Thanksgiving, the recap

Several truly interesting things happened this holiday. I’m not sure how to accurately depict them without running several pages over, and it is way past my bedtime, but since I’ve started….

Really, the story of Thanksgiving happened earlier in that week, around Monday. That was Jacob’s special Thanksgiving Program at his school, and it was about what you’d expect from a group of two-year olds. They sang three songs, including the ever inspiring “Hello Mr. Turkey,” which really needs to be covered by some pop star. The lyrics are, approximately:

Oh hello, Mr. Turkey, how are you? (STOMP STOMP)
Oh hello, Mr. Turkey, how are you? (STOMP STOMP)
With a Gobble Gobble Gobble,
And a Waddle Waddle Waddle,
Oh hello, Mr. Turkey, how are you? (STOMP STOMP)

I get the song, except for the gratuitous stomps. Do we always greet turkeys by stomping the ground, or is that reserved for traveling salesmen? Anyway, I digress a bit.

Jacob completed the program and then was whisked off for 3 days of play at his grandparents’ house. My dad has an Ozarka water cooler bottle full of coins, and the first thing Jacob likes to do is dump them out and proceed to push them around like dirt with toy bulldozers. My dad had a Sacajawea dollar in the mix, and Jacob found it and said something approximating, “This is different.” My dad replied that it was a dollar coin. “No, dollar bill.”

Wednesday, we parted ways with RedTruck. The Ford Explorer, bought because I wanted an SUV-type vehicle, finally came to the end of the road. We acquired Homer the Blue Whale, a 2003 Honda Odyssey.

I had a grand plan to cook a turkey and lots of food for Thanksgiving. Laureen’s parents were driving up from San Antonio and returning the same day, so that meant cooking the turkey early Thursday morning. So, on Tuesday, I go get the turkey. Then Laureen reads the thawing directions: “four days in the refrigerator”. Sigh. Okay, I’ve watched Good Eats. I bought a five gallon cooler for the express purpose of turkification, so I put it to use thawing out said turkey. After an eight hour bath, we declared it thawed, or at least thawed enough. Replace the cold water with a brine, and away we go for six hours in the brine. This was the tough part, since it required waking up in the middle of the night, which is something that Laureen and I don’t particularly do well, except in the case of feeding Jessie. We at least pulled the bag with the neck and stuff out of the cavity. That was a positive move.

When we finally woke up Thanksgiving morning, we realized we didn’t have a roasting pan. Sigh. However, we did have the roaster that my parents got us last Christmas that we’d never used. Hey, it’s an extra oven! Yay! Laureen found it, and then read the directions. Since it’d never been used, it required an hour’s “smoke out” time. Sigh. By now, it was 11:45, and Oma and Opa were arriving around 1. Dinner would be 3 p.m., and that’s about the time that they needed to start BACK down the road.

12:45, I put the turkey in for the 30 minutes of blazing high heat. Laureen’s folks arrive. They play with Jessie and watch Jacob. Laureen makes a command decision to not wait on the turkey (and the sides that I hadn’t even started making, except for a delicious Saffron Aioli to go with the roasted sweet potatoes), and making the sides would require two ovens at different temperatures, thus creating a logistical nightmare in the kitchen with one oven and another roaster (currently holding a 13.83 pound mostly-thawed, mostly-brined Mr. Gobble Gobble Gobble). We get to the “low and slow” portion of cooking the turkey, so it goes back down to 350 degrees with the turkey triangle slapped on (yes, you put a double layer of aluminum foil over the breast of the turkey to prevent it from overcooking), and we locate our Thanksgiving dinner at Golden Corral.

I am thankful for places like Golden Corral, because it’s easy to feed Jacob there. They have olives, salad, pickles, tomatoes, ham, and all sorts of other things he likes to eat. I am very thankful that Laureen’s parents were able to eat with us and also enjoy the kids. Jessie was on her best behavior, and the whole trip was only marred by Jacob being overtired and tripping over the doorway on the way out. He’s a boy. Falls, spills, and scrapes happen.

We got back home, and by this time, the turkey was done. Out it comes, onto a cutting board for a rest. We sit and talk for a while; Laureen gets the pecan pie out and serves it, and then Jessie gets her first solids, fed by both Laureen and Oma. A very special treat indeed. Oma and Opa head back down to San Antonio, and we try to find ways to keep Jacob awake until bedtime. Time for Lightning McQueen and popcorn upstairs.

Friday, my folks came over. Jessie had pictures, since it was her six months’ birthday. Pictures turned out well, except for the having to wait forever and a day because of the staff Sears had, only the photographer showed any sort of competence. Dad played with Jacob and tried to get him to sleep. I went shopping with my Mom. It wasn’t as bad an experience as I’d imagined. Then again, I didn’t try to get there at 5 a.m. We had turkey sandwiches, at which point Laureen discovers that we didn’t remove the giblets from the neck cavity. Again. We’re two for two on those things. The turkey tasted pretty good, though.
Saturday was my primary day with Jacob. We woke up, went to Little Gym, went to Half-Price Books, went to Mardel (where they have a Thomas Train Table), dragged him out of Mardel, went to Babies-backwards-R-Us, and finally back to Little Gym for a birthday party. Needless to say, His Highness was tuckered out after all of the travel. Home for a nap, then back down to the kitchen to cook the Thanksgiving meal, only a few days late: Turkey, Mashed Potatoes with Roasted Garlic, Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Saffron Aioli, Green Beans with Shallots, and an Apple Sage Sausage stuffing. We all eat together, and for that, I am most thankful.

Sunday: church, playground, get food, another playground, home, nap, string up lights, eat dinner, popcorn and Cars, then work on Jessie’s calendar. We hadn’t done anything in there, and it’s hard to recall six month’s worth of grins, smiles, toes grabbed, spit ups, etc. We’ll be recalling that for a while.

So, what am I thankful for?

My family, especially my wife and kids. I thank God for their presence in my life every day.
My health.
My job.
The chance to write about stuff like this.

I’ll get the new pics up soon. I promise.

A family update

At four months, she’s 16 lb. 13 oz. She has the physical capabilities of a 6 month old. She’ll soon be supporting herself in terms of pulling up onto couches and whatnot.

Jacob is in school 3 days a week. He likes it, but he’s also ready to come home at the end of the day.

Some cute things Jacob’s done/said:

At dinner one night, we were talking, and Laureen had a dish with some lifesaver peppermints and a Dum-Dum sucker in it. Jacob had asked for candy throughout the meal, and we told him to wait until the meal was over. Laureen and I are talking about stuff, and Jacob interrupts:

“I have something to say.”

“What, Jacob?”

“I have something to say!”

“What is it?”

The next thing we hear sounds as if Jacob had auditioned for the part of Damian in The Omen: “Candy!”

He got the sucker. We nearly fell out of our chairs laughing.

—

In our house, we have a loop around the downstairs half-bathroom and the coat closet. You can go around a ring and traverse the dining room, kitchen, breakfast area, regular living room, and hallway and then wind up where you started. Jacob has a LeapFrog toy on the fridge that plays various folksy farm songs. He recently started a game of setting the music to “Skip to my Lou” and then completing a lap around the loop, winding up back at the fridge. He would do this many, many times.

On Sunday night, the game evolved. Jacob and I pretended we were train cars, shuffling our feet around the circle. He directed me, “You go that way, and I’ll go this way,” accurately pointing out the directions of travel. When we met on the other side, we would crash into each other, “hooking up” like train cars. I’d then follow him back to the kitchen, shuffling right behind him.

Up on the Roof

Typically, I try not to get overly excited about much. However, we got a box from Dish Network the other day, and when we opened it, we discovered it was… a box. To return a receiver. Joy.

So, I call Dish Network and verify that this is the box they said they’d send us, oh, LAST YEAR. The box contains several pages of instructions, along with dire warnings about how the equipment “is the property of Dish Network blah blah babycakes”. The instructions on one page say “you must return the LNBF and switch with your equipment.”

For those that don’t know (or care), the LNBF, which stands for Low Noise Block Feedhorn, is what your satellite dish curves its signals into. It takes the over-the-air electrical impulses and turns them in a signal that can be carried by a coaxial cable. Now, we had an LNBF that had two outputs. Thus, I made an assumption that they wanted me to go up on the roof and take out the LNBF. This looks like this example, except it had only two outputs, not four:

Nifty, huh? Well, this was what we charitably call a “man test”. The UPS driver had already awakened Laureen once, so I was bound and determined to get this thing off of the roof. Of course, it was also looking pretty stormy outside, but did I let that deter me? No. Did I let Laureen’s imploring cry of “You don’t need to go up there” deter me? No. Why?

Answer that, and you’ll have the genetic key to all of humanity’s foolishness. Anyway, back to the misadventure.

I knock on our neighbor’s door, since he has a ladder that actually reaches the height of the roof (which was where the dish and LNBF were in the new house). He helps me set it up, then goes back to his conference call with Japan (he works in packaging at TI, and as such he’s got strange hours with around the world suppliers). So, I figure the ladder out and set it up. The sky is getting darker, and the wind is picking up, but again, do I let that deter me? No.

I went up the ladder and proceeded to unscrew the three screws holding the LNBF onto the dish. I then unscrew the two coaxial cables from the LNBF. This is a crucial juncture in the story, and a bit of background is required.

I used to work for Nortel, and during that time, I was with the Broadband Wireless Access group. Our product there was a Point-to-Multipoint wireless system. It involved transmitters, receivers, dishes, and lots of cables. From that experience, I learned that if your cable isn’t connected to a receiver, you won’t get a signal. However, it is well known that the prospect of a man test throws a lot of common knowledge, common sense, and other critical faculties out the window, and this key bit of information about signals needing to be connected was not retained while I was on the roof.

I look at the two dangling coaxial cables, wondering where they connect to the satellite dish. There’s no obvious place, so I stuff them back up the long, skinny tube used to hold the now-removed LNBF. At this point, I wonder if I’ve just disconnected the receiver from any signal, but that’s not critical. Getting off the roof is critical. I had mispositioned the ladder going up, and now, my efforts to move that ladder to a better place were failing. I’d try to move it, and the extension would fail to re-catch, or it’d nearly slide out of my grasp. Man tests must always involve a certain amount of “hey bubba, watch me do this” — that essence of being on the verge of killing yourself through stupidity. This was now evident in my situation.

Fortunately, Laureen and Jacob come outside at that point to watch my hey bubba moment. I quickly enlisted her help in repositioning the ladder, and then I make it down safely. She then wonders why I had to do that in the first place, and oh, the satellite’s not getting a picture. I take the ladder back, and head inside. She calls DISH and asks what’s going on.

Well, it turns out that there were two specific pages of instructions. One had the “remove the LNBF now, dummy” on it, and the other page was “overall directions, including our handy asterisks pointing to 4 point type that says you don’t need to return the switch or LNBF if you’re going to only send back a receiver”. Apparently, this happens a lot to people in the DISH world, and they authorized a person to come out and reconnect it today.

Ultimately, it was a test, and I succeeded and failed. If I’d read the sheets before proceeding, I might have discovered the truth and not risked my neck, but hey, I did go up on my roof. It’s steep up there. And my ultimate prize is a resounding chorus of “I told you so” from Laureen. And she’s right.

So… what’s up?

I’ve finished reformatting all of the picture stuff on the site. We now have a webgallery section, and all of the pictures in there are chronologically dated. I’ve got some research to do to figure out if anything is missing, but so far, we’re just rolling with what we have.

Let’s see…

Me: I’m doing good, I guess. Right now, there’s about twenty things more interesting than work that I want to do, but work is something I must do. I’m trying to exercise regularly, I’m trying to eat right, etc.

Laureen: She’s doing pretty well.

Jacob: Started school again. He’s in a class where every other kid has “un” as their last syllable of their name: Caedon, Christian, Rowan, and Mason. His big achievements this week: blowing his nose on his own. I received a phone call at work about that… “I bloo BOOGERS, Dada!” He’s still scaring us with what he remembers. His great-grandmother tells the story of Jacob’s getting down from the dinner table while saying “I must take care, so I don’t lose my way.” That’s a direct quote from one of his favorite books, “New Tracks For Thomas”, but still, he’s memorizing stuff.

Jessica: She’s slightly over three months old now. She’s lifting her head up well, and she can grasp fingers and nearly pull herself up from her back. She’s got the biggest silly smile I’ve ever seen.

Everything else: life is too busy. I find myself running out of time repeatedly. Like now. Talk more later.

Okay, on we go

If you regularly view this site, you may have seen some small changes. A gallery link on the right hand side has been added, and Jacob and Jessie’s pages are now organized by month in terms of pictures. I’m still going through them and doing some editing on photos, making sure they have the right date and such. However, I’ve got most of the heavy lifting done. You can go directly to the webgallery or just simply click on the link to the right. I’ll be adding more photos once I find/recover them, and old, bad, and blurry shots are being removed.

35

Well, I’ve made it this far…

Today has not been an easy day. Jacob decided that he wanted to get up at 4:30 a.m. and play. He did play quietly in his room, except for all of the noise making books and noise puzzles we put in there. So, since Jessie was also starting to get up, I got Jacob duty. I went in there about 4:50, and we read the Thomas story about new tracks. The same story I’ve read to Jacob at least 50 times over, but hey, it’s what he wants. We then decide to go downstairs and have breakfast.

We go downstairs after a slight detour into the master bedroom to say Hi to Mom and Jessie. We then go down, and I cook his breakfast porridge. For those of you unfamiliar with Jacob’s meals, breakfast is homemade porridge combined with vitamins and some sort of yogurt bacteria, along with macerated flaxseed. We make the porridge in bulk, which involves putting 2 gallons of water on to boil, then grinding 8 cups of oats and rice. Since we don’t have a large grinder, this has to be done in several small batches. Of course, Jacob finishes his food and decides to come help.

And it’s there that I have lasting memory number one of today: Jacob and I carefully scooping oats from the measuring cup into the grinder, Jacob and I holding down the grinder’s on switch, Jacob playing with the monster whisk. I don’t know if he’ll remember today, but I will. He’s very good with tools, but he can also be “flingy” for lack of a more technical term.

We cook the porridge, which involves waiting for the water to boil, then reducing the heat, adding the ground-up grains, and stirring nearly constantly for 10 minutes. The more you stir, the less likely you’ll get lumps. Also, you have to add the grains slowly to prevent lump formation. Even then, a potato masher is a useful extra tool at this stage of the game.

Then comes the apportionment: 32 or more cup-sized servings, each with a lid. By this time, it’s 7:15 a.m., and I’ve got to start getting ready to go to work. So, it’s upstairs, with Jacob in tow, to wake up the wife but not Jessie (never an easy task). We go back downstairs, and Mama comes down to help with the packing and stacking of the porridge. Jessie decides she wants to wake up at this stage, so I go in and see her for just a little bit. We have a game of sticking our tongues out at each other and then smiling. She’s better at it than I am. After one glorious grin, I hear what sounds like a succession of tires blowing out emanating from her backside. Hmmm. No wonder she was grinning. Memory number two.
Change Jessie. Change Jacob. Get packed to go work out. Do 30 minutes on the treadmill. Work the biceps and the abs. Take a shower. Clean up. Come to work. Work hard.

And then here we are. It’s almost dinner time, and I can’t decide between Ethiopian or Cajun/Creole.

And then, tonight, sleep. Blessed, inviting, sleep. Until the next wake-up call.