moustache at 1 week

It's pretty noticeable. One of my co-workers predicted I'd have a full blown Earl by the end of the monthPlease make a donation if you can by clicking on the icon below.
My registration number is 2002551. Thanks!

Angela & Fred

Screenshot from this week's episode of The Office

Don't get her mad

It was hard getting a good photo of Iris in her Halloween costume. This is as good as it gets.

She wore her baby Hulk costume briefly in the morning to show the ladies at day care then again when we met friends in downtown Ballard that night. For most of the day she was in her pumpkin costume, accessorized with custom-fitted stem hat made by our friend Kris Chick:

Thanks Chicky!

Like my new coat?; November Moustache

In other news, I am growing a moustache all this month to raise money for Prostate Cancer research.

Here's the site with the details: http://us.movember.com/
(Movember = Moustache November--it's an annual event)

I'll post photos as it grows in. Let me know if you'd like to make a donation. You can also click on the icon to donate. The registration number is 2002551.


here's me with 3 days worth of moustache - not very impressive so far, I know, but I shaved on Monday the 3rd to give the less hirsute a head start

President-elect Obama!

Congratulations to Barack! We are all very excited and relieved that the election turned out the way we voted, for a change! (By "we" I mean Irene and me and Iris too- yes, she's an Obama baby. Some member(s) of my family may not be quite as excited.) Good article here about why the Obama campaign was successful.

Here are a couple of today's specials on Amazon - a bargain at 44% off! This must mean that this seemingly endless election cycle really has come to a close:

Seattle Tuba Guy

I can't imagine how many times I've seen and heard the Tuba Guy playing outside of Safeco during Mariners home games. He wasn't the best but you can count on him to be there playing for tips. I was sad to learn he passed away. There was a small mention in one of our local paper. He was a victim of a mugging; attacked, beaten and robbed by a few thugs. He was treated for his injuries but passed aways days later. I'm going to miss him as well as any sports fan in Seattle.

Election Day

Want to see how the world would vote if choosing between McCain and Obama?

According to the informal poll, McCain is favored in Albania, Niue, and Macedonia. I know this is not a scientific poll but it's hard to believe that more people from Antigua and Barbuda voted than those from Argentina. Either way, it's interesting to look at the results.

Swimming Class

We signed up Iris for swimming class. Today was her first lesson, and she seems to like it.

Happy Halloween

Jim and some of his co-workers masquerading as JP Morgan Chase workers.

Having fun eating a teething biscuit

She sure makes a mess of eating her biscuit.

Dancing Queen

Here are short medium & long videos of Iris having fun dancing. Look for Fred in a supporting role (literally) on video #3.

Eleven Months Old - such a big girl!

Happy eleven months old, baby Iris! Your mom & I can't believe how fast it's gone by or even remotely remember what our lives were without you. Even harder to believe is that it's only one month until you turn a year old! that's crazee!

Here are some photos I took today at day care. (The iphone doesn't have a flash, so they're a little blurry.)

Here's our happy girl having lunchIris mostly feeds herself now. Maybe she's a lefty, like Pepere & cousin Will?Iris is getting the hang of a sippy cup. Hmmm... maybe she's a righty after all, like everyone else in the family? Too soon to tell, I guess.Sorry folks--show's over--I need to go play

It's Over

Well the Sox pushed it to a seventh game with a 4-2 win last night but couldn't get it done tonight, losing 3-1 to the Tampa Bay Rays, and only getting 3 hits in the game. But it was a great run anyway--I'm much happier and prouder of my team than if they'd just lost on thursday night, when they were down 7-0 in the 7th and came roaring back to win 8-7. oh well--we'll get em next year, right?no, this is not me, it's Dustin Pedroia, who homered for the Sox only run tonight. Dustin offered some wisdom, via the Onion.

Out to brunch

For mommy's birthday. (we're a day early)

CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?!

The sox freaking won tonight! They trailed 7-0 with 2 outs in the bottom of the 7th & won 8-7 after scoring 4 in the 7th, 3 in the 8th and 1 in the 9th--UN-BE-FREAKING-LIEVABLE!! I called my dad right after it ended & woke him up--he went to sleep when they were down 7-0 in the 7th. He seemed kind of groggy but I think he was glad I called.
More about my dad - he was at the 9-1 Sox loss in ALCS game 3 on Monday, and of course went to the 19-8 rain delayed marathon loss with my brother & me a couple weeks ago, so if you have tickets to a game the rest of this year--don't invite him, he may be a jinx!!!

Now on to Tampa for game 6 & (we hope) game 7. Can't wait for Saturday!

UPDATE friday morning 9:45AM*****************************************
Sports Guy wrote a great piece about the comeback. (I especially like the line about Manny's playoffs OPS being almost as high as sports guy's freshman GPA--I can relate)
My experience watching the game was similar except instead of calling my dad to see if he was still watching (he was asleep remember), I was texting my friend Eddie to make sure he was. At one point Eddie told me that if he could have gotten the remote away from his dad, he would have changed it. Also a great running description of the game from the Boston Globe here.

Birthday Ideas

The Red Sox must have known that Irene's birthday is this week when they sent me this email. The hard part will be figuring which Red Sox gear to buy for her.In other news, the Sox face elimination tonight, down 3 games to 1 against Tampa Bay in the ALCS, so they need to win 3 in a row to make the World Series. They've come back from deficits like this twice in the past 5 years, so if there's any team that can do it, it's the Sox, but most Sox fans I've talked to are pretty pessimistic, since they got crushed the last 2 games, both at home. I'll be watching for sure--hopefully they won't be down 5-0 by the 3rd inning like in the last 2 games. GO SOX!

***************************UPDATE 9:45 PM Eastern time****************************
Sox were down 5-0 after 3 innings just like I was afraid of, and are still down 5-0 in the 5th. Tito just took Dice-K out of the game. So it looks like "wait til next year" time--this blows

Iris is finally crawling

We're excited that Iris started crawling last week. She's not that quick but it'll be a matter of time before she's zipping around on her hands and knees. Guess who's not too excited about Iris's progress.

Rainy night

Iris and I went for a walk the other night & got caught in the rain.

Here's how we looked when we got home

Weekend away at the San Juan Islands

It's hard to tell but it was a cold and wet weekend when we were up on San Juan Island 2 weeks ago. We had fun and Iris didn't seem to mind the rain and windy conditions. Somehow we missed seeing 60+ orca (killer) whales; we heard there were a few pods hanging out by a state park with a great viewpoint but we were there a couple hours before the whales showed up. The house pictured is the place we stayed for the weekend. The owners happen to be the parents of Laura Veirs, a local musician.

Red Sox update & more game photos

The Sox won their 1st round playoff series last night & will open the American League Championship Series on Friday at Tampa Bay. Should be an interesting series--the teams brawled earlier this season & there's lots of bad blood there.

In honor of their season continuing I thought I'd post a couple more pictures of my recent trip to Boston to watch the Sox-Yankees game on September 26. (Sox lost 19-8, in case you forgot)

Here's my brother Gary, my dad & me. Gary flew up from Texas while I was on my way from Seattle--we met up at the Manchester aiport and drove to my dad's house together.My friends Sean, Eddie and me. We realized that this month makes it 30 years that I've known these guys. They already knew each other when I met the 2 of them on the first day of 8th grade in first period French class with Madame Morea.Then we got to our seats at Fenway & fellow Georgetown Hoya and pub employee Raphael Bastian and her husband James were sitting right in front of us. Raph and James flew up from Miami to see the Sox (though they got to see 3 games), so they were as determined as we were to see baseball that night, since we were all flying home the next day. Since it poured all day most of the ticketholders that night weren't as stubborn as we were, and Fenway was more than half empty when the game started.

San Juans bound!

Yay!

Waiting for ferry to San Juan Island

Chase/WaMu Update

We had an all-employee conference call earlier today and learned that all WaMu employees will find out on December 1 which of 3 groups we all fall into:

1) getting laid off right away
2) have transition jobs (short term, 4 or 5 months probably)
3) full time jobs w/Chase.

Here's the story from the Seattle Times.

The feeling in my group from the few people I've discussed this with, is that our group will likely fall into the 2nd category--short term tranmsition jobs. This is all a guess on our part so we'll see what happens in December, I suppose.

I'll be fine--been laid off before and probably will again, so don't worry too much about me.
Here's a cute picture of Fred to cheer you all up

Sweet Camouflaged hat

Check out my brother's new hat. We're leaving. Sox down 16-5 after 7

And it's pouring again

Yankees lead 13-4 top 5th and the tarp is coming back onto the field

Maybe a rainout wouldn't have been so bad...

Yankees up 12-3 middle of 4th. Here's a pic of one of the Sox' many pitching changes

First pitch was a hour and a half late

But we're seeing baseball!

Go sox!

(Yanks lead 1-0 in 1st)

The tarp is coming off!

We may see some baseball tonight after all

Rainout?

Who cares!

"Largest Bank Failure in US History"

Alternate title, copied from the story on the WaMu internal web site:
"JPMorgan Chase and Washington Mutual Join Together"

The Feds stepped in and seized the assets of my employer, WaMu on Wednesday and auctioned them off to the highest bidder. JP Morgan Chase bought the assets (~$300 billion in deposits and the bank branch network) plus around $31Billion in bad debt for the bargain price of 1.9Billion. So I work for JP Morgan Chase now, I think I do anyway. Good article here from NY Times that summarizes the whole mess.

I was on a plane on my way to NH for Sox-Yankee game tonight when this all went down. My phone was abuzz with emails, text messages and voicemails of two types: those telling me what had happened (my boss & another coworker) and the "you still have a job?" "you ok?" type from everyone else.

As I said, I still have a job for now, at least. All I've been told is that it's business as usual for the time being so I figure I'm probably ok thru the end of the year at least. who knows.

What I'm more concerned with today is the CRAP weather around here & whether the game will actually be played tonight. My brother Gary & I flew in last night (dad knew I was coming but Gary was a surprise) just for the game tonight and are both leaving tomorrow, game or no. We already checked & changing flights isn't going to work for either of us, so we're hoping that the steady rain we're seeing right now will go away long enough for us to watch Dice-K put away the Yankees tonight.

I'll post more about work when I get more info - thanks for all the calls & messages.

GO SOX!

Iris is 10 months old today!

Iris still isn't crawling but she loves to walk while you hold her hands.

Playtime for Iris

Iris was playing with this while we were waiting for our car to have its oil changed at Burien Nissan and she pulled herself up to a standing position using just the cube to balance herself. That was the first time she ever pulled herself all the way up by herself--every other time we've held her hands & helped her a little.



A couple seconds after this was taken she started rocking away from it and gave the wire a good twist on her way to the floor. She was quite surprised that it didn't hold her up when she started to go down
photo posted from my iPhone

On our way home

JetBlue JFK to Seattle, noon departure.

And Iris LOVES her new monkey!

Thanks, Kelly!

Watch out! Cute baby present

photo posted from my iPhone

Iris likes meat!

This is in front of East Manor restaurant in Flushing, about a block from
where Pau pau and Sheila live.

Iris in NYC

Enjoying the Jeff Koons sculptures on the roof of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art this afternoon.

Asleep at grandma's house

Hiding from the humidity

photo posted from my iPhone

Iris meets Grandma for the first time

Hello Apau!

Just landed at JFK

On our way to visit Grandma

We had good seats yesterday

We decided to copy Kris & Ben and trade in the tix for our last two games and go see the Ms beat the Yankees yesterday, since it was so nice out. Then we got upgraded to these front row seats when ex-amzn'er Guy Palumbo & his family had to leave early--section 117 row 1 for the last couple innings. We were along 3rd baseline not far from the foul pole in row 29 for the rest of the game.

In other news, this is really bad. Not a good day to be a Pats fan. Monday afternoon update: It's official. Surgery required & he's out for the season.I think only Kerry Killinger (the big boss at WaMu, where I work) had a worse day than Brady did.

Not Budka

We're told that this is not our friend Ben Budka snagging a foul ball at tonight's Mariners-Yankee game, a near no-hitter by the Mariners' Brandon Morrow in his first major league start. Ms won 3-1.



Seems pretty hard to believe it's not him since:
1) looks a lot like him
2) he & Kris were sitting "second row somewhere between 1st base and Ichiro" according to an email Kris sent me today

I smell a cover-up. The only question is: Why?

IPod Project Update: Finishing up

I am now on song 16900 of 16902 (!). It's "2000 Light Years From Home" by the Stones, with only "2000 Miles" by Pretenders and "2112" by Rush left, (the ipod sorts alphabetically by putting numbers at the end)

yet I'm almost sad about it. what should I do next? Start over? I do have LOTS of stuff on there that I didn't have when I started this project in January '06 with my long gone 30gig ipod.

I'll have to think about that

oops - Stones song is done. Pretenders now--only one more to go!

UPDATE: Friday morning: I created a playlist of all the songs that have never been played since I got the 80g ipod and it's 7890 tracks. Which is a lot. It's mainly songs that come alphabetically prior to wherever I happened to be on my A-Z playlist, plus all tracks that come before I -- that's what I was up to on the old one when it died 2 yrs ago.

So you won't hear me mention it again for a while--this is at least a years worth, if I average 20 songs a day. And I bet no one's interested anyway so I'll shut up about it now

Sleepy girl

Enjoying a 2.5 hour nap at daycare today. Hopefully she'll wake up in
time for lunch with daddy. Mommy had to go back to work already.

UPDATE: baby girl woke up at 12:55, around 10 minutes after this photo was taken. Here's a recap of her very busy next 30 mins

wake up
wet diaper changed
crusty nose de-crusted
repeatedly try to steal lucy's binky while dad mixes up lunch
eat jar of turkey dinner & 3 scoops of rice cereal
squirt saline up nose
nose syphoned out
sit down on floor
poop
new poop-free diaper installed
lay back down on floor
daddy goes back to work

Still not crawling...yet

Peekaboo