Fast Forward

Greetings fellow earthlings! While I traveled aboard my fabled space craft through the limitless dark of space to worlds both far and unfathomable, mere weeks passed for me while millenia turned back here. Is there still a place called America, or have the continents drifted so far as to leave this blue ball topographically unrecognizable? Do humans still even use their tongues and fleshy lips to communicate or have we finally evolved to point of brain-to-brain interlocution. Do I need to get myself a clone for organ replacement or has the Replacement Revolution already occurred? If so, ignore this opening sentence and let me begin again:

Salutations my androgene brosters. I am Jim Billy 4.0. I and my nearly limitless supply of similar genotypes eagerly await a recharging meal of yeast paste and reprocessed sea water. Also, death to the primagenitors! Now, where may I acquire a sexless, white jumpsuit with an absurdly large diagonal purple stripe?

Or at least it feels like it has been that long.

As has been quite apparent, my posting has been somewhat irregular for roughly a year now. Except for a few drips and drabs I have dropped like tantalizing bread crumbs, this blog has been effectively defunct since I moved back into my palatial Valley Glen estate (over 2000 square feet now, woohoo!). The number one reason is, of course, gross laziness. The number two reason will be covered in the next post (stay tuned). But the number three reason was that once I fell far behind it became harder and harder to catch up.

The primary on-going reason for this blog is to try and record the ongoing trials and tribulations of fatherhood. Not only is this a creative outlet and frustration release, but in theory it might be nice to have something I could show my kids someday, especially as we more or less completely dropped the ball on baby books. You know how the second child always gets short shrift on the baby book? Well, when you have twins it is instantaneous tiny shrifting. No time, no time. Anyways, once I fell behind during the summer of exhaustion ('08) I had a very hard time moving forward, because I didn't want to leave stuff out that had happened. Of course, events that happened 6-12 months ago don't have the driving immediacy of more recent events so instead of putting anything out there, I just spun my wheels and waited.

Now I am determined to get back in the game. Rather than just jumping ahead in the "story" or trying to go completely back a year, my present solution is this: Two part posts. BAM! Genius. One part present day, the other blasts from the past. That is a one two punch of baby adorability that is without mercy.

Or alternatively, it will be a god-awful mess. Time will tell. And just like the Bush legacy, it may truly be centuries before we can know for sure.

As I have babbled on for quite a bit already, for the "present day" half of this blog let me simply post a video of the girls attempting a Vulcan mind meld. Honestly, to this day I have no idea what they were up to, but it was definitely some sort of bizarre twin behavior, the sort of thing you might expect to see in the hallway of an empty hotel or anything from the set of Full House. They were doing this for a couple of minutes before I thought to grab my camera.



My mind to your mind.

Now compare that to this next series which are the remaining shots from our trip to Austin in January 2008. You can clearly see the toddler/baby split. Today they got hair, high level speech, 10 more pounds, several more inches of heights, and, of course, green-striped shirts. Totally different.

Here we are packing to go on the trip. This was back in the days when we didn't have to pay to fly the girls. The airlines just made us check them inside luggage.

Ho ho, you have seen through my little charade. The airlines didn't make us do anything. Rylie just climbed into the bag and we couldn't get her out, so we gave her a box of graham crackers and zipped it up. Tip the skycap an extra twenty and you are traveling light.

Oh yes, there are levels and levels to my deceptions. Did we enclose my 1-year olds in suitcases and sneak them on a plane or were they just playing with them? You may never know.

It was the second one. The playing thing. That is what happened. Now you know.

Here are the twins in their metal cages of doom from the first hotel we checked into. I suppose the bars are close enough together they are not going to choke themselves, but it did not strike me as the safest or most comfortable crib I had ever run across.

Let me take this moment to bitch about the Austin Hilton Garden Inn. Because I made my reservation late (typical) I ended up at this "overflow" hotel. But not all nights were "overflow" nights, i.e. the conference discount did not apply to all nights... only some of them.

Mind you this was their comp- lication, not mine. I just wanted a hotel for 3-4 consecutive nights with no trouble. Their reservations lady dealt with all of the ins and outs this oddly byzantine reservation structure and assured me I had a room. Not so. They lost the second half of the reservation, where I was supposed to be paying more, by-the-way. And despite having a wife and two one-year old babies they kicked us out of the hotel, this even after a great deal of pleading to the contrary. They put infants on the curb. This adorable face (Classic Kayla), out in the winter cold.

Sons of bitches.

Fortunately the story has a happy ending. We were able to force our way into their sister (and superior) Hilton Hotel, which was closer to my conference and less money. So [cover the eyes of the little ones] FUCK the Hilton Garden Inn. Fuck them. All right, let's move on.

I might have oversold the "out on the streets" angle a little bit, as I actually did have family in town. This is Mark Land and his kids with my kids. Mark is my step brother, a generally good guy who was the closest thing I had to an older sibling growing up.


I would have to say all things considered, if you can be the oldest sibling go with that. Nothing wrong with Mark, per se, I just don't like being on that side of that power dynamic. Then again, there is no joy quite like irritating an older brother, so maybe I will have to re-evaluate.


Back to the wee ones. While Daddy sometimes attended boring lectures on space and time, Team Elf Kicking, Inc. managed to find plenty of time to hit the town. We had lunch with margaritas, toured the local children's museum, went to the LBJ presidential library, and visited the University of Texas alumni club and Bevo museum.

The girls do love their quesadillas and mommy and daddy sure loved their margaritas. Check out the picture of father and child gracing the very top of this blog. Can you say pupil dilation?


Here is the gruesome twosome at the children's museum, standing on some sort of platform with a tree growing out of it. Inside. Good going, Austin, now my children don't know where trees grow.

And is that Kayla playing a piece of corn like a clarinet? Kayla, that is a grain not a woodwind! Dammit, this means another 12 hours in the learning tank...

Er, I mean, "napping box."

Having fully planned out my daughters' future we took them to their first presidential library so they can start to get a feel for the position. Well, only one is going to be president and the other will be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. But someone besides her presidential sister will have to appoint her. I will not have my girls accused of nepotism. Who will be prez I will let them decide among themselves. Probably whichever one gets a photograph taken while using a corn cob bong, well, they'll have to settle for Justice.

The LBJ library is nice because it has an actual reproduction of the Oval office: 7/8 scale.

That's right, 7/8. Why make one so close and not just do it 1 to 1? (Yes, I know, probably because it had to fit in the building already there.) The point of a scale model is to build it to a different SCALE. Imagine building a scale model of a battleship to 7/8 scale. It would be awesome because you could also use it as a battleship. Only it would cost more to build than the battleship it is scaled to, as it requires bizarre 7/8 parts.

The LBJ presidential library is located on the University of Texas, also home of some sort of impressive cattle ranch. I mean pictures of cows are EVERYWHERE here. I wasn't entirely clear whether they milked them or slaughtered them for hamburger, but clearly that building behind the girls can hold a lot of big bull behind.

They also have a Bevo museum below the Alumni club where we grabbed some food. For the mascot impaired, Bevo is the name of the Bull that UT people love so much. More specifically, they love his horns. As, in "Hook'em Horns!" Then for some reason they shake their hands in the surfing term, hang loose. Or the rock and roll praise for the devil. It's two fingers up is all I know, and that is a dangerous place to be.


Supposedly the origin of the Bevo name is that Texas A&M grabbed poor Bo, as he was known at the time, and branded "13 - 0", the score of A&M's 1915 win over Texas on his rump. A creative U of Texas fellow, rather than live with such ignominy, altered the brand so it read "Bevo" instead. Like all good stories this one is completely false, but in the presence of a good story vacuum apocryphal tales reign supreme. <-- This could be confusingly mistaken for a terrible mishmosh of a metaphor, when in truth it is merely a proven scientific fact.

That's right. Science. If you can't handle it, get out of the beaker.

Anyway, here is one last picture of the cuties, Kayla up front. Holy Creh-Ap they have grown. If I changed that much in a year I could be a Satyr by now.

Some people suggest I may already be one. [Suggestive eyebrow wiggle]

Finally, I would be remiss if I failed to mention our final night in Austin, where Candice and I grabbed a baby sitter, dinner, and a movie. But not just any movie, but a full, bad-to-the-bone, Elvis sing-a-long. If you have not seen the '68 Comeback Special I would strongly recommend it. Not only does it have some of the greatest live Elvis performances ever captured on film -- just raw, growly, powerful, and awesome in a way his radio relase stuff doesn't even glimpse -- but it also contains perhaps the most surreal, bizarre, funny, and oddly revealing (and not in a good way) pre-recorded musical sequence (Trouble/Guitar Man). He fights people in a bordello using Kung Fu, I shit you not. Staggeringly awesome. I am not at all the Elvis demographic and it blew me away, all the way from the folk/blues pure live stuff to the ultracampy musical extremes.

Austin is kind of a quirky town, holding out as best it can against the raging storm of TEXAS that blows all around it. Check it out but stay away from Hippie Hallow.

Dem peoples is nude.

Paralyzed

I have a tendency to procrastinate.

Please, please no need to defend me. Seriously, a write-in campaign is not only unnecessary, it is completely illogical as I, not some third party, am saying it and where exactly would you write in anyway?

It is true, I put things off. I find excuses not to do something unless a deadline looms and there really is no way I can accomplish my task unless I start immediately. And yes, I am the only person like this in the whole world. It is not human nature at all.

I bring this up because it ties into another personality quirks of mine. I have been known, on occasion, to obsess about things. Particularly things I can micro-analyze. It matters little what my personal stake in the matter is or how much I really know about the subject, I am absolutely game for breaking down the minutia of any and all available on data for any little thing that peaks my interest, whether it be the combat mechanics of the video game City of Heroes or the likely future signings of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

It of course goes without saying that I rarely turn this laser-like focus on anything that might be useful to my career, like maybe finishing up a paper or two. [By-the-way, this is about to get seriously navel-gazing bad, involving political talk. As a bonus there are some babies at the end, so feel free to treat them as your reward... or just skip my blather. It really is the way to go, especially since you are probably reading this post-election.]

So along comes the 2008 Presidential Election, arguably the most exciting election in a generation, if you don't count that all too exciting post-election brou-ha-ha we had down in Florida (Al somebody-or-other... I've blocked it all out). History making candidates and inspiring speeches up the ying yang. Economy tanking and a couple of wars still brewing on the back burner, so the stakes are indeed high. I dare say the typical, cynical American has probably paid a bit more attention to this free-for-all than they have in some time (or ever?). Sure, we are all burned out by an election cycle that seemed to start sometime before the election of Zachary Taylor, but it is almost go time. The finale. Even if you no longer like the book, you want to read that last god-damned chapter.

Now what else does politics have? Polls. And 50 states. And 35 senate races with a possible (but longshot) filibuster-proof majority for the Democrats in sight. Hell, there are even a multitude of competitive Congressional races, filled with odious and idiosyncratic candidates. Boy, that is a lot of data. One could spend hours pouring over those tea leaves, trying to predict the future. Now several months ago this was ok. At worst there was a poll a day and only a mild urgency to go along with it.

The past week, however, has been some sort of Greek-Hades inspired torment, or perhaps just a dubious gift from that cursed Monkey-paw. Beware getting what you wish for. There are now something like 30+ polls a day, ranging from national to state to senate to congressional. This means one can literally spend 30 minutes pouring over the data from one poll, read some commentary on that data, and then click refresh for the latest poll. With 30+ polls there is a mathematical certainty that some will be significant outliers, causing mini-bursts of ridiculous optimism followed (30 minutes later) by gut-churning panic.

Yes. It is ridiculous. It is like checking your stocks every couple of hours. Meaningless and it will make you pull your hair out. A wise man would shut down his browser and retire to a room for contemplation. But there is only about 24 hours left anyway.

Might as well feed the beast a final meal.

So here are my predictions, for the whole world (5-10 people who read this blog) to see:^

Obama 367
McCain 171

I give Obama the Gore states+NH (or Kerry states+IA+NM, if you prefer). Don't waste a micro-second worrying about PA, that was a McCain Hail Mary and there is no one even in the end zone.

Obama will easily win CO+VA+NV. He will squeak out wins in OH+FL. MO+NC+MT are toss-ups that will come down to very tight get-out-the-vote efforts, where Obama will crush McCain. MT is my biggest gamble, as the polling there is sparse. MT has a Democratic governor who is going to be re-elected big time which I think tilts it to Obama.

Indiana and North Dakota would be prime candidates for giving McCain indigestion if the map didn't indicate they were going to be the least of his problems. However, as toss-ups with not much else going on (besides anti-Repub mood) I got to think they will come home for McCain.
Other close ones will be Georgia, where the African American vote looks to be surging, and his home state of Arizona, where the latinos are turning against McCain. I think he wins both in the end, but man would losing AZ be embarassing.

My pick for surprise state would be South Carolina. I don't believe it likely, but it is being very poorly polled and lies right between NC and GA, who are breaking hard for Obama. If African Americans come out like gang busters it might surprise an otherwise sleepy electorate. However, SC just does not have the cosmopolitan big cities of its otherwise demographically similar neighbors, so I don't see it happening.

Senate:

+8 for the Democrats.
They get VA,NM,CO,NH,AK,NC,OR + MN.

The first 5 are virtual locks at this point, thank you convicted felow AK Senator Stevens (R). I would be very surprised at this point to see either NC (Hagan) or OR (Merkley) go Republican, with the Obama coattails in effect. MN will be a nail biter. I think Coleman (the Republican) is a fraction of a percentage point ahead of the Democrat (Al Franken), but Obama is going to have massive coattails in Minnesota and a superior GOTV, so I think Franken just pulls it out.

This give the Democrats 59 seats, if you include the left-leaning Independents. Sanders of Vermont is a safe bet, but Lieberman could be prickly, as there is a movement to take away some of his power, having campaigned actively for McCain and all that.

The remaining contested seats are:
GA, which might be the most interesting state of the night. Will the new, black voters all come out to play? Chambliss (R) holds about a 3-4pt lead over Martin (D). I think the new voters chip a couple points off that, but not enough to win it out right. They MIGHT push Chambliss under 50%, though, which would force a run-off of mega-proportions (Repub filibusters on the line).
KY, where I think McConnell holds off the challenger (Lunsford). The last of the poll average gives him something like a 3-4 point lead. Obama will not do that well in this state and does not have anywhere near the GOTV machinery in place that he has in NC, for example. The polling is sparse here and McConnell appears to be flirting with the 50% mark, so this is the race to check for a tsunami of Democrats.
MS, the Repub (Wicker) has about a 5pt lead over the Dem (Musgrave). Again, a very Republican state that has just not gotten anywhere near the resources of Georgia. Still, it has a very high African American population, so even a failed Obama-surge (and it will fail) might make it interesting.

Surprise state: Texas. Rick Noriega (D) is a strong candidate facing a weak incumbant, Cornyn (R). Texas is an expensive state, however, and the Bush/Repub-mojo is still strong here. There have been very few polls, however, and they have been a bit erratic: 6-7 point race one week, 15 point the next, and then a final poll with massive undecideds. If there has been any late movement and the latino/black vote really turns out it might surprise. It won't, but if it gets close it would be a good start for de-nutballing what should otherwise be a more Democratic state.

Congress:

260 Dem
175 Rep

Or a gain of 23 Seats. I have not endlessly analyzed this one (even I have only so much time to waste), so I have relied on what I have read elsewhere. Basically the Democrats are going to gain 15 seats and lose 1 and participate in about 19 tossups, almost all for Republican held seats. I more or less split the toss-ups in half and assumed one surprise seat for Dems to get there. If this is truly another wave election, I think the Dems could gain as many as 10 more seats.

---

All right. Enough of that. Here are the babies:



These shots are quite ancient at this point, coming from our trip in January to Austin, Texas. They are barely the same people. It just goes to show how ridiculously out of date my babies pictures have gotten. In these pictures they are still babies. Today, they are toddlers. Crazy. I apologize if the pictures are slightly blurred. Those babies were flopping around like seal lions on crack cocaine.



We took these baby in bean bag pictures in front of the Google room set-up at the American Astronomical Society meeting I was attending (my reason for being in Austin). Leave to Google to provide comfy bean bag chairs for people to just, you know, chill in if the conference had just become, like, too much you know? I guess what I am saying is that if you want to project a serious, business-like attitude, bean bags don't do it. Google, of course, wants anything but that.



So there, Amy. Babies in Beanbags As requested a million years ago.

Enjoy.

^I reserve the right to delete the whole thing if something disastrous and unexpected happens tomorrow. No need to pour that much salt in my own wounds.

Dieser Verrückte Messingaffe

Guten Tag from the land of schnitzel, spatzle, and highly questionable political philosophies. I may look a little different than you last saw me. I have not posted in a while and in the meantime have decided to grow a giant metal monkey out of the back of my head.

Oh clever reader, you have seen through me already. I see that I will have to come clean. That is actually the Heidelberg Monkey, which sits just to the right of the old bridge crossing northwards from Heidelberg and across the picturesque Neckar river. It is traditional to take this demeaning photo upon arrival. I was going to abstain, but then I thought of my valued readers (for the first time in six months) and went through with it. Fortunately there is always a Japanese tourist around to help out.


Heidelberg is a major tourist destination, even this late into the season. Actually, as you can probably see in the accompanying photos, early autumn might be the perfect time to visit as the leaves are changing, making the surroundings picture postcard pretty. I've marked the location of my hotel, the Goldener Hecht, or "Golden Pike"(the fish not the spear) on this overhead shot. Right next to the old bridge with the aforementioned monkey.




There are several reasons why tourists flock to Heidelberg. The main one, apparently, is that Heidelberg is one of the few German cities that the Allies didn't bomb into oblivion and then fly over and bomb it further into oblivion -- outer oblivion where the rents are cheaper but the commute is long -- and then, after a cup of tea and crumpets, return once again to blow up any pieces that looked like they could still sustain terrestrial life. So, because Heidelberg was so dull that the Allies ignored it, it is now one of the few cities in Germany where the majority of oldest buildings were built pre-1945.


The Heidelberg castle looms over the old part of the city (also looms above my head in this photo) and while it looks a bit like it was bombed, it in fact has not faced hostile fire since the Palantine war of succession (yeah, I had to look it up too). It mostly just suffered from neglect and bad luck, having been struck by lightning and later used as a stone quarry for the local rich. The view from the castle is killer, but the sight not to be missed is "the Barrel."




OK, you could miss it and make through the rest of your life without any significant regrets, but it IS a very big barrel. It is capable of holding some 220,000 liters (that's 58,000 gallons to those us metric-ally impaired), and is in fact the largest wooden barrel ever actually used to hold wine. I figure that in 1751 it was what the typical over-compensating Count purchased instead of a Ferrari.

This claim to fame oddly implies someone built an even bigger wine barrel somewhere, but never had the stones to actually pour wine into it. A simple google search finds that it is twice the size of the current wine barrel record, and in further even more unhelpful news: the largest wooden barrel factory in the world is right here in the good ole USA! But I can't find any mention of a bigger barrel, so perhaps the Germans are being unnecessarily coy.

Seriously. It is a big barrel. No one would dispute it.



Producing considerably less excitement is the Apothecary museum, also located at the castle. Apothecaries were medieval Pharmacists, always good for a poulstice or a purgative to help you with your palsy, catarrh, or excessive choler. What apothecaries had were lots and lots of jars. So if you want to see lots and lots of jars an apothecary museum is the place for you. And yes, bring the kiddies, as they also have a wonderful Kinderapotheke, where they will have non-stop fun opening and closing empty jars.



While at the castle I was not on any sort of official tour. In fact, the conference I was at had basically just dumped us out with a "Have Fun" for 2 hours. There are not two hours of things to do at the Castle (see Apothecary museum, above). There were some official tours wandering around. Not all were in English, but enough were that I caught some bits and pieces. The best bit and/or piece was about this "footprint" in the stone of the castle balcony. Now the flagstones are solid stone, so it is highly unlikely the shape could be anything more than some flaw in the stone that had weathered strangely (footshape-ishly?) with time.

Still, more than one tour was told a tale of an unfaithful Countess and her paramour. The Count returned early, so the lover grabbed his trousers and sprang from the window to the balcony far below, leaving the print. Fantastic tale until you realized that the leaper had to clear 50-60 horizontal feet to even make it to the stone in question. Meaning he would have to leap from such a height that there really should have been a large, puddle-shaped depression in the ground.


After a full five days of talks covering the minutia of the properties of galaxies that can be discovered by studying one transition line of hydrogen (in its defense, it really is a very powerful transition line... the biggest, really) I was ready to stretch my legs a bit. On the north side of the Neckar river the land rises up rapidly. About a third of the way up runs the Philosophenweg, or Philosopher's Way, a strolling path that was once used by the likes of Goethe and Heidegger to clear their heads for really big thoughts. Or possibly to romance young German maidens.

So either I strolled the same pathways used to unlock some of the mysteries of human existence, or I wandered the same roads used to get into the lederhosen of the some Bavarian Milk Frau Farbissina.

To go all the "Way", one has to gain some serious altitude quickly. By the time I climbed up the narrow, tunnel-like stairway I was huffing and puffing like the Big Bad Wolf, although fortunately no houses were damaged thanks to the general lack of Germanic straw housing. Once up there the views were fairly spectacular, although there was a lot of haze making it difficult to far into the distance.


Above the Philly-way is some lovely German forest that one can hike up through. To climb all the way to the top is about twice the vertical gain of the initial ascent to the Way, but it is much more gradual with lots of gorgeous spots to hang out and just be. Fall is just a great time to do the hike, as not only is the temperature pleasant, but everywhere is a thin layer of leaves that transform every journey into a shush-sush of floating through the trees.



At the top of the mountain (Pfft. they call anything over 1500 ft a mountain. If you ain't a mile up, it ain't a mountain.) Lies the Heiligenberg, which translates as "Holy Mountain".

I did not follow the arrow to Hirschgasse, so I do not know what it is, nor do I want to. Knowing the Germans, it is probably a dark place, lost in the misty shadows of time, where the faerie folken once ruled and seek to again, if only a tiny tear in the fabric of reality can be made using the misguided actions of a bumbling but well-meaning professor or similarly bookish academic-type. No sir, I would have nothing to do with that probable Hellscape-to-be.




Hmmm. A Google search indicates Hirschgasse is probably just a Guest House with a couple of charming restaurants.

But most likely dark, malevolent restaurants where the supper... is you! Or a beef pie with a side of julianned carrots. So choose wisely!

Ahem. Where was I?... Oh yes. Heiligenberg.




Heiliginberg has been a site of worship for just about as long as anyone can remember, going back to the days of the Romans who built a temple during their stay here (and by stay, I mean the time they spent slaughtering barbarian germanic hordes.) That same sight become St. Michael's Monastery sometime about a thousand years ago. Here is a shot of the ruins taken from the highest remaining bell tower, the tippy-tippiest top of the mountain. (It still grates. You just don't grow up at the foot of the San Gabriel mountains and call 1500 feet a mountain. My front door step was 1500 feet.)


Now if you got a Holy mountain top, no reason to skimp on your monastaries. A second one, St. Stephan's is about 5-10 minutes walk from the first. It also has one remaining tower, from which I took this vertigo-inducing shot. Neither of these towers which I climbed actually withstood the centuries, of course, but were rebuilt/restored so German hikers would have something further to climb as they ran out of hill (There, I said it. It's a Hill. I feel better now.). The St. Stephan monastery was restored over a century ago, although obviously with regular maintenance since then.


All very charming, I hear someone saying, but when I go to Germany, I want creepy reminders of one of the grimmest periods in human history. Well, you are in luck, for the Nazis built a giant outdoor amphitheater on the Holy Mountain top, between the sites of the two ex-manastaries. The Nazis, of course, loved the idea of a place that might once used for the worship of Wotan being adapted for propaganda rallys run by Goebbels himself. The place practically hums with that Roman/pagan fascist architectural vibe the Nazis loved so much. You can almost hear the hollering crowds of intolerance. It is called the Thingstatte, apparently named after an ancient Nordic/Germanic gathering of people in an outdoor setting (a "Thing"). To me the name conjures images of some sort of prehistoric leviathan that has crawled its way from the lightless depths of the sea to feed upon unsuspecting mankind, as helpless and vulnerable as a newborn babe before its awesome hunger.

So that works too, I think.
------

I am going to try and kick start this blog, which has been decidedly languishing for some time. I have about six months of architecture and babies to catch up on which is probably too much, but I will try and summarize some of the best bits in the next few posts. I know people come for the babies, not the travelogs. In parting, let me pass on the inscription emblazoned on the bridge, next to the Heidelberg Monkey, translated of course. To fully appreciate the quote and statue, it might help to know what that big disk the monkey holding is supposed to be:

A mirror.

"Why are you looking at me? Haven't you seen the monkey in Heidelberg? Look around and you will probably see, more monkeys like me."

Back Home

Yes. I am back home. And moving back home has eaten large hunks of my personal time as well as removing regular access to home internet. So I haven't posted squat since St. Patty's Day.

And guess what. I don't have time for an extensive post today, either. So major updates on the home, girls, and facial hair will have to wait another week. In the meantime I give you, possibly the greatest video of all time.

I am thinking of entitling it: "It's Whats For Dinner."

Lace Curtain Irish

Ireland is known for beautiful lush green landscapes, hard drinking pub patrons, potatoes, sheep, and lace. Today you can't travel around the Irish countryside without coming into constant contact with all of them, but this was not always the case. It was in the lean times of the great Irish potato famines (1845-1852) that many a farmwife took up the lace making trade to keep her family from starving. It was really from this outpouring of desperation that the Irish lace tradition sprung. While today it seems that every window in Ireland overflows with lace, for most of the 2nd half of the 19th century it was only the very wealthy that could afford such an extravagance. The poor seamstress in her cottage had to sell just about every piece she created just to stay alive. The lucky few who had the means to purchase curtains AND food gained the nickname, "lace curtain Irish". You can think of that as a euphemism for "high and mighty sons of bitches that think they are better than me."





Of course the Irish potato famines had much larger global effects than just bringing the world Irish lace. The population of Ireland dropped 20-30% over that 8 year period. Nearly two million people. The unlucky ones perished, mostly of starvation related disease, but roughly half left Ireland altogether in what has become known as the Irish Diaspora. As of today, something like 80 million people worldwide claim Irish descent, half of which reside in the United States. This can be compared to the present population of Ireland of about 6 million people (coincidentally roughly the same population as in 1845, so you can see things didn't exactly turn around for the Irish post-Great Famine). To put it another way, people of Irish ancestry make up 15% of the U.S. population, second only to those of German descent (17%). I am not certain how much crossover there is between the two groups, but if my personal genetics are any indication it is 100%.



So back to the lace curtain Irish.

When the tidal wave of Irish immigrants began crashing onto American shores in the 1850s, they found that some Irish had proceeded them. As is sadly traditional among immigrants, the established, wealthier Irish looked down on their poorer, newly arrived cousins. The wealthy called them Shanty Irish, while the poor referred to the rich as lace curtain Irish, borrowing the term from home and applying it whether their snobby cousins had lace curtains or not.



While I trace my personal Irish genes back through several different lines, I believe
most of them to have been lace curtain Irish, i.e. they settled pre-Great Famine. For instance, despite several fascinating coincidences with the Colberts of the Chickasaw Nation, best research seems to put the oldest Colbert ancestor we can find living in Virginia back in the 1820s (Anthony Colbert, I believe. Sadly I don't have the extensive genealogy work my mother has done in front of me at the moment), with a homestead located on what is today the West Virginia/Virginia border. I don't take pride or shame in the lace curtain Irish title. I recognize that it was once a pejorative, but one now so faded by time that it only adds color to my family story.



So here are my girls, modern day lace curtain Irish. I guess we can reclaim that term in order to empower ourselves. Or we could just not take ourselves that seriously and enjoy little girls with shamrock hats running in and out of diaphanous lace. Yes, those are the same hats as last year (check out the Fight Cranial Panis Mica ad to the right). No, they don't really fit any more. I had to turn the hats inside out and upside before jamming them down on their heads. They seemed to like them. Hopefully the pressure from the hat won't stunt their skull growth (although that could be therapeutic... again, check the Fight Cranial Panis Mica ad). I always try to get (and post) equal numbers of photos of the girls, but in this instance Kayla was being quite coy, letting Rylie (in the darker green) take most of the spotlight.



So I expect some of you, if you are still reading my blog after such a long hiatus, would like to know more about the remodel. The short answer is that it is still not done, but we are close. If the present projections hold we should be able to start moving back in at the start of April. I will have much more info (and pictures) in a future post that hopefully will be more like 3-4 days from now, not two months.



Another great diaspora was that of the Jews, driven out multiple times from multiple places, although usually after the fall of a Temple. Lace curtain or not, that really makes my girls Double Diasporatic. And that means double tough. If you are smart, you do not mess with an Irish street tough. An Irish street tough Jew?

Fuggedaboutit.



Happy St. Patrick's Day!

The Bird is the Word

I think it was somewhere around December 26th, as I spent yet another day painting my house, that this remodel stopped being a grand adventure and became a throbbing headache inseparably mixed with 400 lb Back-Monkey (Tm). Living at my mom's place has been great. More than great. She has been unbelievably accommodating and infinitely helpful with the girls. But a temporary residence is just going to always feel temporary. I am really ready to go home, but home is not ready for me and that has finally started to get to me.

And of course having your pet cat of 13 years die on you does not help. Thanks to those of you who sent condolences. Candy and I got Tigre the very first year we moved in together (1995, you know when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth), so her passing adds a sort of coda to the sense that we have moved into a new stage of life, which is more happily represented by the twins. Sadly, deaths do a better job of making one feel old than births do.

But this post is not a chance to wax philosophic about the inevitable march of time. It is instead another opportunity to bitch about my house!


First the good news: The interior painting is just about complete. We hit the final room -- the front living room -- over the holidays (you know, when the adventure stopped). The front shutters still need a coat of paint and touch-ups are needed nearly everywhere, but that is 1-2 days of work at most. I should take this opportunity once again to thank all those who helped out. I think I shamelessly went through our entire list of friends, so the fact that most of you are still speaking to me after your brief period of indentured servitude is good news indeed.



Most of the house is white -- the color is actually Moonrise, so during the full moon I believe my walls will become transparent. Eat that Wonder Woman! -- but we did manage to hit two spots with colors a bit more extreme. One wall of my office is a deep, brick red and one wall of the kitchen is an electric Lime green. I occasionally have my doubts about the green (it makes ones pupils throb), but in the end it really will only cover a very small area. If several raves accidentally break out in our kitchen we can always repaint it in a day. Please note the shadowy form of Candice as she paints in the Room Beyond the Red Wall, coincidentally the title of my future children's book and/or tasteful NC-17 film.



Also completed: the cabinetry and countertops. This delay was at least partially our fault, as it took something like a month to get the damn cabinets ordered. There was way too much back and forth and indecisiveness on our part. Combine that with Home Depot's inefficient cabinetry ordering system and you have a true Witch's Brew (apologies to Elizabeth and Karen) of procrastination and time wasting. I swear that Kitchens Desk at Home Depot is located somewhere in Dante's Inferno. I'm going to go Eighth Circle, 2nd Bolgia. Look it up, it ain't pretty.



So the cabinets were installed in early December. The counters had to wait for the cabinets and the holidays reared their ugly head, so we finally got them in last week. Absolute black granite in the kitchen, Colonial Gold granite in the bathroom. Sadly I do not presently have a picture to show you, so imagine if you will an infinite plane of stone. Now imagine you are told you need to buy a second infinite plane in order to cover the sides of your kitchen island. We still have a minor issue regarding a crack (I have been assured it is fixable), but otherwise put that in the win column. Except for the fact the final bill for the counters was $4500 more than the original budget and $2000 more than our revised budget after getting a firm quote. Argh, please see sidebar fact #2.



The cabinets for the master bath and kid's room were simple single pieces that we bought along the way. The black master bath cabinet, seen near our truly gorgeous tile wall which you can see in its full glory atop this blog entry, was located via Ebay. We did not actually buy it on Ebay, but Candice found one on Ebay that was almost what we wanted. We called them up and they said we could have exactly what we wanted for cheap if I would drive to East Timor to pick it up. In the end it may not have been quite the deal it seemed at the time, as I have not been thrilled with the craftmanship. For instance, one side is lightly warped. The girl's cabinets are IKEA, which have great craftmanship: namely me. This is where I learned I needed a better screwdriver and less IKEA furniture.



We also have all of our new stainless steel appliances, which I have put together into a stunning collage. I call it: Stainless Steel, Stained Soul. Or alternatively:
This is Not A Fan, Stove, Fridge, or Dishwasher.

The deck installation has begun as I type this. Also the final plumbing and electrical should be happening over the next week. So the final piece, the one thing that will keep us from moving home is our giant bookcase wall. This is a two story bookcase that runs upwards next to the stairs, from our bedroom floor to the ceiling of the loft. In addition to its ability to hold books, it keeps you from falling off the loft into the room below, provides a place to anchor a handrail, and comes with a wraparound built-in desk for the loft, which also coincidentally should keep you from falling off the other half of the loft. It is the "not falling" component which is crucial to getting final inspection approved.

ETA for this bookshelf? Still unknown. More details as I know them.



I did achieve one moment of catharsis over the holidays that may just carry me through to the bitter end. Some of my loyal readers may remember that we had some break-in troubles over the summer, with the most notable annoyance being the defacing of my hearth. Having finally gotten to this room I managed to prime over the offending advice to visit the warmth of our southern neighbor. This was highly satisfying. Now if you will bear with me a moment, I will descend to their level in order to deliver the miscreants a final farewell. I'll see the rest of you further below.

Can you Hear This, My Faux-Vandal Friends?





No?







Then Let Me Turn It Up!

---

Because of sidebar fact #1, I now have quite a backlog of pictures of the girls. Most of these were taken in the last couple of months of 2007, although I think the sleeping in the jogging stroller may have come from a a couple of months earlier.



I think David Bowie said it best, when he famously stated, "Ch- Ch- Cha- Changes." I can only assume he was talking about early childhood development. The girls will be hitting 15 months in just a couple of days, so it may be about time to check the score card. It was at just over a year that we made the big transition from bottle/breast feeding to cow's milk in sippy cups and solid food at every meal. While we still occasionally break out the baby food because it is so handy for carrying around or when we haven't gone shopping yet, we have cut back on that to a trickle also.



Now they eat just about everything. We try to avoid anything sweetened, fried, or over-salted, but otherwise just about anything is fair game. They have consumed and loved quesadillas, thai food, ravioli, and mongolian BBQ. They would eat bananas at every meal if we allowed it and they are also on a constant lookout for Graham crackers, which have clearly replaced Cheerios (which they still like) as the baby crack of choice.



The girls are running, climbing, dancing, and talking up a storm. Most of the talk is still babble, but they are clearly building up their vocabulary. A recent representative sample would be dog, momma, daddy, 'nana (short for banana), neck, book, box, hi, bye, ball, duck, walk, no, yes, meat, up, down... And many more that do not come to mind immediately. And these are just examples of words they use consistently and in proper context. Kayla, in particular, is becoming an impressive mimic so be careful what you say around the girls, as it might just be repeated back at you.



We are still experimenting with television exposure. For the first 6-9 months of their lives we watched any TV we wanted and the babies were 100% oblivious. Then we started noticing the girls paying attention, so we starting monitoring what we watched. No violent or disturbing content on in the background while the twins were playing. As they became more and more aware of the TV as an entity we basically banned it outright.

Ah, but the flesh is weak.

Banning all TV in our home except for the hours of 10pm to falling asleep wasn't going to hold up. I love my babies, but sometimes all of us need a short break from the constant interaction (this is known as solitary play, or some such, time for your child to interact with the world without you constantly approving or disapproving). Plus sometimes you want to hear news, catch the end of a ball game, watch the latest on your famous uncle, etc. So now we have slipped into trying to keep TV to a minimum. We try to never put on TV for the girls to watch (no Sesame Street yet) and we keep an eye on content. In general it is not on more than 30-45 minutes at a time, long enough to catch a Daily Show or House episode and then back off or on to a music only channel (radio channel, not MTV or its ilk). The number one thing the girls love to do is "read" their books, so I think we have not screwed them up yet. Stay tuned.



I'd say the one area that I wish I could do over is putting the babies to bed. Essentially I think we did way too much soothing to sleep and now we are paying for it, as the twins do not go down easily at all. In our defense, our thinking at the time was that putting twins to bed in the same room was trickier, because if one was crying and not sleeping it would keep the other one up. From a series of recent single room experiments in a hotel room (see a soon-to-be posted blog about the Austin trip), I think there is some validity to that sentiment, but we should have worked out a solution (put them down at slightly different times, maybe?) instead of punting.



I know many other parents who get to bedtime, do a short series of bedtime rituals, and then put the baby in the crib and it more or less goes to sleep. Our babies do not do that and it feels like the bedtime ritual length from start to finish has only gotten worse over the past three months. I believe this is because the walking, jiggling, soothing exercises that worked on little babies do not work so well on an older child, who is starting to sleep like an adult (or at least like a kid), who would rightfully be annoyed if you started shaking them while they were trying to sleep. We also deal with a lot of nighttime wake-ups where the baby can not self-soothe. I think this is common at their age, but I suspect we are a bit worse off because the baby is not used to being awake, alone, and in the dark (there is a bright night light) and going to sleep itself.

So if raising a baby involves 3-month plans, the next three months we need to work on (among other things) getting them to bed easier. We have already made a transition to a more gradual bedtime process, where you get them cuddled up with a book, in their blanket, in a rocking chair, and sing to them (Wheels On The Bus is good). While far from always effective, it feels less forced to me, which I think makes it easier on both us and the baby. It is still time consuming, but until we can work out getting the babies to go to sleep in their own beds, alone, I think it will remain a major task. To truly get them to go down in their own beds may involve a series of many screaming nights, so we need to plan and steel our selves for it like we were going to storm Normandy.

So there is a little insight into the mind of a parent of 15 month-olds. Trying to maximize sleep is still a major component I am afraid to say, although nothing like the early days. Still a lot of hard work, but the positive feedback in the form of baby affection (hugs and kisses and yelps of delight) has been steadily increasing. Now if we could all just move home...

Then we could spend all our time wishing we were still living at my mom's house with its built-in babysitter. Damn grass.

Always greener.