While the fall equinox is officially a few weeks away, Labor Day typically signal the end of reliably dry weather in Seattle--although this year it's actually rained a fair amount between Memorial Day and Labor Day.

cuddlyeconomist and the Pumpkin returned from their world-wide jaunt tired, pleased to be home, and towing about 50# of souvenirs. Professor X was super-pleased to have mommy and bru-bru back, and I of course immediately got sick the day they got back. Still, we made it and everyone's better for the experience.

Pumpkin starts school here in Seattle this fall officially moving from Texas, but neither of the boys has really internalized that yet. Dr B has gone down to Houston this weekend to pack up his remaining items for Seattle and bring him back with the aid of her United Gold status and 3x 70# checked bags each it brings with it. We did his middle school orientation this week, although he was in Texas with his dad. His new school is very Seattle; I think the only thing missing is an integrated Starbucks, an Apple store, and a tattoo parlor. Anyhow, his Seattle-based Bestie is going to the same school and Pumpkin passed the testing Washington State demanded of us to get him in the advanced school (again).

Stuffs happening at work, but not much to report publicly. For my ten years at MSFT, stuffs have always been happening at work so that's just life in corporate America. I'll sell my annual vested stock grant, cash my bonus check, pay off much of the debt we accumulated in the new house setup, and just STFU :) My CodePlex projects are still going well, and there's plenty to do there in addition to my contributions to the "Threshold" release, and whatever ID@Xbox educational stuff they ask me to help with.

DrB starts a new job as an instructor at UW Tacoma this fall as well. She's been doing the post-doctoral grant game of musical chairs for a while, and I think she's just glad to get off the merry-go-round for a while. Her Saturn finally reached the end of it's rope, and we bought a New Mommy Car (aka a minivan). She loves it, the kids love it, and it's clearly created with moms & kids in mind. I find it comfortable to ride in, but it's just slightly too short on the legroom while I'm driving. Still, should be great for camping and family trips plus her regular commute.

So lots of change, but mostly for the good.

Japan. Check.
China. Check
Mongolia. Check.
Singapore. Check.
Delhi. Check.
Denmark. Check.
Now they are on their way to Ireland which is their last international stop.

My brother was in for a long weekend, and Professor X has had a great time with him. We are down to the last week of this trip, and I'm really looking forward to them getting back to Seattle.

The world travelers have made it through Japan and China, and are now in Mongolia. My dad has been here for most of that time hanging out with Professor X and I. He's doing really well, but the Professor X definitely misses his mommy. With the summer heat in Seattle, we've been sleeping in the big bed with the room A/C unit I set up last week running.

A few days ago DrB Skype'd to say hello and I had her on the phone on my end. Professor X insisted on holding the phone and put her in his toys to hang out together. It was cute.

It's going to be a long month, and my dad heads home tomorrow. My brother is coming to town in just over a week, and I'm getting some breaks with the help of friends. The single parent gig is tiring.

My mother has been in the hospital for over a week. She had a 'mild' heart attack last week--I'm not sure why anyone would use the phrase 'mild' with 'heart attack', but that's what they said. She's had cardiac problems for 25+ years starting with endocarditis and progressing to coronary artery disease that was treated with bypass open-heart about 5 years ago. Unfortunately, the process that created the disease is still happening, and the vessels were blocked again.

The whole mess is complicated by lots of other problems (asthma and diabetes being the key ones) and very low physical fitness. The open-heart surgery that was done was pretty dicey and they almost didn't get her through it. As such, open-heart again is really not an option. Heart stints aren't very effective for calcium deposits, which is what she has, and they had to do a more aggressive treatment with a catheter drill. My folks were thinking of turning down the treatment, but the doctors said without this treatment she would probably die as soon as they removed the ventricular assist device they attached after the stint procedure.

The good news is that the procedure today seemed to go well. Won't know more until tomorrow, but she is still going to be in pretty poor health even in the best of circumstances. DrB and I are going to be headed to San Antonio in late April with Professor X and Pumpkin in tow...

In other news, moving into our new house actually started this evening. Closing was about a month ago, but we’ve been doing a lot of work with painting, having some carpet replaced (cork for the win!), various electrical and lighting tasks, etc. It’s a lot easier to get all that done with an empty house sans toddler, but it’s been a long slog. We will hopefully be sleeping in the new place by a week from Saturday. The Professor is pretty excited about the new place (Big House! / Chasey House!), but with all the disruption in his routine he's been a handful.

Update: She's no longer on the VAD thanks to the successful drilling procedure, but she's still on a ventilator as they get her fully back from the anesthesia.

Update 2: She's out of the ICU to a step-down unit. The drilling procedure seems to have been a success.

Summer as expected has been non-stop craziness. cuddlyeconomist was out of town four times in the past two months on various trips so I was solo with Professor X a fair amount. Daycare kept me sane, but it was still a lot of work. How the heck do single working parent's survive? His birthday is Monday, and most of tomorrow will be spent in various celebrations.

Pumpkin has been in Seattle about a month. The house renovation planning hit a few twists and churns, so we went ahead and just did the traditional 'give up the office to give the boy his own room' thing in the meantime. We went to Ikea every day of several weekends, but the great shuffle is done. It's been good for the 10 year old to have his own space--he's clearly hitting his 'angst & moody teenager' stride early--and the two (2!) year old is enjoying having his own room as well. We've removed the gates in the living room, and reshuffled everything in there to make room for a dining table as well. Still a small house, but it's working out pretty well so far.

Hard to know what to say about the situation at Microsoft these days. I'm enjoying the work, my projects, and working with my team. It's certainly interesting times Chinese curse style. It will be months before the practical ramifications of Balmer's reorg trickle down and have any impact on day-to-day work at my level. Been doing my part contributing to Xbox One and Windows 8.1 as well as plugging away on my Codeplex projects, so that's really all an IC can do.

Two weekends back I took Pumpkin to Paizocon for some classic D&D (well, Pathfinder since D&D 3.5 is considered 'classic' these days). Good times, although being a family man means not staying to play 8 5+ hour slots and unofficial late-night slots to boot. My old roomie hackard was in town and we got to hang out a bit, which was a nice bonus.

We went camping last weekend--or should I say "kamping". The KOA does a great job of catering to the great American contradiction of both loving the out-of-doors and not wanting to suffer any real inconvenience in true wilderness. I've done the 50+ mile low-impact-camping hike thing, and with a toddler the KOA is definitely a pretty solid compromise. No TV, limited--cause you can't expect no--Internet, rustic cooking, and sleeping bag camping but with hot showers, flushing toilets, and a solid roof & walls to contain the boys. It's good to unplug for a while personally, and get the kids the heck out of the house too.

The house is quiet again with all the family back to their home cities. Sadly this includes the Pumpkin as we'd love to have more time with him, but we have to split his holiday evenly with his dad in Houston. Professor X quite enjoyed all the company, and this morning he was a little confused as to why he couldn't find anyone else in the house when he got up. Poor little tike. We took him to daycare on Monday for a short day to get back into the swing of things, and he needs the baby-friends time.

• Three epic meals. Check
  
• Used all three sets of DrB's china. Check
  
• Annual Christmas viewing of The Hogfather. Check
  
• What seems like 1,800,706 loads of dishes. Check
  
• Cookie party. Check
  
• Three rounds of present giving. Check
  
• Playdate for Pumpkin. Check
  
• The Hobbit @ the IMAX. Check
  
• Seattle Symphony. Check
  
• Hours of Professor X playing with family. Check

cuddlyeconomist and the wee bairn are down in California for a conference in San Francisco, and her mom flew out to help with the baby and get some bonus time with him. To keep our (vacation) powder dry for later in the summer, I'm staying in Seattle with the Rhys. This is in fact my first long "solo flight" as a parent. So far, so good. We told Rhys he could have a bit more screen time than we've been letting him have this summer mostly trying to limit Chase's screen time.

"Mantivities" have included

• Seeing the movie Brave
  
• Six+ episodes of Psych
  
• Watching him play dozens of levels of Portal 2--he's finished it before with his Dad, so he actually goes pretty quickly
  
• About 6 moves in a game of chess
  
• Assembly of one large Lego set
  
• Listening to a Star Talk podcast
  
• An album's worth of Jonathan Coulton
  
• Picking up his bike (DrB ordered it last week)
  
• Breakfast for dinner last night; Today: Breakfast, second breakfast, lunch, dinner, supper, and evening snack (the boys are actually both eating a ton these days)

I even managed to get him in the bath and to bed on schedule for a "camp night" without too much drama. At this point I really only have to get him through dinner and tomorrow night since he's at camp most of the day and his mom gets back on Tuesday.

SNOWPOCALYPSE NOW Edition!

While the snow didn't start until late Tuesday, this week has been all about the big winter storm that rolled in mid-week. Monday I went to work to secure some files and build updates expecting to be working-from-home a few days this week, and we run a few errands as well. We made a point of going out to eat for a meal or two as well Monday/Tuesday. Wednesday snowed all day, accumulating probably 3-4 inches here, then freezing rain today, and then another inch or so of snow. I actually trudged down to the QFC on Wednesday to get cuddlyeconomist some jars for her canning project, and I'm glad I didn't bother trying to take a vehicle and just hoofed it. Our street never gets plowed, there's plenty of hill grades, and apparently nobody in Seattle seems to keep their tires up with good tread either. There were plenty of people spinning out even on my 4 block walk.

Luckily we've not had any power, Internet, or heat interruptions so far (knock on simulated wood-grain finish), and our property has very few trees hanging over it. The ones that are shared with the neighbors have both been trimmed up by an arborist this year so no broken tree limbs downed by heavy, wet snow either in our immediate vicinity.

On the plus side, it's been nice to get several bonus days at home with Professor X. I've managed to get some work done, and generally we've all been keeping sane with the regular application of Xbox 360 time playing Lego® Harry Potter®: Years 1-4. We even managed to have some company early in the week as well.

But it's not been all "Snow Day Phun!" either. DrB has hit the stressful point in her last planned quarter finishing up her M.P.H., and has been stressy, stressy, stressy. Professor X has had a particularly rough time of it today with teething pain, and a rather nasty diaper rash. We've been using cloth diapers and for the most part he has not had any serious diaper rash before now. Our working theory is that one of the solidmushy foods he is eating is not agreeing with him and producing a particularly unpleasant result that irritates the skin on his little bum. It's rough being just shy of 6 months old. For myself, I've also developed a rather nasty cough and cold, probably from too much time in the heated, dry air. Even if there hadn't been an inch thick sheet of ice over 4 inches of powdery snow all over my neighborhood, I'd have still taken a sick day today.

Finally, DrB had been planning to take a trip down to Texas this weekend to see her Pumpkin and for my folks to see a bit more of the Professor whilst he is still in his early larvae form. Continental (or is it United++ now?) called this evening to inform us that her flight for Friday has been cancelled. So after 45 minutes on hold with the airline and numerous other related calls, the whole shebang is rescheduled for the following weekend.

Saturday cuddlyeconomist and I had a great wedding at The Salish Lodge, and the hard work for the event paid off with a short & sweet little ceremony, excellent food, fun music, tasty Mike's Amazing Cakes (one fully sculptural; the other decorated with DrB's handmade royal icing flowers), cool games, and a wonderful assortment of our friends and family. We are both very much looking forward to part 2 down at TRF in October to see the rest of our Texas people who weren't able to join us. Even as it was, the venue forced us to keep the guest list a bit tight, so if you weren't there know that we were thinking of all of you.

We got many compliments on various aspects of the evening, and the Salish staff did an awesome job all day. Special thanks to the bellman, Kevin, who shuffled much of the wedding materials and mediated between the various hotel rooms involved in the preparations.

It was also great to have an event that mostly ran on auto-pilot with some great help from DrB's mom, a family friend Carol, and our friend Denise plus assists from greeneyedkitty, loree, and tithonium. We had thrown family dinner parties Thursday and Friday nights so I had my fill of cooking and cleaning for the week.

Rhys had a great time, and he did great with a room full of adults many of whom he didn't know all that well. He even took a bath without too much fuss--the fact that the Salish has awesome spa tubs helped. Saturday night he stayed in our room and frankly everyone was wiped so we slept well. Tonight we have the room to just the two of us so we'll get some quality time in with the tub and the fireplace ourselves.

cuddlyeconomist and I hosted Christmas in Seattle this year with Rhys, my folks, and Margo's mom all in town--unfortunately, my brother Todd wasn't able to make it due to too little vacation remaining. The house has been pretty crowded with parties and company, but with my folks staying at a hotel it hasn't been too crazy.

Margo watches Miracle on 34th Street every year--because the Post Office saves the day on a technicality--, but I threw in Terry Pratchett's Hogfather as well. Fun times.

This morning, Rhys made out like a bandit of course with grandparent presents, and everyone had a good time. Thanks to my Amazon wish list, we continue to grow our board game collection and I almost but not quite have a complete of Arkham Horror.

We decided that we didn't want to do another turkey for Christmas after having done one for Thanksgiving, so we tried a goose (AB: "This is America! Goose sat behind Maverick!") . It was excellent, although the 29 ounces of fat was a little terrifying--but at least we didn't actually consume that part. It was a quite a spread as usual, and I think we did about six loads of dishes in the last 24 hours. We had originally planned to spread the work out over a few days, but we ended up cramming most of it into today. The goose was fairly lean, so we don't have a ton of meat leftovers, but the stock I'm making smells pretty good.

I'm just looking forward to not going to a grocery store or Target tomorrow.