Ten Years

Ten whole years. A decade. A tenth of a century. Wonderful years. Today is 10 years since our first date. I find it funny that I blogged about our first date, yet didn't mention that it was a date, or Laura at all. It's been fun. I've enjoyed it. I'm looking forward to many more of these posts looking back on our life together.

10 years. Lots of fun. Here's to many more.

Note: I post dated this so I didn't have to write it while getting ready for work.

Summary of today

Things that happened today that are conventionally seen as positive:

• It was a beautiful sunny day
• I got to spend all day with my daughter
• I had a delicious beer
• I was productive work-wise
• I had positive times with my daughter and did some tickling - I love the giggles
• Putting my daughter to bed was a breeze
• standard stuff: everyone healthy, roof over our heads, food on the table, etc

Things that happened today that are conventionally seen as less than positive:

• It was beautiful sunny day, but I stayed inside to work on my laptop for long stretches
• I was home with my daughter 'cause she's a bit sick and producing snot in indescribable amounts
• Said daughter was less than co-operative including doing things like throwing handfuls of food at me, getting timeouts and then going back to doing exactly what she was got the timeout for, etc.
• Tickling ended when my daughter bashed me in the face so hard my glasses because so bent out of shape I have not been able to correct them. My head still hurts
• Two hours after putting my daughter to bed she's still awake

I will actively work on forgetting the second list like it didn't happen. It doesn't add anything positive to the discussion, to the memories, to how I want to think of my life. As my uncle always says: "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." At one point I may look back at my life and while parts won't be fiction, they might not be the whole truth. And I'm okay with that.

Dreams of the Space Above

When I was very little I wanted to be an astronaut. I read about space, or at least looked at pictures of it. I became engrossed with artists concepts of it. I knew that's what I wanted to do. At some point probably when I was 5 or 6 I started to realize how much work it took to be an astronaut. How much of "best of the best" that they were and, surprising myself looking back at it, knowing how much that wasn't me. I am not the top 1% of the top 1%. The dream of being an astronaut died for me then.

Don't be sad. It's good to know your limits.

Now, the dream of going into space has not died at all. Each passing year the likelihood of being a civilian tourist goes up. It wouldn't be cheap, but it's nice to think that it's possible if I really, really wanted it. Or we could have a house. It's really a toss up at this point.

Annnnyways. Sometimes people inspire you. Sometimes it's by making an awesome music video about an astronaut in space by an astronaut actually in space. Sometimes it's the photos. Sometimes there is just enough of a story in a photo and you can continue the rest in your head. Below is the start of a great story.

Do Astronauts Dream of Electric Sheep?

Paste using Citrix to access PuTTY

This made me angry because it took more than 30 seconds to figure out. I was logged into work via citrix and had launched a PuTTY session. I couldn't figure out how to paste using my mac. Keep in mind I don't use PuTTY that often - I usually use cygwin.

It was so, so simple (provided you know how to do it).

To paste in putty you right click. To do that I hold alt aka "option" and click the mouse.

Conceptually Soon

One of the things that I used to love as a kid, and still do, was concept art of people in space or in far off lands. Things like a Stanford torus or an O'Neill cylinder like in the Rama series. I lose myself in those images.

Last Friday we went to the Star Wars Identities and saw some of the concept art. I love the early stuff so much. The stuff from when they were trying to sell the idea of the story rather than a rough sketch of what the camera crew was supposed to shoot. One of my favourite shots from was Ralph McQuarrie of "Luke" (pictured as a girl) overlooking ‎ Mos Eisley. Is it really that different than something that you could take a picture of today? No, except when you notice that the car is floating and there are two suns.

These are the things that dreams are made of. Dreams today, destinations tomorrow.

I can almost feel the crunch of stone and sand under my shoes

Thinking of fun

I love taking pictures. Yes, that should be clear already. One of my favourite lens to use for portraiture is our "long" lens: 55-200 mm. It's great to get in close and not be too distracting to the moment, but it's harder to get the right angle when you're far away. I don't really have much of a point for this post other than I like the picture below. That is all.

Thinking of wonders

Unexpected talents

When you have a baby come along you figure out that you're about to get a crash course in all things parenting. This is true. And to someone without kids you compose a mental list of things you're going to get experience in: changing diapers, comforting a baby / child, grocery shopping on little sleep, etc. However there are things that I didn't expect to get a lot of experience in, let alone become comfortably good at (if I do say so myself).

One example is microwaving tiny amounts of food to warm it up, but not too much. Yes, I'll admit that sometimes I goof, but I feel a lot of time I get it right. It takes a bunch of practice to see some food and based on estimated water content, initial temperature, density, plate type and temp, etc determine if you should microwave it for 10 second or 15. Right now I have a lot of experience with microwaving things for fractions of a minute.

It makes sense, but if you asked me two years ago it wouldn't have been something that I expected to be doing a lot.

Why not?

Why this picture again? Because good things come in threes.

One to beam up...

Putting things in scale

Ah, a year can go by in a blink of an eye. One minute you're playing with someone so small and unable to sit up by themselves and then BAM! it's a year later and they are climbing up on the couch themselves taking down all the things that you cleverly have "put out of reach".

If we didn't have the pictures I'm not sure how I'd remember it.

I'm as surprised as you are, but someone just pooped my pants!

You thought that the controller was safe? Hahahaha! Now let me use it to call my robot...

Surprising abilities

I guess things move in leaps and bounds sometimes. Today after I brought Alice home via bike trailer (a first), we hung outside for a bit. She climbed up on a patio chair which isn't a low chair. I thought "wow" and took a picture. Then we went inside and I let her loose while I rested on the floor. She then climbed up on the couch which she's never been able to do before. I thought "wow" and took a picture. Then after having dinner I let her walk around. She headed to the basement stairs and went down a step on her bum. I thought "wow" but I didn't take a picture. You know, it was only 1 stair after all. Then she came up and walked around for a bit more. Then she went down the 3 stairs to the landing and started to head down the others. That time I came over to make sure she didn't take a tumble. She proceeded to go down the rest of the stairs by alternating planking and sliding down a single step. By half way down she was laughing with each step. Perhaps not the best technique, but who am I to argue?

The thing that gets me is that she's not being super proud about these things. It's like she's always been able to do them. I guess I just never got the memo.

A controller makes an excellent telephone

Biketastic

Today is what I'll call our first successful bike plus trailer ride. We put a towel behind Alice's back to the helmet wasn't forced over her eyes and went for a ride to Dows Lake to look at the tulips. It was a good time, but pulling a lot of weight isn't the easiest thing. I'm looking at it as strength training. Hopefully soon we'll be able to explore almost everywhere we used to go by bike before.

Next weekend I think we should get further and take a nice picnic. That's the best way to spend a weekend. ;-)

Children make you fat

Children make you fat. That's based on my scientific study of one. They make you more tired, but by doing less. It's very confusing, so let me explain. Before I would laze about and head out on my bike to where ever I had to go. If it took 15 minutes longer, that's just how long it took. I had less constraints on my schedule. Now I have to get from A to B as quick as I can because any "wasted" time means less time to be and play with Alice. I can't decide to just walk home because it's a nice day - I've got to hop on the bus to get to daycare and back because I have to be there before 5, which means I'm leaving work at 4. Pre-child I don't think that I ever left at 4 unless I was sick. It's strange.

I used to also go biking when it was dark. A couple of times I'd go meet up with Laura at her work at 3 am and we'd bike home together. Aside: the canal is wonderful to bike along at 3 am - very peaceful. Now someone's got to be around the house from 6:30 pm onwards. Two years ago I don't think that we were even regularly home at 6:30, let alone "in for the night".

So, more rush rush, but less go go. It's... odd.

I'm hoping now that things are warmer we'll be able to pack up Alice and go on adventures on a regular basis. We can go on a quest. I'll call it... The Search For My Sanity.

On the ever vigilant search for adventure. And cookies.