Half Term Tahoe Time

On Sunday we all went to Bonnie and August's place on the Truckee River. The snow wasn't that deep and the drive up was plain sailing.
We spend the first day playing around the cabin and getting acclimatized. Alexander was quite used to the snow from visiting his cousins when they lived in Nevada. Fiona on the other hand only seen snow when she was 2 months old.
One of the roads at the back of the cabin afforded a good sledge run and by the end of the day both Fiona and her parents were happy that she could sledge down on her own. Alexander of course was a demon!

Day 2 we went off to Alpine Meadows to get the kids some lessons. Here again Alexander had picked up some basics around his Uncle and cousins but we sent him out on a beginners course to ensure he "learnt proper". For the first hour he looked very bored but by the end he was able to ski down low incline slopes unaided and without poles, turning and snow plowing at will.

Fiona took a class the same length as Alexander (2.5 hours). We watched her from the lodge with tears in our eyes. She tried so hard, followed every instruction and.. Skied! We were so far away we couldn't quite see her expression under the goggles and I was worried that her whole (lengthy) experience would have put her off forever.
Not so!
She took to it like a trouper and was very proud of her achievements when we hooked up with her at the end of the lesson. She is looking forward very much to the next one.



Hard of Flash can go here:

And now I'm back...

"It's been long time since you blogged."
I know!
I'm sure there are millions of people out there in the blogosphere receiving the same message.
"Why haven't you blogged?"
It's hard to answer, but the best answer I can give is in the style of one of the most well know comedians in the UK (albeit that he was Irish) of the last part of the 20th century Dave Allen.
"I've not been feeling myself recently."
Phnaw! Phnaw!
Well I haven't. And not in the way Mr. Allen meant.

I've just not been the person who blogs.

The last 6 months of tailing off the Thyroid blockers and Beta blocker has been quite difficult. This wasn't case of withdrawal but more the case that each time I was tested I was found to be overdosed.
Overall this was good news, and I have now stopped taking everything apart from small dose of Beta blocker (which is there just in case I go wrong again, which I might).

So how did it feel to be a big fat slob who didn't care about stuff like blogging or much else for 6 months?

Well *I* don't know *he* didn't seem to care.

So (while my thyroid permits) here *I* go again...

The Death Star Revistied

Alexander is 9! Yes really. It's quite amazing to think that he is now older than the kids on South Park.
For his birthday he asked for... THE DEATH STAR!
And it's in caps 'cause it is THE LEGO DEATH STAR- >3000 pieces, >8 hours to assemble by a team of uber geeks on YouTube, >our F'kin budget.
I thought hard about this one... Yes it was expensive, Yes it was for 14 year olds and Yes it was a complete and total max out homage to the great God of Lego in Denmark.

But there were some upsides if I played it right...
"So if you want the Lego Death Star you can't have a party?"
"Ok!"

"So if you want the Lego Death Star you can't anything else from us?"
"Ok!"

"So if you want the Lego Death Star you have to tidy your room to accommodate building it?"
"Ok!"

And I did play it right and so did Alexander; and so after a false start on his actual birthday last Thurs where his stack on personality negative equity outweighed any desire for us to give him so much as a chocolate watch we finally gave hims his BIG BIG present on Saturday night.

He was delighted and then stunned!

This kind of Lego had an instruction book the size of a Haynes Workshop Manual (popular manual series in the UK for car or motorcycle repair)- Nearly 400 pages.

This kind of Lego didn't number the bags but had 53 bags of random* Lego parts to sift through.

*They might look random but Lego actually fill each bag with high contract parts covering color, size and shape so they are easy to discern and find. However you might find the head of R2-D2 in one bag, the legs another, the body in another, and so on...

This kind of Lego had a Dad who knew just how much it cost and wasn't about to let things get off track.

This kind of Lego had a project plan and Dad was the Project Manager!

However...
By 9:00am he had managed to open all the bags and assemble the mini-figures.

By 10:00am he had traded "The Emperor", a one of a kind figure only found in *this*
kit for a 1/20th scale model of a BMX bike with the kid down the road.

By 10:20am he had got "The Emperor" back after a somewhat lengthy discussion on the merits of trading with his Mother who, I might add showed extreme restraint!

By 11:00am he was done for a while.

I carried on, determined to get to completion of the first level.
However, I was told off of not letting Alexander do it himself. He wanted it, he needs to do it.
I just wanted to see what the first floor looked like! Oh Well.

We resumed together in the afternoon and *I* completed this weekends assembly exercise by bagging up the remainder of the kit (and boy does a lot remain) into 42 sandwich bags which will come out next weekend for the next continuing installment.

Conversations with Fiona

Daddy can we get a ban?

A what?

A ban that you sleep in.

A van?

Yes a ban that you pull somewhere.

A caravan?

Yes

Aaasaaarrgh!

Vegetable Venue Increases

After a 2 year break due primarily to my ill health I'm back building boxes to put the veggies in. I feel motivated to do it and don't also don't feel like I'm about to drop dead in the process- both of which is good.

I got the lumber cut last weekend. In fact I got *all* the lumber cut last weekend at Home Depot, by a guy who actually cared and did it right. So this weekend it wast just a case of measure, clamp, drill screw. There were 3 drilling bits (pun intended)- drill hole, make countersink ('cause my woodwork teacher told me how to), screw in screw. I had 1 drill, one battery powered drill that screwed too and a battery powered screwdriver. By the end of the first hour the drill was the only tool left in the game, although I could still use the battery powered drill that screwed, to do the counter sinking.
Sigh- I thought about charging them all up for next weekend, I thought about that task I had set myself this weekend, and I thought about the cost: $31.95 for a new *corded* drill that screwed. [I had gone to the hardware store earlier that day on the pretense (to myself) of buying a bigger setsquare and found a B&D drill the screwed cost just $31.95]
How much is my time worth? How much is family worth? How good does it feel to own Yet Another Power Tool?
I bought it, and screwed and screwed.
And have now completed all the sides ready for assembly next week. Or as we say in the US- Mission Accomplished.

Planter Progress over the last few years is logged here

Back in the Game

After 10 months off the soccer circuit, a failure to get into the traveling leagues, and subsequent failure to tryout for the traveling leagues, Alexander is Back playing with the Los Gatos Soccer League with a great coach. Maybe he will tryout for the travelling leagues at the end of this year or maybe we will not have to travel all of over the California. That's up to him.
This opening game- he was indeed the star of the show playing mid-field (a good choice of his coach), until in the first part of the second half he pushed himself to hard and fell off the field spectacularly with a sore heel. I say sore, not broken, sprained, rolled or twisted- since despite his protestations and people with medical knowledge running around with ice packs etc. telling me it would be a week or so before he recovered, he was back in the game before the end. He even managed to cycle home via the Jamba Juice store (since I promised him one at the end of the game). He has a lot of drive out son and also a lot of....

From Back in the game 2009

The Key to a Harmonious Relationship

After you live with someone for a while you get to know their little foibles- In the case of my dear wife she doesn't have pockets and so she tends to leave things in strange places and then forget about them. This weekend she left her wallet in a toilet in Wholefoods. Luckily the folk of Los Gatos are honest to a fault and so she got it back without so much as a cent missing. I say to a fault because I do think their behaviour is just that- faulty. E.g. they leave their Phones and iPods in their cars unlocked overnight and then get upset when in the morning find them to be gone! But I digress...

I've gotten used to Dena loosing stuff- either temporarily or permanently. Loosing her wallet can be quite a nuisance but loosing her keys can be quite catastrophic and sometimes expensive- so when we moved into our new house I vowed to always have a backup plan when it came to keys. Sure enough a couple of years after we moved on one of my semi-regular trips to Austin, Texas I got a phone call from Dena to say she had lost her keys and was locked out of the house.
"Go into the garage and look behind the vacuum cleaner and you will find the emergency set of keys that will let you in."
Dena was most impressed.
"But how did you know I was going to do this?"
"Oh, I just had a feeling it was going to happen some time."

The problem that arose however wass that Dena misplaced her key many times over the following month and so began to rely on the emergency key to let her in. It was after all always there ready and waiting- until it wasn't! One day she took it with her and lost it!
But I had of course thought of the eventuality and hidden another set of keys which I duly produced and unlocked the house with.
"That's fantastic. Where are those keys hidden?"
And then came the hard part...
"I'm not going to tell you, 'cause you'll start using them and loose them."
Dena wasn't very happy about this, but I refused to tell her the location of the second set of emergency keys until there was a real emergency.
And this weekend there was in the shape of me walking back home from visiting a neighbor and Dena going off the park with the kids and locking me out of the house, and not having her phone on her person. (Technically she had it with her, just not within earshot).
"Aha! Time to use the secret emergency key!" I thought, and went to the secret location and reached for the secret keys.
Nothing!
They were gone.
This seemed really strange, I knew where I put them. I knew I had used them once. I knew I had put them back. Nothing made any logical sense- unless???
Dena explained everything when she returned...
"Yes, I locked myself out of the house a while back. I knew you had hidden a secret set of keys so I just tried to think like you would and sure enough I found them and used them. When I came to put them back I dropped them and lost them somewhere behind some shelving. Sorry!"
Ho Hum...Time for another secret set of keys.

Finally!

We got a weekend where Bob and Marty watched the kids. In fact we got a 3 day weekend where Bob and Marty watched the kids! I've been waiting for this moment for 9 years (and Yes you can see what a planner I am!) Even I did not think it would take this long, and yes I admit there were was the odd little interlude where we left Alexander behind for a weekend 4 years ago and look what happened!! But this time it was just finally a time where we could just be us.
From the moment we said "I do!" in the church I have felt that our lives have been herded into the "family club" and what a club it is!
This weekend I felt that we had been let out into the community once more. We still have our sentence to serve, but due to good behavior during the first 8+ years of this sentence we are now allowed to spend a little time in the real world. AND BOY DID WE LOVE IT! It was Grrreat!

• We went to the Ansel Adams and Georgia O'Keeffe exhibition at the SFMOMA and did the audio tour (and pressed replay several times).
• We walked all the way to the Hill's Bros Coffee Building that Dena's Great Grandfather founded.
• We had a drink across the road and looked at the bridge.
  
• We walked back again
• We went home and had a candlelit dinner in the back garden
• We went to Pacific Grove and checked into a hotel 10 minutes from the beach that cost $59.
• We rode our bikes to the beach, coffee, dinner and back.
• We sat and looked at the waves
• We sat and looked at more waves.
• We put our bikes back at the hotel, walked to the beach and looked at the waves
  
• We rode our bikes to breakfast
• We rode to the beach and looked at the waves
• We... did stuff together. It was wonderful!

And here are some pictures



Hard of flash can click here

Sick

I wasn't keen on going to Toronto 48 hours after arriving back home from the APM. It turned out neither was my body. I'd been feeling rough on the flight back from the UK. I got upgraded to 1st class but couldn't really enjoy it- my colleagues sat at the bar behind me and drank it dry of Gin, I just languished in my bed and slept for most of the flight.

On Tues, 20 minutes before I was due to leave for Toronto I doubled up in agony with pains in my abdomen and that was that- trip cancelled. I think it was probably Samonella and it took me out until Thurs. No fun, but would have been a lot worse if I was in Toronto when it happened.

Overdosed!

I thought that sleeping 16 hours out of 24 during and after the trip home was a little excessive, even for post APM. Luckily my Cardiologist agreed with me and has now cut both my thyroid and beta blockers in half. Having spent the summer feeling tired, jaded and simply "not bothered" about life I hope this will fix my problem. Apparently my symptoms are quite well er... symptomatic of over medication and now that my thyroid has stabilized I should be able to cut everything in half and then... well er... see what happens. Hmm.... Here goes. I'll know in a month.