“What the hell does that mean? Looks festive. Oh well, at least it’s nice to have something to look at while being tortured. What else have we got? Aruba … France… Whoa! That is one scary lookin’ kid. ” My eyes continued to wander across the hodge podge of themes strewn across the ceiling. There seemed to be every indication that these people had no time to work given the places they are alleged to have traveled. I pondered this for a moment. “Interesting.” I thought. “Not only is this going to hurt, I get to pay for it too. So, instead of being able to travel to any of these exotic places, I get to sit here and subject myself to these oral delights.”

Looking outside I could still see the last remnants of snow that had fallen two weeks earlier. As I let my head fall back into place as the woman in white asked, “are you ready?”

“What a silly question” I thought. “If I wasn’t, I wonder how long they would wait. Would they go and get a cup of coffee? Go work on someone else and come back? If I held out until the end of the day, would I still need to pay the bill?”

I nodded to the lady, then needed to stifle a chuckle as they descended upon me. It was quite comical. The movement of the bright light so that it shined in my eyes, then the synchronized descent of the two workers directly into my field of vision. It was perfect horror. Sterile white environment, masked and hatted doctors, strange and bizarre medical equipment (“Why does this stuff always look like it can hold of a tank?” ), the anticipation of the pain, and then the eye catches ‘Never Wall’. I gotta go there.

I’m now in day two of not seeing my family at all. I’ve been able to get Skype to work, but it’s hard to keep the kids still long enough for me to see them. I had to do some shopping this afternoon after work to get some food and various misc. things, so I didn’t have much of a chance to look around. Tomorrow I hope to begin the quest to find a place for Melinda and the kids. I’m not optimistic though. I haven’t seen anything while I’ve been out and around, and I don’t know who I could call to ask. We shall see.

Jim and Paula have been crazy nice to me. They let me sleep downstairs (where it is cool, the ac is out), insist on making me dinner, and are just generally cool to hang out with. That makes it a lot better. I think I would have had a very dificult time being away from the rest of the Beastie House if I had to stay up here by myself.

I like Maryland so far, but the roads are crazy. It seems like every 3 miles there is some spaghetti junction action.

Boy has it been a long time since I have made a post. Sorry about that. I have been off work now for almost 2 months. It’s been great. Not many folks have the opportunity to spend that much time with their entire family. Granted, there have been some crazy days, but I figure they would have been crazy without me and they were probably less crazy with me. Anyhoo, we just got back from a trip to Nawlins that was nice. I was tired as Hell after that trip. I did a fair amount of Drake and Scout carrying. But it was worth every bit of sore back and knee. We got lots of great pictures of the kids playing in a little park along the bank of the Mississippi. Scout is positively enamored with her big brother. Drake would play a game where he would run around in a circle and fall down. Scout would follow in suit. It was priceless.

Now I am stuck in a motel room with an incredibly crappy internet connection trying to blog. I just got finished watching Rush Hour 2. Meh. I would much prefered to get Skype to work so that I could talk with the wife and kids. I’ll try again in the morning. I am heading of to Maryland to start my new job. We have a house lined up, but it will not be available until August 15…about 1.25 months after I start work. That means I’m up there without my family for that long. I am *not*looking forward to it. Mercifully, I have a fair amount of friends up there. So, I have a place to stay fot the duration, but as it stands it is sans familia. We hope to Skype every night. Dad has been generous enough to loan me a laptop until I can get with my family again. My folks rule. I hope I’m able to repay them for everything. I figure the Ph.D absolves me of guilt for getting arrested. I just wish I was better at stabalizing my finances. The hope is that the new job will leave us with the ability to put some dough into savings. That would be nice. It sucks to have to think “Oh God. We can’t afford our bills this month.” It almost makes it worse to be able to ask for help. I just want to be self sufficient. Good grief, I’m almost old enough to run for president (not that I would want to), I ought to be able to balance my own fucking budget!

Okay enough venting. I’m excitred about the job. I’m happy to see old friends again. I’m exciting about my family coming up to be with me in Maryland. There is a lot to look forward to. With any luck I’ll be able to find a place for Melinda and the kids to come to for the next month. It would be like old times at the Knight’s Inn…without the dog vomit. But we could be +3 cat vomit!

Time for bed. Further bulletins as events warrant.

I read this review of R.E.S. on artistdirect.com the other day. Neat!

“Originally formed sometime between 1993 and 1994, Round Ear Spock has been playing their own version of noisy comedy that only the band members themselves seem to fully understand. As a mainstay at Atlanta’s former punk Mecca, the Somber Reptile, the Spock boys pounded it out on a regular basis –whether it be for a crowd of 5 or 500. Many beers and “final gigs” later, the boys still remain one of Atlanta’s most recognized punk acts even though they haven’t played a gig in years. Rumor has it that another album is in the works. Then again, it could just be another rumor. “

We all had a blast this Halloween. Melinda and I, quite some time ago, were trying to decide how we could decorate the house. Since we live on Pirates Lane, Melinda had the idea of making it look like a pirate ship and we could all be pirates. Alas, this was not meant to be. It simply would have been too time consuming to make the modifications required to pull it off without it looking hokey. Also, in a nearby neighborhood someone beat us to the punch. They had a boat on their front lawn (scaled back but very nicely made), a couple of iron maidens, and several pirates. Oh well. While mowing the lawn I had a thought. The two windows upstairs on our house look sort of like eyes and the front porch looks like a wide gaping maw. Then I remembered a whole bunch of scrap plywood that was left in the garage when we moved in (to board up the windows in case of a hurricane). Eureka! Meet Monster House. (Click for full size)

Halloween is, of course, Melinda and my anniversary. (Melinda and my? Is that right?) So I started off the day with a nice breakfast.

Drake slept a little bit late to have a nice warm breakfast. So he got stuck with cold brains. Poor kid. The candy made up for it. The rest of the day went by very quickly. I had some last minute preparations for the house (setting up the fog machine and a radio outside for the creepy sound fx) and I was able to finish that while the kids were napping. Georgia and her mother Kelly came over in the early evening so that they could go trick or treating with Drake and Scout. Drake, unfortunately, woke up from his nap on the wrong side of the bed and wanted nothing to do with his costume. After some coaxing from his mother he emerged in his costume except he insisted on wearing his T-shirt instead of the costume shirt. So, he was a surf pirate. Whatever, it still looked good. Scout made it into her Banshee costume with little fussing and we decided to do the trick-or-treating before dinner. Interestingly, Melinda and I have zero pictures of the kids all dressed up. My father took several so maybe I can get a few from him the next time I see him.

Betty and her two kids showed up evidently because Kelly invited them. Not the most pleasant family to be around and I hoped that it wouldn’t cause any grief for Drake or Scout. Drake tends to ignore those kids now so it wasn’t likely going to be a problem. A few houses into the trip Scout got hungry so I had to go home and get her some dinner. I had a good time answering the door for folks too. I was wearing my costume which consisted of the robes I wore at my wedding, red eye lenses, and horns. The horns were a bitch to get to stay on. I tried using the spirit gum that came with them but after a while I gave up. Super glue works much better.

Melinda, Drake, Kelly, and Georgia all made it back safely and they all seemed to have a good time. Drake amassed quite a horde of candy. I’m already thinking of ways to decorate for next year. I *really* like Halloween.

baffle them with bullshit. I gave my talk in the Math Club this last Wednesday in hopes of attracting some students to work on a research project. I spent a while coming up with the title. It needed to be completely accurate and yet have that arrogant flair which is typically found in titles of science talks/articles. I think I nailed it.

How ’bout dem apples! It was a really fun talk to give because I had to engineer it to a different audience than I am accustomed to. Typically I present material to other faculty (not at Spring Hill of course) or to graduate students. For this talk I was presenting to undergrads. Some of them had taken very little mathematics. So, I needed to throw out all of the high powered jargon and assumptions and really get at what was going on. It was an incredibly instructive exercise. I have given a talk on this stuff to PhD’s before using fancy terminology and, quite frankly, I wish I had given them the talk I gave the math club folks. Oh well. Lessons learned I suppose.

On a completely unrelated note. I have a series of Demotivators^TM up on my door at work and I found some software online here that lets you make your own. I made Perspective below.

We all decided to go camping this past weekend since the weather had been cooler. So we set up a camp in the backyard and planned on having smores. We never did get the smores going; I feel badly about that. I had the fire ring set up, but by the time we got everybody out there Scout was through for the day. Dad and Scout snoozed while Melinda and Drake stayed up for a while reading stories (Including “Just Me and My Dad” a little monster book that Melinda bought me when Drake was born. It’s about camping.) and talking. I think Drake had a really good time and Scout didn’t really seem to care that much one way or the other. I didn’t really expect her to be excited about it, and I was pleased that it didn’t give her any grief. She slept like a stone until about 7:00. That’s pretty late for her. Drake and Mom finally got it out of the tent about an hour later. I think that Drake was a little confused about where he was when he woke up, but he was fine. We’ll need to do that again soon. It was fun.

Melinda has outdone herself with the costumes for the kids. Drake is going to be a pirate and Scout is going to be a banshee (of course). Melinda made Drake’s costume out of one of his old shirts, one of my old shirts (for the sash), and a pillow case. Scout’s costume is made out of one of my old white shirts and some cheese cloth. They turned out really great. We couldn’t afford store bough costumes this year and Mom really came through. We spent a little extra on Drake. We bought him a pirates hat, sword, flint lock pistol, and an earing. It was also a good excuse to go check out the local Halloween store. I always love that.

This weekend Grandmom and Granddad will be here. Drake has been excited for over a week. So has his Mom and Dad. None of us can wait for Halloween. It will be Melinda and my fourth anniversary which means I need to look for linens. Wish me luck.

Yeah, sorry. It’s been a while since I have had any time to write an entry. I have been really busy at work with grading recently and I have been feverishly finding out where I have been and what I have done (and with who) over the past ten years. More on the latter later. By the time I’ve had a moment to breathe after getting the kids to bed, I am usually dog tired. Scout wakes up at about 5:30 these days and Drake gets to bed at close to 11:00pm. So, on a good night, when the kids don’t wake up and need help getting back to sleep I get at most 6 and half hours of sleep…provided I ignore my wife and go right to bed after Drake falls asleep. Not cool. We typically like to stay up and at least recognize one anothers’ existence for a while. On a good night we’re both coherent enough to play a game. I sure miss spending time with my wife. The kids are getting better at entertaining themselves. Shoot, they have even begun to play together a little bit. So, hopefully soon Melinda and I will be able to let the kids play and have a cup of coffee.

First of all, in the latest greatest potty related news, Drake has been out of diapers for about 2 weeks. He’s had very few accidents and he even sleeps without a diaper. We were a bit apprehensive about taking Drake out of the house for an extended time because we were worried that he might have an accident and he would be embarrassed. Fortunately, this hasn’t been an issue. We all went to a birthday party for Drake’s friend Georgia recently. The party was held at a local park (Georgia’s parents are smart) where there wasn’t a bathroom. One of the older boys needed to go to the bathroom so his mother helped him “water the plants.” Soon thereafter all of the boys that weren’t wearing diapers wanted to pee on a tree. Later on Drake one-upped everyone by pooping in the woods.

We also went to the exploreum with the kids to get them out of the house. (Drake used the public bathroom with no problem). The current exhibit at the exploreum is “Grossology”, which illustrates the not so nice aspects of the human body. It’s great. They’ve got machines that let you smell the different bacteria responsible for foot, mouth, armpit, and anus odors. Another machine that stimulates simulates a fart. One simulates vomit. My favorite is a kids play area that represents the digestive tract. Kids climb a little wall to get into the mouth, go down a slide into the stomach, then crawl out a tube to exit the rectum.

Scout had a good time here too. Before we went to the Grossology exhibit, we all went to the Wharf of Wonder. Scout had a great time playing in the “water” (a big sea of plastic balls). She’s sitting up easily by herself now, and she can really get moving when she needs to. I don’t think it will be much longer before she starts walking. She is getting more of a personality as well. She wakes up every morning in such a good mood ready to play. It takes her Dad a little while to get into the swing of things, but not too long. That kid has got a great smile. She’s laughing a lot more now too. I found a few good spots to tickle her and she absolutely cackles.

We all went to the Five Rivers park the other day. This is a new park (that we mentioned in our grant proposal) near our house that is in the delta formed by, ready for this, five rivers. It’s still a bit of a work in progress, but they have set up a room that has many stuffed animals that lived in the area. My favorite is the one below. I think they should ask the taxidermist for their money back. I think the cat is supposed to be running. What does it look like this cat is doing to you?

I have one more picture that I threatened Melinda with posting. We all went out for a walk and this is what Drake was wearing. His mother dressed him. Poor kid.

I am a member of a grant writing committee here at Spring Hill. We are applying for a grant from HHMI (Howard Hughes Medical Institute) that will hopefully allow us to do some research. The focus of the proposal seems to be several research projects related to the biology of the Mobile Bay. There will be much data collection. One of the requested items is an air-boat. It’s gonna be awesome. Anyway, I had to think of a way to incorporate mathematics into this proposal as it is intended to be interdisciplinary. Here’s what I submitted. What do you think?

“The data collected related to salinity, nitrogen levels, and indeed any other quantity measured as a concentration can be modeled using the standard heat equation, here thought of as a diffusion equation, provided we think of the bay as a flat disc. It would be an interesting exercise for students in the mathematical modeling course to adapt this two dimensional flat model to one that incorporates more of the physics of the bay. Measurements taken regarding flow can be treating as damping forces and gross approximations of the topographical data for the bay can serve as a boundary component. With the proper computation tools, predictions may be made which describe high levels of concentration of particular elements based on the observed initial conditions. Students would have the benefit of being able to use real data to explore the mathematical models and the level of complexity is fairly open ended. The more advanced student may wish to study the flow dynamics of the bay and see how changing the topology of the bay, by constructing the causeway, changes the flow-lines that were established. The change in the flow-lines almost surely has had a large impact on biological life in the bay area near the causeway. Predictive models incorporating the new topology may give insight on ecologies that are more subtly affected by the change in natural currents.”

Well, I just got a voicemail from Melinda. There was good news and bad news. The good news, Scout just pulled up. She was on the floor near Drake’s train table and evidently wanted to see what was going on, so she pulled up to standing…by herself. Holy crap, that kids gonna need skis before she’s one. The bad news, she pooped on the floor. I guess one needs to punctuate significant events in their life in whatever way they know how. That’s my girl.

Unfortunately, both kids have colds now. They are both pretty stuffy, but they don’t appear to be running a fever. We are worried to death about Scout catching the RSV virus. That really did a number on Drake, but he was significantly younger than Scout is now when he caught it. She doesn’t seem to have any problems breathing except for the clogged up sinuses. It doesn’t sound like there is anything in her lungs yet. I could really do without her catching the virus this early. She felt so crummy last night that she had to sleep with her Mom and Dad, which meant that Drake slept with Mom and Dad too. It was pretty crowded. At one point (at around 2:00) Melinda, who can’t sleep well with the kids in bed because she worries about rolling on them, headed upstairs with Drake. She evidently hadn’t been able to get any sleep yet. Scout and I stayed downstairs and she slept solid until about 6:00 (a late morning for her). I let Melinda sleep until about 8:00 but I had to wake her up so that I could head off to work. Scout fell asleep again right before I left and Drake was awake and in good spirits playing with Mom.

Drake is *really* looking forward to his Grandparents coming out this Wednesday (as are Melinda and I). He’s been counting the days down on a calendar. He’s hoping that Scarlet can make the trip as well. I wish my mother and father (Melinda’s folks too) could spend more time with Scout. I reckon I need to work on another degree so they can babysit again. Maybe *shudder* physiscs? Nah. I’ll never use it for anything.

We went down to Fort Gaines over the weekend, and it was mostly a good time. Drake really enjoyed running around in the tunnels and playing with a really big anchor that was in the middle of the fort. I got a chance to meet and talk with a blacksmith while I was there and he gave me some good suggestions about getting started in the trade. Specifically, he mentioned the site anvil fire which has links to clubs that meet in the mobile area monthly. He suggested going to a few of the meetings to meet some of the blacksmiths and get a chance to try out using their forges before spending any dough (a good steel anvil costs about $550) on equipment. This is also a great way to get your hands on used tools, which typically get passed on from one blacksmith to another. It’s primarily the stuff that no working blacksmith wants that gets sold at flea markets. To find decent blacksmithing tools, seek out a decent blacksmith. Makes sense to me. I hope to have a chance to do that.