life is good

Speck Candyshell case + Photojojo lenses = WIN!*

noreply@blogger.com (Marcy) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 04:55:00 +0000

*Ahem, this is not a give-away post. Just to be clear.

Noting my obsession with "iphoneography" two dear friends gifted me the Photojojo set of 3 detachable cell phone camera lenses for Christmas. AWESOME! The only problem: the lenses attach to your phone via a magnetic ring that you glue to the phone itself, and my then-current iphone case (an Otterbox Commuter that I have otherwise been very happy with) wasn't compatible with this magnetic ring. In order to use the lenses I'd have to take the case itself off the phone then put it back on again after each use. Not a huge deal, sure, but an annoyance nonetheless.

So I tried to search for a case that was compatible with using the lenses. I couldn't be the only one who wants to use these lenses and a protective case at the same time, right? Um, apparently I am. Or I was unable to find any information about this anywhere online, not even a mention of the problem anywhere.

Well, then. I guess I was just gonna have to figure it out on my own. As it turns out, the only case I found that offers both decent protection and a camera opening wide enough to work with the lenses, is the Speck Candyshell series. I opted for the purple Candyshell Satin case (there's also the regular "non-satin" Candyshell cases). Here are some pictures to demonstrate, since I still don't think I'm the only one faced with this dilemma and might as well share:

The back of the case, showing the magnetic ring stuck on the phone itself.

The phone and case with the wide-angle/macro lens attached.

Success!

As for the case itself, I'm pretty happy with it overall. It feels solid but also slim looks cute enough. I think I personally have a slight preference for the Otterbox case, but the Speck case lets me use the lenses which is a big plus.

Disclaimer: I wrote this post simply because I wanted to. I didn't receive any compensation from anyone for anything, other than being gifted the lenses by my friends.

New Montessori Post-- The Late Bloomer

noreply@blogger.com (Marcy) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:00:00 +0000

In which I use my husband, and his love of reading and utter disdain of handwriting, as an example. Click here to read it. =)

stuffy ears and miserable babies

noreply@blogger.com (Marcy) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 04:45:00 +0000

Sometimes it feels like all I ever do on this blog is complain.

I'm currently on day 6 of an ear infection, which started in my left ear and is still worse on that side, but over the weekend crossed over to my right ear as well. I finally got to see a doctor and start taking antibiotics yesterday (Monday) morning. I'm still waiting to notice any sort of difference.

Quinn developed a 102 fever yesterday, and maintained it all day today. I suspect he has the same thing D had a week or two ago, which was basically a fever for several days along with feeling super tired and overall miserable. D at least had the luxury of laying on the couch and watching TV all day when he felt this awful. Q, however, doesn't have the attention span for that yet. We had a few short play sessions today, but the vast majority of the day was spent either crying or comfort nursing.

Fun fun times.

Babywearing: a sick-baby essential.

The planning has begun for our move to New Hampshire. We're about to book our flights for Tuck's accepted students weekend in April, and I'm contacting Montessori schools for D to hopefully attend. One of them looks really promising. We'll hopefully tour it in April, but from the website and emails back and forth it looks like it could be a great school. We're waiting to find out if there will be space for him in the fall. The other "back-up" school we're looking at came recommended well but is not giving me a very good impression. For starters, it doesn't have a website. At all. Nothing. I'm glad we had a contact with a valid phone number for the school because the one I found online (via a third party directory) was disconnected. Then they said they'd send out a packet for us to browse, which ended up consisting of a single trifold pamplet but no information whatsoever on how to apply. Um....yeah.

There is, of course, much much more than these things to do over the next six months. We'll be moving ourselves this time, and into a place that may be smaller than our current house, so we really need to go through all of our ~~crap~~ belongings and try to pear down what we don't need, along with actually setting up moving details and figuring things out like how to get the kids and the cats cross country, and which furniture to keep vs toss vs sell, and trying to actually ~~sell~~ stuff when apparently Sacramento's Craigslist community isn't all that active, etc etc etc. Every time I start to really think about it all I start panicking just a tiny bit. Maybe once we're all healthy again we can budget in time to devote to the Moving To-Do List. Here's hoping that's sometime before Easter.

Texas Trip Photos pt 4

noreply@blogger.com (Marcy) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 05:20:00 +0000

The last ones, I promise. ; )

at play

noreply@blogger.com (Marcy) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 01:41:00 +0000

This photo is by far my most popular one on Instagram-- it got 24 "likes" (most of my photos get under 10 "likes"). At first I was surprised at the response-- it was just a snapshot taken one afternoon. Then again, I kinda love this photo more each time I look at it. It captures a shift in the blossoming and ever-changing relationship of these two brothers, one where Quinn is becoming a friend and partner in play/crime rather than just a nuisance. It also hints at Quinn's desire to always do whatever his big brother is doing.

It really is very sweet to watch them together (well, when they're happy with each other, at least). We have our fair share of "NOOO, Kuh-WIIINNN!"s that get yelled as the toddler once again snatches at the otherwise-perfectly-lined-up row of cars Donovan had been working on. But more and more D's also asking, "Hey Quinn, do you wanna come play in my room?" or "Quinn you use this car and let's race!" Q doesn't quite "get" these games yet (though he gets way more than I've expected him to) but it's still pretty heartwarming to watch them play together.

I overheard Zach talking to D one day, saying, "Your Uncle Andrew is my little brother, just like Quinn is your little brother. My little brother is one of my best friends, just like I bet you and your brother will be best friends one day."

Here's hoping.

Texas Trip Photos pt 3

noreply@blogger.com (Marcy) — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 22:13:00 +0000

I thought we'd be past this by now

noreply@blogger.com (Marcy) — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 21:56:00 +0000

It's been a rough week and weekend around here. Donovan's been sick. Zach and I are sick. We're all mostly over it, but in that annoying window where you're not sick but still not exactly well, either. Zach paid the deposit for attending Tuck, and so we're both excited about and a bit overwhelmed by the prospect of school and moving cross country in 6 months. I'm making a long list of things we need to do, sorting and getting rid of and researching, and wondering when I'll get a chance to do any of it.

I'm frustrated at how overwhelming life in general still is. I figured the first year would just be a wash-- I knew I wouldn't have time for anything other than just taking care of the bare necessities for the kids (and, hopefully, myself). But I'd hoped that by the time the first year had passed we'd have restored some semblance of normalcy. Many things have improved dramatically, but so much is still so difficult. Namely, the utter and complete lack of free time. Q is still so unpredictable in his naps (both in taking them and in their length); I spend most of the nanny's time here running errands or getting some one-on-one time with D; night sleep is still broken and random so even when I do get breaks I don't have the mental energy to use that time efficiently. I realize this is the end of a bad week and that colors everything, but it's just frustrating how incredibly difficult it all still feels. And, as Zach pointed out the other day, we don't even have it that bad. In the grand scheme of things we have very little to complain about.

I do see a light at the end of the tunnel when I look at D, though. Q is adorable and wonderful and I adore him to pieces but OH MY LORD he's just so much work and effort, and it just drains me. I then look at D and how much more independent he is. Sure, he still has his challenges and he can throw a mean tantrum, but overall he is so pleasant, so fun to be around, so entertaining to hold a conversation with. He can put on his own shoes and sometimes even get his own food and stuff (oh, and he can generally be counted on to sleep from ~8pm-5:30am every night which is also pretty darn nice). Or like when we flew with the boys over the holidays, D took almost no effort on the plane. It was just pleasant with him. I know D and Q are different people and Q may be totally different when he's 3 (almost 4!) years old, but still. I see how D is at this age and it's like a preview of things to come. I enjoy D so much right now, he's just such an amazingly cool and fun kid. And I enjoy the heck out of Q, too, but it's so much more mixed up with frustration and stress and exhaustion because he takes so much.

It will be nice when we're past the stage of needing constant supervision, past this fog of exhaustion and chronic sleep deprivation. I think I'll enjoy parenting a bit more then.

(and if you're a parent of older kids reading this and laughing, please try not to burst my bubble)

Texas Trip Photos pt 2

noreply@blogger.com (Marcy) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 05:03:00 +0000

I hope my kids don't get jealous about this, but I'm pretty sure I took way more pictures of my ginger nephew than of either D or Q. He's kinda irresistible.

Big changes ahead! Yes, again.

noreply@blogger.com (Marcy) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 22:20:00 +0000

About a year ago Zach started thinking about going to business school. It's a move he'd contemplated before, though never very seriously. But he was unhappy with his job, with the lack of options he found while looking for a new one, and with his career trajectory ahead. So for the first time, business school became a serious option to consider. Over the summer he took on his new job in San Francisco, which in a way worked nicely in that it was intended as a one year commitment-- ending just in time to start school in the fall of 2012.

He spent much of the past 6 months researching schools, studying for and then taking the GMAT, and filling out applications. He applied to five schools and got into three: UT, Dartmouth, and UCLA (Stanford turned him down, or "dinged" him as you're apparently supposed to say is business-speak; and we haven't technically heard back from Berkeley yet but they announce their decisions in the 12th and never called for an interview so that's probably a "no").

The two top choices were Dartmouth (aka Tuck School of Business, in Hanover, New Hampshire) and UT (aka McCombs School of Business, in Austin, TX). I could go on for a while on the pros & cons of each school (some of you have read that diatribe) but it boiles down to this: Dartmouth/Tuck has almost every advantage, except that Texas/McCombs would mean living in the same city as our parents and thus having incredible family support.

I'll be honest here: when we first started talking about an MBA and Zach mentioned UT as a possible school choice, I felt excited by the possibility but I never really believed we'd go there. UT's business school is good, but it's not a top-ranked school. Three of the schools he applied to are in the top 10 list for MBAs (Berkeley, Stanford, Dartmouth) and I figured he'd get into at least one of them and it would be too difficult to turn that down. And though we didn't want to admit it and still spent several weeks mulling everything over and feeling nearly every possible emotion about all of this, I think we both knew as soon as he got that call from Tuck that we'd end up in New Hampshire.

So there you have it. Looks like we're moving to New Hampshire this summer. I have mixed feelings about it all. I'm excited about a lot of things-- Tuck is known for having a very family-friendly program and community (Zach has a friend who's there now and can attest that they really do put their money where their mouth is on that claim). Hanover is apparently a gorgeous town and really great place to live, everyone we've talked to who has spent time there has said they loved it. It's also exciting to think of living someplace that gets all four seasons for real.

I am, however, a little apprehensive about the winters. I think snow will be fun, but knowing me I'll probably tire of it, and the cold, pretty quickly (did you know that the average HIGH temp during the entire month of January is BELOW freezing?). I think Zach and the boys will LOVE it, especially the snow and easy access to winter activities like snowshoeing. At least it's for a specific period of time and then we know we'll be out of there. In a way it'll be good to experience it and know for sure how I feel about living someplace that cold.

Moving cross-country is also not an exciting thought, nor is leaving the friends we've made here. The biggest source of anxiety, though, and the thing we keep going over and over again, is the financial investment. Through a bit of good planning and a lot of good luck we've been pretty financially stable the past several years. It is SCARY to give that up and sink such a large sum of money on school. But life's been good to us so far, and we have to hope it will work out in the end. We've talked and thought this decision over (and under, and through, and every which way possible) and it really does feel like the best path ahead.

So. More big changes. A cross-country move. New friends to meet, new climate to experience, beautiful sights to photograph. How is it that we keep getting roped into these wild adventures? I guess that's what happens when you marry a really smart, talented, and ambitious guy like Zach. ; )

Texas Trip Photos pt 1

noreply@blogger.com (Marcy) — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 21:44:00 +0000

Not a whole lot of mental energy for words right now, so I'll just post photos from our time in Texas. That cool with y'all? ; )

neglected

noreply@blogger.com (Marcy) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 05:21:00 +0000

Weeks pass and nary a word. Sorry, little blog, you have been neglected. I have much to write, but haven't been able to organize thoughts properly when I also have access to a decent keyboard (I loves me my iphone but am not a fan of writing blog posts on it).

This is the eve of our last day in Texas visiting family. We've been here for about a week and a half, and it's been heavenly. Grandparent help is nothing short of divine-- I've been able to sleep full nights uninterrupted, to lounge and read for hours at a time during the day, etc. Amazing, truly.

I had much I wanted to do over this vacation/visit, much of it involving the looming decision about Zach attending business school. I haven't mentioned that here at all yet, and I may not go into much more detail until we have firm plans. But it looks like our "tradition" of moving approx every 2 years will continue for a while longer here, as we look to pack up and move somewhere for him to get his MBA, and then hopefully, finally, make ourselves a home we can cozy into and stay put in for a while.

But now I need to hit the sack, as it's getting late and tomorrow will likely be a long day as we finish packing and then fly back to California. I'll write more soon, I promise. For now you can click on over to flickr to see the phone pics I've been posting all week.

Quinn365-- DONE!

noreply@blogger.com (Marcy) — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 22:45:00 +0000

Quinn's 365Project is officially done! I'm quite proud to have stuck to it. People laughed when I said I wanted to do a 365 of D's first year, and then laughed some more when I wanted to do it again for Q. And yet, here it is. I've accomplished little else in the past year-- the house is almost always a mess, the dirty clothes pile almost always larger than the number of clean ones, etc. But I now have this record of my kids' first year, which I figure I'll care about more than how clean our house was during that time. So, yay. Now I need to get to work on finishing the photobook with these pictures... that will hopefully happen before his second birthday. ; )

BTW that sleep fairy? Total tease. We got two random, great nights and since them it's been back to the usual. And so life continues through the sleep deprived fog. One day I'll be able to think clearly....right?

Birthday Boy!

noreply@blogger.com (Marcy) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 15:00:00 +0000

One year ago this morning baby Quinn came into the world, in a tub of water in my bedroom. Exactly how I'd imagined it. Yet also like nothing I could have expected.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the past year has been the hardest of my life. That baby has tested me in more ways than I could have ever imagined. And now here we are. Every day keeps getting better, every day I adore him more.

Here's to a very happy birthday for my darling ~~baby~~ toddler boy Quinn.

So the sleep fairy visited us last night

noreply@blogger.com (Marcy) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 17:23:00 +0000

Quinn pulled one of his magic sleep tricks last night, and slept from 9:30pm-5:30am. I slept about 6 of those hours and OH MY LORD WHAT A DIFFERENCE. For comparison, the night before that my sleep looked like this: 1hr + 1hr + 3hrs + maybe another 20-30mins of dozing.

One thing I've realized this past year: when I'm used to sleeping less than 3hrs at a time, getting a longer stretch of uninterrupted sleep feels AMAZING. It is utterly astounding what a huge difference it makes in how I feel. If I've been sleeping 3-4hr blocks, though, getting more sleep feels nice but many times it's hard to notice much of a difference the next day.

The timing of last night's great sleep is particularly wonderful, as I'm trying to prep things for Quinn's first birthday which is TOMORROW. Yes, really. I'm currently sitting in the car, Q asleep, after picking up the ingredients to make his birthday cake (chocolate with chocolate frosting and chocolate sprinkles, as mandated by Donovan). Another thing I'm realizing: the boxed cake mixes are not only more convenient, but a good deal cheaper to make, too...tho that might be my own fault for going for the fancy vanilla extract and cocoa powder. Hopefully it will be delicious, though.

So yeah, I also still need to write birthday posts for tomorrow and do a few other things, all of which are much easier to do with my head not in a sleep-deprived haze. So thank you, Quinn, for allowing Mama to sleep. It's like you knew you'd benefit from it in the end. ; )

rantings of a sleep deprived mom

noreply@blogger.com (Marcy) — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 22:31:00 +0000

A few weeks ago I night-weaned Quinn to see if it would help with his sleep. It actually went pretty easily, so I guess he wasn't really that hungry at night anyway. His sleep had gotten better in some ways.... ironically, however, it's meant that my sleep is actually worse.

He's been sleeping a longer stretch from about bedtime (7-8pm) through till anytime between midnight and 3am. Which is GREAT. Unfortunately I can't seem to get myself to bed before 10 or 11pm. And, he's also now taking longer to get back to sleep when he wakes up. For a little while he seemed to be getting into a "schedule" of waking up around 2am and then sleeping again till 5 (when both kids would be awake for the day), which worked ok. It still means I'm not getting a whole lot of sleep, but at least getting 3-4hour stretches makes a whole world of difference over 1-2 hours at a time.

But this week has been kinda hellacious. He's been waking earlier, more often, and taking longer to fall asleep. Two nights this week he was up from about 2-4am-- would fall asleep easily in my arms while rocking him, but if I tried to set him down or even move at all he'd wake up and start crying. At least the mornings have started improving a bit, too-- D's sleeping in a little longer and staying in his room playing for a bit after waking up, and in turn I've been able to get Quinn to try going back to sleep when he wakes at 5am. It usually means 30mins-1hr of rocking after which he might sleep another 20 minutes in his bed, but I'm hoping it might help "reset" his waking schedule and maybe eventually he'll sleep through till 6 or 6:30 rather than 5am every morning.

But, yeah. End result-- I'm getting very, very little sleep these days. Or at least this past week. To the point where it almost physically hurts. It's also frustrating and a bit scary, as a few times while driving I've been so tired that I can tell my attention isn't as good as it needs to be, and it feels as if I'm at the equivalent of driving drunk.

And what sucks the most is feeling like there's nothing I can do to change any of this. I just have to wait around for Quinn to figure it out and start sleeping better on his own. Sure, I try all sorts of things-- rocking in the chair, nursing lying down to sleep, co-sleeping, not co-sleeping, using a nightlight, leaving the room brighter/darker, using white noise, keeping the room quiet, etc etc etc. At this point I'd be all for trying to do sleep training, except I honestly don't think it'd even work (since the sleep disruptions are closer to morning when the body isn't as tired anyway, so he'd probably just cry for hours and waking D up as well).

Nothing ever stays one way for long, so I'm hopeful that next week will be better. That he might sleep a little longer at a time, that maybe I'll get myself to bed earlier in the evenings. But yeah, it just sucks to be so tired, to feel so frustrated especially in the middle of the night, wondering why in the hell this baby has so much trouble sleeping, having no idea when it will end (D started sleeping through the night at around 1 year, but I've also heard many stories of kids waking frequently well into their second or even third year), and not being able to do a damn thing about it.

Canine visitors

noreply@blogger.com (Marcy) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 06:27:00 +0000

We had a great Thanksgiving weekend. It was so nice to have Zach home for 4 whole days in a row. Also, his parents have been in town, along with his brother and brother's girlfriend who drove in from San Francisco. So the boys have been having a ball playing with all the family, especially D. The older he gets the more his love of his grandparents shines through, and it's really amazing and heart-warming to watch.

We also had some canine visitors this week. Our friend Sasha was dog-sitting 2 dogs all last week, and both got to visit our house a few times. The boys LOVED the dogs, seriously head over heels. It was one of the first times that I felt a really strong tug at my heartstrings and desire to get a dog ourselves (which was then quickly squelched by remembering about our tiny yard, our unstable lifestyle, and the fact that I already have 1 kid who just left toddlerhood and another who's just entering, I do not need to bring another highly-dependent creature into our home anytime soon).

Anyway, it was very fun to get to hang out with the dogs, and watch the kids enjoy them so much.

Isn't he gorgeous?

He also totally thinks he's a lap dog.

One of the most precious things I think I've ever seen.

Along with this.

(almost) One year

noreply@blogger.com (Marcy) — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 16:47:00 +0000

Quinn's first birthday is just over two weeks away.

It is with only a twinge of guilt that I confess that I've been looking forward to this milestone for the entire past year. It's a strange thing to see all the parents around you lamenting the passing of time and begging for it to slow down, while you yourself are cheering it on and hurrying it along. It's not that I haven't enjoyed this first year with Quinn at all-- I have. There have been many amazing moments with him, and watching he and Donovan learn to be brothers.

But this year has also been probably the hardest of my life. I don't know if it was the shock of caring for two souls instead of just one; me not exactly being a "baby person"; Quinn being a bit of a "high needs" baby; or experiencing what might have been mild depression...or a combination of all these. But this year chewed me up and spit me out. I have never felt worse about myself, as a mother, as a human, than I have in so many moments this past year, often questioning why I even decided to have children to begin with and why in the world did it have to be so damn hard.

As many of you probably remember from all the whining I've done here and on twitter.

I knew it would get better as time went on. As Quinn became more able and independent, as he began to crawl, to walk, to talk, able to entertain himself, etc. And it has. That light at the end of the tunnel has been shining and visible, especially lately, and it's coming closer. Already many things have gotten easier, and I enjoy him and my time with him so much more. I know the years ahead will be filled with other, different challenges, some I can foresee and many I probably can't yet fathom, but in my limited experience so far as a mother I feel that I deal so much better with the challenges of a toddler than those of a baby. At least I think so. I don't know.

I realize I'm not alone here, and that many parents face far greater challenges than I, and with much less support, too. I'm not trying to get pity and I don't mean this as a "woe is me" post. I also don't feel shame in admitting that I am probably a less capable, less resourceful, less patient mother than many others out there. I am trying my best, and for better or worse this is the mother my children have. I'm ok admitting my limitations, maybe because I know (or, at least, hope) that my strengths will be enough to carry me, and them, through.

(As an aside, I am suddenly reminded of all the times I've heard my mother lament how she made this or that mistake with us, how she wished she'd done better. I always thought she was so silly so thinking those things as clearly she was a great mom to us growing up. Like with so many things, now that I have my own kids... I think I get it.)

I am glad to have all the pictures, the letters, my writings from the past year so I can remember and cherish the good parts- the sweetness, the triumphs, the love. And I am more than happy to hold them while closing this chapter and saying "Good riddance!" Here's to what's ahead.

a brief love post

noreply@blogger.com (Marcy) — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 17:58:00 +0000

For some reason we never made note of the exact date, but it was around this time of year nine years ago that Zach and I sat together at Matt's El Rancho restaurant in Austin. We already had 3 years of dating experience under our belts, along with two more years of fairly tumultuous on-and-off status. And there we sat, over tex-mex food and margaritas, and decided to give our relationship another go.

I didn't realize it at the time, but he already knew that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. At the young age of 22 that may seem odd to many people, but he knew. I was still unsure myself, but quickly realized what I wanted, too. That was sometime in November. In March, he asked for my hand in marriage. In May, we graduated college, soon moved to California, and married that following January. We have not looked back since.

This January we will celebrate 8 years of marriage. Still young, I know, but eight years is still something to be proud of. I know many, many more will come.

I adore my husband. He may infuriate me at times, but there's no one I'd rather spend my life with, parent my children with. This past year has easily been the most challenging one for us as a couple, as a family-- new baby, job stress, uncertainty, etc. But we have held strong. We have been angry, frustrated, yelled and cried-- but always with each other, supporting each other. He is my strongest ally, and I am so grateful for that.

Love you, babe.

what we've been doing lately

noreply@blogger.com (Marcy) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 05:35:00 +0000

Quinn is: walking, babbling, starting to say words (swear he said "no, Mama!" today when stopped him from getting in the shower), signing ("eat" and "all done"), playing, loving the outdoors, incredibly awesome when in a good mood, impossible when in a bad one, still sleeping like crap.

Donovan is: enjoying school, making friends, missing his dad, needing Mama lots these days, very into dancing and music and singing, imitating signs that Quinn makes, continuing to be such an awesome and sweet big brother.

I am: doing ok. Still tired, still wishing for better sleep, still frustrated at times... but those moments of kinda hating life and feeling so utterly frustrated by situations and things I have no control over, are getting to be fewer and fewer. This past weekend I had one of those, and it was shocking to get thrown back into that place again, and realizing how much better the past few weeks have started to feel in comparison. It helps that Q's mood has been better overall lately. That saying that you're only as happy as your least happy child is? SO TRUE.

It's Wednesday. Wednesdays mean only one more night till Zach gets home. Then we get our weekend, and then next week is Thanksgiving with all the good things that holiday brings. It's also 9:45pm, which means I desperately need to get to bed since I have, at best, about 7 hours before I have to be up tomorrow, not counting midnight wakings with the babe. So, good night!

three bears on the bed

noreply@blogger.com (Marcy) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 03:41:00 +0000

It's been a rough day with lots of whining and crabby moods on all our parts. But I love these pictures of Zach and the boys reading comics on the bed yesterday afternoon, so I'll focus on them instead.

{Guest Post} Don't Get Shucked; A Rant Against Corn Based Ethanol

noreply@blogger.com (Marcy) — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 01:07:00 +0000

My buddy Cyrus posted this on his Facebook page today, and I asked his permission to post it here since he (as a chemical engineer with much deeper knowledge of these things than I possess) did a much better job than I could have. I've been hearing a similar rant from Zach for a while, as well. For my part I just think it's silly to burn corn as fuel when starving people could it it, instead.

Those that know me know that I am very passionate and informed about the energy needs of the world and the state of our current fossil fuel driven economy. I am deeply concerned that this is not sustainable on many levels. Also those that know me know that nothing irritates me more than corn ethanol and the government subsides we waste on it. I think we need to end these subsides, put our investment into efficiency and nuclear research, and face facts : we are squandering the fossil fuel inheritance in ~1 century that took 500 million years to accumulate and possibly irrecoverably damaging the biosphere.

It seems there is a pretty big range in the thermodynamic estimates of how much energy we put into making a liter of corn based ethanol but the energy you get out in a car is undisputed. The realistic estimates for energy in put the total balance at very negative. You would be better off just burning the natural gas we spent making the corn based ethanol. This is a huge waste of our tax dollars and wastes are extremely valuable fossil inheritance. Insult to injury, the agriculture ends up damaging the biosphere and driving up global food prices, something the poorest people on earth can ill afford.

Get informed – read this excellent blog :

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/11/the-biofuel-grind/

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math

Also if you want to check out the thermodynamics and do a bit of a “deep dive” on corn farming energetics, read this :

http://www.c4aqe.org/Economics_of_Ethanol/CRPS416-Patzek-Web_8.05.pdf

Even the congress knows the corn subsides are a joke :

http://www.grist.org/article/2010-07-16-ethanol-gets-skewered-by-recent-cbo-assessment

Don’t get shucked, fight back against the corn ethanol subsides.

sunday stroll

noreply@blogger.com (Marcy) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 01:11:00 +0000

Zach and I got experience a rare event today-- a DATE. Yes, really. Can you believe these things still exist? A fabulously wonderful friend of ours watched the kiddoes while Zach and I went to lunch and then took a little stroll down by the Capitol grounds. It was pretty nice. Mental note: do this more often. (also: go back to the Capitol sometime with my DSLR)

Finished off the date with an eggnog latte. =)

goodbye, golden curls...

noreply@blogger.com (Marcy) — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 05:34:00 +0000

My sweet boy got his first MAJOR haircut today. He's had trims before, but this was a massive style change, one he's been asking for for weeks now. I'm having a hard time adjusting, to be honest. All day long, every time I looked at him I felt shock all over again.

See these sweet curls? The California-boy waves? The just-plain-awesome shaggy 'do?

GONE!

And he suddenly aged, like, 5 years in the process.

He is of course still adorable and quite handsome. He loves it, is so happy with short. It's another sign of me losing my influence on him as his mother-- up to recently he's been fine just going along with my hairstyle suggestions, but now he wants it short like one of the older boys in his class. This is not in itself a sad or bad thing-- I love watching him grow into his own person with his own opinions and desires, likes and dislikes, and I will support his wants and independence every way I can.

But I still miss his long hair.

(I'm sure in a few days/weeks/months I'll get used to the short hair, and it will seem just as intrinsically "Donovan" as the longer hair has been for me.... It's just been a shock to the emotional system for this mama!)

craving creativity

noreply@blogger.com (Marcy) — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 18:27:00 +0000

A few days ago I found this article with before & after examples of 15 photographs that had been processed in Lightroom, along with brief descriptions of what had been adjusted for each one. I haven't spent much time processing my photos in the past, well, 10-11 months, and reading that articles and looking through the pictures reminded me of how I've been missing it. It got me thinking about how I may want to finally upgrade to Lightroom 3 (I keep hearing how awesome the noise reduction tool is.... would be so nice to have); how I want to photograph subjects other than my children (I love taking pictures of my kids, and if I may say so myself I think I take damn good pictures of them... but still, it'd be nice to experiment with other subjects from time to time); and I want to explore and experiment more with post-processing (for example, learning more about and becoming more comfortable with Develop panels like Split Toning and sharpening tools).

The main problem here, of course, is finding the time for all this. These days it's all I can do to offload pictures from the camera and add keywords before sharing them on flickr. But I miss taking time to play with a photo and create something beautiful with it. And, the only way to improve my photography & processing skills is to practice them.

So. Not entirely sure how I'm going to do this, but I want to make a point of making time for photography again. I figured that by now, by the time Q was close to a year, I'd have more time for myself. Unfortunately that does not seem to be turning out that way. His overnight sleep is basically about the same as a newborn right now, in that I never know how much time I'll get in the evening before he wakes again (this past week it was often at 9 or 10pm, after finally getting both kids down by 8pm). Yet he barely ever takes daytime naps anymore, or if he does they're short (30mins). Having the nanny helps, but most of her time here is taken up by both of us getting the kids fed and then to bed. It's really frustrating having so little time for, well, anything. But I think I need to make this more of a priority, maybe making time on the weekends.

These pictures were taken months ago. I found them this morning and snagged a few minutes to play with them a bit while Zach wrangled the kids. It felt kinda nice to do. Hopefully I can keep it up.

Halloween Pictures and Camera Lust

noreply@blogger.com (Marcy) — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 02:26:00 +0000

D's costume this year was Super Grover. This is his first year to choose his own costume. About a month or 2 ago he decided he wanted to be Super Grover, and has actually stuck to it the entire time. Our nanny got into sewing over the summer, and volunteered to make a cape and sew the Super grover logo onto a shirt for us. I then made his helmet following an idea I found on Pinterest, to take a kids play helmet and cover it in duck tape. The end result, I have to say, was pretty awesome.

His school had a festival on Friday night where the kids wore their costumes, and they all recognized D's immediately. He was quite popular. We also went trick or treating here in our neighborhood today, and again heard many kids calling, "Hey, it's Super Grover!" D was a bit shy about it, but smiled each time.

Q had 2 costumes-- Zach insisted that he go as Quinn the Eskimo (from the song), so we tried that... although he wasn't a huge fan of the coat.

Today was a bit warmer so I opted for a lighter costume of a mini-Mack Brown. I wish I'd thought about it sooner than this morning, or I might've been able to figure out a headset or clipboard or playbook or something else as a prop to kinda help the costume along. But, hey, he still looked pretty adorable in his UT gear.

In other news, I had a bit of a photography-related epiphany this weekend... I don't think I like zoom lenses. Most of my daily shooting is with prime lenses, but I use my 17-85mm for things like, well, the festival on Friday night, or parties, or other times when I figure I need the convenience of zooming in and out. Except, zoom lenses are big. And heavy. And I'm never as happy with my pictures with the 17-85mm as I am with ones taken with any of my primes. My dream zoom lens is the 24-70mmL lens which is even heavier than my current one. Last year I bought a Canon 35mm f/2 lens and have been using it a lot lately, and I'm realizing that when I use it I don't miss the ability to zoom in and out as much as I thought I would. And it's much lighter, faster, and better quality in my opinion.

I'm almost tempted to just get rid of the 17-85mm now, though it's still nice to have for the wide angle. But, I'll be sticking to my prime lenses even more now, and have officially erased the 24-70mm off my wish list. Interestingly, this means that now my next "dream" purchase has shifted to wanting a full-frame DSLR camera body (ahem). I really like the 35mm field on my 30D which is approximately equivalent to what my 50mm lenses (Canon 50mm f/1.8 and Sigma 50mm f/2.8 macro, aka my top 2 favorite lenses) would look like on a full-frame camera.

And yes, I do realize how ridiculous it is to want a $2,500 camera for a $80 lens (ok, so the better noise handling, HD video, live mode, etc would also be quite appreciated). I have no idea if/when I'll ever upgrade to that nice of a camera-- it'd be quite a few birthdays and christmases put together. But, hey, a girl can dream, can't I?