Argh.

I am so ready to quit this stupid job.

Sadness

I can't help but think that my wanting something affects whether or not that something happens.  If I just want something hard enough, it will happen.  And thus I feel responsible when bad things happen, because maybe I didn't want to avoid them strongly enough.  

And so I sink into depression when things out of my control occur.

And I have to sit and stare at the TV or computer until everything seems ok again.

NBA thoughts

Ok, so Amar'e is going to the Knicks and the Nuggets aren't interested
in trading Melo and nobody knows where Bosh and Wade and that other
guy (can't think of his name) are going to end up, but the Raptors
have said they're ok with a sign and trade for Bosh with the Cavs.

What do we know at this point?

1. This is the most interesting moment of LeBron James's career. So
far anyway. Which is kinda sad. A trip to the Finals, consecutive
60-win teams and MVP trophies and I've never been more interested in
what he is doing than right now.

2. Unless the Knicks also get Wade or LeBron or somehow trade for an
amazing point guard (Derron Williams, Chris Paul, Steve Nash...that
might be the whole list) then this Amar'e deal will look horrible in 2
years. There's never been anyone I've watched play who benefited more
from playing with an elite teammate over the past two+ seasons (before
the knee injury, he was legit in his own right, but since then he's
never been the same). I'm not saying Amar'e will put up terrible
numbers without Nash, but there's just no way he is the primary
offensive weapon on a 50+ win team. As the primary complement to
another creator...yeah...he could add a couple more fantastic years on
his resume (it seems like he's been in the league forever, but I guess
he's just 27).

3. If the Bulls had a choice between Wade+Bosh or LeBron by himself,
they would be crazy to turn down Wade+Bosh. Only 1 other NBA player
has a deadly late-game arsenal that compares to Wade's, and they'd
have 4/5ths of a championship-calibur starting 5.

4. What I really want to see happen, more than anything else, is to
see Wade+Bosh+LeBron play in the same city. Chicago would be nice.
Clippers would be nice. Cavs would be nice. Heck, even the Nets
would be nice. I just want to see how that would work. Could Wade
and LeBron solve the alpha-dog battle? Would other teams just give up
and roll over? Can Bosh become a scrappy 3rd option who does all the
little things? Could a team with so much committed to three players
find the rest of the pieces necessary to compete? Any outcome other
than this would be a bit of a disappointment, and if they only thing
that happens is LeBron staying in Cleveland, Wade staying in Miami and
Bosh going to the Bulls, I'm going to be super-disappointed.

5. Finally, what the heck was Atlanta thinking? I know they don't
really have a clear path forward post-Joe Johnson, but there's no way
he's worth what they are going to pay him. He's not worth that _now_,
and in 2 years he'll be such a huge problem for them.

I can't remember

I thought there was something I was going to post about on here.

It was funny, insightful, and frankly would have changed your life forever.

That's right, you, you specifically.  

I know.  

And I forgot.

My shoes

Apparently my shoes look like "skater punk" shoes. Specifically,
"Avril Lavigne shoes".

Ok...

So I guess I'll be wearing different shoes this afternoon.

The Failure of Phoenix

In the NBA, superstars usually come up short because they fail in some
way. Clyde Drexler couldn't beat MJ because he got outplayed.
Patrick Ewing would have won two championships if he (and John Starks)
hadn't fallen apart at key moments.

The Suns are different. Charles Barkley, Kevin Johnson and Thunder
Dan played their best basketball ever, and it was good enough to
inspire great memories, but they just couldn't beat MJ.

Nash's Suns are the same way. They play excellent. They come up big
late in games. None of the core guys plays like a dope. And yet they
keep coming up short anyway.

Man that sucks.

My blog

Did you know I've been updating my blog again?

Yeah, I think I'm funny.

I think its better because its just short snippets.

But that doesn't mean I like Twitter.

I just think most people only need a little bit of me at a time.

I am exhausted by Prairie Chickens

I've never really been interested in birds. In fact, I've been
actively opposed to learning anything about them.

But sometime in the last year or so I started thinking of them as dinosaurs.

Now I'm pretty into birds.

I feel this is important to share.

In case you didn't know...

The absolute best websites for food recipes (aggregation sites anyway)
are Allrecipes.com and the food network's websites. What makes these
sites so great is the comments on recipes. Lots of useful
information.

In the past week we've made a couple of new recipes off these sites
(Greek Green Beans and Greek pasta salad). Both excellent, but both
with very useful info on different varieties in the comments of
AllRecipes.

Argh

I practically write for a living, but when I'm writing a letter
committing us to spending $30k I suddenly can't figure out how to
construct a sentence.

Background noise

I usually listen to this, along with some light jazz, while I'm at work to set a relaxed mood.

Today? 

Today was just two tabs open to the rain, slightly off, so that the number of thunder-crashes was greater.  

I'm like some kind of genius.

The Tea

See, the tea is Earl Gray. I brewed it this morning (at like 7) and
put it, still rocket-hot, into my travel mug, sealed the lid on, and
just opened it at around 9 or so. Apparently that's just enough time
for the tea to cool to an acceptable temperature, without being cooled
completely.

Yeah, my travel mug is pretty awesome.

I thought you should know.

Ups and downs

Ups:

Child #2 is doing great, gaining weight, acting cute, trying to sit up
(working his core)

Downs:

Streams in are getting the short end of the stick

Ups:

Participated in a contest for high school students yesterday that was
focused on environmental concerns

Downs:

I feel excluded and isolated from everyone I interact with, plus I
have a generalized feeling of dread.

Ups:

This is really good tea.

Basketball

Blog posts will resume soon, however, I just wanted to point out that my favorite rookie in the NBA is Brandon Jennings and I think you're crazy if you believe he's not the biggest reason the Bucks are going to be about 10 games better this year than last.

What?  NCAA basketball?  What happened to Kansas?  

I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of my 2008 KU National Championship shirt.

I never knew I never knew

(The long delayed story of my second son's birth)

So there it was, early afternoon on a Monday.  I was finally back at work after basically two weeks of sickness and exhaustion and holiday.  A huge mountain of work, a huge project looming, a huge amount to do.  And then this little message popped up on my gmail chat window:  Wife: "I'm feeling weird"

"Like, uh, how weird"

"Like I'm having contractions."

(jaw drops....cold chill enters my bones....think.)

"Um."

This conversation is happening at the beginning of week 35 of the pregnancy.  This isn't so bad, really.  Thirty five weeks is just a week or so away from the point where I was going to stop worrying about the pregnancy.  But that week or so was a little foolish optimism.  Our due date is a month away!  Just over a month actually.  So uncertainty began on Monday just after lunch.

By Tuesday we were calling the OB's office, who reminded the Wife that she had missed a doctor's appointment on Monday and yes, come in today.  So we piled the fam into the car and drove the 1.5 hour to the doctor's office.  There to be told this could last 4 weeks.   Ugh...but ok.  We don't want him to come yet.  So we went back home.   Around 7 30, son slips in the kitchen and splits his lip open.  Blood everywhere.

But the contractions continued.  At 11 30, we called the local hospital.  They said: "Well, you're early, so if you can just make it to [Big City], you should, because we're going to helicopter you there anyway."  Oohhh-kay.

The contractions diminished, we went to be at like 12 30.  At 3 am Wednesday, we were awake again, thinking this was it.  The Wife took a shower (one of the things they said could reduce the pain).  Contractions continued, but the wife said "Just go back to sleep, I'll wake you if we need to go."  At 4 30, we re-awoke..dressed the kid, and drove the hour and a half to the big city hospital.  

Only after an hour in the car, the contractions stopped....great.  Instead we went to my parent's house in Big City, arriving at 6 am, woke up my dad, and Wife went to bed, Son went to sleep on Grandpa's chest, and I (hyped up on caffeine that I used to actually get there) couldn't sleep.  When the OB's office woke up (opened), the wife called.  They said:

"Take Tylenol and [something else, can't remember] and see if you can sleep through the contractions.  If you can't, come in."  

So from around 9 in the morning until around around 7 o'clock that night, the drugs worked.  At around 7 30, I'm looking at the boy running around Grandpa's basement (grandma was out of town helping my sister with her 2-week old).  I think to myself: "Kiddo, I'm about to grab you and take you to bed, because daddy's tired."  

At about that time Mom comes out of the bedroom and says:  :"Yeah, it's time.  We're going to the hospital now."

Adrenaline is a wonderful thing.  As it turns out, adrenaline can keep you going for a about 2.5 hours before total exhaustion kicks back in.  

And when it kicked in, it kicked in hard.  

(To be continued...)

Baby # 2 (the Younger)

Monday contractions began...at 12:02am on Thursday the contractions were done (or at least, the baby-birthing contractions). In between was very little sleep, and increasing sense of impending arrival, me fainting in the delivery room, lots of drugs injected directly into the spine, and finally, a screaming child.

Since screaming, the child was moved to the neonatal intensive care unit, since he's about a month early, but he's doing pretty darned well.

A full accounting of the delivery (complete with my increasingly complicated explanation for my own collapse) is forthcoming, this is a brief update.

And some music (first time trying the NPR embedding function):

I love K'Naan

I also love Regina Spektor:

And finally, Modest Mouse continues to be totally awesome:

What am I going to do with myself

I always assumed that I would, at some point, know what I wanted to do
with myself. You know, what kind of career I would want, what kind of
house I would want to live in, even the part of the country where I
would prefer to reside.

It comes as something of a continuing shock that I really don't have
the slightest clue. Sometimes I think Kansas is pretty awesome (and
sometimes it is), but other times I really, really want to move.
Oregon seems amazing. North Carolina seems beautiful. New Mexico and
Arizona have a strong appeal. Norway looks so awesome I can't even
fathom it. On some level, I can't imagine staying in one place for
any appreciable length of time.

And then there are career options. So I'm very slowly learning new
things. Things about programming and writing. Things about cooking.
How neat would it be to do these things in some professional capacity?
Pretty neat, I think, but then again...who knows? Everything I leave
behind (English lit, physics, research) becomes something I dearly
miss. Will I miss fighting for T&E species if I leave? I think I
might. I think that without some strong goal, I am going to
constantly be looking for the next thing and wondering why I left the
last thing.

Of course, there are a lot of really good aspects to the way things go
now. I have a hard time remembering why I was so angry all the time
in grad school. I have a hard time remembering why I was so
frustrated with my physics prof. I seem to only remember the good
stuff (well, except for Oklahoma. I'm not forgetting that). And each
move had taken me to a place where I meet and get to know amazing
people.

So I don't know what I want to do with myself. I don't know quite
what I want to accomplish. I guess my only real goals are to raise
happy kids and have a happy family and not be too bitter and jaded
when I come home at night. Well, and I want to figure out how to make
pickles that taste great every time, but I assume that's going to by
my personal Mt. Everest.

--

Cooking really is so much fun. Despite the
'so-good-I'd-blog-about-it-if-I-were-my-brother-in-law' meme that is
apparently floating out there (A and S!), I don't actually blog about
everything I cook. I only blog about the stuff that is somehow
fulfilling on both an intellectual and spiritual level.

And today was all about cooking. Apple Ketchup and Pumpkin bread and
grilled cheese and quesadillas and smoothies that the boy wouldn't
try.

Holy cow it was cold today...

I picked a great day to hike all over the Neosho River Basin. As I approached my destination, I realized it wasn't just that the sun wasn't up yet, it was also that a thick layer of clouds had developed. I was further clued into the blowing northerly wind by the presence of snow and ice pelting the window of my truck.

And did I mention that I didn't really bring appropriate clothes?

So from 8 in the morning until 3 in the afternoon (with a half-hour break for lunch), I walked around looking at gravel bars, secretly grateful for the first time in my life that previous generations have so devastated the riverine environments that the 15-20 feet of channel degradation between field and stream bank was offering a modicum of protection from the wind.

Luckily I was wearing a flimsy pair of summer pants, so it only took about 30 minutes for the nerves in my legs to be permanently damaged, and thus cease sending little messages of protest to my brain.

I spent probably 45 minutes soaking in hot water before I felt warm again.

But worry not, the Neosho River will be protected...a little....by today's actions.

And it was actually way better than sitting in the office all day.

--

I find myself relating more to Jay-Z than Tiger Woods.

--

Parenting. A brief explanation as to why child # 2 will be arriving in a couple of months.

--

In case you didn't know....Daisy Owl. Actually, there aren't that many, just start at the beginning.

--

I guess that's it.

Good music

I've heard this before, of course, but it has been so long that I forgot and then remembered.

Chicago.

Twilight

So my wife read Twilight. Yeah. I know. I was opening scorning her as she was reading it. And she was expressing grave misgivings about reading it the whole time. And after the last book, her sentiment seemed to be: "Well that was a complete waste of my time."

Of course I had to pick up the first book and see what all the fuss is about (it was lying around the house).

A word about expectations here: I was expecting a book about vampires.

Twilight took me longer to read than any other book I've ever read (other than some textbooks). I am almost pathologically compelled to finish books when I start them, and this was hard. I think the writer is genuinely gifted with having a reasonably good 'voice', and I think when things start happening, she's better than most at capturing the sense of action.

Having said that, this is maybe the worst book I've ever read. The main character (and I use the term loosely) has no drive or ambition beyond her male love-interest. None. None. She has no interests. She has no motivations. She's an empty-headed dimwit who has all the personality of a cracker. She loathes everything. Her dad. Her mom (less obviously). Her classmates. In fact, I would not have been the least bit surprised to hear that the entire book, after a particular dramatic incident, was a drug-induced hallucination after a failed suicide attempt. Amazingly, that would improve my opinion of the book.

The vampires described here are ridiculous. They are virtually invincible beings who can't possibly have any reason to be hidden away. After reading synopses of the other books on Wikipedia (I'm not going to finish the series), I'm given to understand there is some kind of vampire authority that dictates they not reveal themselves. But, I'm going to be honest here, that is just dumb. In addition to the main character, it is clear that the vampires have no aspirations. They just...exist.

This is a book that actively seems to encourage women to think of themselves as incompetent, useless creatures with no skill or ability. Just accept whatever your man wants and accept that it may destroy you. Great.

I've been wrestling for days with trying to figure out what about this story appeals to anyone. The action is vanishingly brief, the two main character's interactions are basically just "You're so great." "No, you're so great." "Ha ha. No no. You're so great!" And the ending gives me absolutely no reason to want to continue the story. The are a handful of blunt references to a larger world history related to the supernatural, but, amazingly the main character is almost completely disinterested in knowing anything. You can see that the author is trying to entrance us with a rich world backstory, but her efforts to allude to that backstory are just so crude.

Basically, I give this book a frowny face sticker, and I really just wanted the main characters to die by the end. After reading the wikipedia summaries, I guess I can't even get that satisfaction if I read the remaining books.

Rant Over.