12 posts from 2006
- January
- February
- March
- April
- May
- June
- July
- August
- September
- October
- November
- December
Man, I was weak on the book front this year. I think I only read 19 or so, down a full third from 27 the year before. A few of those were really long, though. One fantasy trilogy was 3,000 pages and I read another sci-fi book of about 800 pages.
I partly attribute the decrease in books read to decreased commute time
that began shortly after mid-year when I discovered the commuter bus
that shaved a good 30 minutes off my daily round-tip commute on the BART. Another
reason was that there was about one full month where all I read was
magazines, front to back. And not crap like Time or Newswee, but meaty stuff befitting a true intellectual and renaissance man, publications such as Discover and The Atlantic Monthly.
What were your best/worst reads of the year?
April saw us take our first camping trip as a family. I had taken Harlan to Gerstle Cove by myself in February while Tala was in Beijing for a week. Yes, it was butt cold in February. So April was better.
However, Gerstle Cove -- about a half-hour's drive north from Sonoma County State Beach -- is fiercely windy. The campsite is in a clearing on a gentle slope about a quarter mile from the ocean, so the wind just comes whipping straight in. I was starting to get worried that it would be a chilly night, something that could have had negative implications for future camping trips involving Tala.
I had awoken my long-dormant camp cooking skills and was wowing Tala when the sky began to redden. We were treated to a spectacular, 30-minute long light show. This shot was taken on high zoom about two minutes before the sun dipped below the horizon. The trees are bare because a forest fire started by campers cleared out most of the area a few years back.
The crazy thing? As soon as the sun vanished, the wind stopped blowing. Abruptly, just like that. It was calm the whole evening, and our sleeping bags were more than adequate for the warming task at hand. So a good precedent was set and Tala got on board with the whole camping thing.
We got most of our Christmas shopping for other family members done today. Every year I say to myself, "Next year, I am going to get all my shopping done in November and mailed on December 1!" And every year it turns into a last-minute rush. This year we were out of town for almost all of November, then dealing with that winter crud we all picked up. We had our "holy crap" moment a few days ago when we realized we had exactly one weekend to finish our shopping and get packages mailed.
We also got our tree. I was disappointed that we didn't get down to the tree farm in Half Moon Bay like we did last year. We had planned that for last weekend with some friends but we were all still sick so we cancelled. So we ended up going to a tree lot about a mile away. Hardly the same as cutting your own, but the upside was that it was easy and we also found a really nice little tree. Came home, threw on some Bing Christmas caroles, and decorated that sucker right up.
Oh, of course it wouldn't be a tree decorating without having some sort of crisis with the lights. We had picked up an extra strand out shopping today because I figured that at least one of our existing strands would be burned out. Well it turns out we only had one existing strand, and it was the kind with that white cord. I don't know why we had white cord last year, but it definitely clashed with our tree this year. So I jumped back in the car and sped over to Target. And even though I had to park in their Christmas spillover lot a mile away, it was still worth it because I picked up a couple other Christmas items for the family. And some toothpaste. We were all out, so that was kind of crucial.
I used to love drawing as kid but pretty much dropped the hobby after starting college. I picked it up again a few months ago and now do the occasional sketch. This is an ink drawing of Manhunter, a comic book character I was into back in the day.
Manhunter kicked butt. He was a world-class big-game hunter and WWII operative before he was killed by an engraged bull elephant. His body was obtained by The Council, a super-secret group of nine old dudes seeking power and immortality.
They revived him, tweaked his genetic code to give him a totally awesome healing factor that let him rapidly recover from injury, and made him head of their security service, complete with super-cool ninja training.
At least until he figured out they were a bunch of sick bastards and defected, becoming a modern-day samurai/ninja/bounty hunter. He had a WWI-era Mauser pistol, modified to do extra damage, and a "Bundi dagger" with which he could kill tigers. And check out that footwear!
Manhunter was kind of an anomoly in the comic world because his story ran its course in about eight brief episodes in the back of a Batman series, and in the last issue he ended up destroying himself as well as The Council. Life for Manhunter the comic was indeed nasty, brutish and short.
Okay, we're back on track in terms of the timeline, meaning this picture was actually taken in March. My folks had driven down from Seattle and we went out to Point Reyes, which is near the San Andreas fault.
Check out this map of the area.
The lighthouse is on the tip of that outcrop to the southwest. That straight line going up to the northeast is an amazing stretch of beach that is also one of the most treacherous in the state. In fact, up until a couple years ago it used to be illegal to even set foot in the water because sudden surges could easily suck you out and kill you. But that changed after surfers sued for the right to, I don't know, commit suicide by wave.
Back to the map, the long finger of water running diagonally from the upper left to the lower right? That's the San Andreas. And that curvy bay that faces south? That's believed to be where Sir Francis Drake first set foot on the continent of North America, although that account is disputed.
Not surprisingly, Point Reyes is incredibly windy, and it was really screaming on the day we visited. You have to descend a couple hundred stairs to reach the lighthouse, and I carried Harlan at some points because I was half worried the wind was going to blow him into the ocean. Which would have sucked. But we watched this sailboat come tooling along down that beach to the north, and as he went whipping by the lighthouse I managed to get a couple shots off.
I finally felt good enough to go back to work today after being out sick since last Friday. I'm still nowhere near 100 percent, but well enough to make the commute, answer the phone, move my fingers over the keyboard, and annoy my coworkers with bouts of coughing and throat-clearing.
I would like to reiterate that this is one nasty, icky little bug. How nasty and icky? Well, Paris Hilton's limousine seat is like a freakin' surgical room in comparison.
We took Harlan to the doctor yesterday at he it turns out he has -- ta da! -- pneumonia. Lovely. It's actually not terribly serious and slamming amoxicillin shots three times a day for the next 10 days should take care of it. At least he's in great spirits. You can make Harlan sick, but it's hard to bring him down.
Can you spot what is wrong with this picture? Probably not. What is wrong is that It was taken in January, not February. But we apparently didn't take any pictures in February, so I was forced to use one from another month to maintain Gregorian continuity.
There's nothing much to say about this one other than it is a building in downtown San Francisco and we just liked the play of sunlight, and the contrast provided by the shadow.
I am in possession of both a digital camera and a kid. That means I end up taking a lot of photographs. This year I've taken 1,412 photos, which is probably the smallest annual count since Harlan was born. That, however, does not count the multitudes of pictures Tala has snapped since she got her own digital camera in September. Our combined production is probably well over 2,000.
In order to bring some order to the digital shoebox that is my "My Pictures" folder, I try to go through each month and pick the handful of pictures that are the cream of the crop. At the end of the year we get these shots turned into hard copies and put them in an album. This year I have just 67 pictures -- fewer than 5 percent of the total -- that will make the leap from pixels to photo paper.
In an effort to have our pictures keep up with the Web 2.0 wave, I will share one photo from each month here over the next couple weeks. This one was taken in January on our first trip to Half Moon Bay. The sky was too bright to get good people shots but this one captured that rugged natural beauty this part of California is famous for.
Well, this is not fun.
Far from starting to get better, I'm actually getting sicker. I believe this now ranks as one of the worst bugs I've ever had in my life. I actually felt slightly -- ever so slightly -- better last night, but in the middle of the night I broke out into chills. I woke up aching all over. My abs and back are sore from coughing fits, and I'm sweating profusely as I type this.
Mom called last night to say she and Dad are still sick and that they think it's been 15 years since they were this sick.
I don't see how I'm going to be in any condition to go to work tomorrow unless I make a recovery to rival that of Lazarus himself.
I figure that's what I must have since I've been sick for four freakin' weeks now. It feels like a cold with a moderate cough and massive sinus pressure.
After fighting it for 2-1/2 weeks, I saw our old family doctor in Seattle. He diagnosed it as a bacterial infection and gave me a short course of antibiotics and a prescription nasal spray to handle the sinus swelling. Sure enough, after three days I felt significantly better. I figured another day or two of recovery and I'd be 100 percent.
Sadly, the bug, tough little bastard that he is, got up off the mat and got back in the fight. So after several days of a worsening condition I went to our local doctor here in Albany.
At this point I feel as bad as at any point over the past 3-1/2 weeks. This doc says he can't detect any signs of bacterial infection. He says it's purely a sinus issue and that I should count on using that prescription nasal spray all winter. I say, "That's funny, because not only is my head stuffed up but I feel like crap. I can't exercise, I can't play with my kid, I probably shouldn't be going to work."
Reluctantly, the doc gives me another antibiotic prescription, but advises me not to take them unless I don't feel better in 2-3 days.
Last night, I shot more stuff up my nose than Paris Hilton. But this morning I felt even worse. Sorry doc, I ain't waiting another day or two. I completely understand the logic behind not using antibiotics. But I've been ill for a month. I think that counts for something. Gulp. Down went the first two amoxicillin. C'mon, modern medicine, don't fail me now.
At least I'm not bleeding from my eyeballs. Yet.
