Any word on Jess?
Any word on Jon's painting?
I'm going to Rob Winn's wedding this weekend.
And then Betsy and I are going away next weekend for our 5th anniversary.
And I'm still on the verge of starting a company, but things keep slowing me down. Hopefully I'll get fired or laid off soon so that I don't have any other excuses.
"Play?"
I enjoyed Over the Hedge very much! My sister-in-law and I went to see it today. It's very visually pleasing. I enjoyed the slow-mo scene with Hammy.
Anyway, go see it.
My mom's going tomorrow.
And Mo's by-line looks very important.
I'm glad I know her, because that makes me famous (a little?)
In case anyone didn't get this email from Tiffany...
Hello all I just tried to send you a message from my Dartmouth account but I don't think it worked, so I'm trying again. I'm sorry if you get this twice. I don't know how many of you know that Jess is having surgery tomorrow. She hurt her knee again last month. Luckily, not her ACL this time, but they think it's probably a torn meniscus. This will be her fifth knee surgery. She's trying to have a good outlook, but it's been hard. She'll be completely off her feet (confined to her apartment) for probably two weeks, and then will have 2-3 months of recovery/therapy, depending on what they find in the surgery. I think she would appreciate any thoughts, messages, cards, etc. that you could send her way over the next weeks and months. If you need her address/phone number, just let me know. Her mom was planning to come in today and stay until Saturday. Thanks all, Tiffany
Yes, this blog is viewable by anyone on the Internet, but I highly doubt anyone comes here randomly. Only members can post.
I can't stop listening to the new Tool album. The new Pearl Jam is pretty good too.
stare like a junkie into the tv
1. No recent painting, but there are some exciting developments. The wood flooring is going in as we speak in the upstairs hallway, the deck is being started this Saturday, and the baseboards around the living/dining room (along with a few other odd jobs) are going in a couple weekends from now.
2. I was born at the end of July, so perhaps there is a corollary to the Christmas candy hypothesis that involves Thanksgiving cranberry mousse and pumpkin pie.
3. I am 42 beers in to my 100-beer World Tour of Beers. Ohio has done me proud. In addition to the phenomenal Great Lakes beers, another fantastic beer on the tour is the Hippie Pale Ale, a product of Buckeye Brewing Company in nearby Bedford Heights, OH.
4. Actually, my parents have four kids. They were born at the end of june, end of july, beginning of august, and mid-september. So, I think we need to also add Halloween candy to the hypothesis.
Yes, I am a proud Sept 15 baby. Unfortunately, I also have the additional confirmation that I was conceived on NYE. Since I am certain my parents only "did it" (huh, huh, he said "did it") 5 times, NYE is the only possible date for conception. Now, no more talk of periods and such. I want to hear more about Jon painting walls. It's fascinating.
I respectfully disagree with Dr. Mazzucco. Based on the standard method of calculating a due date from last menstrual period (called Naegele's rule), you subtract three months and add 1 week to the first date of the last menstrual period to get the due date. So, for example, if your last period started on December 11 or 12, your due date would be September 18 or 19, and you are likely to have conceived on December 25 or 26. All this assumes a regular 28 day cycle. This means that if Dan's actual due date was October 1, he was conceived on or around January 6. Let's all take a moment of silence in honor of that special event.
Perhaps this is too much information for most people. However, when you spend 8 years and $100000 on your education and spend your days with small children, you have to exercise your unused knowledge when the opportunity arises.
1) Devon, I'm sorry to hear about your back pain. Lower back pain is often refeered to as the worst pain that will never kill you, and for good reason. We'll be praying for your healing and coping.
2) Giving your kids nebulizers is the worst. Shannon, we had to do it a few times with Wesley, and it was really hard. We now have to give him Albuterol occasionally, and it's really hard even to accept that he has asthma. In some ways, I feel at fault b/c I have asthma and I feel like I passed on poor lung function to him (FYI, I didn't have asthma in college). I hope you never have to do that again.
3) The true "New Year's baby" syndrome is oft-confused. There is a clear glut in births around Oct 1 (my birthday, 9 months after NY day). For example, Kevin is Sept 30 and Khoa is Oct. 2. However, as I learned when Betsy was pregnant with Aidan, the 40 weeks gestation or 9 months is from start of last menstrual period, and assumes ~two weeks from start of menstrual period until ovulation (and conception). When you get an ultrasound date, it tends to be based upon characteristic anatomical dimensions (orthopedic, not genitourinary; Rob, get your mind out of the gutter), so hopefully it corrects somewhat for the variability in time from menstruation to conception. In any case, gestation is approximately 38 weeks after conception, so Kevin and Khoa and I were conceived approximately mid January (assuming we were not preemies). Buttercup Doucet and Tyrone Papsdorf, however, were most likely conceived on or about new years'. Since Anne didn't actually attend New Years', it probably occurred soon after. Rob, get your mind out of the gutter again. Aren't Rob and Maurissa mid-september babies, as well?
This brings us back to the question of the Oct 1 glut. I've started to formulate rediculous theories about people re-evaluating their families near the end of season holidays, and of Christmas cany putting women on a more consistent schedule beginning in the new year (similar effects have been shown in all-girls dorms).
4) Again, there is no 4.
I don't know if I already mentioned this or not, but Devon has a herniated disc (L5) with a tear in it. At least that's the initial results from the MRI (taken 3 weeks after realizing that something was VERY wrong with her back). She's able to walk and get around now, but sitting is not a recommended part of the daily routine - only reclined positions.
As one might expect, the military hospital system blows. They have yet to give her more than 72hrs off of work at time (Devon just hasn't gone in to work these last 3 weeks though). We're working on getting her convalescent leave. Her command isn't much help yet - they haven't bothered telling her to forget about coming in until she's better. At best, her supervisor tells her how much work is piling up. Things are getting sorted out I guess, but it can be frustrating for her, and in turn, for me too.
She has an appointment with a neurologist next Tuesday, the 30th, to get a specialist's opinion on the MRI. We'll just go from there. We also had to cancel our Switzerland trip after graduation. Somehow, many hours on the plane and hiking around the Alps didn't seem appropriate.
Lincoln, Devon knows your pain...
Oh, and the cable company finally cut off our free cable. It took 19 months for them to figure it out. We're suddenly dependent on Blockbuster Online for video entertainment.
1) Re: OtH - Betsy and I saw it Friday. It was the best (and only) movie we saw in the theater this year. I particularly liked Hammy and the energy drink scene. And of course, seeing Maurissa Horwitz listed as 1st Assistant Editor.
2) Re: announcements - It's probably not easy for people who don't go calling people every day to call everyone and tell them big news, so it's better to be on the blog than not at all. That said, Lincoln probably should have called me about the engagement and emailed me to ask me to fill out a stupid form so he could take the bar (instead of vice versa).
3) Re: bars - I'm taking the patent bar, so I'm sort of commiserating with the rest of you taking exams. However, I'm aiming to get as close to a failing grade without actually failing, so it makes studying a little more complex. I'm also getting more time with my family than some others have had, so I'm thinking the patent bar is easier than the more general law bar.
4) There is no 4.
Hi all,
Kevin is up at Dartmouth tonight for the AQ Trustees and Overseers weekend, and both of my kids are asleep. I just sat down to a bowl of cereal for dinner (truly one of life's simple pleasures).
Nothing really exciting to report here. I got Mary Grace her first pair of scissors this week, and she has gotten quite proficient with them. I didn't realize that it's not exactly intuitive to use scissors, but she figured it out. She seems to be a leftie (like me), but prefers to use scissors with her right hand (also like me). Also, I had to give Christian a nebulizer treatment in the pediatrician's office this week, which was among the most miserable 20 minutes of my life. I know there are some of you out there who can sympathize.
As for where the smiling faces of my darling children went, Kevin thought it was a bad idea to have their pictures on a blog that can be accessed by the general public. I don't really understand why it's so bad, but perhaps I just don't have enough appreciation for the creeps in the world, so I defer to his judgement.
Kristin, hang in there with studying for the boards. Total misery, and the vast majority of the material will have exited your brain by the time you leave the testing room and you will never need it again.
I need to go on record with something, and request an informal poll. I take exception to the recent practice of posting major life-changing events on this blog. I mean, we have known each other for more than ten years, and I have learned about babies and engagements on the blog of all places. I am strongly against this practice. Opinions?
Our numbers are growing!! It's exciting. No offense intended to Jon or Jill, but isn't it fun to hear about people other than the three of us? (although, I still love hearing about your lives...truly!) I'm happy that the other BLDers have amended their ignoring ways and joined our ranks. Not much new here, just (not) studying for the boards. Doug, I have a lyric for you. Gotta say, I love this guy. I'll let you figure it out, but when you do, download the song. It's Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen rolled into a youngster (my opinion). This song, in particular, is one that I love, because it (to me) makes the point of you can argue from the left, the right, this religion, that religion, but in the end, it's individual people we are losing and isn't that sad? Anyway, anything to avoid RNA transcription reading, I suppose.
Peter said to Paul you know all those words we wrote Are just the rules of the game and the rules are the first to go
Thanks, Hurst, for filling me in on the fact that I've been missing everything by not blogging. (I sometimes have trouble finding time to check my e-mail once a week, so don't expect me to comment on a regular basis, though.)
Congratulations! To Lincoln and Laura, to the Papsdorfs and Doucets, to Mo for her movie, Rob for his job, and anyone else that I may have forgotten (I'm still working through all the past postings.)
Our family is doing well. Chad and I got away for the weekend for our anniversary last month, which was so nice. We hadn't spent a night without the girls since Caitlyn was born. My mom met us and took the girls, and then the girls and I went to Ohio for the week to see my family. It was a nice trip, but we all came back sick, thanks to my sister and her kids, and it took us a week to recover. Oh well.
The girls are great. Amanda is very excited to be getting a new, big bed this weekend. The girls are moving from a crib and toddler bed into bunk beds (we're not bunking them), which I am not ready for. My sister-in-law is moving away this week and she's giving us her twins' beds. Amanda will be fine, but I not looking forward to having Caitlyn in a bed that she can get into and out of by herself. It promises to be a rough week (or month).
That's all the excitement here for now. It's great to hear how everyone is doing.
Tiffany
Hello all. I thought I'd post something that had nothing to do with working on my house. I got back Monday night from a glorious 4+ days in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. Hillary and I went down there for a mini-vacation and stayed with her grandmother (who is a very cool lady, I must say). It was gorgeous - 75 to 80 degrees and perfectly clear skies the entire time we were there. On Sunday, we went sailing. Despite the fact that I battled sea-sickness for about an hour of the trip, it was awesome. I got to see many dolphins swimming and playing around, which was spectacular. I've only seen dolphins at Sea World. Speaking of which, my childhood awe of what the Sea World trainers got the dolphins to do has diminished substantially. Those dolphins do jumps and tricks on their own in the wild.
Anyway, it was great to get out of the office, even if it was just for a few days. Plus, all it has done in Cleveland is rain for the past week, so it was especially gratifying to be in nice weather for a bit.
Hmmm.... maybe we should have BLD New Years in California...
especially when you've been waiting over a year for an incompetent building management company to fix it...
here comes the rain again
I was going to post them right on the BLD blog, but since Doug beat me to it, you'll have to go to Caleb's blog to see them (and some other fun pictures of Caleb, of course).
Baby Papsdorf is due Sept 18 and Baby Doucet is due Sept 19. Anyone want to take bets on who shows up first? I'd like to think I have the upper hand since this is baby #2, but Caleb was about a week late so I won't get too confident.
Anyone have good ideas on where to buy a toddler bed?
I've just been uber-lazy lately. And I think Anne deleted your email because she didn't recognize the email address. Either that or it was routed to her spam folder for reasons known only to AOHell. I will now get off my butt and forward your email to her.
As for the Habs, they deserved better. I thought they played very well; those last 4 games could have gone either way. The turning point of the series was when Laviolette finally decided to replace Gerber with Cam Ward. He didn't win the series for them single-handedly, but if it hadn't been for him, they never would have had a chance. Still, Carolina was extremely lucky to win 4 games in a row by a single goal, 2 of them in overtime. In a series that close, whichever team gets the bounces usually wins. It's just the way hockey works most of the time.
and it's all right where it belongs
Okay, so I haven't exactly checked this blog since about February and my head is now overloaded with the shock of all this happy news. Congratulations to everyone, particularly Doug and Lincoln, since I'm only caught up on the last couple of weeks of blogging and will take a while to catch up on the rest.
Thank you everyone for your support for "Over the Hedge". It opens May 19th (yes same day as Da Vinci Code and sadly, a week before Xmen which I'm sure will slaughter us). Anyway, I actually think it's a pretty great little movie and truly, highly recommend it. I didn't go to the premiere b/c they flew me to a couple of film festivals to screen it. Actually that weekend I got to take it to the Indianapolis International Film Festival - not the most pretigious, true, but lots of fun for me because my parents and friends from high school got to see it a little early. To celebrate the end of the project, I'm going to Australia for 2 weeks mid-June, which I'm really looking forward to it. Sadly my boyfriend can't go with me ($$$), so my mom's going to come. Hopefully the mother-daughter voyage won't end in a murder-suicide, but I feel pretty confident that we'll have fun together.
Well I don't really have any exciting big news, aside from finally coming up for air after a crazy 3 years on this movie. And then I'll be diving back in again sometime after I get back from Australia. All my best to all of you. I'd like to say I won't go MIA like this again, but I think we all know that's a lie. =) Miss you all!
I really wanted to call all of you, but I don't have many people's numbers and it's already so late in the game and I feel more guilty about not having told you than I do about not calling and it's been driving me nuts that most of you don't know yet and I really really hope you're not mad I didn't call, because you guys are all so important to me and, and... I've been procrastinating as usual. I'm really sorry. 8(
But I'm so excited!! It's going to be a girl!
she's an extraordinary girl in an ordinary world
I have been called "special" before, but not in the way you meant it I think. Thanks for building up, not tearing down Josh. hehe.. Shan, there's a little graphic that looks like a photo above the link "Recover post" when you are typing your post. Click on that and load your picture... I uploaded a late submission from the holidays.
Speaking of being special - I won a prize in the raffle after the golf tournament last Friday. It just happened to be a Wine Lover's Basket of assorted bottles of wine and wine-related items. It was all Gallo stuff donated by one of the alums who works there. So now I have Gallo jockwear and some extra wine. I am special. And I'm special for longer than 9 seconds... Sorry, I couldn't let it go.
I have been reading the blog regularly for quite awhile, but couldn't remember my username or password. Luckily Doug knew my username and I remembered my password (it's not that difficult when you use the same password for everything).
I have had a lot of comments about posts, but it's too much, so I will let most of it go. I will agree with Kristin and Jonathan about the bar. Total misery. Kevin has taken it twice (no he didn't fail the first time, he took it in two states). I still shudder when I pass the stupid place where he took his bar review class for the VA bar. We saw each other for approximately nine seconds over the course of two months before the Virginia bar, but we managed to conceive Christian in those nine seconds, so they were clearly both productive and enjoyable.
Do you have to be special to post pictures to the blog? If so, how come Rob gets to be so special? If not, how do I do it and why aren't more people doing it?
Just thought I'd respond to a statement of Dan's...the time has passed for any Christmas babies, unless they are very very early. I know this little factoid, not because I am trying to have a baby, but because it seems that everyone I know is. If one were to conceive now, I believe we are into Feb. So, I think it's safe to say that any NYE-plan-changing babies are already incubating. Speak up!
It has come to my attention that there are certain spouses, or soon-to-be spouses, that read the blog. I'm definitely all for it. But you should have to post/contribute your insightful/witty/sarcastic/comic remarks as well. Anything is better than what Lincoln writes so it will raise the level of conversation. Petitition Ha-Doug for acceptance (Devon and Laura) and start contributing!
I'm "networking" tomorrow at the Chardonnay Golf Club in Napa. I start my day with a midterm for my class, The Business of Wine (a Viticulture and Enology class, not the B-school's class), then head to Napa for the b-school golf tournament on Gallo's nickel. That is followed by a dinner and raffle at the course before returning home. I like business much better than engineering.
Congrats to Lincoln who is done with law school. He is now officially a law-yer. Assuming he passed. Which, I guess, isn't official or certain yet. Therefore, delay your congratulations. On the other hand, I'm sure Laura passed, so feel free to congratulate her.
Back to studying wine. Mmmmmmm, wine.
Oh my goodness! What happens when I take a couple weeks to go to Spain and Portugal!
Congrats Lincoln! Couldn't happen to a better guy. I mean, if you exclude all the previous BLD men of course.
The world tour of beers is way cool! On Kauai we have a hard enough time just finding Guiness on tap! To bad they didn't mail beers to your door.
Spain and Portugal were cool. And Spanish is very cool! I hope to learn a lot more. Spanish cuisine is not very cool but it looks like the top restaurants in the world keep appearing in London and Spain (Restaurant Magazine) which I don't understand considering both places have pretty sucky local cuisine. Oh well! If your rich you get the best and if your poor you get what's left.
Cheers to Mo about the movie. I'm definitely going to see it! Especially since I haven't seen a movie in the theater since over a year ago. Sin City to be exact.
Dan...please invent a new core for surfboards. We could make millions. Something non-toxic would be best,
Congrats to Papsdorfs and the BLD Gen2.
Oh...and Spring in Cali if overrated. They're still trying to be as cool as Hawaii. Though Bogle is a decent wine and Hawaii has no decent wine. But who cares. Hawaii is still better than Cali. That's why Cali-folk keep moving here....arrrrrgh!
Love ya all!
1. The draft weekend went well. Our main guy, Donte Whitner, went higher than expected at #8. He was thrilled and so were we. Hopefully, Adam Vinatieri doesn't talk to him any time soon.
2. I was wondering if Over the Hedge was the movie Mo worked on for the last seven years. I will definitely go see it now.
3. Dan called me twice this weekend, but I only called him back once, so I owe him a phone call. The second time he called me was on Sunday in the early evening. I was in the midst of trying to sign all of our guys who didn't get drafted. It was crazy. At once point, even though I was constantly on the phone or answering call waiting, I had 8 new voice messages because I just couldn't get to them. It was great fun, even if a bit stressful, but I still would have rather talked to Dan.
4. The Indians are infuriating, as usual.
5. I am not clamoring to get New Years. Like I've said before, I just thought it would be a good place to host since we really have two houses. But if someone else has a compelling interest in having it elsewhere and people would rather do that, it's fine with me. That being said, my mom mentioned to me again this weekend that she hopes New Years is in Cleveland so she can get all the baby toys down from the attic. She is in serious "I want to be a grandmother" mode. Sorry, mom. I am definitely NOT helping out in that area at the moment.
6. In keeping you all apprised (yawn) of my house progress, I managed to remove all of the wallpaper in my master bedroom while watching 57,000 hours of the draft this weekend. At least I found a way to be productive.
It's out, it's out!!! Over the Hedge premiered last night. Alert: ALL BLDers must support Mo by going to see this movie. Even Gen2s need to go.
ps. Mo, you have to tell us if you met Brooke Shields...I noticed she attended the premier
