Stardate 60093.82 - The Man is Keeping Me Down

Work is just kicking my ass right now. I've been working 50+ hours per week for the past 3 weeks, working to support a big proposal. Add travel back and forth to Virginia, and I am just beat. I'm supporting a couple of aspects of this proposal, and one of them is taking all my time. This means my weekend is shot because I've now got to work on the stuff I didn't get done this week over the next 2 days.

Its just been a lot of work, and I'm not getting a lot of help on it. Meanwhile, my regular work is piling up and the e-mails and phone calls keep coming.

I know I look happy in this picture, but believe me...I'm not right now.

And now the phone is ringing again...

Stardate 60089.25 - Loren Showing Off

See? Loren does use her crib. Not just very often. Or for very long.

Here are some shots of her showing off how far she can lift her head. She is a little over a week away from her 3 month birthday.


"Mr. Fly" as we call him is her favorite toy. Or maybe second favorite. She has a woodpecker puppet that is very soft and she likes to hold him.


NYC

Stardate 60087.22 - Loren Reading Blogs

Here is Loren, reading Jessica Stover's blog for the first time (not sure if the monitor is visible). ;-)

This is what the office looks like when I'm working on two proposals at the same time.

NYC

Stardate 60083.06 - A Day As Cold and Grey as Today

Suzanne Vega has a song with the lyrics, "...on a day, as cold, and grey, as today..." And while it is not particularly cold, it is particularly grey and rainy today. But I thought I'd share with all of you my little corner of the world when I am in Virginia working. I didn't use to have my own office down here. When I first moved to NYC I was an "Associate" and that level didn't warrant my own office in VA when I was living in NYC. After I was promoted to "Senior Associate" then I could maintain an office in McLean while living elsewhere. Of course, in my continued efforts to help the Firm keep costs low (just look at all the crappy hotels I've stayed at), I share the office with the Senior Associate in charge of our Rome, NY office. Usually we are not here at the same time, but when we are whoever gets here first gets the main desk, and whoever is second gets the little round table in the corner. The office is also used as temporary space by new hires, and as a place for my Vice President to park when she is in our building and needs a desk for a few hours (or a day). Oh, and that is a decaf skim latte for those who think I may have fallen off the wagon. I'm still off caffeine.

It is a pretty big office as far as space goes in the building, but it is an odd shape (sort of like a comma) with a tiny floor to ceiling window. My view is also rather uninspiring (at least I have a window), and as I don't like to use the overhead lights it is usually dark until the afternoon sun shines directly in through the window, blinding all who enter my door.


I'm just glad to be getting back home. Loren is progressing pretty quickly developmentally and I hate to miss things, like her first time being able to be pulled into a standing position from being flat on her back.

McLean, VA

Stardate 60081.68 - High Ho, High Ho...

...it's off to work we go. Back in Virginia, but back home tomorrow. Been up since 0420, and once again caught the 0630 down. I'm staying again at the Marriott Courtyard. Even though my initial check in last time was pretty bad, I've decided to give them another chance.

This place is like an organism, with cars the blood cells, roads the arteries, and buildings the organs. And it is a dense organism. And one that sucks the life out of man (and woman).

Every time I come down here, I can't understand how people deal with the traffic. I know I live in NYC, but there the public transportation system is good enough that you don't have to drive. There are no such options here.

McLean, VA

Stardate 60076.29 - Loren is Out and About in NYC

The day was warm and nice, so we decided to take Loren on a little walk. Before we left, we snapped a picture of her in a present she got from the author of the "Patently Delicious" blog. The shirt says "Patent Pending" in case you cannot read it.


After a quick stop to tour a gym we are thinking of joining, we headed over to the river. Here are Loren's first pictures being out of her stroller in NYC. That is the East River in the background, taken from Carol Schurz Park near Gracie Mansion.


We stopped by a diner on the way back so Cheryl could feed Loren, and Loren had to have two diaper changes while we were there. By the end of the meal, we were all tired and ready to come home. It was a good walk on a nice day.

NYC

Stardate 60075.03 - Amazon Software Oddity

I got another odd e-mail from Amazon:

Dear Amazon.com Customer,
We've noticed that customers who have purchased Sideways (Widescreen Edition) also purchased Blood and Wine on DVD. For this reason, you might like to know that Blood and Wine will be released on February 7, 2006 on DVD. You can pre-order yours at a savings of 25% by following the link below.

Humm...is that because of the wine theme? Not sure that Sideways and Blood and Wine are similar in any other way. That's like saying that if you watched Clerks you would like The Sopranos because they both took place in NJ.

Blood and Wine is described as :
Bob Rafelson has stated that this is the final part of an informal trilogy he started with "Five Easy Pieces" and continued with "The King Of Marvin Gardens". In the three, Nicholson has now played son, brother and father. In this one, Nicholson is a wealthy wine dealer who has distanced himself from his wife with his philandering and from his son with his negligence. After he steals a diamond necklace with the help of a safecracker partner, Victor, things start coming apart. His wife sets out to interrupt what she thinks is another one of his weekend dalliances, but is really his trip to pawn the jewels.

I don't think that is like Sideways at all:

Miles is a failed writer living a meager existence in San Diego as an English teacher. With his career seemingly fading and the fate of a book hinging on a publisher's decision, Miles is depressed with himself and what he hasn't achieved. Jack is a television actor whom some recognize but not many do, as if he were a minor actor who got a taste of success. With his best friend Miles, the two embark on a road trip through California's wine country. Miles wants to give his friend a nice sendoff before married life, while Jack simply wants to have a fling beforehand. As they're both nearing middle age with not much to show for it, the two will explore the vineyards while ultimately searching for their identities.

NYC

Stardate 60073.72 - Glad to be Home

This is your brain on too much travel....

I'm always glad for the long walk from the plane into the terminal when I am back home, although I feel a bit like this photo looks after three hard days in Virginia. I'll be glad when this proposal is complete.

NYC

Stardate 60069.47 - Jessica Stover Updates

Since I know all my friends look to me for regular J.Sto updates, I wanted to pass along that Jessica Stover has started a complete make-over of her web site/blog. It looks pretty cool so far.

McLean, VA

Stardate 60063.86 - My Own Line of Clothing

My fans have apparently created my own line of clothing, based on the post and subsequent discussion of The List.

I will laugh if anyone actually buys one.

NYC

Stardate 60061.9 - Quick Camera Picture

Here is a quick picture from my camera phone of Cheryl's grandma with Loren. The walls in the room are yellow, and they cast a yellow tint to everything.

The picture was taken at night, and I think the room doesn't have the best lighting for evening pictures. Other than the off color, the picture is nice.

NYC

Stardate 60061.26 - Cheryl's Dad Takes a Trip

Cheryl's Dad Bill had to go on a business trip to Taiwan. It is a short trip, and he'll only be gone a few days. This is how the conversation went with him on Saturday:

Cheryl: How long will you be gone?
Bill: Less than a week.
Cheryl: That is a long way to fly to only be there a few days.
Bill: I need to find out what their XYZ procedures are.
Curt: And that can't be done by teleconference?
Bill: I have to see their XYZ procedures.
Curt: And they can't be e-mailed to you?
Bill: I want to look them in the eye and have them hand me their procedures.
Cheryl: They could hand you a take-out menu and you wouldn't know - you don't read Chinese!

Maybe you had to be there, but I thought that exchange was pretty funny.

NYC

Loren Update (from Cheryl)

I've had a lot of fun watching Loren developing noticeably day by day this week. She is now very smiley and chatty, especially after she's just eaten. She is even smiling on demand for pictures. She's getting very picky about how she is carried; she only wants to face forward (no more over the shoulder -- she even wants to fall asleep facing forward), and is content to watch the world that way for long stretches. I took her to Central Park in the stroller on Friday, and it was warm enough that I didn't need to bundle her to the eyeballs or use the sunshade, so she could see out. She stayed awake all the way to the park watching the cars on 66th St (a record -- until now the stroller put her to sleep within seconds).

Her head control has gotten much more sure in the last few days, and all of a sudden she can sit supported without drooping her head, and she can stand while supported under the armpits. The hands are slowly coming on line too. When we got to my parents' house yesterday, she reached for the flower embroidered on my mom's sweater. That was the first time I've seen her reach for something.

We've been hitting the East Side new mommies' circuit: we're regulars at the breastfeeding support group at NYU hospital, and we've tried the new parents' discussion at the 92nd St. Y and the Upper East Side new mothers' luncheon on 64th St. Since most of my friends in NYC are from the UN and don't live in our neighborhood, it's been great for me to meet women who live near us and have babies Loren's age. There are some challenges to keeping a baby in the city that suburbanites don't have to contend with -- for example, stores are small and carry a limited selection of supplies. You can go to 5 drugstores and not find the kind of diapers you're looking for. It's nice to have a network of people who happen to know "Oh, they have those at Food Emporium on 68th." I don't know that I'd want to do the stay-at-home mom thing indefinitely, but I'm enjoying it for a few months! I'm trying to get some annual leave approved to extend my maternity leave by a few more weeks, until the beginning of April.

Stardate 60059.06 - Houses in Holmdel

So for fun on Sunday after church we went to an open house in a development near where Cheryl grew up. It used to be a farm, but now is "The Vineyard" and is full of million-dollar homes. Cheryl said it is called the "Vineyard" because "The Soybean Field" didn't have the same panache.

The home was listed at a little below $1.3M and had 3800 sq ft finished and another 2000 or so unfinished in the basement. Of course, they had more crap in their basement than Cheryl and I have in our entire apartment!

We don't go for the big columns in front, but the layout inside was actually pretty nice. The carpet and color scheme would need some changes, but the flow was nice. It had four bedrooms upstairs and one "extra" room downstairs. It was up on a hill so the views from the second floor were not bad.

They did have an interesting master bed, which matches a wine rack we got for our Wedding. Cheryl couldn't resist snapping a picture.


Holmdel, NJ

Captain's Log Supplemental - Things Left Behind

When Cheryl and I sold our home in Vienna, VA and moved to NYC, we had to leave a lot of things behind. We gave away a lot of furniture, and load and loads of books (that really pained me) along with bookshelves. We also gave away almost all of our plants. My friend Brian took most of them, but some got scattered among various people.

While I was in McLean for meetings this week, I happened by the space of my boss' Executive Assistant (secretary), and lo and behold, I saw something I recognized...the rubber tree plant Cheryl and I used to have! I had forgotten that I gave some plants to her (she worked for a different Principal in the Firm at that time), and apparently the rubber tree plant had not only survived these past 4+ years, but it had thrived!

What's the old saying about, "If you love something set it free, if it comes back its yours and if not it never was"? Is that applicable here? Perhaps not.

Or just maybe, "There are some things better left behind."

Or better yet, "There are some things better for having been left behind."

Holmdel, NJ

Stardate 60056.66 - Going for a Ride

So Cheryl's Dad finally purchased a Toyota Prius. Cheryl's Grandmother has had one for a while, and her Dad has been singing its praises for years. He's been working on Cheryl's Mom to replace their Mazda Protege with one, and Carol finally gave in a couple of weeks ago.

So while we were in NJ this weekend Bill took Cheryl and me for a ride while Loren napped at their house and Carol baby-sat.

The car is pretty neat and it appeals to the science fiction nerd in me with the display showing where the power is coming from and tracking the MPG and everything, but Bill is way into it. Here Cheryl is pointing at something on the display and asking a question. She called shotgun so I ended up in the back. I forget how much MPG we averaged on the trip, but according to the picture there were several times we were just running on the batteries and not the engine.

I know that the extra cost doesn't really offset the gas savings for quite a few years, but I think the point is just to be driving something that is better for the environment. That's pretty cool.

Holmdel, NJ

Captain's Log Supplemental - Pictures of Loren from this week

Since most people come to this blog not to hear me pimp for Jessica Stover's latest project, or to hear me gripe about hotels, or to hear me discuss the social implications of a D&D game, and not to hear me yell about Cingular - but rather to see pictures of Loren, then here are some recent shots that Cheryl took and e-mailed to me while I'm on my trip so that I can see her grow on a daily basis. And I think that may have been the longest run-on sentence I have ever written.


McLean, VA

Stardate 60053.47 - More D&D in Person

One advantage of traveling to McLean for the past two weeks is that we get to play D&D in person rather than over the Internet. Don't get me wrong, with broadband and Skype and Fantasygrounds playing on-line is so much better than the days of old crappy NetMeeting, but there is just no substitute for being there in person.

Here are our characters, having just finished off some nasty, heat-sucking brown mold from the inside of a coffin and now we are looking to see how to activate a special key hole we found in the bottom of the item. Later in the evening we went down the trap door (marked with the "X" and a circle) and had our butts kicked by a mummy. But we lived to fight another day, and his re-death will be coming at our hands...just not last night.

I won't harp on this subject any more as I beat it to death last week.

McLean, VA

Stardate 60050.3 - Anyone Else Got a List?

I posted a blog entry about my list a couple of days ago (thanks, Steve, for the answer that this concept appeared on Friends). I didn't get many comments on it. I'm curious as to what my male readers thought of my list, and if they keep a list of their own. Lets get some dialog going!

I'm still going to try and convince Cheryl to put up her list, but she tells me she doesn't really have more than a couple of people on the actual list...she just knows which actors she finds attractive.

McLean, VA

Stardate 60048.66 - Hotels Just Suck

I am really not an old man. Cheryl says I am turning into a cranky old man who complains about things all the time and writes cranky letters. I say that I have reached a point in my life where I have traveled enough so that I know what I want and I speak up when something is wrong.

I don’t think it is too much to ask to have a problem-free check-in and stay at a hotel. But people are just incompetent. For example, I just stayed Monday night at the Ritz, and even there they forgot that my corporate rate included club access and had to call me to come back to the lobby so my room key could be encoded to provide club access. I would expect that at the Ritz of all places, they would have the check-in process down pat.

This trip to McLean the Ritz did not have our lower corporate rate available, so I am staying at the Marriott Courtyard. This is a hotel that opened about 4 years or so ago, and I stayed here shortly after they opened. I had a litany of complaints on that trip, but the three biggest were that they put me in a smoking room instead of non-smoking, the hallways were about 450 degrees centigrade, and they didn’t have their snack area opened yet – even though the books in the room touted their snack bar. I went to the lobby and asked where the snack bar was, and they told me, “Oh, that’s not open yet.” They didn’t seem to think that advertising a service that wasn’t open was a problem. Just freak’n tell me at check-in. I stayed at the Doubletree last week, and they shut down their Honors club and didn’t mention that at check-in, even though I am a Hilton Honors Gold member.

Anyway, after the Courtyard experience, I wrote a letter to the manager that was not acknowledged in any way. So I declared this Courtyard a “no-fly zone” and never stayed here again.

But I have gotten so mad at the Doubletree recently that I decided to try the Courtyard again. After all, it had been 4 years so they had to have improved, correct? Well, so far I give them a “C”. When I checked in I was assigned a room on the 6th floor. When I got to the 6th floor, the smell of fresh varnish overwhelmed me. Apparently they were re-varnishing all the room doors on 6. And warily eyeing the “wet paint” sign on the door I tried to get into my assigned room but the key didn’t work. So back down to the lobby.

Turns out they are varnishing on 5 and 6 and the people at the front desk didn’t know that. That type of situation is just poor management. Don’t put guests onto a floor with the smell of varnish. How difficult is that? They did resolve the issue by moving me to the top floor, and my key worked this time. We’ll see if the hotel service improves any over the next few days.

NYC