Month: October 2007

Well, I’m a little behind in my blog postings, but Arif and Tahera have (sorta) packed up their things and gone off travelling for the month of October. Nasreen has taken off to sweet Paree to live like a French artist. We enjoyed smoking some cigaraettes on the rooftop of my building before everyone took off. It was quite a coughfest since none of us smoke. It was kinda amusing. Smoking is bad. Remember that girls and boys.

Oh also, speaking of Paris, work is flying me out to Paris in November. Totally f’ing sweet!

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Thank Mom and Dad for the chocolates!

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Anyone know how to repair a hole in the wall? Laff. It must have been quite a dream, but in the middle of the night, I sleepkicked the wall really freakin’ hard. Here you see the result. I barely woke up when I kicked it and my toe is totally fine. Does anyone else in the family get a little jerky at night? it seems to happen more these days for me.

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Jeremy rode his bike to the Metro today. I know all you folks out there who commute to work without a car might poo-poo Jeremy’s effort, but keep in mind that we live in the ‘burbs – a place built for carpooling and everyone is really spread out – there isn’t even a sidewalk on both sides of the street where we live.

It took Jeremy 30 minutes get to the subway and he did it by careful analysis of Google maps to eliminate crossing of large 6-lane intersections. Pretty impressive since I go through at least 10 of these intersections on my own early morning drive to the Metro.

This weekend we went to the Solar Decathlon. These are solar power houses, all off the grid and they have ten contests that they compete in – such as being able to wash 12 towels a day, keeping the temperature/humidity in the house constant, being able to take hot showers in a timely manner, charge up a car and drive it to work. Pretty nifty.

This was my favorite from the outside. Good use of an orange shipping container.

Here’s MIT’s.

(It’s not orange and it looks like a bunch of engineers designed it. Sigh.)

I don’t take off my watch to go to sleep. I switch beds so often during the night, I never know where I’m going to end up in the morning, so my watch is set to go off at 5:15 every morning and it’s firmly attached to a body part that moves with me.

Before I started work, Edda would wake at 4 or 5:30 in the morning and I would coax her back to sleep with much effort on my part and she would sleep until 6:30. But now I’m up at 5:15 and have no time for her as I have to shower, get dressed, make my lunch and get out the door by 5:45 am.

We all had minor coughs on Thursday. Edda did not sleep well. She was in the infuriating state of almost asleep for most of the night and was wide awake at 4 am.

I remember last year, getting Edda’s diagnosis, all the crazy emotions were amplified by the fact that none of us were getting any sleep. Edda would wake up at 1 am and be up for 3 hours. This is much, much better than it was a year ago, and for that I’m thankful.

My wristwatch and a hot dog on a fork.

Every Sunday, we have dinner with Jeremy’s cousins and their children. We rotate through houses and cuisines. Sometimes it’s take-out or pizza. Other times it’s Indian food or brisket. All the kids are great fun, they range in age from 10 to 3 – Edda is the youngest by a week.

Her one-week-older second cousin is such a sweetheart and is truly a friend of Edda’s. Tickling her and feeding her grapes and sharing her videos. (She also, occasionally, imitates Edda’s mouthing much to our and her mother’s dismay.) She and Vince also make such an adorable pair.

Louisa has been showing up to the last few Sunday night dinners. She brings out Vince’s more sensitive side.

Jeremy has always owned a stick shift car. Over the course of the last decade, I’ve tried to learn to drive stick and I have learned (somehow in 3 different Jeremy-owned cars – all Hondas), but I’m always a bit nervous and hesitant and always preferred the more convenient (there is always something you need to do with a free non-shifting hand – cell phone, eating, makeup, nose picking) atmosphere of my automatic.

Lately it’s caused some problems in terms of switching cars/dropping kids off and picking kids up. So I’m determined this time to make it stick (ha ha, get it? STICK! I’m so funny.) So I’m driving Jeremy’s car to the subway every day this week. I’m parking far, far away from the other cars for some extra maneuvering area.

I’m loving my job. In many ways, it’s a perfect fit.

My parents were in town last weekend. We went down to the river to throw some sticks (get it? STICKS!) for Ruby.

It’s raining. Really really hard.

I should not cave in and drive to work tomorrow.
I should not cave in and drive to work tomorrow.
I should not cave in and drive to work tomorrow.

This past weekend, my parents were in town. Jeremy’s uncle Gene came over for dinner and dessert. The evening’s conversation turned to politics – immigration and labor unions.

I love my running group. With them, I can run forever (at a 10:40 min/mile pace).