Why, Blog, Why?

Dear Blog,

There's so much I have wanted to tell you over the last few months, but couldn't because things were still so uncertain and I didn't want to alarm you or any family, friends or colleagues. I think now is a good time to clear the air.

Sarah and I are very indecisive, we know this. It's not really that we can't decide out of a given set of choices, it's that we can't stop adding new choices to the pile. We suffer from a habit of trying to discover every possible outcome to a problem.

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Imagine all the kick butt cardboard rocketships we could have built when we were kids if we had Mr. McGroovy's cardboard fasteners in our toolbox!

I see one ginormous, pink cardboard castle in my daughters' future.

Cardboard castle built using Mr. McGroovy's Box Rivets

And check out this image of a rocketship built using the fasteners.

Cardboard rocketship built with Mr. McGroovy's cardboard fasteners

They have plans for all sorts of other things too! I soooooo NEED these!

(Credit where credit is due: Found via Cool Tool blog)

Can’t sleep, so I’m up surfing. I thought I may as well post some updates.

First, if you left a comment recently (a legitimate one) and it isn’t showing up you have my apologies. I just nuked 85 comments that all appeared to be spam. If yours got lost in the shuffle I apologize.

If you hadn’t heard, Sarah is pregnant with our 2nd (or 4th if you’re counting, or maybe 3rd 2nd if you want to get technical) child. If you had heard that you might not have heard that there was some concern because of some blood pouches that formed in the uterus, and while they aren’t an absolute indicator that something would go wrong, it was just one more thing to worry about. And then, if you heard both of those news items maybe you didn’t here the latest complication - that the baby might have Trisomy 18 (a.k.a. Edward’s Syndrome), which as one nurse practitioner explained is “incompatible with life”. How quaint. This concern stemmed from a cyst (specifically a choroid plexus cyst) that was found in the baby’s brain during a recent ultrasound. Ironically it was the same ultrasound that confirmed that Sarah’s body had reabsorbed the blood pouches.

This month has seen some good news after all of that though - At a follow-up ultrasound a few days later they were able to rule out Trisomy 18 with a pretty high degree of certainty (1 in 99,000). That was a huge relief. We also found out the sex of the baby which I won’t reveal here in case any of you don’t want to know, but I’d be happy to blab about it if you drop me an email to ask.

I’ve been reading a lot and listening to some fabulous sci-fi stories in podcast form. In the past few months I’ve gone through The Lock, a really great fictional read about the theories behind the Loch Ness Monster. It goes down some Darwinian lines of thinking, and there are lots of quotes from real-life biologists and naturalists. If you are into evolution and naturalism and cryptozoology then I would recommend it.

A young Canadian named Cory Doctorow has quickly become my new favorite author. I knew of him originally as a contributor to Boing Boing, a geek-news site that I read daily. I found out he was an author through Escape Pod, one of the great sci-fi podcasts, when they read one of his stories. I then started to listen to some of Cory’s own podcasts which are a mix of readings of his own stories and recordings of speeches that he has given on Digital Rights Management software/policy/legislation. Then just last weekend I picked up a short-story collection of his called A Place So Foreign and 8 More. The stories are fan-friggen-tastic and I’m just all but finished reading it already. He has a really unique style of writing in that he a.) likes to dump his readers into the middle of these strange locals and then explain them from the inside out, and b.) he uses a lot of nerd slang, techno babble and geek-speak which is at first striking and then ends up supporting the stories and characters. The stories are fun and short and, well the guy deserves all of the awards he’s gotten for writing so far.

I’m also picking through Understanding Waldorf Education, a great introduction to the principles of Waldorf education. It’s the education model that we hope to educate Maelin with. The private Waldorf schools are pricey for sure, and there aren’t many in New England, but the system really echo’s Sarah’s and my own thoughts on life and learning. I’m not well versed enough on the topic to give a detailed explanation, but in short they focus on natural, spiritual, emotional and artistic talents and try to get students to focus on things that they aren’t already good at (i.e. get the athletes to paint and the painters to play). The schools are in beautiful locations to boot.

And then there’s the Bill Bryson book that I’m reading called A Short History of Nearly Everything. Unlike Stephen Hawkings’ Universe in a Nutshell books which I’ve read and listened to on CD numerous times to no avail, Bryson’s book goes from the creation of the universe to present time in words that mere mortals can understand (even if the actual ideas are still unimaginable).

When I’m not reading I’ve been playing Oblivion for XBox 360, an amazingly open-ended role-playing game that is great for people like me who just love to explore.

In other family news Maelin has been crying up a storm the last few days and we can’t tell if it’s new teeth coming in or the Terrible Two’s or something entirely different. It’s been real tough on all of us though with lots of stressful nights. But, it makes the times when she’s “normal” like pure heaven, and she couldn’t be any cuter either way. Today she stood at the window as I left for work and was yelling “I Love You” to me as I drove past - heart wrenching let me tell you, especially now that she’s started in on me every morning with “No work Papa. Stay Maelin’s home.” Yeah, like that doesn’t start the day off with a sob.

Work… is work. I do it for the paycheck. Nuff said.

44-minutes later and I suppose I should retire to bed, at least if only to do some more reading. All of this reading by the way has started to make me think about getting into writing again. I wrote a lot when I was younger, especially in high school. I’m sure there is a floppy disk laying around some where with some really bad beginnings of stories. The hard part is deciding what to write about. I feel like every idea I have has already been done in some way or another. One great thing about reading Cory Doctorow’s stuff is that he has a knack for taking an old story and spinning a new story off of its heels. As he quoted in a recent podcast, “Amateurs plagiarize. Experts steal.” :) I guess that’s my cue to just do something, anything to get the ball rolling. If I’m brave enough maybe I’ll post some of it here.

TTFN

Link of the moment - DIY brilliance

I was playing around with Windows Live Local some more, this time plotting out a potential course (or alternate (warmer) course) for when our cruising dream is realized. I was following the basic route that Tania Aebi took on her maiden voyage, except returning via Cape Town at the southern tip of Africa rather than going up the Red and Mediteranian seas. The push-pins are great for this, although I already hate that you are limited to 10 :(

Maiden Voyage

The completion of this book marked the first milestone of the first milestone towards my dream of Cruising– read at least 3 books about the topic. One down, two to go…

As I mentioned in previous posts, this book was very slow to start, but once I was past the first chapter it became much easier to read, drawing me in to the life of Tania in those days some 20-years ago.

The story is a true tale, written by the author, about an 18-year-old girl from Manhattan who, with no real purpose in life, is challenged by her father to circumnavigate the globe solo in a small sailboat. It begins when she is a few miles off of the coast of NY on her return leg after several years at sea, and then flashes back to tell the entire story from the very beginning. Up until she left, her sailing experiences had been sparse, and she had never sailed single-handed. However, armed with a plethora of technical manuals, sailing charts and a stronger-than-nails will, she thrusts herself into the situation and learns quite quickly what her boat, and herself, are capable of.

The story is wonderful, though a little rough in some spots. She never hesitates to remark on her mistakes or personal hang-ups, and as the story unfolds she also candidly relates her own personal history. She tells of friends made and friends lost, her mothers death, her strained relationship with her father.

I found this story to be truly uplifting - a story of the remarkable human spirit for adventure. It was certainly a great read for someone considering a similar adventure, and I imagine anyone with a love for personal-triumph stories will enjoy this book.

I was left with a few concerns after reading it though. Her trip takes place in the late 80’s. I know the rest of the world is much different today than it was 20 years ago, but I wonder to what extent it would be noticeable while at sea? Tania talks about having to avoid certain ports because of geo-political reasons, but she still manages to spend several months traveling close to many nations that would now be considered dangerous for US travelers. Her stories of the people that she meets while docked at some of these ports are always positive and related with fondness - total strangers that take her in and help her, asking nothing in return. I wonder if the world has changed too much the worse since then?

Tania currently writes articles for many sailing magazines, gives speeches on her trip and has been known to lead sailing excursions for women of all ages. To date, she has not written any other books.