Baby Party

Last Saturday we had a great big party to celebrate Alex's arrival. Friends and family from near and far came to visit and live it up with the little guy. Dana's Mom and Herb, my folks, my sister, a ton of friends - Jim, Pemma, Helena, Kirsten, Martha and Jeff - travelled from across the mountains, and a ton more people that we've been fortunate enough to get to know from Colorado. It was probably the biggest party we've had at our house. Big highlights were the vegan chocolate birthday cake and the baby blue Alexander-tinis.

Rock on dude!

Thanks to everyone for coming out and making it such a warm and wonderful get together! Every time we do that it convinces me we need to have parties more often.

This is how Alex feels when he has a party! (or poopy pants)

It's a "go" for Seattle this summer, and my Mom has volunteered to help us babysit Alex for the 2 months!! In fact she pretty much insisted. Kinda makes me wish I was retired. Now we need to find a place to live.

Dana continues to cram for her 1L final exams; Property and Torts. It is a constant juggling act with taking care of Alex, cleaning up after ourselves, making sure Dana has quiet time to study, and trying to make some headway with my projects at work. I'm afraid work has been suffering the most, possibly because it complains the least, for now.

Where Does the Time Go?

People occasionally ask me about the best concert that I ever attended. Music is a big part of my life, and I have attended some phenomenal shows in the past. Sometimes they are special because of the music or the artist, sometimes they are special because of the people you are with, sometimes because of the venue or the circumstances of the concert. And once in a great while all of these factors come together at once to make for a truly memorable occasion.

The photograph above, taken with a very primitive camera phone, is from a Vienna Teng concert Dana and I attended on December 29, 2004 at the Freight & Salvage in Berkeley. Vienna Teng is an incredibly talented singer/songwriter and accomplished pianist from the Bay Area, and probably among my top 3 favorite artists. The concert was memorable for several reasons. First, Dana and I had just gotten married in September, second, it was a rare and sublime solo performance with Vienna Teng and piano; third, it was pouring rain that night in Berkeley and the constant pattering of rain on the metal roof of the club made a beautiful backdrop to the soft, somber music, and finally it was just three days after the Indian Ocean tsunami that killed 300,000 people, and everyone there felt a heavy weight on their shoulders that was soothed just a little bit by the music that night.

I just happened to come across this picture and wanted to move it off my mental stack, so there it is.

This week I have been at the MySQL Conference and Expo in Santa Clara, learning a ton about this once-scrappy little open source database that is now taking over the high-tech world. This is the second year that I've come to the conference and the product has matured enormously even in that time. It is hard to see why enterprises now undertaking a new software project or web-based application would seriously consider any older, "mainstream" database products like Oracle, SQL Server or DB2 when there are tools available today such as MySQL that are of such high quality, making such significant headway, and so widely accepted by "those who know".

It has been hard to make these business trips with a new baby at home, but our families have been so incredibly helpful with baby care and support -- thank you all very much!

Speaking of big trips, it seems that we will be relocating to sunny Seattle Washington for the summer for a legal internship that Dana has secured. Details are scarce at the moment, but we will be there for June and July.

Alex's First Bath

On Saturday afternoon, we gave Alex his very first bath. We thought his hair was starting to get a little bit stinky, but maybe it's just baby smell. Anyway, now he smells like baby shampoo, which is ok too.

He seemed to like the bath a lot until the very end, when he started to get a little fussy. As soon as he was dried off and re-diapered, everything was fine again.

Sorry about not posting to the blog for the last couple of weeks. Once I started the work week in Beijing I was completely swamped for the rest of the trip. After returning home, it took me just about a week to recover from the jet lag coming back from Beijing,

So now I'm back and will make a concerted effort to make regular updates once again.