Kevin (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} kworces) wrote,@ 2006-07-23 19:49:00 |
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General Stuff
I haven't had an update on here in... well... forever. New car, heat wave,baby toddler updates, Talmud reflections--all behind the cut.
Also, some home-grown herb questions (of the completely legal variety) for the culinarily inclined.
It's a long post, so I put headers on everything in case you just want to skip to the part of the teaser you're interested in.
New Car
So I finally decided to ditch the Saturn SL2. I put $3000 in repairs into the thing in the last 9 months and that pretty much sealed the deal. It's been nothing but trouble since the warranty expired.
The new Car? Honda Civic LX Automatic, Shoreline Mist. Everyone I've talked to who has owned a Honda Civic says they never have any problems with them. And that's just what I want, something that just works.
Back in 2000 when I bought my first car I was debating between the Civic and Saturn SL2. I went with the Saturn because I just felt like the SL2 drove the way I expected--it was just "more fun". It stopped being fun when I had to pay $1000 in repairs every 6 months.
Heat Wave
It was 106 in San Jose when I was at the Honda Lot today, and it was still pretty busy there. The salesman I spoke with said they were less busy due to the heat, but they still had plenty of customers coming by the lot.
At the apartment we've been trying to avoid using the air conditioning. We'll turn on fans and just use the AC during dinner time. With temperatures over 100 yesterday and today we just broke down and started using the AC any time it got uncomfortable, which was pretty much all day yesterday and all afternoon today.
I'm not used to using AC in California. I guess I'm not living on the coast any more... :-)
Every day the weather forecast says it's going to cool down 10 degrees over the next two days. The forecast has been saying that for 1 1/2 weeks now. Someone needs to give this high pressure area a ticket for loitering.
On the plus side, I'm just now feeling my first cool breeze since Thursday. I suppose that's progress.
The Adventures of Monkey Boy (toddler update)
The little guy isn't dealing well with the heat. That's one of the main reasons why we're running the AC. Need to make sure he stays cool and hydrated. The news keeps talking about how California is setting records for energy usage. So every time we have a brown-out (3 times now) I worry that the power may not come back on. Sure we could abandon the apartment and go to the mall, but apparently the nearest mall (oakridge) blew a transformer today, so that's not a 100% reliable solution.
For those who haven't seen him in a while (or ever, in some cases) he's walking really well. He's been cruising since December, and taking steps since April. But he first started really walking when we flew out to PA for B&S's wedding... at the Philadelphia airport, in fact.
Air travel with a young child was... interesting (in the Chinese proverb sense). All in all he did pretty well but we did have some difficulties. The fortunate thing was we were able to wear him out before the first flight and during our layover for the second flight. So he slept almost the whole way on each flight of the trip out to PA.
The night before we returned he started vomiting, he couldn't even keep breast milk down. The doctor on call said to give him a couple tablespoons of water every half hour. After 8 hours he could start on other fluids and then work his way back up to real meals. The morning of the return flights he seemed to be doing better--until he had his pears. The pears ended up on the Philadelphia airport carpet. So on both flights back we had a young child with an empty stomach who couldn't have anything but a couple ounces of water to drink at a time.
It's one thing to deny him something he wants a get a tantrum or a "why are you doing this to me?" pathetic reaction. It's totally different when he's completely exhausted, extremely thirsty, has an empty stomach and doesn't understand why he's being tortured by his parents with only 2 tablespoons of water. The look of confusion and betrayal was heart-breaking.
We get back to CA, he gets back onto his regular foods, and then two days later it happens again. Strangely enough the doctor insists that these two episodes within 1 week are almost certainly unrelated. It's something viral that he caught, cleared out of his system, and then another bug that he caught. He said the only other thing that it could really be would be food allergies or dehydration. He didn't have any signs of dehydration and hadn't had any new foods (the second time) so it must have been viral.
He's talking now and the only words he uses that are completely distinguishable are "yes" and "no". He uses "no", much more frequently. You'd think that would be the one word he heard all the time...
Anyways, the kid doctor says that signs of the terrible two's start around 18 months. Apparently our little one is strong-willed enough that his terrible two's started at 15 months.
[Condensed] Talmud Reflections
Anyways, with the heat being as bad as it was we weren't willing to go venturing out into the wild world of San Jose over the weekend. So on Saturday I parked myself on the couch in front of the AC to finish my book.
A few weeks ago I was looking for books on Jewish theology... something that would give me a good Jewish overview of Jewish scriptures, just by way of contrast to the Christian interpretation I'm familiar with from church, university classes, Christian scholarly texts, and personal study. Someone recommended (somewhat facetiously) "The Talmud"; then more seriously "Everyman's Talmud" by Abraham Cohen. It's a condensed overview of the Talmud, organized into major themes.
It was a fascinating (though occasionally tedious) read. It was interesting to see the dialog of differing views between various Rabbinical traditions. Also there was a bit of a cautionary tale about inflexible scriptural interpretations and dogma (re: the disappearance of the Sadducees).
One thing is for certain: I could never be a serious talmud scholar. For my taste there was far too much emphasis on out-of-context quotation, Hebrew-specific meaning (down to relying on the spelling of words to draw out meaning), and general semantic juggling. Things that roughly translate to using "There's no I in TEAM" as a proof text.
Cooking / Grilling / Herbs
We picked up a grill right before Memorial day. We used it three times before the 4th of July. Then 5 times over the weekend of the 4th. And pretty much every day for the last two weeks because it's been too hot to run the oven (just keeps coming back to the heat).
I picked up some Santa Maria Style tri-tip seasoning (because NO ONE in San Jose does it right). It seems the Santa Maria Style seasoning is actually very simple (salt, pepper, garlic powder, dried parsley), but I need a control sample for my own seasoning experiments.
If anyone has any interesting grill ideas they'd like to share I would love to hear them.
Back to the heat wave, I've decided to make an extra effort to help stop global warming--reduce CO2 by starting an herb garden. I'm pretty sure I use oregano and parsley often enough to grow my own. Anyone out there have other suggestions for herbs you like and what you use them for? Also, which herbs have you had the most/least success with growing your own?
So... yeah... aside from work stuff I can't talk about that pretty much catches everyone up on what's been going on.
Anyone actually read that whole thing?
I haven't had an update on here in... well... forever. New car, heat wave,
Also, some home-grown herb questions (of the completely legal variety) for the culinarily inclined.
It's a long post, so I put headers on everything in case you just want to skip to the part of the teaser you're interested in.
New Car
So I finally decided to ditch the Saturn SL2. I put $3000 in repairs into the thing in the last 9 months and that pretty much sealed the deal. It's been nothing but trouble since the warranty expired.
The new Car? Honda Civic LX Automatic, Shoreline Mist. Everyone I've talked to who has owned a Honda Civic says they never have any problems with them. And that's just what I want, something that just works.
Back in 2000 when I bought my first car I was debating between the Civic and Saturn SL2. I went with the Saturn because I just felt like the SL2 drove the way I expected--it was just "more fun". It stopped being fun when I had to pay $1000 in repairs every 6 months.
Heat Wave
It was 106 in San Jose when I was at the Honda Lot today, and it was still pretty busy there. The salesman I spoke with said they were less busy due to the heat, but they still had plenty of customers coming by the lot.
At the apartment we've been trying to avoid using the air conditioning. We'll turn on fans and just use the AC during dinner time. With temperatures over 100 yesterday and today we just broke down and started using the AC any time it got uncomfortable, which was pretty much all day yesterday and all afternoon today.
I'm not used to using AC in California. I guess I'm not living on the coast any more... :-)
Every day the weather forecast says it's going to cool down 10 degrees over the next two days. The forecast has been saying that for 1 1/2 weeks now. Someone needs to give this high pressure area a ticket for loitering.
On the plus side, I'm just now feeling my first cool breeze since Thursday. I suppose that's progress.
The Adventures of Monkey Boy (toddler update)
The little guy isn't dealing well with the heat. That's one of the main reasons why we're running the AC. Need to make sure he stays cool and hydrated. The news keeps talking about how California is setting records for energy usage. So every time we have a brown-out (3 times now) I worry that the power may not come back on. Sure we could abandon the apartment and go to the mall, but apparently the nearest mall (oakridge) blew a transformer today, so that's not a 100% reliable solution.
For those who haven't seen him in a while (or ever, in some cases) he's walking really well. He's been cruising since December, and taking steps since April. But he first started really walking when we flew out to PA for B&S's wedding... at the Philadelphia airport, in fact.
Air travel with a young child was... interesting (in the Chinese proverb sense). All in all he did pretty well but we did have some difficulties. The fortunate thing was we were able to wear him out before the first flight and during our layover for the second flight. So he slept almost the whole way on each flight of the trip out to PA.
The night before we returned he started vomiting, he couldn't even keep breast milk down. The doctor on call said to give him a couple tablespoons of water every half hour. After 8 hours he could start on other fluids and then work his way back up to real meals. The morning of the return flights he seemed to be doing better--until he had his pears. The pears ended up on the Philadelphia airport carpet. So on both flights back we had a young child with an empty stomach who couldn't have anything but a couple ounces of water to drink at a time.
It's one thing to deny him something he wants a get a tantrum or a "why are you doing this to me?" pathetic reaction. It's totally different when he's completely exhausted, extremely thirsty, has an empty stomach and doesn't understand why he's being tortured by his parents with only 2 tablespoons of water. The look of confusion and betrayal was heart-breaking.
We get back to CA, he gets back onto his regular foods, and then two days later it happens again. Strangely enough the doctor insists that these two episodes within 1 week are almost certainly unrelated. It's something viral that he caught, cleared out of his system, and then another bug that he caught. He said the only other thing that it could really be would be food allergies or dehydration. He didn't have any signs of dehydration and hadn't had any new foods (the second time) so it must have been viral.
He's talking now and the only words he uses that are completely distinguishable are "yes" and "no". He uses "no", much more frequently. You'd think that would be the one word he heard all the time...
Anyways, the kid doctor says that signs of the terrible two's start around 18 months. Apparently our little one is strong-willed enough that his terrible two's started at 15 months.
[Condensed] Talmud Reflections
Anyways, with the heat being as bad as it was we weren't willing to go venturing out into the wild world of San Jose over the weekend. So on Saturday I parked myself on the couch in front of the AC to finish my book.
A few weeks ago I was looking for books on Jewish theology... something that would give me a good Jewish overview of Jewish scriptures, just by way of contrast to the Christian interpretation I'm familiar with from church, university classes, Christian scholarly texts, and personal study. Someone recommended (somewhat facetiously) "The Talmud"; then more seriously "Everyman's Talmud" by Abraham Cohen. It's a condensed overview of the Talmud, organized into major themes.
It was a fascinating (though occasionally tedious) read. It was interesting to see the dialog of differing views between various Rabbinical traditions. Also there was a bit of a cautionary tale about inflexible scriptural interpretations and dogma (re: the disappearance of the Sadducees).
One thing is for certain: I could never be a serious talmud scholar. For my taste there was far too much emphasis on out-of-context quotation, Hebrew-specific meaning (down to relying on the spelling of words to draw out meaning), and general semantic juggling. Things that roughly translate to using "There's no I in TEAM" as a proof text.
Cooking / Grilling / Herbs
We picked up a grill right before Memorial day. We used it three times before the 4th of July. Then 5 times over the weekend of the 4th. And pretty much every day for the last two weeks because it's been too hot to run the oven (just keeps coming back to the heat).
I picked up some Santa Maria Style tri-tip seasoning (because NO ONE in San Jose does it right). It seems the Santa Maria Style seasoning is actually very simple (salt, pepper, garlic powder, dried parsley), but I need a control sample for my own seasoning experiments.
If anyone has any interesting grill ideas they'd like to share I would love to hear them.
Back to the heat wave, I've decided to make an extra effort to help stop global warming--reduce CO2 by starting an herb garden. I'm pretty sure I use oregano and parsley often enough to grow my own. Anyone out there have other suggestions for herbs you like and what you use them for? Also, which herbs have you had the most/least success with growing your own?
So... yeah... aside from work stuff I can't talk about that pretty much catches everyone up on what's been going on.
Anyone actually read that whole thing?
