We have been on a massive Beatles kick lately, started by Fiona who is learning a routine to "Yellow Submarine". We have probaby heard the song about 1000 times in the last week, but we are allowed to play other Beatles songs occasionally as well.
The other day All You Need Is Love was on. When Fiona heard the song she frowned and commented: "What about toys and dresses and clothes?". I guess love alone does not cut it for a 4 year old!
Friday, March 27, 2009
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Sliced Up
Pretty much spent Friday getting sliced up by doctors or waiting to get sliced up by doctors. It started at my skin doctor to get two small moles removed. Nothing too bad here - two shots of lidocaine and all was good. So then I had time to go home, hang out for an hour before returning to a different surgeon to remove a cyst from my back. Apparently it was too big for my skin doctor to remove in his office, which I thought was strange but whatever...
So I show up, simply expecting to have this other doctor remove it in his office...well...it turned out to be kind of like a "proper" surgery. It was done in a proper operating theatre, there were 4 nurses assisting, monitors on my for heart rate and blood pressure, quite a lot of overkill I thought. The only part I felt was the lidocaine again, but this time, due to the quantity used, it was a lot more uncomfortable. Still, it is magic stuff - once it took effect, I could not feel a thing. I guess he was cutting away at me for about 30 minutes and he showed me the offending cyst, about the size of a marble I would figure.
Now I am healing up and dealing with follow up appointments etc. It feels good to have it done that is for sure.
The rest of the weekend was spent watching us lose at cricket and also watching many college basketball games. Overall, I am quite happy with the cricket side. I think that we will lilely be playing in England without a spinner, probably an attack of Johnson, Siddle, Clark and Lee will do the trick. In fact, I don't think we have much choice about this as we don't have other decent options. Katich, North and Clarke will fill the spinner role for now and we will have to hope there is some 18 year old just ready to burst onto the scene.
So I show up, simply expecting to have this other doctor remove it in his office...well...it turned out to be kind of like a "proper" surgery. It was done in a proper operating theatre, there were 4 nurses assisting, monitors on my for heart rate and blood pressure, quite a lot of overkill I thought. The only part I felt was the lidocaine again, but this time, due to the quantity used, it was a lot more uncomfortable. Still, it is magic stuff - once it took effect, I could not feel a thing. I guess he was cutting away at me for about 30 minutes and he showed me the offending cyst, about the size of a marble I would figure.
Now I am healing up and dealing with follow up appointments etc. It feels good to have it done that is for sure.
The rest of the weekend was spent watching us lose at cricket and also watching many college basketball games. Overall, I am quite happy with the cricket side. I think that we will lilely be playing in England without a spinner, probably an attack of Johnson, Siddle, Clark and Lee will do the trick. In fact, I don't think we have much choice about this as we don't have other decent options. Katich, North and Clarke will fill the spinner role for now and we will have to hope there is some 18 year old just ready to burst onto the scene.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
A Day And Night At The Museum
The last couple of weeks have been amazingly busy, both with work and leisure stuff. Colgate has been keeping me quite busy during the days as we get towards the end of the first quarter and some of the stuff we promised to get done is falling due. In addition, in the evenings, I have been doing some extra work testing the next release of my company's software. I don't mind the work - it is interesting to see the new features that are coming out and it helps you learn a lot about how it works. However, the combination of the two has led to a lot of late nights.
Last weekend did not really help the fatigue. A little bit of cleaning on Saturday morning followed by lunch at our local Indian buffet...then off to Atlantic City with a few friends for a night of poker. We arrived at the tables at 5:00 and played until 1:00, arriving back home at about 3:30. It was a lot of fun and a successful venture, finishing $130 in the plus columm after the night. I actually would have won more if not for a few unlucky cards that prevented me from winning a few bigger pots - having the nut flush and then having a 4th suited card hit the board to freeze the action; having the nut straight and getting someone "all in" only to find they have the nut straight also and having to lay down the 2nd nut flush after the 4th flush card hit (again) relegating my hand to 3rd best. Fortunately these did not cost me too much money, but could have certainly won a lot more had things worked out a little differently.
The prearranged plan was for me to sleep until 8:30 before rushing around and getting ready for ou trip toe the American Museum of Natural History. I was a little suprised when Mindy woke me at 7:30 to "see if I wanted to eat breakfast". Her comment was that it was only 30 minutes earlier than we had agreed. Strange...I figured that there was a whole hour between 7:30 and 8:30 and for me that would have been 20% more sleep! So, I decided to get up and get on with the day.
We drove into the city, arriving about 10:00. You can normally find a parking spot on the street at that time and with the "Fit" we should have a lot of options open to us, even with my very limited parking skills. We toured a few rooms showing some space exhibits and also the African and Asian mammal halls, before meeting a couple of friends at the Imax Theatre. The show was called "Wild Ocean" I believe, but it would have been better to call it "Sardine Fishing". It was really quite uninteresting I thought and the girls did not enjoy it much either.
From there, a few more exhibit halls and an overpriced, poor quality, cramped and rushed lunch were to follow, then off to a butterfly exhibit. They had created an indoor environment for them, nice and humid, and so it was a good chance for the girls to see a lot of butterflies up close. Fiona did not like the humidity or the smell, so Mindy left with her. Naomi had to be almost dragged away. After this, came the highlight of the day - the Cosmic Collisions show in the planetarium. This was really well done and a must see for anyone going to the museum. Naomi was still talking about it today.
After arriving home, we then watched the somewhat appropriate "A Night At The Museum". The girls (Mindy included) really enjoyed it, I had seen it before while trapped on a plane to somewhere. We then packed them off to bed, watched some episodes of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and crashed ourselves. Looking forward to another week packed with work leading into the cricket on Thursday. Sleep can wait another week I guess.
Last weekend did not really help the fatigue. A little bit of cleaning on Saturday morning followed by lunch at our local Indian buffet...then off to Atlantic City with a few friends for a night of poker. We arrived at the tables at 5:00 and played until 1:00, arriving back home at about 3:30. It was a lot of fun and a successful venture, finishing $130 in the plus columm after the night. I actually would have won more if not for a few unlucky cards that prevented me from winning a few bigger pots - having the nut flush and then having a 4th suited card hit the board to freeze the action; having the nut straight and getting someone "all in" only to find they have the nut straight also and having to lay down the 2nd nut flush after the 4th flush card hit (again) relegating my hand to 3rd best. Fortunately these did not cost me too much money, but could have certainly won a lot more had things worked out a little differently.
The prearranged plan was for me to sleep until 8:30 before rushing around and getting ready for ou trip toe the American Museum of Natural History. I was a little suprised when Mindy woke me at 7:30 to "see if I wanted to eat breakfast". Her comment was that it was only 30 minutes earlier than we had agreed. Strange...I figured that there was a whole hour between 7:30 and 8:30 and for me that would have been 20% more sleep! So, I decided to get up and get on with the day.
We drove into the city, arriving about 10:00. You can normally find a parking spot on the street at that time and with the "Fit" we should have a lot of options open to us, even with my very limited parking skills. We toured a few rooms showing some space exhibits and also the African and Asian mammal halls, before meeting a couple of friends at the Imax Theatre. The show was called "Wild Ocean" I believe, but it would have been better to call it "Sardine Fishing". It was really quite uninteresting I thought and the girls did not enjoy it much either.
From there, a few more exhibit halls and an overpriced, poor quality, cramped and rushed lunch were to follow, then off to a butterfly exhibit. They had created an indoor environment for them, nice and humid, and so it was a good chance for the girls to see a lot of butterflies up close. Fiona did not like the humidity or the smell, so Mindy left with her. Naomi had to be almost dragged away. After this, came the highlight of the day - the Cosmic Collisions show in the planetarium. This was really well done and a must see for anyone going to the museum. Naomi was still talking about it today.
After arriving home, we then watched the somewhat appropriate "A Night At The Museum". The girls (Mindy included) really enjoyed it, I had seen it before while trapped on a plane to somewhere. We then packed them off to bed, watched some episodes of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and crashed ourselves. Looking forward to another week packed with work leading into the cricket on Thursday. Sleep can wait another week I guess.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Cricket, Hitting and Cricket
This past weekend was quite busy. Saturday was my first cricket practice of the year at an indoor facility in Brooklyn. It was not the greatest area and so I was convinced that I would never see my new car again. The practice went well - very happy with how I batted and my bowling was OK as well. It really felt good to get back out there and get another hit.
After this, I raced home through gridlock traffic to go on a night out. It was originally going to be a poker evening but morphed into a night at Hooters watching a UFC fight. Much beer was consumed and a lot of spicy meat products were devoured. Put it this way, I think the McDonalds I had for lunch was a more nutritious meal! The fighting was quite entertaining. I cannot imagine anyone bothering watching boxing anymore, this stuff was violent, up tempo and the best fighter always won...the loser was typically unconscious on the ground, so it was kind of easy to tell.
Much of the rest of the weekend involved watching cricket. Another nice win in the 2nd test went a long way towards erasing the memories of the home series. Of the new guys, you have to love Siddle (Craig McDermott and Merv Hughes' love child); Phil Hughes has a huge future (unfortunately he can pretty much only go down from here) and North seems quite promising as well. I wish McDonald could bat, he would be an ideal 5th bowler, but you have to figure that he cannot play in his current role for too much longer.
The only way this got better was for the Poms to lose the series against the West Indies. Classic stuff!
After this, I raced home through gridlock traffic to go on a night out. It was originally going to be a poker evening but morphed into a night at Hooters watching a UFC fight. Much beer was consumed and a lot of spicy meat products were devoured. Put it this way, I think the McDonalds I had for lunch was a more nutritious meal! The fighting was quite entertaining. I cannot imagine anyone bothering watching boxing anymore, this stuff was violent, up tempo and the best fighter always won...the loser was typically unconscious on the ground, so it was kind of easy to tell.
Much of the rest of the weekend involved watching cricket. Another nice win in the 2nd test went a long way towards erasing the memories of the home series. Of the new guys, you have to love Siddle (Craig McDermott and Merv Hughes' love child); Phil Hughes has a huge future (unfortunately he can pretty much only go down from here) and North seems quite promising as well. I wish McDonald could bat, he would be an ideal 5th bowler, but you have to figure that he cannot play in his current role for too much longer.
The only way this got better was for the Poms to lose the series against the West Indies. Classic stuff!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)