A man, a woman, a boy, a blog: golbayobanamowanama!

The many names of Simon

June 14, 2009 in Progeny by T | No comments

When Julia’s mother was in town in the weeks after Simon was born, she expressed not-entirely-serious concern that he was going to grow up confused about what his name was. Apparently, in those heady days, we were coining new monikers with alarming frequency. Some of them have already been abandoned, either due to increasing inaccuracy, or perhaps poor memory caused by lack of sleep. Still, what’s a blog for if not to catalog the minutia of life? So here are some of the nicknames we remember.

Of course, there was his original in utero nickname, Grendel, now largely abandoned (at least after the first few days, when we occasionally forgot Simon’s real name), in part because when we called him Grendel, we thought he was a girl. Yes, in spite of Grendel’s being a male in Beowulf, we know, we know.

I don’t know if it’s due to his cleft palate or if all babies do this to some degree, but early on, Simon made lots of, well, snorting noises. It was actually fairly comforting to us back then, because it made it easy to know if he was breathing in the middle of the night. Still, several names came from this attribute, among them Snuffleupagus and Snorky Doo.

Snorky Doo was likely derived from the similar Simon Doo, no doubt itself derived from the name of popular mystery solving canine, Scooby Doo. (I guess. Julia never actually explained this to me. And since she only ever spoke these nicknames aloud, it’s possible I got the spelling wrong, and these nicknames are actually references to influential punk band Hüsker Dü. Except that Julia is almost certainly more familiar with Scooby Doo than Hüsker Dü. Anyhow.)

Also owing to a particular bleating-like noise Simon was prone to making before turning to a full-blown cry, Simon was also not infrequently referred to as Lambikins or, more simply, Lamb.

Fans of the former TV show Arrested Development may appreciate that, owing to his surname, Simon was sometimes called Mr. S, with the attendant three-note jingle that went along with the name “Mr. F” in that series.

Julia and I share a love of robots (defined as anything from the pre-robotic age, back when robots were cute and didn’t have boring jobs like assembling cars), and it’s difficult not to envision Simon as some sort of mechanical automaton (in a good way). Thus he’s been called Wigglebot, Lovebot, or Rollbot, depending on whatever best characterizes him at the time. Note that Simon isn’t actually able to roll when lying on his back yet, but he does a fine job of dislodging himself from the burping or feeding position, largely by tossing his head to the side and having the rest of his body follow.

But by far the most popular — and enduring — name so far has been Beets, or Mr. Beets (when we’re feeling respectful, I guess). The etymology on this one is tricky, but it seems largely based on how he acts when he’s hungry, turning (beet) red, and exhibiting the rooting reflex (beets being roots, you know). Factoring somewhere in there is an auto repair shop in Southeast Portland called Beets Auto Body, whose sign features the outline of a beet with a man’s face on it. The name Beets often leads to ad-hoc songs, such as the Go-Go’s influenced “I got the Beets”. There is no end to the cleverness in this household.

Anyhow, I’m sure there’ve been, and will be, more, but those are the ones that spring to mind right now. Oh, and I guess we still do occasionally call him Simon.

Simon the eco-zealot

June 6, 2009 in Progeny by T | No comments

Kids these days! They’re so into environmentalism — radically so!

Of course, Simon comes by this naturally — there was the time his dad, after learning about Earth Day and recycling, insisted that his parents save up all cardboard scraps (which were then not recyclable at the curb), which he then drove many dozens of miles away to be recycled. Because he cared about the environment. Or that was the idea, no matter how much gasoline it actually took.

And then there was the time Simon’s papa earned the nickname “The Recycling Nazi” in college for going through the trash cans outside of people’s dorm rooms, looking for soda cans that had been thrown away (and leaving a note on the offender’s whiteboard — every college door has a whiteboard — about recycling).

But Simon, part of the next generation, has exceeded his father’s environmentalism. You see, he hand-mulches. That’s right. He’s taken mulching to the next level.

Fig. A: Harvesting more organic material

I guess Simon has noticed that his parents consider hair and lint to be detritus, worthy of throwing in the trash, and he’s concerned about the inevitable effect this will have on our landfills. In response, he seems to have come up with a plan that involves tightly clenching said hair and/or lint in his fists for hours — possibly days — on end, apparently so that, with the attendant moisture, heat, and pressure provided by his fists, he could … um, I don’t know. Make a tiny amount of rich compost for his miniature garden? He hasn’t explained that part to us yet.

But there is definitely lint and hair — sometimes his, sometimes the hair he’s happened to find around the house, hopefully Julia’s or mine — in his fists, and, owing to his frequent desire to keep his fists clenched, it sometimes gets a bit gross. But who am I to question the next generation’s environmental fervor?

Mother’s Day

May 10, 2009 in Adults by T | No comments

Like many of you, I have a mother. In fact, I’ve recently gotten to spend a lot of time with her and my father, both of whom have been in town for a few weeks to help out after Simon was born. (Julia’s parents were in town before that to also help out. It’s been sort of a parental torch-passing, really.)

I love my mom, and she’s a wonderful parent (same goes for you too, Dad, but I’m not supposed to say anything for a month — you know, legally). Loving, giving, patient … all that and the proverbial bag of chips, to this day, even now that I’m old enough that I don’t feel like anyone’s baby.

But this year, on Mother’s Day, I find myself with more than one mother figure to contemplate. Because, you see, my wife has somehow managed to — while still remaining fully my wife — also become a mother. Now, at some level, this was fully anticipated — I’ve read up on all the biological underpinnings of this transformation and all. But it’s still something of a shock that this beautiful, fun woman I’d known for many years had all this mothering inside her. Who knew?

In times past, I had always considered myself the tough one. When hiking up a mountain (or its Scottish equivalent), I was usually the one in the lead. I was the one, say, who went on a bonus hike to the relatively creepy garden of carved wooden objects while Julia rested up from the morning hike to the waterfall. And so forth.

And then Julia told me that she wanted to have a drug-free childbirth for Simon. Now, I will admit that I initially took this in the same way that I might say that I want to have a chocolate milkshake appear in my hand: it would be nice, if not terribly likely. But Julia kept saying it. More importantly, she said it to the nurses when we checked into the hospital the night Simon was born.

And after seeing her go through that labor without any drugs, I relinquished the title of Toughest Stadler. Which title, you know, technically, I had never actually won. But Julia certainly did, that night.

But it wasn’t just some extraordinary burst of strength on the occasion of Simon’s birth. No, her amazing abilities have continued the whole month-and-change that is Simon’s life. It hasn’t always been easy — there have been challenges for both Simon and Julia — but through it all, she’s just kept going. And doing amazingly well, no less.

It’s like finding out that you’re married to Wonder Woman after years of thinking you’d been living with a very nice Diana Prince … only without the invisible plane and so forth. (And yes, I did have to look up Wonder Woman’s non-secret identity on Wikipedia. What the heck, Wonder Woman can fly? I mean, without the invisible plane? What?)

Point being, my wife — and, more to the point on this day, my son’s mother — is amazing. She’s tough, she’s loving, she’s beautiful. And I love her.

Simon

April 18, 2009 in Progeny by T | 3 comments

Do you know where you were and what you were doing on April 8, 2009, at 9:23 am, Pacific time? Well if not, you’d better come up with a reasonable sounding fake answer quick, because I fully expect you to know what was going on when our son, Simon, entered the world.

(Booyah! How’s that for a dramatic opening? And now I’ll deftly cut to the visual payoff …)

Anyhow, while you’re thinking about whether you were actually in the office bathroom at the time he was born, and whether you’d like to change that to “I was thinking about you and Julia and composing an appropriate celebratory tune upon the hoped-for birth of your son,” here are some statistics to bide the time (but do get crackin’ on that tune, please):

9 lbs., 4.5 oz. Not quite Gigantor status, but no shrinking violet, either.

22.5 inches long. Yes, my metric friends, that is inches, not centimeters. Though born in Oregon, this child is clearly a result of his Texas-sized genes. Whatever that means.

14.5 inch head circumference. I have no idea how that compares in the Baby Statistics Land, but given the size of his father’s head, that’s likely fairly high on the “orange on a toothpick” scale.

So yeah, Simon. Welcome to the world, son.

We won Science Olympiad

March 16, 2009 in Adults by T | 2 comments

So I did my best to avoid this story in the previous entry, since I’m insane and writing two entries in as many days about current events — take that, my former companions in lazy blogging, he said ironically before lapsing into silence for another few weeks! …

Uh, that opening got too complicated. Here’s the upshot: J’s Science Olympiad team won yesterday for the third time in as many years, earning them the right to advance to the national Science Olympiad competition this May in Augusta, Georgia — which competition the careful reader will note J is not attending (somewhat sadly) for the first time, since we will almost certainly have a beautiful new baby to care for and teach simple ion formulae and basic music theory to and whatnot.

But eyes on the prize(s): we won! Huzzah!

Actually, this is a somewhat tricky thing for me to exult in (to be cockahoop, if you will). First off, while winning any competition is reason for happiness, it should be noted that there aren’t a lot of schools competing in Science Olympiad in Oregon — five this year — so the state competition is a bit more like a regional event in more competitive states (like just across the Columbia in Washington, where there are over 100; this also makes hobby shops in Portland suburb Vancouver, Washington much more likely to be able to offer advice on whether you want to use balsa or bass wood in building your elevated bridge for Science Olympiad, say).

Second, there is the awkward nature of being associated with a team that has won first place every year it’s competed. I don’t want our team to become the Yankees, if you will, of Oregon Science Olympiad. The other schools also worked hard, were worthy competitors, won many medals, and I hope will continue to compete for years to come. I was especially impressed by the newcomers this year from Sunset, which fielded only half a team (in terms of the maximum possible), and yet won third place and no small number of medals, including several golds.

But in the end, our team did better across the board and won, and I can’t help but be happy for them. While there were times I was worried they weren’t working hard enough, in the end they worked really hard and pulled it off. And, thinking back to my own very, very late nights (occasionally becoming mornings) of last-minute work in high school, I can’t really fault them. Too much.

And now, some notes from the Science Olympiad.

As can be seen at the national Science Olympiad site, www.soinc.org (pronounced “soink!”), there are corporate sponsors, most of whom are what you might expect in the whole “promoting science and engineering among the youth” milieu: DuPont, Texas Instruments, 3M. There are, however, two sponsors I find a bit … odd, if nonetheless appropriate. One is the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors, sponsoring It’s About Time, a competition in part about building a functional time-keeping device. I guess I’m just surprised that such an association has apparently as much largesse as your corporations that I assume are generally much better funded. Also: watch and clock collectors? Really? The association of, you know, clock builders was too busy?

And then there is Egg-O-Naut, an event in which the competitors build water-powered bottle rockets, with the intent of having an egg-bearing capsule separate from the main rocket in mid-flight and make it safely back to earth as slowly as possible. Perhaps you saw this coming, but that event is sponsored by none other than the American Egg Board, the people who brought you “The Incredible, Edible Egg” campaign. Actually, they’re still bringing it to you, it turns out — and brought several bright-yellow “Incredible!” egg-picturing t-shirts for the winners of said event, which was our team. I will refrain from speculating as to whether the t-shirt or the gold medal was the better prize.

Regarding Egg-O-Naut, that was a rather difficult event at the tournament, given the strong wind and rains that plagued the area. But the Egg-O-Nautery must go on, as they say, and so most of the rockets, designed for much more favorable conditions, were, my friend, a-blowin’ in the wind after a prematurely short ascent. The winning rocket faced even more difficult conditions, as one section of it — thankfully, not the egg-bearing part — was also run over by a car, what with the event taking place in a parking lot, the winds having carried it beyond the car-free section of said lot. Regardless, the egg survived.

The events at such tournaments are supervised by volunteers, who, in addition to coming from the various competing schools, are also pulled from local Industry, as the academics say. This year, J also managed to snag some of our friends (who do, after all, work in Industry) to supervise, and it was really fun to see them working with the events and kids we’ve come to know so well. Even more fun was hearing that they enjoyed preparing tests or seeing what the kids had come up with. What can I say, we’ve got good nerd friends.

Our team is also, not surprisingly, blessed with many good nerd parents, several of whom helped out over the season as assistant coaches of sorts. Given that these parents come from engineering backgrounds, it’s not too surprising that our team did especially well in the engineering events this year (in previous years, we had been stronger at the knowledge-based test events). And yet this was no case of overbearing parents doing all the work. On the Trajectory event, involving the construction of a launching device that can hit any target within certain parameters, made her own unique mark on the event — she enjoys sewing in addition to Science Olympiad, and I couldn’t help but notice that her device’s launching mechanism involved a Rube-Goldbergian use of fabric scissors to cut through embroidery floss to send her projectile flying. It’s all very clever and endearing, frankly.

I’d write more, but frankly, editing this post has already prevented me from posting twice in one day. I’d hate further writing and editing to prevent me from a still-unprecedented twice-in-two-days series. So, yeah: Science Olympiad! Huzzah!

We survived Science Olympiad

March 15, 2009 in Adults by T | 1 comment

Yesterday was Oregon’s state Science Olympiad competition — a science competition with many different types of events that the clever among you will note is very Olympic in nature — which J coached for the third year in a row for the school where she’s also a science teacher.

(Here’s where I catch my breath from the wreckless pace of this blog entry, what with the writing about events mere hours after the events transpired and all. What do I think this blog is, some sort of newspaper with fancy, fact-filled ledes? No, really this entry is less about describing our lives and more about shaming our friends with their new blogs but less-recent posts — less about information, more about competition, as it’s meant to be on the Internet.)

In any other year, this would be just another story about how J coached and I helped (occasionally even assistant-coaching) and the girls worked hard and so on. But those paying attention or otherwise in-the-know know that, in addition to coaching an award-winning team, J is also 37 weeks pregnant. And we’re moving into our new house next week. Oh, and J was also one of three people running this year’s Oregon Science Olympiad competition.

In short: [mild exclamation of your choice]! What were we thinking? What? Were we thinking?

Yes, well. I won’t say it hasn’t been one of the most stressful periods of our life together — indeed, while I usually consider myself a fairly laid-back kind of guy, I haven’t been this stressed since late college. Which is exciting, because perhaps it means that my time of stressful-college-nightmares-as-dreamworld-metaphor has come to an end, henceforth to be replaced by nightmares about hiring contractors, packing boxes, and working twelve hours at a science competition.

All of which sounds far too whiny. With the competition now over, and one fairly major item on our checklist now largely checked off (for simplicity’s sake, I will simply ignore any preparations needed after the competition … but more about that in the next entry), I’m already in “happy retrospective” mode vis-a-vis Science Olympiad: “It was all worth it, to see the team having competed and worked so hard!” And so on. Hopefully, the following weeks will see similar shifts in opinions about buying and moving into a new house, and the final days of pregnancy.

And while it can be trite, after a endeavor has been successfully completed, to thank God (I’m thinking here of the occasional televised award ceremony winner), I really can’t see how we could have made it this far without him. It’s easy enough to ignore his blessings when I feel in control of things, when I have a plan, when I know how everything is going to play out.

But in times like this, when I come home from a stressful time at work to a house that is full — but not yet full enough — of boxes and calendar full of activities that do not lend themselves to filling more boxes, not to mention the occasional, looming feeling that I am ill-prepared for my imminent parenthood and thus already a bad father … well, there’s precious little else to lean on besides God (and the blessings he puts in our lives, namely family and friends). At times like this, trusting merely in my own abilities leads me to lying awake two hours before I’m supposed to get up, quietly freaking out. And while I’ve certainly tried that approach a lot lately, it hasn’t generally been one I would dub successful.

Anyhow, that’s done. Phew. Thank God.

A moving story

February 22, 2009 in House by T | 3 comments

At one point, I thought of buying a house as a singular action — like buying, I don’t know, a piece of furniture. Sure, there was the house-hunting, which could take a while, but once you found the house you wanted, at some point after that, you’d clearly own the house.

And I guess there will yet be a point at which we can say, “We have a house now.” But that point is still off in the future.

And yet … we … have a house? Sort of? Or we will … in a week or two … have the keys to a house … which, many years from now … we will truly own, and not the bank … actually?

Mentally, of course, we already have the house. And given that the inspection is over and we’ve signed various Important Documents, we have very little legal recourse to back out at this point from the evental purchasing of this house. But someone(s) in a bank somewhere — I imagine it to be a tall grey monolith filled with short grey suits — needs to cross-reference something in a table on a computer, nod, and then sign something before they can buy the house for us and let us call it our own. Which is nice of them.

(I have to be nice to them, so they don’t revoke the comparatively low mortgage rate they’re giving us — given as much information as they take into account when processing a mortgage these days, I have no doubts that “Did they say something mean about us on their blog? [yes] [no]” appears on a screen somewhere in that tall grey building.)

Anyhow, I’m given to monolithic postings here — when I bother to post at all — and I have more to say on this house issue, but there’s the story for you. Of course, most of you already knew this, but hey.

We found a house. We close in a week and a half.

The winter of our Web content

December 23, 2008 in Adults, Weather by T | No comments

Since I last blogged about Portland’s winter storm, the snow and cold temperatures have continued (and continued), resulting in the longest spate of winter weather I’ve ever experienced.

I realize “bad winter weather” is all relative, and many from points north and east of here would scoff at what we’ve been going through. Still, you can’t argue with the effect the weather has had on Portland, shutting down various aspects of it because, well, we don’t get feet of snow very often!

Anyhow, things were actually looking pretty good through the end of last week, such that, while Julia was off every day due to school being canceled, I made it in to work along with everyone else in my office. This was mildly disappointing, not only in that I begrudged Julia’s ability to stay snuggled in a warm bed while I went off to work, but also because, after walking over the ice and snow and then hopping on a bus with chains, I was kind of hoping to find the office empty of less stalwart folks who weren’t nearly as brave as I’d obviously been. Turns out everybody who rides the bus was equally brave, which is to say that it wasn’t that brave after all.

They’d been forecasting bad weather over the weekend, so we weren’t surprised when the predicted snow hit Saturday morning. In fact, the heavy snow was charming in the way only that ironic things that you’ll later come to fear/loathe can be.

But all the nearby restaurants — or at least the ones within a shortened walking distance — were open, and I consider this a win for local businesses. The employees could walk or bus to work, and so could we. And boy, were we happy to see them open! Given that we were flying out on Monday (he said, ironically foreshadowing … perhaps), we hadn’t stocked up a lot of food at home, so our food options were a meal at Sckavone’s or Detour Cafe, or … whatever odds and ends just happened to be in our fridge or pantry, the true details of which I am too embarrassed to admit.

Anyhow, Saturday passed without problem. Julia went to a prenatal yoga class, we had lunch nearby, and then we went over to the Kunze’s for the night. Not the sort of stuff I’d usually blog about, except that every trip, every meal seemed exceptional, hard-won, a victory over the snow continuing to pile up outside.

Church was canceled Sunday morning, which was not at all surprising, but frankly a tad welcome, given the previous week’s adventure. With the extra free time, I engaged for only the second time in my life in shoveling the walk. After only a few minutes of this activity, I was glad I’d only done it twice so far — that is hard, aerobic activity. Nothing like sweating while cold! I was even feeling so charitable that I shoveled most of the neighbor’s sidewalk, too, though this was only marginally useful, given that most of our neighbors did not clear any snow away. Heck, I had to borrow one of our neighbors’ snow shovels just to do my bit.

Lacking any other plans besides sitting inside and looking at a computer screen, I decided to light a fire — another surprisingly rare activity in my life. In our house, the fireplace is somehow designed to completely fail to heat the room, so we only light them when it really suits the moment. Basically, it’s the thermal and visual equivalent of one of those fireplace DVDs.

We’ve never bought any firewood because whoever rented the house before us left a few dozen logs in the garage (along with other things — there were dishes in the dishwasher and clothes in the dryer; one wonders exactly how quickly she left and under what circumstances). There were also a few pieces of scrap wood which we used for kindling.

But, to be honest, one of the main reasons I wanted to light a fire was to destroy documents. See, we’ve had this ever-increasing collection of papers with sensitive data we’ve meant to shred for several years. At one point, it would have been manageable, but as it grew, it became obvious it was simply too much for our dinky shredder to complete in a reasonable amount of time.

Of course, why shred things when you can spend an hour balling them up and throwing them into the fireplace, I always say? With a soundtrack of Mussorgsky playing in the background, I felt legitimately sinister, as if I was nefariously destroying crucial evidence of my own malfeasance. In reality, I was burning tax documents from 1990, when I didn’t even have a job and hadn’t graduated from high school. If the IRS wants those, they can now piece them together from the copious amount of ashes in our fireplace. Along with too many credit card offers to mention.

And while Julia got no warming benefit from the fire, I, seated mere feet from the flames while I tossed paper wads in, found myself sweating for the second time that day. I sweated more on December 21st than possibly the whole month of November.

We woke up on Monday to see that even more snow had fallen, rendering the previous day’s shoveling largely undetectable, and the previous day’s shoveler a bit cynical about the whole process. “Well I’m not going to bother doing that again!” Everyone was trudging through the compacted snow of the street, anyhow, the sidewalks being slow-going due to the deep snow.

It’s not the most exciting story ever, but given the relatively historic nature of the weather, I wanted to have some documentation of it. Other, of course, than the hundreds of largely-white photographs I took, which I will inevitably upload to my Flickr account in, say, several months.

Winter wonderland, my (cold) foot!

December 18, 2008 in Adults, Weather by T | No comments

Since sometime last week, we’d been hearing about the forthcoming winter storm, due this past weekend.

Of course, living in Portland, there is no such thing as an uncapitalized winter storm. When you have generally mild (if damp) weather year-round, cold plus snow gives you, at a bare minimum, a Winter Storm. To hear the news folks tell of it, it yields more like a Winter Storm Death Blood-on-the-Ice Mayhem Catastrophe 2008 Snow-Zombie Apocalypse.

Now, I know you folks from more wintry climes are laughing at such hysteria, but deep down you’re jealous that we can freak out so easily about what is, to you, just normal winter weather. It just shows how nice it is here normally, so you “win” by having your weather be suckier. I happily concede.

Anyhow, by Saturday, things had gotten cold, but the forecast snow had yet to materialize. Not a surprise, of course — like I said, often the only thing blowing hard in winter is the weather talk. So when I woke up Sunday and peered out through the window condensation at the yard, only to see green grass*, I figured there was no reason not to drive to church.

However, while we were showering, dressing, and otherwise not looking, the snow suddenly launched a sneak attack. And how! Not merely coming down in the way where you have to look closely at a really dark tree for a few seconds — heck, not just coming down, but actually sticking and blanketing the streets in white!

Even in Portland, this isn’t that unusual. What was unusual was that I was considering driving in it. As little as we drive these days, my experience with driving in snow is pretty much near-zero — I may have driven once or twice while a few flakes were coming down, but without actually threatening to get between my tires and the road.

So I called our pastor, just to see what the story was out in Hillsboro (a suburb 15 miles or so to the west where our church is). As much as I enjoy our church, I was secretly hoping our pastor would say something like, “Are you crazy? Drive out here in this weather? Dear me, no!” Even though he doesn’t really talk like that — such is the power of winter weather. Or so I’d hoped.

Unfortunately, our pastor, like many Lutherans, spent quite a number of years out in die lutherische Mutterland, if you will, and as such had no apparent sympathy for a pair of native Texans looking fearfully at the falling snow. I believe his most comforting words were, “If it gets impassable or you start sliding, then turn around.” See, this is why I don’t talk to you people with experience in Midwest winters. If our car starts sliding, then owing to my Texas-bred inability to automotively deal with anything remotely slick, we will necessarily careen over a ledge and explode in a ball of flame — even if we are on a completely flat plain!

But the damage had been done. Namely, to my machismo. “It’s only snowing a bit — in fact, it had only started snowing recently, right? Snow itself isn’t so bad, right? It’s the ice that causes cars to crash and burn! I see no ice out there! We can do this with minimal automotive damage!” And so forth.

So it was that we ventured boldly out of the driveway. And, observing that we not only hadn’t died but hadn’t even hit any cars or trees, we kept on going. All the while muttering “I can do this” and “This is, of course, crazy” in equal measure.

Now, those of you who are familiar with Portland and its western suburbs know that to get from the former to the latter, one has to take Highway 26 over the West Hills, which entails a climb from near sea level to several hundred feet above sea level (the best estimate I could find was 400 feet). And while the West Hills are normally a pleasant spot, full of zoo animals, Japanese gardens, and the luridly well-to-do, in wintry times, they are also rather intimidating.

There’s nothing like snow to make you suddenly aware of your city’s topography. Not only does the snow become thicker (both in the air and on the ground) at higher altitudes, but that uphill drive you’ve done hundreds of times suddenly seems to be taking a much longer time than you remember.

Of course, in part, this was because we were driving a lot slower than normal, which I counted as a good thing. But then there was the general confusion of driving in the snow, which for me entailed following the relatively clear tracks made by previous cars. As opposed to any official notion of lanes, which had by apparent mutual agreement been abandoned by those on the highway. Every so often, I would catch a glimpse of the actual lane dividers in the tire tracks, though the two did not always run parallel.

Not that we had all lanes open to us. At the top of Sylvan Hill, there was more than one accident, with flares closing off the surrounding chunk of highway. In a way, I was thankful for those who had gone before, as they served as an suggestion to my fellow Portlanders to try and drive less foolishly — it has been noted that, in any wintry weather, it is Portland drivers’ stupidity that is the most dangerous element.

The view from west of Sylvan Hill, heading westbound; notice the very safe distance and speed!

And then, somehow, we arrived at church. Fifteen minutes late, but completely unscathed — even mentally. Who knew I was capable of such capable driving?

Indeed, on the journey back home from church, I was remarkably at ease. The human mind is a fantastically plastic machine, acclimating with incredible speed to different situations. Somehow, it seemed like I’d always been driving on white-covered roads, and adeptly, at that. “Ha ha!” I laughed at the dark gray clouds — not literally, as such, lest Julia think I was actually going snow-mad or whatever people do when it’s actually cold for long stretches of time.

Of course, scoffing at the weather is never a wise thing to do, even in mild Portland. So it was that, as we again neared Sylvan Hill, this time on the way home, we noticed the electronic highway sign that told us that chains were required in the Portland metro area.

Um. Well. That’s all well and good, of course, but we don’t actuall own any chains, you see. It’s sort of a matter of principle. If chains are required for driving, then I shouldn’t be driving in the first place! All very logical. Except for the part where I was somehow able to leave home without chains, only to be told I needed them to return.

At this point, we were left with several less-than-perfect options. We could exit the highway and hope to find a nearby store selling tire chains that happened to be open on Sunday while it was snowing enough to require chains. This one seemed pretty dubious from the start.

We could try to park somewhere that was both free and close to a public transit line, and come back at some later date once the snow had abated. However, given that the now-vindicated forecasters had called for up to a week of this weather, I wasn’t keen on the possibility of leaving my car in Beaverton for days on end.

This left, as best I could reason while still trying to drive safely, the option of driving back to Portland without chains and hoping for the best. Which presumably would involve minimal traffic tickets and/or death.

Rather than attempt again the relatively high altitude of Sylvan Hill that Highway 26 traverses, I decided to take the rather long way around, south on 217 and then back north on I-5. The only flaw in my plan was that, for whatever reason, I’d never actually driven this route in my life, and so I was unsure if, in fact, I’d be driving at lower — and therefore presumably less treacherous — altitudes. But my hunch seemed correct, and that’s as good as reality in these crazy postmodern times, right?

So yeah. We headed south, slowly, though safely. And then turned north onto I-5. Where we were again treated to electronic billboards alerting us to the need for chains, and possibly the certain death that awaited us if we ignored the part about the chains.

Okay, not really, but do you remember that scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind where Roy Neary is driving closer and closer to Devil’s Tower, and the government has spread false reports of a nerve gas spill, so people are evacuating? And even though Roy thinks the spill is a fake, it seems very ominous as he continues on, passing dead animals and such? Well, we kind of felt like that. Nearly everyone had pulled over to the side of the road to put on chains. And there we were, passing them all while chainless. It certainly felt ominous.

And then, somehow, we made it back to downtown Portland, none the worse for wear, except for possibly a tense back on my part. I’d decided to avoid taking the Marquam or Ross Island bridges across the Willamette, since they both went a bit high for me to be comfortable driving on them in the cold and snow. Not that any bridge sounded like a good idea, but at least the Hawthorne could reasonably claim that it wasn’t at a higher altitude than any other surface street — any ice-inspired swerve and subsequent plunge off of it would be mercifully short.

Division Street, where bad drivers go to play

Interestingly, it was in this final stretch of our trip on the surface roads that we saw some of the worst driving. I was heading down Division, behind a pick-up truck whose driver would accelerate so fast after coming to a stop that it would fish-tail. And he either thought that was really fun or he was too stupid to learn from his mistake, because I watched him over-accelerate and then fish-tail six times. I found myself yelling at him, “Idiot! I’m a native Texan and I know how to drive better in this than you!” Not that he could hear me over the squealing of his tires.

Anyhow, we made it home, where I plan on keeping the car in the driveway until there is no sign whatsoever of anything remotely frozen** on the roads.

*See? Our grass was green in December! You “our winters are so bad that half my friends died of exposure last week” types probably had your grass die sometime in October! However, I will actually concede that, in losing (which is to say winning) the Crappy Weather war, you have actually won this battle, as I hate our lawn and wish it was dead pretty much year-round. I have little interest in mowing the lawn in between the frequent winter rains.

**Yes, that’s right, I only plan on driving on molten roads, you chemistry nerds!

Ultrasonic baby boom

December 5, 2008 in Progeny by T | 6 comments

Last week, Julia and I went in for her 20-week ultrasound. I’d write more here up top, but it would only delay some people’s ability to get to the pictures quickly, so I’ll leave my yammering to the bottom, where it can be safely ignored. One note, though: you can click on the images below for a larger version, which I suppose is suitable for framing or printing onto coffee mugs.

Okay, maybe a little interstitial yammering between pictures. Now I know that baby photos are supposed to be cute and all (even if we all secretly know that babies don’t get really cute until a few months after they’ve been born — not my baby, of course, just everyone else’s). But frankly, this shot gives me the heebie-jeebies. All I can really make out is the eye. That soul-piercing, unblinking eye. Clearly, Grendel is staring at me and asking why I have dared to disturb his* peaceful slumber with these pestering ultrasounds. Is that his* pelvis over to the left, or is it shoulders? Okay, the more I type in this caption, the more weirded-out I get. Next picture.

Ah, that’s more like it. A nice, cute foot. Now, we’re no ultrasound experts, but Julia and I both thought this may have shown a little 20% bonus in the metatarsal region, if you will — that is, a sixth toe. Again, I’m no pedopodiatrist. And what if he** does have a few extra li’l piggies? Like they say, “as long as he has 10 fingers and 10+ toes, I’ll be happy.”

Now for the good stuff! He** clearly has inherited his* father’s monstrously large head, and as can be plainly seen, is the cutest child ever. And that’s not just my opinion. I asked the ultrasound technician if, in fact, this was the cutest baby she’d ever seen. Really, I did. “Yes,” she said. And ultrasound technicians cannot lie. It’s part of the Hippocratic Oath.

More of that profile you know you just can’t get enough of. Plus a nice shot of the spine. The spine was definitely one of the most obvious features in the whole process, which is often a confusing mess of static punctuated with adorable little motions. His* mouth is open, apparently saying some sort of “ah” sound, perhaps the word “Mozart”.

I’m starting Grendel’s musical education as early as possible, with strict emphasis on the Classical period. Which is why I was horrified one day to walk in on Julia listening to Debussy. “No child of mine,” I said, “is going to grow up thinking this Impressionist cacophony is ‘music’. If you want him* to grow up to be anything but a mouth-breather, we must play Mozart!” Okay, I’m lying to make these captions more interesting. If we ever become parents like that, please slap us.

Go on, Grendel, stretch it out! Clearly, our little genius has been learning a little yoga of his* own while Julia’s been at prenatal-yoga classes. I fully expect him* to be born being able to touch his* toes with ease. Fine, all babies can easily touch their toes, but ours will do so with grace and panache. No matter how many toes he** has.

I saved my favorite for last. For while — as my friends Aaron and Morgan noted about their own ultrasound — Grendel does bear a passing resemblance to Skeletor, he** is also clearly waving, as if to say, “Y’all come back now, hear?” Grendel being the progeny of two native Texans, it is not unexpected that he** would phrase it thus, and it should be seen as a sign of his* mastery of multiple dialects instead of a product of poor grammatical education. And if it is the latter, I blame Debussy.

And now, some notes from a nerd father. Have you read the book Flatland? It’s an 1884 novella that both satirizes Victorian culture and explains dimensions (i.e. 2-D, 3-D) with surprising clarity. I know, most of you are long gone now — “Ooh, geometry and Victorian satire? I’m done reading this entry.” Go on, then. Perhaps you’d prefer to listen to Clair de Lune?

Anyhow, the story largely takes place in a two-dimensional world (that is, Flatland) inhabited by various shapes. At some point, a sphere comes along and introduces one of the denizens of Flatland to Spaceland — that is, the three-dimensional world that contains Flatland, but is, of course, much taller.

Now if you’re not very good at visualizing such things, you may want to find a copy of the book to read for yourself, as it is good at explaining them. But you may be able to imagine how odd a sphere would be in a 2-D world. As it passes through the plane of Flatland, it starts off as a point, then becomes a small circle, which grows larger and then smaller, and then back to a point. All of which is naturally unnerving to a Flatlander, as the sphere appears to come from and go to nowhere while passing through. Not only that, but the sphere can see the inside of everything in Flatland, including its people.

Anyhow, all of this came to mind as I was watching Julia’s ultrasound. Because the device ultimately displays a 2-D slice of Julia’s uterus, and this is what you see above. Of course, Julia’s uterus (and the child therein) is three-dimensional, so as Grendel moved around (or as the operator moved the wand), you would in effect see him* passing through this plane, often creating unsettling images.

For, just as the operator had arranged things so that we were peering at Grendel’s face, he** would lurch forward, and we’d be staring at the inside of his* brain. Needless to say, this doesn’t happen in normal life. In fact, God willing, that will be the only time I stare inside his* or anybody else’s head.

So that’s what was on my mind while I was peering into Grendel’s.

*Or her, whatever. Don’t make me type his/her everywhere.

**Or she. Again, pronominal precision at this point is just frustrating.

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