Following Edge

I think my work will always have a long list of projects to get to. I hope to enjoy my off hours a bit more by appreciating the work I complete.

(This post has been briefly summarized for you due to possibly sensitive content.)

Anne Marie, who is wonderful and smart enough to (so far) keep me from also referring to her as "Foxy" here, had her birthday today. Happy Birthday!

And how did she get to enjoy her birthday? Well, sick with a cold enough to mutter "death on a stick" more than a few times. And enjoying a dentist appointment first thing in the morning. Followed by waiting in line at the DMV for a driver's license renewal. Then, getting a gift card from Lauren and I, reflecting the most creative gift choice we were able to bring ourselves to. Finally, enjoying a fine birthday dinner at the restaurant of her choice, while also counting "points" on her diet.

Anyhow, despite how things could have been better for her birthday, Lauren and I truely love and appreciate her, and hope the fever from her cold blocks her memories of all but the best moments from the day.

It seems everything recently ties back to something else...

Lauren and I visited Emerld Park and Lauren remembered visiting the park when there were no other kids there and she wore her "special outfit". Lots of kids there this time and no "special outfit" was required to enjoy both the playground and the sandbox.

My dad (and brother and sister) left today after their week visit. It wasn't until the end of the day today that I had recovered from the week's family visit, family reunion, work backlog, etc. I hope the coming weeks will be a little more routine. After that, routine will be back out the window as we prepare for Philadelphia.

Louise, our oldest hen, died today. We were just noticing last week that she was looking very old and weak. It's always a bit sad, of course. On the other hand, we now have seven baby pheasants which are now pestering us throughout the night, making me secretly calculate the possible duration of their lives. We are expecting another hatching tomorrow, but I hope it will actually hatch on Monday, so it can be a "birthday pheasant" for Anne Marie, since I got three "birthday pheasants" two weeks ago.

Finally, Anne Marie and I recently completed a Jumble puzzle which struck me curiously. Even though we don't really set out to do the Jumble, Anne Marie and I often play it after we either finish the newspaper's adjacent crossword or are forced to give up on the crossword. The answers for that day (June 22) were "SOGGY FRUIT", "CUDDLE BEGONE" and "SINGLED OUT", which stuck me curiously, since it sounded almost exactly like an entry from David's blog. I have stopped commenting on his blog since he is going in circles and doesn't seem to want any feedback. Maybe I'll see if I can write him Jumble puzzles whose answers are uplifting words.

This is my some of my family... well, except for the monkey, despite what you may think of my origins. However, this monkey probably displays my feelings of the last two days of family reunion better than any picture of my miserable self over that time. The main problem was that my brother Max arrived on Saturday with a cold he got on the flight from Chicago. He's young and resilient, but after the cold caught up to me on Tuesday, I spent two days at the family reunion sleeping or in a daze trying to talk with talkative relatives.

The place where we stayed for the reunion was a double-wide ingeniously converted to three hotel rooms overlooking the North Umpqua river. Our room, the "Ponderosa", was decorated with an unbelievable collection of cowboy tchotchke and art. After spending much of two days napping for recovery and two nights coughing every five minutes while admiring the decor, It's almost too much effort to imagine the detailed decorations of the neighboring "Heritage" and "Huntsman" rooms.

Of course, a perfect wireless Internet connection was available just a mile away, while there was absolutely no cell phone or data signal at all at the reunion. I would have shared my misery earlier if it hadn't been for that. My devotion to you, my readers, even brought me to take a short drive to nearby Colliding Rivers Park, where I got excellent wireless signal, but where my laptop decided that my phone doesn't exist! Could anything else have gone wrong?

Seriously though, it is nice to visit with relatives and enjoy the beautiful sights around the river. We even made it to a nearby fish hatchery to visit millions of tiny fish, and to Wildlife Safari to see the disgruntled monkey pictured here. Now, to finish working through the hundreds of emails that arrived while I was away.

Wow, there's been no lack of activity keeping me from posting here. On the contrary, a frenzy of planning for our birthday/graduation party brought us to the actual party last night (tiny picture to right). There had to be around 35 people there and it seemed like a great success, despite a bit of rain. A very sad David was there as well as many of the "usual suspects". Kat and her boyfriend Justin attended. Some people (being naive to the blogosphere) didn't know how we met Kat and a few people asked "who are the young guy and the tall blond with the great camera"?

The party is always pretty amazing. A day or more of work and a bit of money to bring all our friends together. Well worth the effort. Thanks to everyone who attended.

My dad and my brother and sister (well, half-siblings, actually) arrived from Chicago during the party. We'll all be driving to Glide, Oregon for a family reunion this week. Family reunions don't really feel like my thing, but it'll be a nice break from work and a nice trip out of town. Hopefully, I'll be able to wrangle an Internet connection to post an entry or two!

Today, we attended Kate and Charles' very cool wedding. Lauren wore a very cute dress, which everyone commented on. (See the cute picture.) The ceremony was held at The Bijou movie theater and was only about half an hour long with a meaningful combination of ring-exchange and pagan-esque hand fasting. Then, we all watched The Princess Bride. It was personal and wonderful in all the ways that Anne Marie and I worked to make our wedding. Well done, Kate and Charles! Best wishes!

Despite a handful of local bloggers intending to show up to tonight's Eugene Weblogger Get-together, it turned out to be just Alan (yeah, I pestered him about his blog), David, and myself. The small group seemed fine to me, even though April's huge turnout keeps me anticipating more people. I ended up ordering a big pizza and whole pitcher of beer, which I drank most of, which probably added to my feeling that the evening went fine.

But seriously, Alan, David and I had plenty of technical discussion, since we're all of that persuasion. We gossiped about Kinsey, who, as a regular attendee, was noticeably missed.

All in all, it was great, especially compared to tomorrow's meeting: an all-day manager's meeting with four hours of driving. I'd take a blogger get-together any time over that, if that was an option.

What is a birthday supposed to be like at 36? Yesterday was my birthday and, although we're having a party next weekend, I think I spent the day expecting something good to happen. Taking Lauren to school and back, repairing and cleaning lawn mowers, working, and taking Anne Marie in for her late shift at work didn't seem to spell "birthday" for me.

Although I enjoyed my dinner at Poppi's Anatolia with Lauren (and their really excellent Spanikopita and rice pudding), I was still a bit in a funk and depressed as we put Lauren to bed and settled into bed ourselves. Anne Marie even noticed that I was feeling down. She noted how birthdays might bring depression about getting older, but that's not really my issue. We decided that you may get to this age and have some expectation of something after years of exciting birthdays.

Anyhow, all of my concerns and worries seemed to magically disappear after Anne Marie and I got some time together in the evening. Sometimes the simple things make everything feel right. Note to self: Happy Birthday.

As previously predicted, it appears that Meetup.com is not having much success with charging hard-working organizers for their web site.

Almost 2 months ago, I ditched Meetup.com and set the wheels in motion for the Eugene Weblogger Meetup to be disbanded, and for the "Eugene Weblogger Get-together" to begin. I noted that there were about 100 groups on the Meetup site at that time.

Checking back today, exactly the same groups are listed. Amazing. Oops. Except that if you click on any of them, it them reports they are disbanded and that you can step forward and pay to be the organizer.

Being too lazy to actually click all the groups to see if any are still active, I discovered that their Feed of the next 100 upcoming events for this area shows the one event for the only remaining active group, The Eugene Sweetest Fruit Meetup (really, I suspect you don't truly want to know what that's about).

Amazing! I expected there may be as many as a dozen suckers who would pay. Evidently, though, not even this organizer paid, since she hasn't visited the site since before Meetup announced the fees. She must have paid to be a "M+" member at some point, so they didn't collect the fees from her.

So, evidently, no one, not even an insane clown, was willing to pay. Maybe Eugene is just too small? How about Portland? They have one active group, the "Portland Russian Language Meetup Group". Not much for an urban area of almost a million people.

Glad to know that my decision wasn't a bad one. Or, if it was, at least it was a bad decision with lots of good company. I think the message here is that, if you're going to start a business on the web, you should figure out where your money comes from before you get desperate for cash.

Instead of telling you about the business book I'm supposed to be Bzzing about as a BzzAgent, let me tell you about something I actually understand.

You've probably heard of "Voice over IP" or Internet phone service. Even though I do my best to stay away from leading edge technology, I've been using Vonage's Internet phone service since 2003, a bit before it entered the public consciousness.

Recently, there has been a bit of bad press about whether or not their 911 emergency service really works like it should. I think it's a bit overblown, since we haven't used it for our main phone service, but just as a way to get a local phone number in Portland for about $25 a month, which usually has saved us at least that month in long distance calls. The only trouble has been that the Lingo service sometimes cuts out or drops a call while we're talking.

Now, I can sympathize with the technical troubles of Internet phone because I wasn't new to it when I signed up in 2003. I had actually run an internal Voice over IP phone network for my company from 1996 to 2000. It was early technology over a low-speed Internet connection, so the quality was just good enough for internal communication. The staff called it the "Submarine Line" since it had all the same audio qualities as the old submarine movie where the captain calls over the radio "engines full stop, ballasts to 400". Needless to say, with this preparation, the problems with the Lingo service seemed minor.

This month, I decided to give Internet phone service a try for replacing our local phone service. Well, actually, it's not really me giving it a try for my phone service... I decided to let Anne Marie try it with her phone line. Better her than me, I figure. We had to sign up with Lingo instead of Vonage, since Lingo provides local numbers in Eugene, whereas Vonage only has numbers as close as Portland. What's even better... we could transfer Anne Marie's number to the new service so she didn't have to change numbers. (Remember I'm more than happy to let the phone company mess around with her number... it might say more if I was willing to do it with my number.)

Anyhow, the good news is that the phone company didn't lose Anne Marie's phone number, Lingo's service seems to be more reliable so far, and we're saving another $25 a month while still getting free long distance and local numbers in both Eugene and Portland.

If you've got high-speed Internet, I'd really recommend giving it a try. Let me know if you try it and it works out... maybe someday I'll switch my phone number?

The Eugene Weblogger Get-together is next Wednesday (June 15) and, despite my best intention of planning ahead, I haven't announced it yet nor set up a way for Eugene-area bloggers to RSVP.

If you've been thinking about attending, you should be sure to attend June 15, since if you miss us this time, you may NEVER get another chance. Well, never until August at least. Since I'll be out of town in July, there will be no get-together in July. Don't make yourself wait!

Anyhow, if you write or read a Eugene-area blog, why not join us at the Eugene Weblogger Get-together next Wednesday, June 15 at 6:30pm at Track Town Pizza near the U of O at 1809 Franklin Blvd.

Enjoy some pizza and talk with local blog personalities. It's usually not a big crowd or a firm agenda, just a friendly get-together. There are over 100 active weblogs on the Eugene Weblog List. Why not meet a few of the people behind those local blogs?

Eugene Weblogger June Get-together
Wednesday, June 15 at 6:30pm
Track Town Pizza
1809 Franklin Blvd (near campus)

Please comment here to RSVP! Maybe by August I'll have a fully automated system.

I live with two great people. Most of you love to appreciate Lauren, but she's even better than I think most people imagine. She's extremely capable and independent, and, in 99 of 100 cases, she manages that without without creating conflict with us. Of course, I can sometimes become irritated since the 1 of 100 cases arises a couple of times a day. Observing other children quickly reminds me that most parents need to constantly correct or assist their children. Lauren is so pleasant, she sure makes parenting a joy. This week, she has, naturally and on her own, started reading and sounding out the letters in books and starting to recognize words. Brilliant!

The picture here is her composition on Keith's whiteboard in the dungeon, called "All 1-year-olds". Lauren's drawing is simple, but consistent, with people having a round head which sprout long legs and, sometimes, long arms. All the people in the composition are 1-year-olds except, of course, the two large figures who are the mother and the big sister. Strangely, "father" is one of the larger 1-year-olds in the middle. It seems to agree with Anne Marie's claim that she has two children: the four year old and the thirty-five year old.

So let me tell you about Anne Marie, the other wonderful person here. She's just finished her second Master's Degree and, with the coming year of clinicals as a student Nurse Practitioner, will start having the autonomous level of responsibility she deserves. Everything about her speaks of her caring, compassion and intelligence. As she takes on more autonomy in managing patients' health care, she'll be doing a lot of good. She often feels undeserving and when her energy is low (as it was today), she doesn't give herself much of a break.

On top of how brilliant and good she is, I also could not ask for a better wife or partner. I'm profoundly attracted to her. We work almost perfectly together to attain both of our goals. And, she's quirky, warm, kind, tolerant and generous.

Who could ask for more. Well, actually, I could ask to feel better. The good news there, I think, is that the new treatment seems to be slowly helping me have more energy. It's hard to tell from day to day, but two months ago I would have to nap 8 of 10 days and drag myself to accomplish something the remaining 2 days. Now, it's nearly reversed, and I feel like taking on more work or chores most days. For example, today, while Lauren and Anne Marie napped, I had the energy to mix and pour 9 bags of concrete for a basketball hoop and pull up and store an electric fence. Other people may not find a couple of chores amazing, but it's a significant step for me after 11 years of fatigue.

Things are good here, eh?

Keith and I are working towards an important milestone at work, but more requests for features make meeting goals a challenge to work on.

(This post has been briefly summarized for you due to possibly sensitive content.)