike home, change back into my street clothes (no one wants to talk to someone wearing bike shorts), get into the car, drive over to pick up Alice and then drive home? About an hour.

I assume at this point if I somehow had access to the floo network it would still take me about an hour.

Fleeting - like a bubble

It's funny. Just a short time ago in September we were sitting in the backyard blowing bubbles. Alice couldn't walk - just crawl away. She wouldn't get very far unless we were really not paying attention. Now it's spring and we're again playing with bubbles. Only this time Alice is different - she's walking (and sometimes almost running) and has a lot more hair. (Aside: I think that she's growing it out for the playoffs.)

I see the pictures like below and say "Of course she was like that.", but in my mind I have a harder time resolving that reality. She's changing quickly, but I have a hard time thinking of her differently as she currently is. It's weird. I don't know if it's a failing of my brain or brains in general. Weirdness.

Another thought that's occurring to me: I should be using the dslr whenever I can. First picture is taken with the "good" camera, the second with my phone. I don't think that I'll ever be happy with the camera phone shots. I'm happy that I'm able to get pictures because I've always got the phone in my pocket - I'm sad that the quality is less than I desire. Ah well.

I likes bubbles

You call this a spoon?

Mechanically Handicapped

Compared to the other males in my family, I feel like the black sheep. The different one. They have a problem with something mechanical, they just tear it down and fix it. "Sure, the head gasket went on the engine, but I just tore it down and decided that I'd add.... blah blah blah... and now it also puts twice as much torque!"  Writing that sentence right there is about as close to working on an engine, and having the engine function afterwards, as I get.

I have to do simple things like change a bike tire and it starts to feel like an impossible task. I literally don't have the words for the parts - and the results that you get when you google "fix bicycle thingy into other thingy" aren't as useful as I'd like them to be. Another problem is that some of the things that I need to fix, like our house or some of my bicycles, are older than I am. Much older. The older things aren't so much "buy new part and unsnap old part, snap new part, done!". They are more like "Well, first you have to smelt some iron. Then you take it to the local blacksmith...". Well, maybe not that bad, but they are definitely from an era where "fixable by the common man" had a different meaning.

*sigh* I just get frustrated sometimes with my own inadequacies. In the meantime amuse yourself with a picture of my on an old bike.

Look ma! No sense!

Not the best day

Dear blog,

Today Laura pinned me down and farted on me. It wasn't my best day.

Yours always,
Jim

It's not a lifestyle "choice"

Many people would describe it as a lifestyle choice. I really don't agree with the word choice at all. That's not how it works. "Oh, you can just choose not to be. It's not that hard. My cousin was in college, but now he's not. Not as much fun at parties anymore though..." Most people don't understand, they just can't.

If you're extremely lucky, you can find someone special to share this lifestyle with you. Not just share, but embrace it. Occasionally you'll come across someone at work or at a party and from across the room you know that they share the same lifestyle as you. You might share a look or a wink to convey the understanding - to let the other person that they are not alone. Some people are more public about it, some only let their close friends and family know. If you've been reading this blog you might have suspected, perhaps for some time now. I'm just going to state it here to clear any doubt: I'm a silly person. I can't help it - it's just who I am. It's no more of a choice than me choosing to be me. And I'm lucky enough to share that those moments with the ones I love.

If you find yourself at a party wearing a duck on your head and catch my eye across the room, the knowing smile and little nod is because I know what you're going through. I know what it's like. But you'll probably be able to figure that out because I'll be wearing an Angora rabbit on my head.

Stubbornness goes both ways

We're at the toddler part where Alice knows what we want and exactly what she can do to piss us off. You'll ask her to do something and she'll just stare at you with a blank look. But she knows. She knows. Of course as soon as you threaten to do something like end the meal or not take her waltzing she'll very quickly acquiesce. That shows that she not only understood your original request and how her behaviour deviated from it, but that she understood the threat as well and how to avoid it. I have no idea if this makes her typical or a prodigy of pushing parents past being pissed (ppppbp for short).

Even though most days I don't really feel like I've left childhood, I feel I don't really know how to talk to children. And now I have one of my own to deal with. So I'm going to avoid the whole situation and just talk to her like she's a rational adult. Well, I'll do that until it doesn't work. I'll try to lay out action / reaction situations and let her play a part.

I can also push for desired behaviour as well. If you want the food, toy, to be picked up, you say "please". You say "thank you". 'Cause that's how we do things here.

At this point I'm not delusional in thinking that I've got any mad parenting skillz, I recognize that we have a happy and compliant child. It's not me, it's her.

Now that I'm in a state where I no longer feel I can actually focus on my monitor, I'm going to bed and hope that this post somewhat makes sense. Hopefully. Perhaps. Ah, who am I kidding - it probably won't make sense to me if I re-read it tomorrow.

3rd Person

Jim finds it strange to think about writing about someone in the third person. He has done it in the past to great success while over coming the challenges that arose. He also firmly believes that make work paperwork is bullshit.

That is all.

Better pictures

I figured out how to explain what my goal is for improving the pictures that I take: I don't want to enter competitions but it would be nice if people thought that I could - and possibly win.

Waltzing Ma' Daughter

We figured out something new today: Alice enjoys a good waltz. So far we've only tried The Blue Danube, but I suspect that she'd enjoy other ones as well. I never picked her as a waltzer, but it's hard to tell too much about someone future hobbies / career choices when they are still pooping their pants.

Tomorrow I'll teach her a quick box step. After that - merengue!

Running on the spot

Today after a quick bus trip from the day care provider and a carry to our street, I put Alice down so should could walk the entire length of our (short) street. It's a pretty long distance for little legs. Even longer when you notice a stick you want to inspect, and then walk back 20' and inspect it again, shinny cars that simply must be touched (much to the horror of her father) and other interesting things.

Not wanting the 3 minute walk to take 45 minutes, I tried to get Alice to hurry up. I'd walk a little bit ahead and encourage her to follow me. I mimed running by running on the spot. She loved it. To communicate that she understood, she started running on the spot. And laughing. A lot.

So now I've taught our daughter that when her father is in a hurry and is urging her to move quickly, or at all, she just has to run in the spot.

I award myself The Gold Star of Parenting I Wish I Could Undo™

Making flat white's might be flat out expensive

While we were traveling down under, we both really started to enjoy flat whites. Very tasty stuff. Laura and I have talked a while about getting an even fancier coffee machine - we've got a good drip machine that I use when we have a bunch of people over, and I use a french press the rest of the time for making a single cup. So, I started to look around for an espresso machine that I can make the flat whites.

Holy crap are they expensive.

An entry level one can easily be 500$, or north of 1k$ without even trying. For comparing the cost of making a flat white yourself to buying one, a "caffè latte" is the closest thing that I can find that they serve at starbucks and it costs about 3.25 $. How long would it take to pay off a thousand dollar machine, not including cost of coffee, milk, power or cleaning?

Cups per week	Weekly cost	How long to pay off a machine
2	6.50	Almost 3 years
4	13.00	1.5 years
14	45.50	22 weeks (5.5 months)

I think that you'd have to be drinking a lot of coffee or steamed milk before it became worth it financially to get an expensive machine.

That's not to say that we won't get a fancy machine at some point. There is something to be said for drinking fancy coffee in your pj's.