Category: bliefs

The Haps

Lots of things have been going on in the past couple weeks. I will have to tell the story in pictures.

JC, BopOp, and me finished our 100 mile training ride as you may have read about earlier. I didn’t really recognize how much yellow we had on until now. I like yellow.

Flying Wheels? What about Flying hair!

We made a sandbox for the girls.

Sandy mermaids

After a very hot training ride just yesterday BopOp got a nap in with a Mermaid.

Good snuggles

Abby excellently performed her jazz routine to Think Pink by Barbie.

She definitely thinks pink

Thanks for taking pictures of tigers.

It only took a few minutes and I have Jott posting to my blog. I won’t go into Jott right here and now but let me sum up;

Dial a phone number
say: WordPress
say: [whatever I want for about 30 seconds]
——–
the results will be posted here along with an audio link (in case the Jott translator can’t hear me or gets it famously wrong).

Yesterday Abby left me a Jott:

Don’t forget to bring surprises.

but Jott thought she said

Thanks for taking pictures of tigers.

That is an extreme example, and a good one too, but so far I have had a LOT of success with Jott.
But what, you may ask, will I use this for?

Right now the only thing I anticipate is for status updates while riding the Flying Wheels Century on Saturday and the Seattle To Portland in July.

You who are so worried or so inclined can login and check periodically to read or listen to my progress. I may even have a guest blogger (BopOp or JC).
Alternatively you can read and listen in series at a later time using the new ‘Jott Biking’ category. I may even segregate it further into it’s own sub-page…but not today.

Dvorak update

So I get some grief for using the Dvorak keyboard layout but the numbers don’t lie.

On this powertyping page I have consistently come back to take the small “Frequent Words 1” typing test.  For a while my speed plateaued at about 60wpm which is what I think I could have attained in QWERTY and after a while of not checking I came back yesterday and again today (to make sure yesterday wasn’t a fluke) and I can report the following numbers.

your typing rate is :  79 wpm
words typed : 57
mistakes made : 8
which is 10.9 mistakes per minute

I have always maintained this level (or more) of mistakes which means I am hammering as quick as I can in a speed run and worrying little about absolute accuracy. This time, however, I noticed that it reported 8 mistakes and I only made 4. I counted them up afterwards and must report that the tool is flawed somehow. So, my error rate is 1/2 of what is reported.

I am quite sure that I couldn’t have attained that level in QWERTY, and now that I know yesterday was no fluke I am ‘gunnin’ for 80+. When I test myself on the other, more natural sentences I get around 55+ WPM with about the same number of mistakes so 79 is by no means my actual typing speed (for a letter) but it would be accurate for short chats, twitters, and other such information-like offal. It also serves as a good comparison of my progress (getting faster, my numbers today, still typing, still more numbers) since this test is the same one that I have been taking since I switched.

In case you didn’t know I have made this switch and are curious if I can still type ‘normally’? In short…No.

I am completely QWERTY illiterate these days (except for my name and my password) and when absolutely forced to type in QWERTY I am a single finger, hunt n peck (SFHAP) typist. Luckily, being forced in this way only happens at kiosks where keyboard configuration is not possible, and usually those keyboards are touch screen anyway…this makes us all SFHAP typists.

Summer is fun

Friday night we had friends over for dinner, 6 friends. We talked until midnight then a subset of the group partook of the 39 ºC hot tub. They left at 02:20.

Then Saturday another guest, we watche Big Brown pull up in the Belmont dashing a 5 year old girls dreams of a triple crown winner…even though 5 short weeks ago she didn’t know what the sport of kings was. She cried, but got over it pretty quickly once she found out that he wasn’t going to die, like Eight Belles did when she didn’t win. That’s how new racing is for her. 🙂

So, we were up late watching Angel-A, the latest Luc Besson directorial effort. Very good.

Then today, all three mermaids and I went to Auburn and walked 3 miles for Cystic Fibrosis and, more specifically, for the daughter of a good friend. She is 18 months old. Then, the Luck O’ the Abby played it’s hand again and the very first item in the raffle went to us. It was a Nesco Roaster.

Then, still with undeniable energy we did some yard work, read some stories and now at 21:00 on Sunday the summer evenings have me awake and blogging.
I am tired, to be sure, but I will probably be up until after midnight doing something or other.

Summer is good. I can sleep in November.

What is a double play?

Wednesday afternoon I won tickets to the Mariners game…for Wednesday night.
I called home.

Does Abby want to go with me?
Abby, do you want to go with Daddy to the baseball game?
N.uhhh…well…ok.

Her vote of confidence was overwhelming but when she was apprised of the potential for cotton candy and hot dogs she was all-in like Templeton.

She wore her pink Mariners hat, pink Mariners pants, her sporty shoes, and a blue windbreaker…Mariners of course.
We got there early and then waited an inordinately long time for a train. I am not kidding, something like 15 minutes or more on the wrong side of the tracks makes the cotton candy on the other side equivalent to a christmas that will never come. We procured our hot dogs and watched batting practice from our seats in right field. We weren’t back again until the 8th.
Since the M’s aren’t terribly good right now there were a lot of available seats and we sat in all of them. Every half inning we switched seats. At the top of the 300 section; now on the rail; 20 rows back from the 3rd base dugout; now we’re in Ferris Bueller land.
Two servings of cotton candy (blue and pink), one hot dog, exactly 1/2 of a peanut (salted and unshelled – “echhh! THAT is nasty!”), one homerun, 8 baseball cards, and a whole lot of seating changes we cheered the M’s to a 1-0 victory over the Boston Red Sox.
Somewhere about the 4th or 5th inning, near the Beuller seats, Abby said:

I didn’t know it was gonna be THIS much fun!

Forget the peanuts and cracker jacks man.

Hello Pancreas? WAKE UPPPPPP!

Take me out to the ballgame!

Bada boom! Big bada boom.

Emma fell down today. She has fallen before but this time she hit her face.
We have noticed a couple of things of late.
1) She is navigating stairs and other obstacles with relative ease of late, and she is going faster and faster because of her confidence.
2) She is falling down more.

Today was a perfect storm of a composite driveway (crumbly surface), a steep grade, biggish shoes, and a confident two year old.

It all added up to this.
Multipass!

A scraped cheek, a split lip, some scraped knees, and well…her pride is still pretty much intact.
She cried of course but overall, she recovered and was back to business as usual before the day was over.
It seems that she has QUITE the pain threshold.

Park and Ride

You know your car has been parked (no gas added) for a while when this happens.

wasps nest

About mid April Petey’s engine light came on and she started running roughly. I parked her and since then have logged about 500 miles on my bike, Draftless, commuting to work. Add in a couple of weekend rides and I am probably over 600.
This week alone I have commuted an all-time high 140 miles.
All of this is to celebrate Bike To Work Month, and to get ready for the Seattle To Portland classic double century ride in July.
You can see my stats (along with the rest of my company) online for a while at http://www.cbcef.org/contest/btw_report_riderstripsdaysmiles.cfm?contest=13&orgid=2038

Ye olde Darby

While The Mommy and Emma slept, Abby and I watched The Kentucky Derby. This is a household tradition from way back. My brother has some details on his blog and BopOp as well. I still remember 1981 and Pleasant Colony. I remember Easy Goer vs Sunday Silence. I remember the fun and the heartbreak of Barbaro. I remember many of the jockeys and all of the 10 cent bets. I remember that we have missed a few here and there and the following disappointment at not paying close enough attention to “popular culture”.
Well we didn’t miss it this weekend and a simple statement made by Abby changed the goal I think

‘Let me ‘splain…No, there is too much; Let me sum up.’

Abby picked the Derby winner, and while he was winning I was pointing out her horse amidst a field of brown, black, and multicolored jockeys letting her know that he was in prime striking position. Then in the homestretch she was uber excited watching ‘her horse’ race for the wire. It was harder to keep an eye on her, with all the jumping around, than it was to locate her horse in the field.

Is he winning!? Is that Big Brown!? He’s winning!?! He’s WINNING!!

She was ecstatic when he crossed the line.
Then she was near to tears moments later because of the filly, Eight Belles, euthanized on the track with two broken legs despite a gamey second place finish.
We had a long talk.
Later, when The Mommy was awake Abby broke the news:

Do you wanna cry first or cheer first?
Ahh, cry first? Cause I wanna cheer later.
Ok. [flatly] Your horse died.
[you see Eight Belles was The Mommy’s horse and so a lot of ‘really? yes. descriptions of conditions; then really? yes. Died Died? yes, died died. and some tears welling up ensued and then]
Now do you wanna cheer?!
Well yeah.
My horse WON!!

But earlier, on the phone with Monya, the comment that changed the paradigm:

Hello?
Yeah, Gramma, my horse won.
[…]
Yeah.
[…]
Yeah.
[…]
Yeah, I was sad too. I almost cried.
[…]
Yeah.
[…, …, …]
No, I think I get maybe a trophy or something.

The question was “did you win a lot of money?” because we traditionally bet $.10 on our horse and the winner (or closest to the winner) takes all.
But I propose a new prize, a trophy. One each for the Kentucky Derby, The Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes. All of the rest of the rules (that we have built up over the years) apply but the winner gets the trophy for that race for the year and turns it over to the winner the following year. A triple crown could potentially rest all three trophy’s in somebody’s house for a year.

The $.10 bet was always token yet I recall as a 10 year old the import behind losing that $.10. It was tough. So this, I think, takes the money thing out of it and makes it somehow better, with a growing history of winners.
Leave it to a 5 year old to change a 25+ year tradition for the better.

Not un. Twos!

I am very late in getting the visuals (or even for that matter the verbals) of this big day up for everyones viewing pleasure, I apologize. Come to think of it, I am not as utterly late as I am with the Christmas DVD, so you might count yourself lucky in that regard.

Let’s just say that Emma looked forward to her birthday for weeks and weeks. We may have had some small part to play in building the anticipation. She was even singing the song to herself for many days.

When the day finally arrived for the party she was a little gun-shy with the small crowd we assembled. We intentionally kept the group smaller for her sake, as she seems a bit edgy in rooms full of people so we made the tough call and kept the gig to just parents, grandparents, and immediate parental siblings (and families). It was a good size for Emma and she warmed up quickly, after she woke up from her ‘hewg’ nap.
I think we all agreed that she got her fill of Ariel, Elmo cake, and playing with all of her many boy cousins. We had water balloon experiments (remember that one day in early April that was 80 ºF? Yeah, the party was that day), feats of strength, dancing, contests of skill whereby one tried to spill the least amount of water from two full cups whilst hopping from one circle to the next.
It was a very invigorating event and everyone had their own methods. In the end Emma just showed us how much it all mattered as she hopped a few times and then poured out both cups happily in the lawn. That was more fun.
She is putting together complicated sentences and even describing events that happened six months ago with words that she can only now say. Amazing how the mind works.
So, now she is “twos” and not “un” anymore. With the help of her sister she is going on about…oh…twelve.

Here we see her cake, in the style of Elmo’s World. It was crafted fastidiously by The Mommy with much skill and even more fondant. 🙂

Dah Da dah da Melmo's world!

baoons!

Twos! [blink blink]

Lastly, perhaps the most commonly sung song in the world. And no I am not paying royalties. Observe how The Wee One deftly handles the cake bringing the candle to within striking range. (1MB video)

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