Alex the Discriminating Traveller

Alex and I had a restful and uneventful flight from Denver to Oakland yesterday to visit Grandma and Grandpa. I used up some ancient upgrade vouchers to get us into first class for the 2.5 hour flight. It was well worth it.


Here Alex is getting a nice long nap while stretched out in my lap. Sorry for the grainy pictures, I only had my cell phone with me. They had huge, soft blankets and nice fluffy pillows for us. They also served warm milk for Alex.


Here's my traveling companion, sampling the exceptional United First service. The cabin attendant even held and played with Alex while Daddy used the head. What a deal!

Now we're in Benicia getting settled in. Grandma bought Alex about 2 dozen new toys. His favorite thus far is a lawnmower; when Alex pushes it across the floor, a set of little plastic balls spin around in the "motor". What fun!

Grandma also got Alex a baby pool to play in. Good thing too, as it topped out yesterday at about 90 degrees!


Play in the pool...


Chase the baby!


Have a sip of wine!

Dana and I set up Skype on hers' and my Mom's laptops, so we are able to have free video conferences between us. Alex was overjoyed this morning to see and hear Mommy on the computer. So excited, in fact, that he accidentally turned off the wireless networking and ended the call. Oops. We got Mommy back in no time, but this time I held him in my lap to talk to her. He wanted to lift up the front of the laptop to see just where the heck Mommy was hiding.



This afternoon I'll head down to the South Bay for a week at the MySQL Conference & Expo in Santa Clara. Yay. I'm giving the HP talk on Sizing MySQL for HP BladeSystems. I'd be excited, except that I'm tired of working on this product when there's absolutely no traction or support from upper management for it. So no matter what I say to the audience there, I probably won' be able to back it up. On the plus side, I'll get to see many of my remote colleagues who I enjoy working with and rarely get to "hang out" with in person.

Safeway's Newest Customer

The other day we went up to Fort Collins to orchestrate a lease signing at our rental house. On our way back down we stopped at the Safeway near work to get some organic whole milky-milk. We noticed that Safeway has these really cool kiddie car shopping carts. And they have SEATBELTS! Game on!



He was laughing and talking the entire way through the store. We will be back.

In other news, we've already had two showings at the house. No feedback yet, but a nice start. The front yard sure looks weird with a real estate sign up in it.

Our place hit the MLS system yesterday!

Alex Likes Pizza

We've been ordering a lot of pizza lately... with cause. We've been working on the house, on the jobs, on the law career, on the rental house, on sleeping. Busy, busy, busy.

Alex loved his first slice of pizza. He generally loves anything that he can hold in his hands and also eat.


As we started packing up some old baby stuff, Alex saw his old play chair and was "taken back to his youth". He wanted to sit in the chair, but he barely fits anymore! Dana and I were amazed. When we first got the chair he couldn't even reach two of the three dangling animals


A couple of weeks ago I walked into the kitchen to find Alex helping himself to the contents of the fridge. To his credit, he was eating carrots from the vegetable drawer.


In other news, our beloved nanny Ryanne is engaged! (I hope I'm not spoiling anything by printing this here! Way to go Ryanne and Luke!) Fortunately for us, this doesn't change anything vis a vis Alex.

Now, turning to the house...

1. The heat is finally, completely installed upstairs. The front bedroom and bath have hot water baseboard heat. The other two bedrooms have electric baseboard. Yay.


2. Before (left) and after (right) pictures of the "breakfast nook" in the kitchen. We took off the horrendous pink wallpaper and painted a nice bright yellow. Special thanks to my man Keith for the outstanding stripping, patching and paint job. Special thanks to Susan for the excellent white paint job on the trim and cabinets! Wow! This place is really looking sharp!


Shiny freshly-painted kitchen cabinets

More house pics...

Entryway, all cleaned up, with a nice wood bench instead of our trusty old plastic Walmart garden bench.


Upstairs bedroom, showcasing our new bookshelf. This is the second time it's been "done". But this time I'm serious!


Upstairs bathroom, mostly the same except for the baseboard heat.


Tidy living room


Playroom with fancy pants new play rug. Sweet.