Holes In Thoughts

Friday, August 15, 2008

I can't sleep.

Rachel is visiting her family to meet our first nephew, her brother Isaac's son Elijah. I'm excited for them, and Rachel is beyond words.

She and I are, still, very close. That sounds strange from a married man talking about his wife, but we really do still have many of the hallmarks of a relationship still in the "honeymoon phase" - four years into the marriage. We sometimes chide each other for being codependent (and frankly it's a fair cop); I wouldn't eat without her and I don't know what her finances would look like without me. We still balance well, and that's largely because we're still good at communicating, even when we're angry (at each other or just in general).

I've heard from many sources that the first wall is at seven years, but I'm comforted, in a way, knowing that even when she's only gone for a day and a half, sleeping isn't something that's likely before complete exhaustion.

Labels: family, insomnia, love, Rachel, sleep

posted by Steve @ 3:04 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Baseball in Phoenix

I visited my family this last weekend.

It was good to get out of the house. Nice to see the family. Awkward to admit that we had given away the dining room table that we inherited from the grandparents. Grandpa seems to believe that the furniture he bought us is indestructible.

He's half right, actually. I think the couch we got (and are forever upholstering) would outlast most nuclear blasts. But then, it was built in the '60's.

I have been assured that the fact that I haven't heard any repeat stories from my grandparents in a few years entirely stems from the fact that I don't see them as often. I don't mind, though, even if/when they are. Grandpa actually knows what he's talking about usually, even if he is stubborn. I fully expect to be at least as stubborn when I'm in my 80's. Seems like a perk of getting old to me.

After an awesome barbecue dinner (I arrived at around 7; it takes an absurd amount of time to fight through traffic in both Tucson and Phoenix), I considered going home but was persuaded to stay another day. It was the first time I had been detained in Phoenix for a reason other than a broken vehicle in quite a while, and that was refreshing indeed.

The next day, I got a chance to sit down and hang out with Steve & Tanya. It's rare I get the chance, mostly because they live in Russia, but also because usually I only see them at family gatherings where the conversation is strictly PG. I live in a very liberal town and while I wouldn't call myself liberal or conservative, I'm much more conservative than my grandparents.

Back when the presidential election was up in the air over Thanksgiving, I decided to declare that I was, in fact, an adult at the dinner table and asked my grandmother what she thought about the election. She said, "The weather's fine, Steven."

Steve's perspective is that of an international businessman and he's generally a conservative in the old-school, balanced-budget/not-insane type. I picked his mind quite shamelessly. I also managed to get Tanya's new PDA (a Palm like my new phone) to check her email. Unfortunately a lot of it was in Russian, and I didn't have time to get a language pack.

To end the day, we went to a Diamondbacks game at what used to be the BOB (Bank One Ballpark) and is now Chase Field. It's just down the road from the Suns' home arena, what used to be AWA (America West Airlines) Arena, but what is now US Airways Center. Which can be abbreviated U SAC. Say it out loud.

Nice.

Anyway, I've now watched a Cubs game at Wrigley Field, a Sidewinders game in Tucson, and a Diamondbacks game at Chase Field.

Chase Field is huge and impressively has a retractable roof. Unfortunately, only about half of the people in the stadium - which had 33,121 people in it - can read the score boards. There's a huge one on one side, and a pair of teeny ones that are too small to be read by humans from the other side of the place. Thankfully I had my awesome camera and could zoom way in, take a picture, and see what it said on my camera. This shouldn't have been necessary. But it did give me a rare instance in which I could both (A) give my camera a true test of its abilities and (B) out-gizmo my globetrotting uncle.

While my camera could make out the 1st baseman's number, it was just a few meters shy of being able to make out the name. Considering the guy must've been a quarter-mile away, that's not shabby. Also, the players were all in the shade, so it's possible it could've resolved the name if I didn't have to have the ISO so high.

On the other hand, the ratio of food booths to attendees was about 4:1 (for you hard of mental math, I'm exaggerating to the tune of saying that there are 8,250 food vendors in the arena; a more realistic ratio would have been 4.5:1). The lines for food weren't nearly as bad as at a Suns game for this reason.

Actually, since I saw a few Suns games last year, I was struck by how different a Suns game is from a baseball game. I am once again reaffirmed in my belief that baseball games are picnics in bleachers, and that's great. Though, I think Steve was right - it's right expensive when soda is $5 for a cup.

After the game, I wandered around the downtown area a bit with my camera. I didn't realize how much I enjoy doing that sort of thing. Eventually, one day, I'll be able to take pictures of people without feeling weird.

I also bought a nice bookshelf for Rachel from IKEA on the way back. With a little luck, we'll have our living space arranged before the month is out; our last place took 10 months.

Labels: basketball, family, Phoenix, sports

posted by Steve @ 1:08 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Music & Life... with Rests

Rachel's birthday is on Wednesday, and so of course everybody - and I mean everybody - wants to see Rachel and I. It's nice that we're popular, but I'm pretty sure she's going to want to sleep for the most part.

Finding a balance is proving harder than we thought, especially since we have different weekends. Hopefully, when we go to the libraries around here to apply for a job for her, we'll have some luck and eventually have the same two days off every week.

We also weeded and pruned a ton this week. I'm pretty sure we've cut, pulled and otherwise removed about 300-400 pounds of foliage, branches and weeds. Sad thing is that we're not even really close to finishing. We're still excited about our new place, but boy it's a lot of work getting it up to where we want it to be.

Labels: birthday, family, friends, house, Rachel, vacation

posted by Steve @ 12:52 AM 0 comments

Monday, July 02, 2007

Prescott for the 4th

Yay! Rachel and I are going to Prescott for the 4th of July. We'll eat great food, see the in-laws, help build their new house, and rewire the truck. It's going to be great to see them and get so much done. I know that a working vacation is just what I need.

Meantime, I'm going out in a bit to check out where our next place is. I'm sad that we're moving, not because I'm particularly attached to this place, but because I've yet to live in the same place for more than roughly a year since I moved out to college - in 1998. That means this will be my 12th place in 10 years, including Okinawa.

Still, we've got enough money to be able to rent both places for a week or two, and so will be able to catalogue every last thing we own (!), partly to get rid of things we don't want or need, partly because getting rid of things will make the move easier, and also for home insurance purposes.

Oh, and this time, I have a nice camera to bring!

Labels: apartments, family, holidays, in-laws, moving, Okinawa, Rachel, truck, vacation

posted by Steve @ 2:00 PM 0 comments

Thursday, June 28, 2007

I think I'm a Republican.

I'm going to visit my in-laws this weekend. I love my in-laws. But I'm a great deal more liberal than they are, and more to the point, much more casually religious. The reason I still like them, though, is because they're very much the kind of Christians I think the country lacks: the ones that recognize that Jesus was a humble, kind, hard-working person that didn't judge needlessly or haughtily. He absolutely knew where he stood on issues, but didn't run around knocking people's heads together when they disagreed with him.

Regardless, I'm going to be there a week, and I'm sure that politics is going to come up at some point or another; after a discussion about how torture is bad with her brother, my wife got an email from her Mom about the war in Iraq.

I don't mind. Being pressed on my beliefs forces me to inspect them.

Thankfully, my belief that the Bush administration is incompetent, unjust and shameful got an amazing proof yesterday: Scooter Libby, who was convicted of conspiracy and then perjury to cover it up, got bailed out of jail by Bush by having his sentence commuted. Bush hasn't used the Presidential (or even gubernatorial) power to pardon or commute a person's sentence pre-mortem almost at all - including an oft-criticized decision not to pardon a born-again Christian her death penalty. He even, in his own book, said that he didn't think it was his job to alter the rulings of the court; he then signed the death sentences.

Labels: Bush, family, in-laws, politics, rant

posted by Steve @ 10:18 AM 0 comments

Monday, December 18, 2006

I am becoming open to the idea of being more open.

I am going to begin blogging again.

I have decided to let my students add me, but will not add them in the interest of protecting myself.

I am so very close to being where I want to be: out of debt with a steady job.

I am re-opening doors I had shut with my Dad, with people I'd done business with that had gone sour, and within myself.

I am listening to a lot of Muse, GYBE!, Mogwai and Snow Patrol, because epic change should be met with epic music.

I am finishing a Design homepage that I can maintain and is up to standards - mine as well as the Web's.

I am going to start making mix CD's and post them in the same way that online blogs do.

I'm going to get my blogs together; MySpace for some reason won't let me date blogs before 2005, despite the fact that some of them were written in 2004. But I'll repost them.

I'm ready as I'm ever going to be.

Close eyes. Breathe in, slowly.
Open eyes. Breathe out.

Begin.

Currently listening :
Eyes Open
By Snow Patrol

Labels: BASIS, blog, design, family, jobs, mixing, music, MySpace, school

posted by Steve @ 8:11 PM 0 comments

Friday, September 09, 2005

Political Rant No. 2: CONSPIRACY!

It seems that, in light of the endless debacle that is FEMA, it's appropriate I recall my Mother's wisdom. Well ... you should know about my Mom before I dispense. She's been working in the nursing and health care world for several decades now and it was/is usually in the government end - at Maricopa County hospital, the VA, or in her decade-long stint in the Navy. She knows how the government works (or doesn't work) as well as anybody when it comes to high-stakes issues (and it doesn't get higher stakes than, say, life and death). Her take on conspiracies goes something like this:

The U.S. Government couldn't possibly hide anything of real significance - such as aliens living among us - because it simply doesn't run effectively or efficiently enough to do so.

Currently listening :
Absolution
By Muse

Labels: conspiracy, family, government, joke

posted by Steve @ 2:36 AM 0 comments

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Name: Steve
Home: Tucson, Arizona, United States
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