Doctor Alycia In the House

Well everyone, you may know by now that it is official - Facebook or e-mail should have told you - that Alycia is officially a doctor. Her proposal defense the other day was a magnificently triumphant affair that couldn't have made her happier or me prouder. Her dissertation committee not only passed her and signed off on her graduation, but didn't even ask for any re-writes or minor changes to her paper, a pretty rare happening in the PhD world.

We happily celebrate her doctoring this weekend with a no-holds-barred shindig that may actually keep us awake past our normal bedtime of 10:00pm. It promises to be a grand affair with guests flying in from near and far (OK really only the bay area) to celebrate with Alycia in her moment of glory.

And the Water Rises.....Part II

So the water continues to rise in Grand Forks, though not alarmingly so that fear of the whole town flooding is present. This is good since it allows us to continue to plan an above water move and not consider the extreme situation of buying water wings for all of our furniture - this expense can add up.

Want to know what's happening right now with the water levels in Grand Forks, check out their newspaper - The Grand Forks Herald.

We're scheduled to fly out there the second week of May and have us a look-see at 10 or so houses that have made the final cut. We have a meeting with a mortgage person set up and he should give us the go ahead, from there all we have to do is find the perfect house and we're set. We're still looking at only spending about 150k to 160k for our house, a large sum of money in North Dakota, but not enough to buy a decent garage here in California.

Despite all the technological advancements in real estate, being able to see pictures of the house, review the MLS listing with all the facts and numbers, you still can't get a good feel for a house until you see it first hand. Pictures just don't seem to do many houses the justice they deserve.

A Book Review

Huh? A book review? But books are a dying art form, slowly to be replaced by the Kindle and other similar devices until we're all ingesting what little literature we actually consume in pixelated form on tiny hand held computers.

Nay I say. Nay. Books are here to stay, perhaps only as a niche in the future, enjoyed by the few who cherish the comfort and tactile pleasure that comes with handling a book, seeing the words in ink, the cathartic act of turning the page, the feel of the page on your fingers as you turn it. Perhaps books won't be appreciated by the masses in the future, but they'll always be around, and they'll certainly be in my life.

If you enjoy "slice of life" tales and peeks inside the inner workings of family life, and if you also are rejuvenated by an inspirational garden tale, you might like Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. It's the kind of tale that makes me want to go back outside and touch the warm earth and lodge dirt again under my fingernails. Here's the full book review:

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

The Graduation Couch

Alycia recently had some tooth pain and after a dental appointment learned that she needed a crown on a back molar (I blame the Celiac Disease - Damn You!!!). Not a big deal for most folks, only she found out that her dental insurance, while very happy to cover cleanings, X-Rays, and filings, wanted nothing to do with crowns. Our options became a) suck it up and deal with it until approximately August when the UND insurance kicks in (not my choice, also not her choice) or b) pay the $800 or so for a new crown out of pocket.

This is when Alycia's guardian angels (her kindly folks in Cavalier, North Dakota) mentioed during a phone conversation that for graduation they would be happy to buy her a new tooth!!! Woohoo!!! A graduation tooth (fake tooth really, since a crown isn't really a tooth). No one knows what they would have gotten for her had this dental disaster not surfaced, but it got me to thinking - "Is a new tooth the strangest thing anyone has ever gotten for graduation?" Probably not, but it is pretty odd. And it brought to mind the story of my graduation couch.

Can you spot the graduation couch in the picture????

The graduation couch came to be when I successfully ended my matriculation at the University of California, Santa Barbara. I staged a small BBQ with housemates, friends, and other like minded folk on my next to last day in town, and invited my parents and sister up as well. Much to my chagrin they all decided to attend.

Now as a little back story, my parents had gotten my sister a rather expensive gift of jewelry (some kind of necklace/ring/bracelet set), which I could care less about, and I wasn't really motivated by any manner of gift at all until my Mom rolled out the red carpet of embarrassing parental antics at aforementioned BBQ. But whether it was due to their own gift giving generosity or my sisters insistence, and precedent had been set of graduation gift giving, and I wasn't about to be left out.

To get back to the ambarrassing antics portion of the story.....So a festive (but very PG rated) gathering is going on and my folks and sister roll up to the house. Unbeknownst to me, dear old Mom has thrown back at least one, possibly more, bottles of wine before the event, and was thus adequately primed and ready to roll with inebriated shenanigans.

And as yet another aside, no one ever mentions "Congratulations" or anything similar, and no one even has a card, I mean C'mon?!?!!? The only person bearing anything is my sisters friend Hilary, who I've never met before, but yet is thoughtful enough to bring a nice "Congratulations" card. She forever has a special place in my heart for being more thoughtful and gracious than my own family members.

Suffice to say that Mom spent the time stumbling around and being mildly embarrassing until at some point she loudly asked "Where are all your white friends at?" I determined at this point that it was a good time to enlist my sister to help me shepherd my dear sweet Mom to the car, where according to legend she later threatened to assault the hotel valet with an empty wine bottle before retiring for the evening.

It was after this outstanding performance that I demanded retribution, and considering at the time I was lounging on milk crates in my post-college apartment type domicile, I thought a couch to be the perfect gift/extortion payment for emotional distress. Thus the graduation couch came to be, born of the awkward angst of a drunken Mom, celebrating amongst my friends, and threatening hotel staff with empty wine bottles. It twas a wonderful origination, the graduation couch, and lo it continues to support my dreams horizontal lethargy on a daily basis, mostly during nap time....

Earth Day Prelude - Earth Hour 2009

Lights out!!! Tonight at 8:30 local time, cities and countries around the world are turning out their lights in an environmental statement. So put on some candles, or nestle up to the fire, and kill that TV, if only for just one hour.

Extreme Sheepherding

Somewhere in the Welsh highlands and bunch of sheepherders, their dogs, and handful of modern gadgets, including digital video recorder, camera, and laptop, somehow got the idea for the following video.

http://i.gizmodo.com/5172963/sheep+powered-led-display-lights-up-welsh-hillside

Turn up the sound and enjoy. OK it's not the coolest video clip out there, but it certainly is unique, and funny. Who thinks up thus stuff? It certainly gave me a chuckle and possibly you'll find it humorous as well.

March Madness

I love the NCAA Tourney, aka March Madness, where all of America and college basketball loving expatriates worldwide gather around their TVs, or Alt-Tab through their day at work toggling between live game feeds or score updates and actual work. The prototypical pre-March Madness news articles regarding the percentage decreases of workers productivity during the first two rounds of the tournament always gently warm the cockles of my heart and make me chuckle a bit.

This year held special promise though, being slightly underemployed I entertained the thought of watching as many of the first two rounds as I could manage, not an easy task and not for the faint of heart. So I set about clearing my schedule (this was surprisingly easy) and sat on the couch, lap adorned with computer, streaming one game on the laptop will watching another on the Tele. Armed with my dual mode of basketball viewing vehicles, I hunkered down for 12 hours of hoops on Thursday and Friday and 10 hours on Saturday and Sunday.

Let me just say that the depths of good times that were achieved cannot be adequately described. Fueled by daily pots of Dead Man's Reach coffee and the timely arrival of my Girl Scout Cookie order the weekend before, I braced myself for the caffeine and sugar and basketball roller coaster.

I watched the North Dakota State University Bison, the arch rivals of my newly adopted school, The University of North Dakota, make a sporting effort against Kansas in Round 1. It was also pleasant to see the Big West conference (home of the mighty UCSB Gauchos) represented well by Cal State Northridge in their noble effort against Memphis. All in all it was a highly entertaining first two rounds, with games on Friday and Sunday being especially good.

If you replace carrots with Girl Scout Cookies in the picture below, this is a highly accurate representation of what I looked and felt like after some 40+ hours of hoops watching action.

And the Water Rises.....

Our future move to Grand Forks, North Dakota is yet a few months away, and we're starting to get into higher gear with house hunting out there. Alycias' Mom (aka The House Hunting Fairy) is going out again this weekend, and we've contacted a few loan people with questions. We're also just about settled on a real estate agent we like are narrowing down the list of houses we've found on the internet (with the help of the House Hunting Fairy of course) to a handful that we'd like to see in person.

One small problem is the whole flooding thing. Apparently Eastern North Dakota had a record year for snowfall in the month of December, and the rest of the winter, though not record breaking, was also quite heavily precipitated, which raises the specter of flooding. You can read about Grand Forks and its tendency to flood on Wikipedia. Let's just say that regardless of the source of information the phrase "flood prone" is usually used at some point in the description of the city. Hmm.....

In 1997 they had a huge flood in Grand Forks (picture above), in which much of the town promptly burned after flooding, and have since spent millions of dollar on flood control, large earthen dikes, etc. Well this is the first year that they anticipate the water level being high enough that this system actually gets tested. Will they pass? Who knows, but hopefully they will. You can see the flood forecast in the Grand Forks Herald newspaper.

Needless to say that we won't be putting a bid in, or even seriously looking at, any houses until after the first week in April, when they expect the river to crest. It's not exactly the best housewarming present to find you have a pool in the basement - and I thought the house didn't have a pool? - YAY!!!!