Communication Break Down

Hey, girl, stop what youre doin!
Hey, girl, you'll drive me to ruin.
I dont know what it is that I like about you,
But I like it a lot.
Wont let me hold you,
Let me feel your lovin charms.

Communication breakdown,
Its always the same,
Im having a nervous breakdown,
Drive me insane!

Words of wisdom brought to us by the kings of classic rock: Led Zeppelin. No, Robert Plant (who wrote most of the words) wasn't really much of a poet -- although I must begrudgingly admit I had lyrics to "Stairway to Heaven" on my yearbook page. The band was built on its heavy guitar riffs which in many ways inspired what came to be known as Heavy Metal in the 80s. I am sure Jimmy Page is more chagrined about that than I am about that yearbook quote. A classic example of how their style worked: "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" is a folk song recorded by Joan Baez in 1962. According to one version of the story (and of course as with any rock legends, there are more than one version) when forming the band Jimmy Page played the other members the Baez version and said "That is what I want to do." Raised eyebrows all around. "Only Heavy."

I thought about putting the Hindenburg on the last blog, but decided last minute to go with the Tacoma Narrows bridge collapse instead. Good thing as that left the album cover for the first Led Zeppelin album available for this week, the album which brought the world the classic hit, Communication Breakdown. Which is what happened with our contractor this week. We had said from day one: Give us a schedule of what you need when. Feel free to be aggressive with the schedule. We don't want to hold up the project because you don't have something that we were supposed to provide. Apparently forewarned is not forearmed.



It is not entirely our contractor's fault. We also suffer from Hydra-syndrome: The beast running this project has just too many heads. There is the contractor, the architect, and the owner. There are the subcontractors that are not always upfront with the contractor as to what they need when. The architects split into at least three different entities, each with a different priority. And of course we the owners are two separate people who work different days at different places and it can often be confusing as to who needs to be contacted on what days regarding what issues.



Even so: Apparently on Monday the contractor found out from his subcontractor (the plumber) that he needed the tub and shower fixtures to be able to do the rough plumbing. Rough plumbing is all the pipes that run in the walls and under the house, so this was not immediately obvious, but rough plumbing can't be finished without the various valves that go with the fixtures (and by fixture I mean the actually spouts and knobs). These are not standard and change depending on exactly what you are putting into your shower/tub.

On Monday, the contractor contacted the architect about this issue. Late Thursday is the first we heard about it, in an e-mail from the architect that went something like: "As you know Ely (the contractor) really needs these fixtures right away..."




Oops. Communication Breakdown. So now Candice is running around trying to get the perfect fixtures today before our trip. The latest reports do not look too good, so it looks like we may have a delay on the plumbing front. Not horrific, but just another hydrogen-filled aero-glider igniting in the evening sky... The Hindenburg and Tacoma Narrows bridge are good examples of our "disasters" so far. Lots of motion and flame, but no one has really gotten hurt.

Yet.

As I am trying to get some work done and deal with contractor stuff and trying to get out of town this weekend, I don't have time to get my latest set of pictures resized or formatted for the web. That will have to wait until next week -- sorry. The pictures included in this post are therefore a few weeks old. The first one shows my new den ceiling, or lack thereof. You can also see my contractor and his able assistant. The second set are a before and after of my patio that didn't make it into the earlier before and after post. Before: Patio. After: Pile of shattered bricks. Finally I show the front of my lovely abode, which is presently dominated by a gi-normous green dumpster into which most of my previous home went. What goes in there does not return.

And of course, as always, I leave you with pictures of the girls. Or in this case a triptych of Kalya Mackenzie. These photos come from our Memorial weekend at the beach. Where Rylie was laughing it up with the in-crowd (see previous post), Kayla was determined to revitalize herself with a blast of Gatorade refreshment (belonging to the ever-charming Dawn Merkel). Silly Dawn, babies don't need to replace their electrolytes! Or do they...?

Hey, girl, stop what youre doin!
Hey, girl, you'll drive me to ruin.

Is it in you?

Catastrophes

Well, the start of my week could have gone better.

After starting the softball season 3 for 3 with a home run and error-less play at second base, I was feeling fairly good about the upcoming season. Then there was this Monday, where our team Ether Binge -- Don't ask -- was playing the Steamers. Started off ok. I swung at a bad pitch and weakly grounded to short (maybe third, I was concentrating on running to 1st), but made some good plays at 2nd, including snagging a relatively well hit ball to my left.

Then came the play, which was embarassingly routine: Ball hit into right field with men on base. I am the cut-off man. The throw back in is slightly offline, so I have to run left to get to it, but really not a big deal. I want to make sure I get the ball back into the infield quickly to keep the runners from getting any more bases, or possibly scoring, so I plant my leg to pivot quickly and toss the ball back in. I am not sure exactly what happened, but I can tell you I didn't do it right. My foot caught on the surface and my weight came over it all wrong with a twisting motion. I felt a great deal of pain and went down in a heap, although I did manage to weakly toss the ball back in (that's focus people).

It looked bad from the outside as well, as a good hunk of the team immediately ran over to check on me. Nothing popped as far as I know, but it was fairly clear my day was over. To make matters worse, this was the game I finally got Candy and the girls to come out and see. Sigh.

So now I am trying to take it easy and let the swelling go down. I am not in a lot of pain (almost none, really) but I am trying to be very cautious as my family has a history of tearing knee ligaments. And my knees have never been great to begin with. For now I am using a cane, which again I don't really need except to play it as safe as possible and keep strain off the knee for my walk from the car garage. I have an appointment to see a doctor in 10 days, the delay for tedious insurance reasons I don't want to get into. I could hit an urgent care sooner and pay out a little more cash, but I am hesitant because of how dubious I am that a doctor will be able to do much for me until the swelling is gone down. The knee works fine, so the question is just whether anything is partially damaged that might need repair long term. For that, I don't see why the doctor trip can't wait a little.



Of course the title of this post is plural. My second catastrophe this week was our first inspection-related work stoppage. Our contractor had laid out all the forms and rebar for the footings of the addition, porch, and new support beams. Here are a series of pictures of guys working on the main forms, which are wooden frames designed to hold poured concrete that will be the base of all the new walls. Basically they are molds that form the concrete into the shapes you want (i.e., walls or pillars bases for support beams). There was nothing wrong with the way the forms were made, but it turns out that the set of plans describing them was missing the proper approval stamp.



Now my architects handled most of the city approval stuff, but for multiple reasons, not the least of which is an attempt to save money by not sending a contractor to wait in line at city hall, I was the one who actually went into the Department of Building and Safety (LADBS) to pull the permits for the job. This was a very uncomfortable errand, as I had no prior experience doing this and every time I asked for a detailed description of what to do, I was told "You go down and pull the permit."

Uh-huh. Yeah...



So I went down with a pile of plans and forms in my hands and repeated the mantra that "I wanted to get an Owner-Builder permit". This usually led to further questions, none of which I had answers to. My fall back position was to mumble something incomprehensible and shove the forms and plans in their faces. Surprisingly enough, after studying the things I gave them they always seemed satisfied and pushed me to the next person down the line. Eventually one of them unrolled my big wad of blueprints and began stamping APPROVED on them.



To back up one step, every plan I have from my architect has been signed and stamped by the city. Specifically, I believe a city engineer has looked over the plans and made sure that nothing dangerous or not to code was being proposed. The final issuing of the permit tells the city who is doing the project (me) and starts a clock on the official permit. Most importantly, it makes sure that the city is being paid. No check and the city does not stamp your plans. The final permit issuing does not appear to be a high level transaction, being something two highly trained chimps could have pulled off, one with a suitcase of cash and the other with a rubber stamp. This is why my contractor and architect just threw me to these proverbial lions. It really is a mindless event.

Which only makes this failure all the more infuriating. In addition to the 2x4 feet of big blueprints, it turns out I also had a small set of 4 sheets of little blueprints. These were basically blow-ups or cut-outs of areas of the project that needed a bit more detail. These had been examined and signed off by the same city engineer on the same day as the big plans. But they were missed by the rubber stamping monkey at the LADBS and the inspector refused to sign off on our concrete forms without these approval stamps. Remember this is not a safety issue, the engineer signature is clear. The inspector was just making sure the city had got paid (even though obviously from the receipt it had been). And, of course, covering his own ass.

So now it is 3:30 on Tuesday and I get a panicked call from Ely (the contractor) that we failed the inspection and our architect should have gotten ahold of me hours ago. The whole project is now on hold and we are going to start hemorrhaging money as people that are lined up are just being sent home. So I need to go RIGHT NOW, traveling from my mom's (near Pasadena) to our house (near Van Nuys), pick up the plans, and get to the LADBS before is closes at 4:30 to get this straightened out. Mind you, on Monday I tore up my knee so I was sitting at home in bed with an ice pack on my leg at the time.

So I do just that. I hop in my car (ouch, knee did not like bending), drive like a maniac to my house, get the plans from Ely (who is properly chagrined at my severe limp), and then on to the City Hall. Of course, in many ways nothing has changed since the last time I went there. I still have only the vaguest clue as to what I am doing, only now my mantra is "I need approval stamps on these pages". I am eventually directed to an odd little fellow who seemed to talk to himself more than he was talking to me. He repeatedly asked questions that seemed rhetorical, but then he waited for an answer. I grunted. Eventually he found my receipt, deduced that these the small plans had just been missed the first time, and stamped them.

The system works, I guess. It is now Thursday and the inspection has succeeded, so I should be getting concrete soon. Stay tuned. And for God's sake be careful with your limbs.

Now for our regularly featured baby. We went to the beach over Memorial Day weekend and I took this one of Rylie after she stole my hat. As you can see, she is the life of the Beach Party, a veritable Annette Funicello of the baby set. Beach blanket bingo indeed.

Plastic, Heal Thyself

Pictured above is a polymer designed with capillaries like that present in human skin. The capillaries are filled with low-viscosity, monomeric dicyclopentadiene, which to us non-materials scientists could be referred to simply as the healing agent. That's right, this is self-healing plastic. The moisture you can see on its surface is its "blood", which will coagulate into a solid epoxy, filling in the cracks in the plastic like a scab. The possible uses for this cool stuff are many, from car finishes that repair their own scratches to spaceships that repair all their stress fractures as they happen. And of course it will be key for the development of the Terminators and other soulless runaway robots who will eliminate the then-superfluous human race. Probably to make us into batteries or something equally lame.

Another application could be walls in your home, so one could pound their fist into them with impunity. Of course bleeding walls are nothing new, but generally it requires at least one gruesome murder, a soul trapped between worlds, and a malicious, bile-spitting demon. However, neither futuristic plastic nor all the proverbial king’s horses and men could get my house back together right now.

Not for under 100K anyway.

We have reached stage one of what shall be referred to from now on as “The Project.” Not to be confused with The Projects, which are kind of a different thing altogether, although we may take some time to watch the asphalt grow.*


Stage one is demolition, which is exactly what it sounds like. They destroy everything. Well, everything that they are supposed to destroy. In theory, large sections of the house are supposed to survive this construction maelstrom. I think my contractor really likes smashing things, as he keeps calling me up to ask if he can smash something else. Now I love to break things as much as the next guy, but everything he tears out I have to replace with something brand new. Since I do not relish the thought of building my new house only to sell it because I can’t afford to live there, we will have to stop smashing eventually.



I’ve included a series of before and after pictures. If I haven’t screwed up the formatting, the pre-demo is first and the post-demo is second. Generally I hope it is quite obvious which is which, although the house was a bit of a mess by the time we got completely moved out. I did my best to take pictures from the same angle where possible.You might also notice that the pre photos were done in daylight, while the post photos were done at night. It is standard to pull these kind of shenanigans with before and after pictures, this being the architectural equivalent of taking the fat photo in bad lighting and a filthy, ill-fitting bra.



Running from top to bottom we are looking at a) the back of my house from where the tri-trunked tree stands toward the previous main bathroom, b) the kitchen counter and sink, complete with cabinetry and dish washer in mid-removal, c) the corner of my den, beyond which a closet and small guest bathroom once stood, d) the main bathroom from inside the house, and e) the whole expanse of my kitchen running down to the laundry room.



It is more than slightly discomforting to see the place you have made your home for 8+ years completely gutted and presently unlivable. Since I first visited at night, I felt more than a little bit like a spirit returning to haunt the ruins of what was once my abode. Go to the light! Into the light... No, the street light, dummy. It is just too damned dark in there with the power turned off. I am likely to bust an ankle.




In other news it turns out I still have two baby twin daughters, which, despite the balance of info on the blog of late, still take up the majority of my time. The monsters are crawling, requiring baby-proofing and crib height adjustments and generally being a lot more "on-my-toes". They can go from 0 to stuck under the couch in 6 seconds flat. Rylie, who has been slightly (one weekish) developmentally behind Kayla all along has suddenly pulled into the lead, at least when it comes to crawling and climbing. While also quite mobile, Kayla seems more interested in studying stuff near her, like books or balls, than moving on to the next thing as fast as possible. We have decided that she is the scholar and Rylie is the athlete. Done. End of story. Glad we got that figured out so we can treat them differently from now on...

Well, maybe I will let them continue to develop on their own. If Rylie surprised us once by overtaking Kayla, who knows what will happen when we get to talking. But I still plan on having their whole lives mapped out by age 2. In the meantime, here are the two in their crib, undoubtedly up to something.



* Die-No-Mite!

Mars Has a Gigantic Hole

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter recently snapped this photo of the bright dusty lava plain to the northeast of Arsia Mons, one of the four giant Tharsis volcanoes of Mars. The most famous Tharsis volcano is Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the entire solar system, with an area the size of Texas and a height of three Mt. Everests. This hole does not appear to be a crater as it has no crater rim and no ejecta (stuff that got kicked out from an erupting volcano or smashing meteorite). It is just a hole in the planet with a diameter roughly the size of a football field. The only other thing scientists can say for sure about this hole is that it must be extremely deep for them not to be able to see the bottom. Several hundred feet or several hundred miles, no one can presently say. At last we know where they are hiding the invasion fleet.

Speaking of bottomless pits, I have finally started the remodel of my house which is also the reason for the abysmal and inexcusable lack of posting for the past month. We moved ourselves and every valuable item we own clear across town and into my mother's manse over several weeks that were rather all-consuming. In addition to exhaustion, our internet connectivity was spotty at best for this period. This is not an excuse, but an explanation. I hope you accept my sincere apologies.

Like any good fairy tale/home improvement project I should probably begin at the beginning: Once Upon a Time there was a family that wanted a house, so they gathered up their wedding money and a gift from the Mighty and Powerful Barrister and bought a lovely cottage in a valley glen. Many years passed blissfully where the young couple became more prosperous and started to want fleeting luxuries, like Jacuzzi tubs and stone countertops. They searched high and low for a new abode, but all the wondrous places of the land still seemed far beyond their humble grasp, especially when one took Prop 13 and its effect on stabilizing property taxes into account. So they decided to turn their sweet, little cottage into a castle.

Then they had twin baby girls and everything went kinda squirrely. The dream project was delayed. And what happens to a dream house deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore -- And then run?... Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?*


Turns out none of the above. A dream house deferred makes one do foolish things, like attempt to move a lemon tree without any professional arboreal expertise. The planned corner of the new house was going to take out this top notch citrus producer, so I, hole digger extraordinaire, decided it would be a snap to move it.

I may have been a bit hasty.



Here is the hole I dug to which I would eventually transplant the lemon tree. It was quite easy to dig and at this stage in the process I was quite pleased with myself.



This close-up gives a good idea of the massive trench we dug around this lemon tree. It took me and Candice three weekends to dig it down 28 inches. The diameter is roughly three feet. These numbers were not pulled from the Ether, but actually came from a calculation I found online regarding root ball size vs. diameter of the tree trunk. You may notice that the trunk actually splits into two mere inches off the ground. In my cleverness I deduced that the root ball size was probably directly related to the volume of water the tree like to pull up its trunk. Since there were no branches before the Y-split (to take water), I could just take the numbers for each trunk diameter and add them together to find the total volume of root ball needed.


Whether or not this calculation worked I will never know, as the bottom line is that the subsequent root ball was so absurdly heavy I had approximately 0.00001% chance of moving it. This number is greater than zero to account for the possibility than in a rage I might transform into a jade-skinned, musclebound Hulk because of gamma rays I absorbed during a college lab trip to a Nuclear accelerator.

So after all that time digging and scooping and measuring and planning, I finally managed to push the tree over with something like 4-5 inches of root ball attached. Oops.


With my handy sidekick and female progenitor (i.e., mom) to help we pruned the poor tree back to a shrub, because we knew if it were to have any chance to survive we had to cut its foliage back to match its now drastically reduced root system. Soon after this photo we literally rolled the tree across my yard and into the prepared hole. Then I made the prepared hole actually big enough to fit the tree in. So much for preparation.


Finally the tree was moved and replanted. Here I am enjoying the spoils of another excellent hole digging adventure. As of this photo I gave the mutilated lemon tree about a 5% chance at survival. At least the lemon flower is sweet. Unfortunately the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat. Because I killed the tree before it could make any more**. More updates on the tree (will it live or die? Your phone call will decide) in a later blog entry.

This whole fiasco actually went down almost two months ago, but it is really the first stage of this redo everything project. I promise future entries, appearing much more often than once a month, will record it all in excruciating detail.

My market research shows me that 45% of my audience are here for the Holes and related Hole-issues, while another 45% are here for baby stuff***. Babies will continue to appear here amidst the remodel craziness, never-you-fear. To tide you over, here is Kayla lost in a fantastical land of pillows. I believe she eventually escaped by singing a song to the lollipop king, who carried her away to his hide-away in the mysterious caverns of Mars...



* Could someone please dig up Langston Hughes and stop him from his incessant spinning? Thank you.
** To the best of my knowledge Peter, Paul & Mary are all still alive. Hopefully this travesty will not alter that. Stay strong Travers.
*** The remaining 10% are serial killers. Their high viewership has been previously noted in these pages. Why this is I have prudently decided not to ask.

IMPORTANT ADDENDUM: Candice heavily participated in the hole digging, a fact I originally neglected in the blog. For this I thoroughly apologize and offer to dig her next hole without taking any credit.

Stop giggling. It wasn't meant to be dirty...

Ok maybe a little bit.

Please Help in the Global Fight Against Cranial Panis Mica!



After my recent open and honest look at this debilitating childhood disease, the outpouring of love and support has been overwhelming. A special thanks goes out to Little Joe of Nevada who wrote to tell me the tragic tale of his own brothers, Adam and Hoss, who suffered from a similar malady. Sadly each of them had brows so swollen that their mothers did not survive childbirth and they had to be raised by their father near an old ranch with constantly burning maps.

I have been so inspired by all the letters, gift baskets, and telegrams that I have decided to do something about it. We are going to beat this thing. I have started the Fight Cranial Panis Mica Society. You can best help by visiting our store, which is now a permanent link on the right side of the blog.

I will take 10 cents of every dollar we pull in and add it to each previous 10 cents until 10 have been collected and then it will be combined back into a dollar again. After which I will deposit it in my bank account. Or spend it, depending on my needs at the time. Either way the world becomes a better place.




Thank you all so much. Together, we can make a difference!

Firsts

Like the joy one discovers when Country hits Western or Chico joins up with his Man, I have finally managed to unite two of my passions: twin baby girls and Dodger baseball. This is part of my master plan in which both girls will take up all my life long obsessions and take them to the next level allowing me to live vicariously through them. I firmly expect they will win dual NCAA Softball championship while receiving Eisners for their ground-breaking line of comic books. Oh, and they will earn a billion dollars and invent a calorie free form of Chex Mix.

I do not feel that I have unreasonable expectations.


Let's set the mood:

April 21, 2007: Pirates at the Los Angeles Dodgers. It's a Saturday and game start is 7:10pm. The weather is cold, with a slight hint of dampness in the air as a storm system has only recently finished its transit through Southern California. The starting pitcher for the dodgers is Brad Penny, a giant fire-baller who once bet a batboy he couldn't drink and keep down a gallon of milk. Facing him is young Ian Snell who spent three years as Ian Oquendo when he took his wife's last name at marriage. Both pitchers were off to very fast starts in this young basbeall season, having only allowed a trickle of runs in opposition. On this day Snell got the best of Penny, and left in the seventh inning winning 3-2. But there is a reason they play all nine, as poor Pirate closer Salomon Torres could not get the job done and allowed a tying run to score with the unlikely sequence of a wild pitch, error, and finally a passed ball. So it was on to the tenth inning, as the manly men of baseball do not allow games to end in ties, where the Dodgers managed to load the bases. Up came mighty Russell Martin, the latest in a long line of beloved Dodger catchers, who could have won the game with a lazy fly ball, but instead he murdered a helpless baseball with a tremendous blow from his splintering bat, knocking it deep into the left field bullpen. Not only a home run, but Martin's first ever Grand Slam.



Wow, huh? Of course, we left the game in the 8th inning. Yes, in addition to the joy of our first major league baseball game, this was also another stop on the new responsibility superhighway. We arrived in the second inning as we were careful to feed the girls right before departure to ensure maximum tranquility. While we thought we had carefully planned out the entire outing, for some reason we had forgotten hats. This is particularly perverse, as hats are one of those things that people (and by people I am including their mother) love to jam on their heads no matter the weather or eventual destination, which is invariably always indoors. Going to dinner? Hat. Going to Las Vegas (in-laws)? Hat. Going to a baby hat store? Hat. I mean sometimes I really think they might not want to wear a hat when it is 85 degrees in the shade. But of course on this night, when we KNEW it was going to be cold... no hats. And to be perfectly honest, the blankets could have been warmer, too.



So by the time the 7th inning rolls around, it is getting quite chilly. Not east coast/great lakes chilly, obviously, but temperatures in the low 50s are a bit brisk for hatless babies with only 13 pounds of heat capacity. We sing "Take me Out to the Ball Game" and feed the babies a bottle and then it is really clear it is time to go. Besides, the Dodgers were losing. What were the chances they were about to rally? The health of the girls was more important than seeing the end of a game. Even one that turned out as great as that one. Not a big deal (I've left games too early many a time), but just another notch in the Daddy Responsibility belt. Hopefully this thing won't get too tight...



My savvier readers might have noted that the title of this blog was "Firsts" plural. We are also well into the process of introduccing the girls to solid food. We started almost a month ago with rice cereal, a mush that looks like Cream of Wheat but tastes like paste. We then kicked it up a notch to Oatmeal. Again, the baby version has been atomized to a point where I have to take their word for it that oats are even a peripheral part of the process. It does have a bit more flavor than the rice stuff. And yes, I do taste it all. That is not the weird thing. The weird thing is still give it to my children afterwards.



While the girls tolerated their mushes, they did not really get on board this whole eat-with-a-spoon thing until we got to carrots. They LOVE carrots. As in they would turn orange if we let them eat all the carrots they want. As in they would strangle Bugs Bunny for for just one more sweet bite of carrot. I mean, if they had the coordination to do so. And if Bugs Bunny wasn't a fictional character. And if they could eat a whole carrot, which they can not. They got no teeth and can't even say What's Up Doc? At best, they might manage waa aaa aaa.



So these are images of the girls immersing themselves in liquified carrots. Since the carrots we have moved on to peas, green beans, sweet potatoes, and one mushed up banana. For the moment, Magilla Gorilla is safe (the banana was surprisingly not a hit).


By the way, for those of you trying to keep score at home... In order the images are: 1) Both (Rylie on left) 2) Kayla 3) Rylie 4) Both (Rylie on left) 5)Kayla 6) Rylie 7) Rylie 8) A cartoon ape buying vending machine bananas from a gumball dispenser. So Rylie took this blog 5-4. However if you didn't stay to the end, you most certainly missed it.

Eight Miles High...



"...and when you touch down, you'll find that it's stranger than known."

Whew! Let me warn ya, this blog entry is a long one. We just came back from our first transcontinental flight (or any flight, really) with the girls. The flight out was not too bad. Candy and I had some debate about whether dealing with the stroller was a good idea or not. Boy was I wrong. The stroller was awesome, as they allowed us to roll right up to the gate and gate check it. This allowed us to haul even more stuff in addition to the babies. Another nice thing about taking the babies is that the airlines throw out virtually all of their carry-on rules (or at least stretch them quite a bit).

Two valuable travel tips for multiple baby travel:

1) Travel on low travel days (Tues-Thurs) and there will generally be plenty of extra room on board the planes. This gives the gate the freedom to clear out almost an entire row for your comfort. We basically had 5 seats to ourselves. On a low use flight this is easy to arrange, as the answer to "would you like to move away from potentially screaming babies?" is always yes.

2) IMPORTANT: There is a hidden rule that basically no two lap babies can be placed next to each other. While there appear to be some exceptions based on the type of plane, each section of seats normally has only ONE extra oxygen mask, so if the plane depressurizes two babies together would be in trouble. This means when making a reservation, you want to get seats across the aisle from each other (the best you can do). If the flight is full they will not be able to move you. See the bottom of this blog entry for more details on that horrible eventuality.



Left on a Thursday and flew into Dulles, which is officially the oddest major airport with its shuttle cars on stilts. That airport should have been updated two decades ago and they are only getting around to it now. Drove into Rockville, MD to stay with my BE-UTE-IFUL Aunt Margo (pictured here). The traffic at 5:30 onto the 495 Beltway was less beautiful, but we will not discuss such an ugly thing. Margo made us dinner and we visited with our friends Debbie and Tracy, who apparently live so close they are really neighbors of my Aunt and Uncle. We slept in a red, white, & blue themed bedroom, except, oddly enough, for the leopard-skin wallpaper on one wall. Where Yankee Doodle Dandy meets Tarzan the Ape Man.



On Friday we visited with my college buddy/roomie/lackey Dave G. Sadly, I appear to have no pictures of this. Maybe I took them and Dave sucked the silicon right off the RAM chip with his mind. He can do that. You should see what he does to Dodger baseball games. Friday night was the Rehearsal Dinner at my Uncle Ed's house. I got about as lost as possible trying to go from the Congressional Country Club, where I was staying (and this cute picture of Kayla was taken) as I have ever been. First of all, I blame Dave who has bad directions karma. Secondly, I blame myself for blindly following Google Map directions without THINKING about them first. We had swapped maps accidentally, so I was on my way to the wedding church site. Finally I blame the Potomac River, which stubbornly insisted on lying between me and my final destination. It took an extra hour to unravel that mess, and we missed some of the Rehearsal Dinner festivities. Rats.



Saturday morning we met up with Candy's Uncle Chuckie. Once again I have no photos, but we do have some video that I will not even pretend I will ever post on this site. If you want moving pictures I suggest your local cinemateque. Chuck is quite the baby expert, with four (if I have counted correctly) grandkids of his own. He appears to have developed the trick of tickling babies necks with the tip of his nose. Rylie (pictured here in her "Owned by Daddy" outfit)in particular seemed to like this.

The wedding itself was at Saint Patrick's down in the heart of Washington DC. It was here I finally got it through my thick skull that Google Map Directions and the like are very limited, as the poor signage in DC got me once again. Once off the directions I was [please cover your child's eyes and/or ears] SCREWED. If I had taken the five minutes to study a map of where I was going I could have saved myself, but instead we spiraled our way towards where we thought we needed to go to get back on the printed directions. We never did, as this part of DC is full of one way streets, streets that don't go through, and highways that won't let you off or on where you want. We also ran into a full-fledged street fair, which I felt just wasn't fair (second meaning, same spelling) at all. We did eventually arrive, only 15 minutes late, and then miraculously found on-street parking practically out front, which was clearly God's way of saying, "Oh, I really overdid it with the street festival closing off five city blocks, didn't I? My bad."



We missed the bridal processional, but otherwise saw the entire ceremony, which was the full Catholic wedding-fest, complete with liturgy, communion, and the whole shebang. Amazingly the girls slept through almost the entire thing. They stirred once, and I can only imagine what they were thinking, waking up inside a Gothic cathedral-style church, complete with stain glass windows and the rhythmic echoing chants of priest and congregation. We then went from the Church to the Reception (this time NOT getting lost), where the girls were a big hit. They seemed to be on there best behavior, snoozing through most of the dinner, pictured here where I parked them in front of a window at the CCC.



The wedding itself was a typical family affair, with a lot of drinking and dancing. It is not a party unless someone staggers into my room looking for a bathroom. The next day we nursed hangovers at a family brunch. We had competition for cutest baby from cousin Caroline (pictured with mommy Rachel), but I think once again the crown went to us, as it is difficult to stand up to the twin barrels of the K-Mac and RJ Outlaw show. Caroline did have us beat in the talent competion, where she managed to carry both a cinamon roll and a small bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream throughout the house, picking herself up when she fell by her head alone, as she refused to put down any of the treasures she had in hand.

It was great seeing everyone, but all good things must come to an end... and for us that end was the flight home. The flight was packed to the gills, but they had to move us from our booked seats because of the oxygen mask issue I mentioned above. They put us in the aisle and center seat, in the front row. This is nice because it has a little more leg room and bothers fewer people, but sucks because you have no place to store anything and with two babies you have lots of stuff you want easy access to. But that was only half the problem. AFTER they loaded everyone on the plane, they decided that there was still only one extra mask for the three central seats (the plane was a 767 with a 2-3-2 seat formation). This led to an immediate shuffle which left Candy in the middle seat and me diagnally behind her on the aisle. At this point seven people has been moved around and none of them were happy. Two of those highly grumpy people were Kayla and Rylie.

With their parents split, limited access to things to sooth them, a long ground delay, a milk supply issue (we had only 4 bottles for what was nearly a 10 hour stretch, if you don't include the two smaller Medela bottles, which I do not count because Kayla would only scream if you tried to feed her with one of those), multiple unfriendly diaper incidents, and a Captain with a love for the Fasten Seat Belt Sign, things got ugly real quickly. Even when the flight crew tried to help, they hurt. For instance one "nice" stewardess liked to help us by picking up our child and then running away to the opposite end of the plane and not returning the baby to us. I am talking more than 15 minutes. Twice we had to get up and take the baby back from her. Kayla didn't seem to mind, but the mother of the baby was definitely further stressed by it.

To summarize, the babies cried most of the trip home, so we were THOSE people on the plane. The ones that make everyone else miserable. It is very, very hard when the babies get cranky like that on a plane, because 90% of the things we do to soothe them get hard or can become impossible because of take-off, landings, and turbulence. By the time we got to LA, we looked like we had been riding on the outside of the plane the whole way. The trip was great, but I think I will not run and plane travel with twins again soon if I can help it. I have been told they only get worse to travel with until about 2-3 years old and won't be tolerable until roughly 4 years. Sounds like a goal. No one else get married for three and half years, or if you do, please do it within a one hour flight of Los Angeles.

To soothe all our frazzled nerves, please enjoy a picture of my two young-uns with two of my cousin Lorna's young-uns, the irrepressible Maggie and Colleen.