Friday, December 30, 2005

Sex and Presents (no, not what you think)

Is it a boy or girl?

Elaine doesn't want to know the sex of our baby until it's born, whereas I want to use all the fancy new gadgets we can and find out as soon as possible. It's kind of like opening Christmas presents, I always want to open a few presents early, but save the big presents for Christmas day. Elaine prefers to not open any presents early (although sometimes she indulges me). Finding out the sex of our baby is just like opening a little present early, and we still get the big present when the baby's born. (I guess it's a bit more like carefully peaking inside your big present early, trying not to tear any of the paper so your parents won't find out, but I did that too as a kid, so the analogy still works. I just hope it's not like opening presents this year, since we've waited untill five days after Christmas to open presents, which pleases my sister to no end, but drives me a little batty).

It used to be that expectant parents didn't have a choice, you simply had to wait 'till the baby was born to find out if it was boy or girl. Now with the advent of sonography, 3D ultrasound, and even 4D ultrasound, not only can you find out the sex of your baby early, you almost can't avoid it. Old sonograms required some skill to determine exactly what you were looking at, so it wasn't too difficult to ask the doctors and nurses to simply not tell you. But some new technology makes the sex of your baby blatantly obvious.

So what are we going to do? Well, we don't have to decide for a few more months, but the plan is that we'll ask the doctors and nurses to not tell us the sex of the baby when we have the sonogram, but if we figure it out ourselves, that's okay. We might even post the picture to the blog and let all of you way in on what sex you think the baby is, but that will have to wait for another post.

Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Solving the World's Energy Crisis

While the price of a barrel of oil is beginning to fall from the $70 peak in August, and in real terms it is still well short of the historical high, today's high energy prices combined with the threat of global climate change make research into alternative sources of energy ever more important. In the field of climate change it is widely regarded that there is no technology silver bullet that will stabilize greenhouse gas emissions, instead many different technologies must each contribute their own "wedge." This Christmas in Dallas, Elaine and I discovered what could be the latest "wedge" for dealing with the energy crisis and climate change: Olivia, Maura, and Sam Zimmerman!

Our nieces and nephew possess a boundless amount of energy that has already been proven capable of running me ragged and powering a light bulb (in the form of l.e.d.'s encased in their shoes). With a few R&D dollars, we can turn their sweet cries of "dance dance uncle Allen," and "another horsey ride uncle Allen," into light sweet crude. Now using children for energy often conjures up images of large scale hamster wheel generators, but with a little extra capital expenditure we can capture the energy of child friendly "free range" play by installing piezoelectric floors or some other such device.

All kidding aside, our last Christmas in Dallas before Mike and Ginny retire to Iowa was truly wonderful (and I have a feeling it was probably the Zimmerman clan's last 80 degree Christmas). The whole family was there, and we all had a great time playing with the kids and catching up with each other. We had some wonderful meals, ate too much delicious home-made candy, visited the Aquarium at the Texas State Fair, and had a very merry Christmas.

(click here to see all the pictures, or here for the slideshow)

Monday, December 19, 2005

Don't Ask Don't Tell

If you look at the calendar you'll probably notice that the current date and the date of this post don't quite match. That's because as I sit here writing this, we still aren't telling people yet. By the time you read this, hopefully (knock on wood) the first trimester will have passed safely and we'll be ready to share the big news with our family, friends, and the whole blogosphere.

The biggest problem for us in keeping everything secret is the timing. (Well the biggest problem might be that I'm horrible at keeping secrets, but I'm trying to channel my urge to tell everyone into writing these secret posts.) How do we keep this secret over the holidays? We're going to Dallas to spend Christmas with Elaine's family, and while they might not think twice about Elaine passing on the wine at dinners, they'll probably wonder about the conspicuous lack of diet coke consumption. Last weekend we went down to Charlottesville to visit Joe and Cate, a trip we planned before we knew that Elaine was pregnant. Originally we were planning to go on some winery tours, thankfully Joe and Cate didn't mention those plans, and we certainly didn't bring them up. However, over the course of several meals and many hands of bridge they certainly noticed Elaine wasn't drinking wine with the rest of us. Now Elaine is completely conviced that there on to us.

Anyways, Elaine comes from long line of mothers that believes it's bad luck to tell anyone about a pregnancy before the first trimester is over. During labor, her grandmother still thought it was too early to tell people, and many women from that generation wouldn't even tell their husbands until they were showing, so I guess I should be happy that at least I know. Since I'm not overly superstitious I'm not too worried if people suspect before we tell them, and I'm all for waiting to tell people if if makes Elaine feel more comfortable. So until we're ready to tell everyone, I'll keep writing these posts (which I have to admit are a pretty good substitute for telling everyone I see that I'm going to be a dad) and saving them as drafts until we're ready to go live. And if anyone asks Elaine if she's pregnant, she has the perfect comeback, "Why, do I look fat?"

Sunday, December 11, 2005

+ or -

" l "

It's not a "+" but it's certainly not a "-" so what exactly does it mean?

Let me back up just a little bit. Elaine is late, but is she really "late". Yes we are "trying" but we just started, and really it's more like we stopped trying to avoid it than any real active "trying" on our part. We don't really have any pattern set forth yet to compare against, so maybe without the precise timing provided by actively avoiding, she simply is less regular. We don't have the data, and certainly haven't developed any charts or spreadsheets yet to really know how late "late" really is.

Anyways, we were sort of expecting it to take a few months, and maybe sometime after the holidays we'd be pleasantly surprised. But now, much sooner than expected, late seems like it might be turning into "late", so it's time to break out the big guns and use the test.

It's supposed to be incredibly simple, just pee on a stick, wait a couple minutes and you should see a "+" for positive or a "-" for negative. Well, we followed the directions (technically Elaine followed the directions, I didn't pee on anything) and after a few minutes we held our collective breath, looked at the results, and reached completely opposite conclusions.

The test read " l ". What's that supposed to mean, "such that", "given", "bitwise or", "vertical concatenation"? Elaine thought the test was negative and I thought the test was positive (perhaps a little bit of our underling hopes and apprehensions peaking through there). I argued that the test certainly must contain two elements: the part that forms the "-" should turn dark when it reacts with substances in any urine, as long as you pee on it you should see the horizontal bar; and the part that forms the " l " should only react with something found in the urine of pregnant women, so the combination of the two reactions, the "-" and the " l " should form the "+" of a positive test. Elaine countered, "but it's not a plus!" As a tie-breaker we called the hot-line listed on the box, and sure enough, the vertical line portion of the pregnancy test looks for the presence of beta hCG or human chronic gonadotropin in the urine. As for the horizontal line, sometimes it can be incredibly faint, and sure enough if we squinted our eyes, we could just make out the hint of a horizontal line completing the "+".

So we're going to have a baby! What do we do now?!? That'll have to wait for another post.

Monday, November 28, 2005

War Stories

One of the best parts of Thanksgiving dinner was hearing my grandfather (Pop Pop to me, Marvin Atchison to most) tell stories about his experiences during World War II. This video records his story about how he won the Silver Star fighting on the island of Saipan. (Click here to see the full video (4 min 35 sec) on Google Video.) On a more lighthearted note, in this next video Pop Pop tells the story of how he met my grandmother (Mom Mom, aka Janelda Atchison). (Click here to see the full video (5 min 4 sec) on Google Video.) Some other time I'll have to convince Pop Pop to tell the story about being shot through the neck on his 21st birthday and winning the Purple Heart. ------- update --------- Here are the full videos Silver Star Pop Pop Meets Mom Mom

Sunday, November 27, 2005

The Days After Thanksgiving

The day after Thanksgiving, Elaine and I had Mom & Don, Katherine, Adrienne, and Pop Pop over to our house to celebrate our Austin connections and watch the Texas vs. Texas A&M football game. Katherine and Adrienne decided to be a bit ornery and root for the Aggies, just because Pop Pop rooted for Miami over Virginia Tech a few weeks earlier. Fortunately their rooting wasn’t enough to prevent Texas to pull out the win and keep their undefeated record in tact. Elaine and I made pork tenderloin with cranberry sauce for dinner after the game, which we somehow managed to find room to eat after gorging ourselves the night before at Nancy & Danny’s.

On Saturday, we all went over to Mom & Don’s to meet Mom's new cat, Squirrel Nutkin; play with Katherine's dog, Tamu; eat bbq pork; and watch the Virginia Tech vs. UNC football game. Katherine, Adrienne and Darius also played the “drink a shot of vodka every time someone scores” game, which led to 10 shots and much hilarity for the rest of us. Pop Pop enjoyed the most highs and lows that resulted from the game. Katherine and Adrienne decided they needed many pictures with Pop Pop, one of which, taken by Darius involved this exchange:


Darius: “Adrienne, you’ll have to move your boob off of Pop Pop’s head for the picture.”

Pop Pop: “Darius, you talk too much.”


If that was one of the highs of the game for Pop Pop, one of the lows would have to be waking up in the middle of the night with what he thought was Katherine’s dog Tamu jumping into bed with him, only to find out that it was Darius stumbling into the wrong bedroom. Ahh … the joys of Virginia Tech drinking games.

On Sunday, the last day of our post-Thanksgiving celebrations, Elaine and I went over to 813 E. Capitol to have lunch and celebrate Dad’s 62nd birthday with Rodney, Claudine, Evelyn, Jimmy Jackson, and Merrily. Katherine, suffering the after effects of the previous night’s revelry, managed to rouse herself out of bed and make it all the way down town. She even had enough energy to give Dad his present, but as soon as the food was served, her hang-over won out and she headed back up to Silver Spring and the comfort of her own bed.


(click here to see all the pictures, or here for the slideshow)

Friday, November 25, 2005

Thanksgiving

Elaine and I ate Thanksgiving dinner at Nancy & Danny's with Pop Pop, Mom & Don, Katherine, Adrienne, Christopher and Kel. The turkey was injected with juices and delicious; the sweet potatoes were meticulously topped with marshmallows by Christopher; Elaine made a superb pumpkin pie; and Mom made her famous rolls. Pop Pop regaled us with stories from the War, including how he won his Silver Star, and how he and Mom Mom met after the War. I told Danny about my old high school friends and I would scoff at the cold and strip down in the cold and make snow angels. Danny, being a little to the left of sober, took my story as a mandate to take off his shirt in the bitter cold, claiming it was too hot outside. Of course he questioned how I could bear to be out in the heat with a sweater and jacket on, so I had to take off my shirt to cool off. Christopher of course was horribly embarrassed by the resulting picture.



(click here to see all the pictures, or here for the slideshow)
(or here to see Don's pictures)

Monday, November 21, 2005

Skating & Sculptures


Elaine and I went ice skating in the sculpture garden across from the National Archives yesterday. Were it not for a criminal lack of practice as a child (this was Elaine's third time ice skating), Elaine certainly would have been Olympic material. As it is, she just has to settle for being a graceful beginner. I on the other hand suffer from a surplus of confidence and a deficit of ability, which yielded more than a few bruises.










(click here to see all the pictures, or here for the slideshow)

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Ireland!


Taking advantage of the long weekend provided by Veteran's Day (Armistice Day in Ireland) and suprisingly cheap airfare, Elaine and I took a quick little trip to Ireland.

Getting to Dublin was a bit more adventurous than planned. For now let’s just say, never fly through O’Hare if you don’t have to, even if it would save you $400.

When we finally arrived in Dublin (10 hour late do the O’Hare debacle) we caught a bus into Dublin and tried to walk to Cassidy’s, our hotel. Unfortunately, the map I printed out telling us how to get to the hotel had the hotel in the wrong place. So we ended up walking way too far to get to where we were going. Exhausted, we collapsed for a little while on the bed before rallying and going out for a lovely dinner at Halo located in the Morrison Hotel.

The next day, we slept in, and walked through Dublin to the Guinness brewery, stopping along the way to eat lunch at Gruel, which was highly recommended by our Lonely Planet guide. The soup I had for lunch was delicious, and the Guinness brewery lived up to the hype. The story of the 9000 year lease and the cooper exhibit were highlights of the museum, but the best part was the free Guinness at the Gravity Bar with the spectacular 360 degree view of Dublin and the surrounding countryside. After the tour, we went back to hotel, grabbed our bags, and caught a Bus Eireann bus to Ennis in County Clare, where we caught a cab to Hotel Woodstock and continued catching up on our sleep.

On Saturday morning, we headed into the town of Ennis and took a Bus to the Cliffs of Moher. We lucked out on the weather, which was a bit brisk, but sunny whereas the day before the Cliffs were battered by 50 mph winds and driving rain. We had two hours to explore the Cliffs of Moher (also known as the cliffs of insanity from The Princess Bride) and really the pictures speak for themselves. After the Cliffs, we took the bus up to Galway, which was a spectacular ride through the Burren and along the coast of Galway bay. In Galway we did a little shopping, and saw a random Christmas parade. We ducked in a pub called Busker Brownes for some dinner and caught the end of a rugby match between Ireland and the legendary New Zealand All Blacks. The All Blacks won 45-7, but we did see Ireland’s only score, and even got a picture of the moment of their touchdown. After dinner we headed back to Ennis, and stumbled upon the ‘Trad Festival’ where every pub in town had live traditional Irish music. We wandered around the pubs of Ennis, and also saw the 12th century Ennis Friary.

On Sunday we traveled back east to Dublin, and stayed in the George Frederick Handel Hotel on Fishamble Street, which dates back to Viking times and is the oldest street in Dublin. While not so old itself, the Hotel’s claim to fame is that it is the building where Handel’s Messiah premiered. That evening we wandered around the pubs of Temple Bar, and enjoyed our last night in Dublin, and the next day we flew home.

(click here to see all the pictures, or here for the slideshow)