Archive for November, 2005
Wednesday, November 30th, 2005
Beware the Naysayers
I’ve been to many many graduations. High school graduations for myself, my siblings, my sister-in-law; college graduations for myself, my wife, my sister-in-law, friends. And at each commencement I hear at least three speakers give advice about how to live life to the fullest. A quick calculations shows it to be roughly 25 speeches.
At most graduations, everyone is so excited about graduating that the speakers are just hurdles that must be endured. The content is dry and ethereal, not relevant to the diploma sitting a few few away on a table, and the party that is only a few hours away.
Out of those 25 to 30 speeches, only one managed to find its way into my brain, where it lodged itself. I graduated from college in May 1998, and one of the commencement speakers was Susan Collins, a Republican senator from Maine. She talked about her travels through life, about the ups and downs of public office, about perseverance. And the phrase she used to emphasize this point was, “Beware the Naysayers”. There are people out there who will tell you that it isn’t possible, that your dreams are unattainable, that fighting the good fight is a waste of time. The naysayers have given up because the fight has been too difficult for them, and sometimes they enjoy bringing other people down with them.
I’ve had naysayers in my life, many of them. And everytime I feel frustrated of defeated, I think of that phrase. To me, it represents diligence, tenacity, perserverance, and courage in the face of adversity. I’ve often thought that if I were ever to give a speech, I would use the same title. And if I am only able to pass on one nugget of wisdom to the E-man, it would be to beware the naysayers.
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Monday, November 28th, 2005
our little turkey
We had a great Thanksgiving, full of family and fantastic food. It was the E-man’s first Thanksgiving, and I hope we have many more just like it. A little over a year ago, as we were enjoying the bliss of expecting a baby, my wife bought a onesie she found at BabiesR’Us. It says “My First Thanksgiving”, and more than once we would take it out of the closet in the nursery and talk about how much fun his first Thanksgiving would be.
It’s truly amazing how much stuff a 17 pound baby can add to the list of necessities for an overnight stay. There’s clothes, bottle supplies, formula, sippy cups, diaper changing equipment, diapers, wipes, a pack-n-play for sleeping (which he wouldn’t use), his exersaucer, his highchair, a camcorder, a camera, extra clothes for Mom and Dad just in case, and undoubtedly other things I’m too tired to recall. This tiny baby, 8 pounds smaller than the turkey my mother cooked for dinner, has quadrupled the amount of things I have to pack into our car!! I have no idea how we’re going to manage Christmas!!
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Tuesday, November 22nd, 2005
Tom Cruise crazier than The Shining
Stayed home with a sick E-man today (sinus infection). While surfing, I found the following videos that I had to share with the world.
The first is a new trailer for Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Whoever made this used clips from the original movie to create a new twist on the film. It’s a totally different film, totally hilarious!! (Thanks to Butterstar for this!)
The second is for all of those who believe that Tom Cruise has gone off the deep end. Controversial, I know, but I think he’s a nutjob. Anyway, there’s a video here and here that made me laugh so hard my wife asked me what was up!
Have a happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!!!
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Sunday, November 20th, 2005
The Goblet of Fire
Today my Mom visited and watched the E-man while my wife and I went on a date to see a movie and dine out. We went to the newly-renovated Carousel cinemas (so much room, no heads or hairdos in the way!) and after much debate decided to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, over Walk the Line.
I had read a review recently, written by someone who hadn’t yet read Book 4. He felt that the movie was too ambitious, covering too much ground without a cohesive thread. Seeing the movie through the eyes of someone who doesn’t read the books or hasn’t read Book 4, I can see how this might be true. The movie tries to accomodate the entirety or at least touch upon the myriad of storylines in the book. Unavoidably, some are ignored while others get only a brief mention. I will say that the 2.5hr movie flew by without dragging, and my wife and I would have felt comfortable watching another 20 or 30 minutes. (Is there some industry research out there that recommends against going over 2.5hrs, such that revenues will be greatly diminished? Why are all movies in the 1.5 to 2.5hr range? Is that due to a human characteristic such as attention span? Oh well).
We enjoyed the movie immensely. It was full of ups and downs, and Ralph Fiennes as Lord Voldemort was brilliant - I always thought he was sort of creepy even without a costume or makeup! Mad-Eye Moody, played by Brendan Gleeson, was also well acted. I did miss many of the bit players who only managed a line or two in this movie, such as Draco, Severus, and others. All in all, I would highly recommend the movie, although anyone who reads the books will want to see it regardless of what a reviewer might say!
Afterwards we had a nice seafood dinner, then went home to see the child we’d talked endlessly about and missed so much. He was sleeping on my Mom’s shoulder, resting after a day of play and fun.
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Sunday, November 20th, 2005
Six Degrees of Wikipedia
Remember the whole six degrees of separation thing? The professors in my first-year program at college were obsessed with theory that a human being is linked to every other human being by a link of no more than six people. It’s also simiilar to the Kevin Bacon game. Well, now there’s six degrees of Wikipedia. Enter in two articles, and see how many links are required to jump from the first article to the second. So far I haven’t seen more than five links between any two articles. My only complaint about the process is the use of broad dates to join articles. For example, the Year 2000 Wikipedia entry has so many entries that it combines many disparate topics. But I still enjoyed exploring.
Here are some examples:
Syracuse to Warren Zevon (3 links)
Lake Ontario to toxoplasmosis (3 links)
Heartburn to Benjamin Franklin (3 links)
Cadbury eggs to Bob Seger (4 links)
Have fun!
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Thursday, November 17th, 2005
Hematology Lesson
Daddy and the E-man had their first doctor’s appointment without Mom today. I picked him up from daycare and walked over to the hospital where we met with the hematologist. As usual, his defense mechanism lit up as soon as I walked in the door - a full and messy diaper. After that was fixed, then it was off to the phlebotomist where we got blood drawn. After a first attempt in his arm, and then a second attempt in his foot, they finally found a good spot on his scalp (which isn’t as bad as it sounds - it hurts him less, isn’t sore afterwards, and was an easy and quick stick). Poor guy, he hated every minute of it and let us know it. I can’t imagine how much it hurt to have them looking for the vein. It’s so barbaric to use a sharpened piece of hollow metal to get at our blood. Sounds like the middle ages.
The doctor, who graduated from the same department I’m doing my graduate work in, had me look at the microscope slide of the E-man’s blood with him. I got to keep it afterwards too; here are a few pictures:
The circles are all red blood cells:
The clumping in the middle here are platelets:
And here are two types of white blood cells:
In the first picture, his red blood cells should be filled with hemoglobin, not hollow like they are. It turns out that he has iron-deficiency anemia, and the doctor prescribed an iron supplement to fix the problem.
I’m so relieved that it was a simple problem with a simple fix. Sitting there in the Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorder Center, seeing other children of all ages getting cancer treatments, made me appreciate our healthy and happy boy even more. How is it that one child gets sick and another doesn’t? Who decides? The best thing the parent of a healthy child can do is appreciate that very fact. And we do.
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Wednesday, November 16th, 2005
Photoshop Magic
The E-man has an appointment tomorrow here at the hospital where I do research. During his recent illness, our pediatrician thought he looked very pale and he was checked for anemia. He was only slightly anemic, but while looking at his red blood cells (RBC’s), they saw some ovalocytes. Normally RBC’s are slightly oval shaped, but some of his cells were more cigar-shaped than oval. This could be do to a condition called Hereditary Elliptocytosis, a benign condition that doesn’t require treatment. Still, I’ll feel better when he’s seen by a hematologist and a diagnosis is made one way or the other.
I spent some time last night editing this photo (pretty much just removing the power lines from the background):
I thought I’d link to my uncle’s ice cream business, Snoqualmie Ice Cream, in Lynnwood, Washington (but soon to be Maltby, WA, where they’re building a huge new eco-friendly factory). In August 2004 I attended a meeting in Seattle, and stayed a few extra days to visit my family out there. I was able to try a number of flavors, but the lavender ice cream was by far my favorite. I’ve tried to explain the flavor to people, but I can never seem to do it justice. My aunt and uncle have expanded the business considerably since they purchased it a few years ago, and they use only the best ingredients in their products. If you live in Washington or Oregon, I highly recommend their ice cream!! I would give anything for a pint of the lavender!
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Monday, November 14th, 2005
Up North
We had a great time visiting my family on Friday, and my wife’s family on Saturday and Sunday. The weather was beautiful (once it warmed up from Friday). On Saturday, the sun was shining and the sky was bright blue - we took a few pictures of the E-man, including my favorite:
On Saturday night, E-man was a little grumpy, so while mom watched a movie with her family, I did my best to put him to sleep. Lately, when he’s tired I can get him to fall asleep by singing to him. It works in the car too, which is nice. So he fell asleep in my arms as I was singing some made-up song to him and rocking in the guest bedroom, and I was left thinking about the past and the future. A year ago we were still new to this whole parenting thing, and we wouldn’t even know for another month that we were having a boy. Now I can’t remember life without him, can’t imagine a day without him. That unmistakable smell of baby, a mixture of clean clothes, lotion, and wipes, will eventually fade away as he gets older and more independent. There will be a day when he wants to do everything himself, when he doesn’t always want our help. I know there will be times ahead when I can only wish to hold my son that close, to keep him safe and happy in my arms. For now, at least, I can hold my son close enjoy every passing moment.
Speaking of the past, yesterday I got a message from futureme.org, a site where you can send an email to the future. On the 13th of November of last year (2004), I sent myself an email to be delivered on the 13th of November, 2005. Here’s some of what I wrote, “Today is November 13th, 2004. [My wife] is 15 weeks pregnant with our baby, which we think is a boy. Today is Saturday, and we’re spending a quiet day at home. [My wife] is upstairs taking a nap. How is the baby? How was the rest of the pregancy and the birth?”
Turns out we were right, it was a boy! And ‘a quiet day at home’, remember that?
Here’s a set of photos from this weekend.
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Wednesday, November 9th, 2005
Kielbasa
Once in a while, the wife and I enjoy a good old fashioned German meal of Kielbasa and Sauerkraut. Well, I happened to pick out the kielbasa in the grocery store, and instead of picking the turkey kielbasa I chose the beef. I chose poorly. When I cooked it up last weekend, it was terrible - so greasy and heavy that we couldn’t eat it. I threw it into a tupperware dish and into the fridge it went.
Yesterday morning, as I was preparing bottles and lunch for us all (the bottles are for the E-man, lunches are for us, just in case you were wondering), I saw a few items in the fridge that I could clean out and stick into the dishwasher load I was compiling. So into the garbage disposal went the kielbasa and sauerkraut.
Now, those of you who grew up with garbage disposals, or have had one for years, might know not to put such a dense or heavy object into the grinder. I thought I got away with it - the sink shook a little, but it got through the stuff just fine. It wasn’t until my socked foot began to get wet that I looked under the sink. The vibrations had caused the garbage disposal to come loose from the drain pipe, and “digested” kielbasa and sauerkraut littered the area under the sink. The water I was running to clean out the sink was just spreading the mess.
Any other meal, any at all, and it wouldn’t have been such a big deal. But this stuff was the devil before being grinded up!! And of course we’d run out of paper towels the night before. And finally, I don’t know about the rest of you, but with the baby, my wife and I have very little slack in our morning ritual!! I did manage to get it all cleaned up, but needless to say, the whole day was just a little off. And I don’t know if I’ll ever EVER eat kielbasa again.
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Sunday, November 6th, 2005
Family Tree
(I actually wrote this post once last night, but I put a data CD into the computer and when it opened in my browser I lost the post. Very frustrating!)
As a genealogist, I often enjoy the most random genealogical thoughts. For instance, the E-man is the 9th generation of his surname to live in the United States. His great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, Philip, was born about 1752 in Germany and arrived in America in 1770. He fought in the American Revolution and was awarded some large land tracts in New York. Interestingly, both the E-man and I carry his Y chromosome, which is passed only from father to son, and typically without much modification. All the direct male descendants of Philip, of which there are many, carry the same chromosome.
There is another type of DNA that is passed from parent to child without modification. Mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA, is passed through the egg from mother to child, both male and female. But only the female children pass the DNA on to the next generation. Mitochondria are tiny fuel factories that create the energy each of our cells use. Since the ancestors of mitochondria were eaten and subjugated by our single-celled ancestors billions of years ago, they still contain a string of their own DNA. This DNA is also passed from mother to child without modification - we each carry exact clones of our mother’s mtDNA.
The E-man’s mitochondrial DNA comes from his mother, who got it from my mother-in-law. I can trace his mtDNA back to a woman named Susan who was born in England in 1830. My mother-in-law’s family has many many direct female descendants of Susan, meaning her mtDNA is surviving very well!
My mtDNA comes from a woman named Sarah who was born in England or Ireland in 1846 and then emigrated to the Caribbean.
Many companies now offer genealogical DNA testing. You can use use your Y-chromosome, your mtDNA, or your non-sex chromosomes to test the following:
- Relatedness of two or more individuals (provided they share the DNA in question)
- The presence of African American or Native American markers
- The ethnic and geographic origin of your Y chromosome or your mtDNA. This test usually groups you into a haplogroup, or a branch of the human family tree that your DNA most closely resembles. See Oxford Ancestors, the most popular company through which this is done.
Back in 2003, my wife and I had our non-sex chromosomes tested by AncestrybyDNA to examine the mixture of ethnic backgrounds in our DNA. This process uses Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms, also called Ancestry Informative Markers, to trace tiny variations in our DNA back to the source of that variation. For instance, a G nucleotide at a certain spot in your DNA might indicate a European ancestor who passed that down to you.
This was my wife’s result:
This suggests that she has roughly 9% Native American ancestry. Here are my results:
My results indicate roughly 12% East-Asian ancestry. I found this to be quite remarkable until I discovered that Native American ancestry is often misinterpreted as East Asian (this makes sense since the ancestors of the Native Americans came from Asia on the land bridge).
So anyway, this type of genealogical DNA testing is very new and is still far from perfect, which it can never be. It is merely fun to use this technology while knowing that the results can vary wildly. Genealogical research should always be taken with a grain of salt. Remember that recent study that suggested as many as one in 25 fathers are unknowingly raising someone else’s child? That would really screw up my family tree!!
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Tuesday, November 1st, 2005
Happy November!
We had a great Halloween, about 75 kids stopped by, which my wife loves. The more the better. We still had candy left over so she took it to school for her kids there. The E-man was pretty oblivious to it all, but next year he’ll get a kick out of it.
This weekend we went up north to my parents for a meal on Sunday. Before dinner my wife and I went for a walk down to the ballpark in my tiny hometown. We took some amazing pictures in the fall sunlight, you can see them posted here.
I also posted some pictures of the E-man, located here. I’ve just started using Flickr, but I really like it so far. It’s so much easier to edit, arrange, and tag photos than Snapfish, who I normally use. I hope everyone else had a great Halloween!
