Happy New Year!

2011 ended with the one-thousandth puzzle piece completing Yosemite Valley and another day of snowshoeing. It was a week of indoor activities, helicoptoring and reading, and sporadic outings on either snowshoes or cross-country skis, but mostly it was a week of resting for the year to come.

Unlike the last two years, Baleen and I were with my parents this year, not the Garetts, so we didn't get a chance to give each other New Year's Resolutions. Instead, we reviewed last year's resolutions and learned that Baleen had met hers, I hadn't, and that Grizzly had spent the last two weeks cramming for what he had neglected over the previous fifty, daily push-ups and sittups.

Here's hoping that 2012 starts off well for everybody and is full of happy, healthy and well-behaved babies.

Night Walking

We're cursing La Nina and Ken Duncan over here in the Beehive State. La Nina's keeping our skis in the garage as there's a dirty ridge of high pressure stationed over the Salt Lake City area. That comes from our resident meteorologist, Margarine, who's getting into fisticuffs with Grizzly over the location of this jetstream. They're settling this little disagreement like they've always done in the Old West, by pulling out dueling iPads.

Wherever the jetstream is the result is the same, cross-country skiing in slush and snowshoeing after dark. It's a couple hours of activity a day, which just might be enough in this high altitude, with the rest of the time filled with books by the fire and eating, especially eating.

Our other nemesis, Ken Duncan, comes courtesy of Margarine, who gave Grizzly an 1,000 piece puzzle of Yosemite Valley for his birthday. We're about 100 pieces in. At the current rate, we just might finish by 2012.

8,350 feet

There's more snow up on the mountain so Grizzly led us on a hike through the woods. It started at Empire Pass's 7,900 feet just as the lifts were closing and headed up, turning right and left so many times that 0.6 miles only gained us 365 vertical feet.

It is Grizzly and Wood Duck's home course, and they're happy to share it with the skiers, but back when they arrived in late November, they had it all to themselves. They told us about breaking their own trail through the fresh powder and all the different routes they'd tried before settling on the one they showed us, the Loopty-Loop.

Baleen and I want to go back soon now that we know about what to expect and especially what to wear and try it again. Because the Garmin, the very same one that makes sure I get the biking jerseys I deserve, said that our entire hike was 1 hour and 20 minutes, but that our moving time was only 43 minutes. That's a lot of time for pictures, nature stories from Grizzly and water breaks.

6,371 feet

Shrimp Jr, Grizzly and I got out the garage sale skis and ran 4.2 miles on those long skinny things. It was my first time on the new course up by the Olympic ski jump, and I enjoyed it, but we'll really need some more snow to still be skiing there at the end of the week.

Doesn't look like I'll downhill this week, not with the thin cover and modest amount of terrain open at each of the mountains, which is just fine by me and also by Baleen with her swollen belly, but there is something missing in a ski town without any snow. It's like being in a fishing town where all the boats are docked.

It's all anybody talks about, the lack of snow. It's not so bad when it's you and another couple flown in from Dallas chatting over the shade grown coffee at Whole Foods, but when it's the guy in front of you at the gas station who's filling up the tank instead of giving private lessons on the mountain, that's where it's felt a good bit more.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to those in Park City, Fort Worth, Birmingham, San Francisco, Princeton, Wisconsin, Chicago, Atlanta, Milano, Los Angeles and Newport Beach! And to everybody else, a Happy New Year!

A Day's Labor

Baleen and I shredded sixteen pounds of cheese today, all in the name of that traditional Christmas favorite: mac and cheese. I'm hoping there will be some left over around noon tomorrow when I wake up. A hundred and fifty people are expected at Carole's house tonight, hopefully rotating through with no more than a hundred at a time, and I don't think I'll get to bed until well into Christmas Eve, better known as Grizzly's birthday.

He'll probably wake up early out there in Park City and wait down at the kitchen bar for Shrimp Jr to come downstairs and wish him Happy Birthday. Then he'll put on a modest amount of clothing in a great huff and cross-country ski out his backyard with Shrimp Jr in tow, perhaps with Wood Duck there also.

He'll lead the group of three for as long as he can, saying he's cutting the trail and doing extra work up front, but really hoping as many people as possible see him leading the way, until Shrimp Jr decides she's had enough and passes him by. They'll get back to the condo where Wood Duck might already be, waiting with something hot, and Grizzly will be the first to say something, probably something like, I'm improving, I got second, or, if I hadn't of cut that trail at the beginning I might have had you on the back stretch. All Shrimp Jr can do is just nod.

Baby Strength

I'm on vacation. In the morning I dance around the tides, leaning a little toward the ocean as I head down the beach. North of there it's a concrete sidewalk for a few minutes before reaching the driveway at 984 Hale Street. It's a slight climb, nothing like Hawk Hill, nothing at all, but that's what I'm thinking of when I turn back for another go.

I also did thirty push-ups this morning, thirty more than I normally do, as Baleen's been saying my equilibrium's off. I'm bottom heavy and I'll need some baby strength up top to swing Baxter about.

The stroller, which we already have, will carry the load when we're outside the apartment, Baleen says, but when we're inside the apartment, I'll be carrying Baxter around. Though he'll come out at around eight pounds, he'll double that weight in just a few months. Makes me want to do some more push-ups right now.

Pages

We're actively leisuring up here in the North Shore. It's a comfortable rotation from bed to couch to alternate bed to table to couch in front of the fire and back to bed again. A few diversions are thrown in here and there, some that even require us to change our outfit, like a run down the beach or a walk to Dunkin' Donuts, but what most happily got thrown in to today's laundry was Baleen's pajama bottoms.

She's somewhere in Minnesota right now, confirming that Freedom isn't the next great American novel with her avian concerns, but still a great one while I've gone from Montana with Wood Duck's Christmas present to an Alaskan winter with Carole Morley Bruce's reward for top marks in the Fifth Form (I won't tell you the date), Call of the Wild, to west Arkansas for a little True Grit.

It's pleasurable leisure but what I really should be reading, and am saving to cram just before the test, is the 100 page instruction manual on our new camera and that other instruction manual, The Baby Whisperer, so we can sleep through the night come March. I've still got a few more months.

Ipswich Date Night

Baleen and I sampled some of the North Shore's best on Tuesday night. We shared the Riverview with the St Johns hockey team, college kids back on break, and three generations at a single table, the youngest usually crawling over the grandparents or dancing around the pies and drinks pushed to the table's edge.

We liked it, though not quite as much as those fervent Yelp reviews or that single review which came from inside our own house. It seems like what they were really describing was nostalgia, some memory of a first date, a championship celebration, or the way an old couch feels down in the basement where you could disappear from your parents for a few hours.

The pizza was fine, and I'll tell people it was good if they ask, but what I'll remember is pulling out the calendar on the iPhone and sketching out visitation rights for Baxter's first few months, all in the town that Baleen and I got married in just sixteen months before.

Bridge to Cam

I saw Dario's father, the Professor, at his workplace. He's the new guy there, or really, the hasn't even started guy, so he had to look smart, which means dress like he normally does, including a jacket with the collar absent-mindedly turned in, but with leather shoes instead of sneakers.

Cambridge is still a college town despite the city real estate prices, as they've got bookstores and even a few record stores. The cars are proudly unkempt with years of parking permits crawling up the windows, advertising your tenure in ways you can't in conversation. There's organic sandwich shops with the sections of the New York Times spread amongst the tables and the Dunkin Donuts' where the panhandlers warm themselves and stare at the Massachusetts Avenue passengers through the window seats.

But my favorite part of Cambridge is the Mass Av Bridge, not just because you've gone from gown to town in half a mile (and let's not kid ourselves about the town part), but because whatever agency that regulates the Bridge has let MIT tastefully tag it. You see, as I understand it, some fraternity, two kegs deep, was discussing units of measure, as MIT students do, and decided that feet or meters or even fractions of miles was inappropriate, that the Mass Av Bridge should be measured in body lengths of their smallest fraternity member, Smoot. So they laid him out, head to toe, starting on the Boston side, until they reached land in Cambridge, determining that Mass Av wasn't 4/10 of mile, but 364.4 Smoots and one ear.

JoyLibs

I'm knee deep in Cheerios and risotto over here in Inman Square, Dario's castle, doing today what I meant to do yesterday. It's a preview of things to come, I'm sure, as Baxter's not even here yet, and I'm falling behind on the basics. On Thursday night and Friday morning back in San Francisco, it was a rush to get everything done that needed to be done for two weeks away, first in Boston, then Park City, and, well, the non-essentials didn't get done. Baleen put this on the list.

Then United split us up, Baleen going to the front of the plane, me staying behind, and we didn't get the chance to simultaneously watch The Help on the iPad with the split headphones, or do what we normally do, which is create our own Hangman. Instead, we'll just to resurrect the last one, with the guessed words from Hopalong in CAPS and the whole thing written by Baleen.

Baleen's water broke at 8.43am and it was a TREMENDOUS sight. Hopalong first started SKIPPING like an OCEAN and then realized that he should take Baleen to the hospital by grabbing the overnight bag and JUMPING there. Baleen exclaimed on the way that her belly felt like GLASSES and started EATING. Once at the hospital, Hopalong continuously exclaimed, YES, I feel DASTERDLY. The actual pushing went CURIOUSLY and the new parents were DELIBERATE with joy. Hopalong claimed the newborn looked like an ORANGUTAN but later stated he was delusional with the SYMPATHY of fatherhood and ORNERY with love.

28

Shrimp Jr turned twenty-eight today. I think she's past the age where she's measuring her height each December 15th though she still has homework and gets report cards, just not the kind that require Grizzly and Wood Duck to sign them.

I could have used her this morning up Hawk Hill as it was 2011's last assault on 7.36. Rain and cold kept everybody except for Asprilla and another away, but the rain meant Asprilla brought his cross bike which meant that I was taking the hill on my own.

It was a good ride, enough to earn me two digital jerseys in the absence of most everybody else for the way up and the sprint through the Presidio, but to break 7.36, it looks like I'll need some help. 7.50 is all I could do solo. Here's to Hawk Hill in 2012 and Shrimp Jr continuing to get report cards she can happily put in front of mom and dad.

Pizza Pizza

Baleen's got the best home kitchen pizza dough recipe in the English speaking world, created by somebody with strong ties to those indebted places. It takes forethought, which Baleen has plenty of, as you imagine today what you would like to eat tomorrow, and organization, which is where I come in. I'm the one who goes to the grocery store, and when Baleen's work won't stop calling her through the night, I'm the one who gets out the electric mixer with the dough hook and does the day before prep.

But having the best base doesn't mean you'll do right by the top. That takes restraint, which I think I have enough of, but also vision (cooked pancetta also helps). The vision thing is where I fell short. I had the right idea, don't overload, as I kept it to tomato sauce, mozzarella and green olives, but mine was swimming in tomato sauce. When I tried to slide it all onto the pizza stone, the sauce beat the dough off the peel.

Mother is the necessity of invention! Baleen could have cried, but didn't, as she rushed in with a metal spatula. She folded the back of the dough over its innards so that my once perfect pizza was sealed off like a perfect calzone, which, we found out, takes just a few minutes longer than a pizza to cook.

6 More Seconds

2011's giving me one more chance to best 7.37. I gave it a shot this morning with 7.42, my second fastest time, and the third consecutive morning of improvement. Thursday just might be the day. It better, because after Thursday, it's two weeks of turkey and a few quarts of egg nog before I try again.

I'll know on Thursday about how I did, but not exactly, as frequency has led to familiarity these past two weeks. I feel it mostly on the sections where I used to relax for a seconds. If I can push through those moments, it just might be. Before, it felt like, pain, pain, pain, now it lets up and I can ease up, and I'm easing up, now it's rising again and there's pain, pain, pain, and a little less pain now because I'm letting up, and now it's over.

But to get 7.36, it'll have to feel like, pain, pain, pain, now don't let up and keep on pushing through the False Flats, hard through the circle, then more pain, staying in the saddle but keeping 10mph, then ninety more seconds of pain, then sixty, then thirty, and a final frickin push out of the saddle to the finish.

German vs German Engineering

Oh, the immeasurable satisfaction of doing what you're told you can't do. Dario's Father knows what that's like, having biked to Inverness when everybody told him to drive there, or maybe even take a cab, and Baleen does, too, when she got plenty of counsel against moving to London, which meant she almost certainly never would have gotten that job and been transferred to California and we might never have met.

Those are big ones, but the small ones count, too. When the Audi dealership told me it would be $80 to replace a broken bulb, I figured I'd do it myself. When the instruction manual told me I really, really shouldn't, I got all Dario's Father on them and decided I had to.

Ten minutes on the internet and three trips up and down the stairs to stare at Audrey, our car, then back to the internet was what it took to get the light off. $5 was what it took from O'Reilly's to get what I needed. So with the 75 extra dollars in my pocket, I did a little solo dance in the garage and told Baleen to put on that blue dress, the one with the gold buttons on front as I was taking her in Audrey, the Audi with two fully functioning tail lights, to Wayfare Tavern, the new Tyler Florence restaurant downtown. We didn't have reservations, but hey, you don't really need reservations when you get there at 5.45, do you?

MC

Margarine's gone all Mission Chinsese on us. Back when Baleen and I lived in the Mission, back before Bon Appetit and the New York Times had annointed Mission Chinese as the next best thing and way before Ferran Adria stopped by for a bite, Baleen and I used to pop in every now and then for the Ma Po Tofu and a cold beer.

If you didn't want Tsingtao, which I didn't, then the other choice was Bud, which was fine becausae we didn't need something that stood up to the food, just something to cool us down. But last night, when we took Margarine there during his 18 hour work visit to San Francisco, I ordered a Bud after Baleen had ordered far more things we could eat.

Oh, we've stopped serving Bud, the waitress said. She listed a number of microbrews, all of which I like, but just hadn't expected to have alongside Broccoli Beef Cheek. The next morning, as Margarine headed out in his Sebring convertible to interview an expert witness, and I hugged him goodbye, telling him, Later, as two brothers do, it was easy to see that he, too, looked a whole lot better in his nice suit, tie and shoes, than he did back when Baleen and I used to live in the Mission.

Foghorns

500 feet gets you through the wet, dark fog of a San Francisco morning to something like a clearing. If you're going that far, might as well keep on going to something like 805 feet and the top of Hawk Hill. And if you're headed to the top of Hawk Hill, might as well try and get there as quickly as you can, which today, was 7:50.

That's twenty-three seconds faster than Tuesday and just thirteen seconds behind my fastest ever time. Gloves and a heck of a push from Asprilla on the first half of the False Flats got me there, though he wasn't there at the end to yell at me like he did on Tuesday.

In the end, it was a double jersey day with a winning sprint through the Presidio, my first lead from beginning to finish. Packie Bonner's flat and the continual cold helped winnow the field and when we got to the start, instead of finding a wheel to hang on to, I found the front and just kept on going.

Oh My Sole

Well, get me a cable knit lambswool sweater stiff with sea salt and call me Cap'n. It's fish and greens week here in the Mission suburbs. After a cautious month or two as we figured things out and a hopeful attempt with predictable results of asking a Greek fisherman if red snapper was good for pregnant ladies, it's been nearly ten straight days of fish for Baleen.

Sunday was king of the Pacific night with a wild sockeye over pureed peas, the peas served at room temperature, the sockeye warm from the pan, which Baleen thought wasn't right, that the peas should have been warmer while I liked the peas as they were, just as I mostly like white wine at room temp so I can taste it, while tonight was sole with rice and spinach.

Oh my beans and rice. Sole, the flounder like fella that loves the seafloor, supposedly spends all its time buried in the sand with only its eyes and gills exposed, according to Alan Davidson, while at night, and on very dull days, it's the Summer Olympics. Pity the poor sole, bored to death and ending up on a dinner plate near you, and near me again, hopefully.

35 Degrees

It was damn cold out there this morning. For those needing a little more that means it was somewhere between I can't feel my fingers and the digits are losing dexterity, but warm legs is what you need on Hawk Hill, not warm fingers. Full of hope, I took off after Christopher Robin at the gun, 3 yards behind him, and immediately 50 in front of the rest, but at the first turn 3 yards was too much to make up at the pace he was going and I fell behind.

As Christopher Robin pointed out afterward, that left the two of us tied with a King of the Mountain on the Hawk Hill Start, the 0.2 mile 12.2% grade that took us 1:03. But for me, as I couldn't keep up, that's like saying I had the fastest quarter mile in the one mile race yet dropped to eighth at the finish. There's no joy in that.

On the False Flats I was in no man's land so I stood up and waited for Asprilla and John Wooden and rode their wheels to the top where Asprilla, in his first ride since the birth of his second son 3 weeks ago, told me to "push until I puked." I didn't, but I did come across the line first in the Presidio Sprint, thanks to a nice lead out from Christopher Robin, making that 2 jersyes in as many months. Hot bananas.

Yeast

Vegemite bites. It might be my fault, I could have applied it wrong, but I don't like it, and I'm justifying it by saying it's legitimately bad, not like when George Bush 41 said he didn't like broccoli and as president, he didn't have to eat it. Broccoli's good. Vegemite's bad.

I had it at The Wedge, a sandwich shop in Glebe that any Mission Cycler would have been proud to have sponsor their jersey alongside Bi-Rite or Tartine. There were two pieces of toast with a few ounces of Nutella, Vegemite and butter. When the toast was gone so was the butter and the Nutella, but not the vegemite.

I checked a bag through security on the way back so Baleen could sample two different jars of vegemite, and it's been two straight mornings of butter and vegemite on toast. That's where I could have gone wrong, slathering a healthy chunk on there without any butter, but the way things are headed, there's a good chance I'll soon be outnumbered in my own household 2 to 1 by Vegemite loving family members.

With Hopalong Gone...

Unlike when I was traveling for work and Hopalong was home alone, my evenings were not filled with a swim in the frigid bay, a pound of pasta and 25 minutes of my legs propped up against the wall and back on the hardwood floor in order to "get the lactic acid out."  In looking back on my first solo week in over a year, I am delighted and amused to see how I chose to spend my alone time in my new "maternal" state.  Where 3 years ago I would have booked dinner (definitely kicked off with a glass of champagne) with a different friend every night, this week was marked by healthy dinners, online shopping with a warm cup of pregnancy tea or a Trader Joe's Chocolate bar (which won the Baleen and Hopalong blind taste test against several European and New Zealand contenders, by the way) and a few "bouts" of productivity. I am chuckling at how almost "stereotypical" I unconsciously was!

For dinner, I made myself a salad with spinach, asparagus, boiled egg, parm cheese and wild sockeye salmon.  I entertained myself by buying adorable silk maternity pants that I don't see leaving my wardrobe even post-maternity and I closed the gap on the list of Christmas gifts remaining to buy.  In one of my fleeting states of productivity, I framed the pigment reindeer print we bought for Baxter's nursery!

Enjoyable week, but definitely nothing compared to my weeks with Hopalong.

xo, Baleen

My Salmon Salad

                                  My new silk pants from Hatch Collection.

Baxter's first piece of artwork

Corella Hill

My Australian bike rides are over, thankfully, for Baleen, who worried incessantly that I'd have a head on collision with all the cars driving on the wrong side of the road, but it worked out fine as I just tucked in my chin and followed the wheels in front of me, leaving them only to push my way to the top of whatever hill we were climbing.

There were no jerseys at stake, just a roll through places with funny names, and English ones, too, like Woolloomooloo and Paddington, and enough rain to keep my hands on the bars and away from my camera, even as we descended down Watson's Bay with the opening to the harbor in sight.

I finally paid back a few Aussies, too, like the couple in Santorini who gave us a ride in their cab from the port to the airport, as I bought a round of cappuccinos for the two Chrises, my Aussie biking hosts, at Parc Cafe on Clovelly, where people in spandex outnumbered those wearing pants 3 to 1.  It's like buying a round, but for the early, active crowd.

Quarantine

The quarantine section at arrivals in Sydney is bigger and scarier looking than customs. They don't want in what they don't want in, and that applies as much to what's in your bag as to who's carrying it. But once you get in, you can find things that you can't bring back to the US.

I had my first non Gros Michel banana yesterday. The Gros Michel is what we all eat, the USA Today of bananas, inoffensive, ubiquotous (at least once) yet loved by very few. It was short and stump, a tad firmer than the Gros Michel, but a good bit sweeter.

The real treat was the Corella pear. The Corella parrot, found in the Royal Botanical Gardens, is it's namesake, perhaps once having parroted, name a pear after me, name a pear after me, and it's unique to Australia. It costs 20% more than the local boscs, but for that little less change in your pocket, you get to chew longer. The skin takes some chewing, but the real treat, and like most treats it shouldn't be abused, is what's inside the skin. It's super sweet, and tastes a little like Boston in the morning, which is a Dunkin Donuts coffee prepared the way they do when you let them.

Impressions

Australians are a hearty lot. They wake up earlier than we do in San Francisco for their early morning bike rides, they exit the financial district en masse at noon to swim, run, and play in the Royal Botanical Garden, and they deal with the everyday dangers of poisonous plants in their backyard, not to mention plagues of monsoons, floods and earthquakes.

I saw Bondi Beach for the first time today, and the mass of surfers a little further south at Maroubra, but the pace in the group was a little fast for a photo. As I said, Australians are a hearty lot. Work starts today, as does a thunderstorm, which means I might see lighting for the first time in years.

Maybe San Francisco is making me soft. I sleep in, there aren't thunderstorms and the only botanical dangers are rashes from poison oak. It's a Peter Pan place that doesn't always let young adults become adults, like Nate and Amanda said. But don't think I'm moving to Sydney. It's too expensive here, at least if you're spending American dollars.

Van Diemen's Land

I'm in Australia. Actually, I'm on my way there right now, somewhere over the Pacific, having not seen land since I left San Francisco. At least that's what I think. But then again, the San Francisco to Boston route doesn't follow a straight line, it arcs into Canada just above Lake Erie and then slants down toward Boston, so I might have seen some land.

Nonetheless, I'm in the Southern Hemisphere, my first time here, which means I've been in as many hemispheres as Baleen and in a few hours, as many continents. Hopefully I've slept a full night on the flight, a 14 hour one, but if not, then I'll have done some reading.

The pile I'd like to read is on the left, the pile on the right is what I should read. Already I'm falling way behind in conversation with Baleen throwing out terms like sleep cycle and EASY (Eat, Activity, Sleep, You) like she used to talk about neighborhoods in Oslo or the sauteed greens she had from Piccino. So I've got two from the right and one from the left. And a first phone call scheduled with Baleen at 4pm Tuesday in Sydney, which is just about Monday night bedtime in San Francisco.

SLR

Baleen and Grizzly are speaking a foreign language. Something about apertures, shutter speed, and 18x55. I think it's got something to do with Baleen's Black Friday toy which has everything to do with Baxter.

I've retired to the kitchen with Wood Duck for extra helpings of apple streusel ala mode where we still can't escape what they're talking about. Wood Duck is telling me that Grizzly's interest in photographs stretches back to Alaska, when he earned a relatively high wage compared to his immediate needs and bought himself an expensive camera, then got out in that great wilderness to use it and even developed the pictures himself. This was back when he built himself a bark canoe and kept a wolf that you didn't get near during feeding time.

There's a pile of books I'd like to read, but shouting for attention even louder than the baby books is a 200 page Samsung manual. We can't have all our family photos of just Baxter or Baxter and me. Baleen needs to be in one or two, too.

Thanksgiving

Baleen would have cooked the same meal with the exact same care had it been a Thanksgiving of one. Luckily for Grizzly, Wood Duck and me, we were there, too. It started at around nine this morning as she boiled some wild rice for the stuffing, but for us, it started around four, exactly as intended with some Oysters Rockefeller and Buena Vista Chardonnay.

Grizzly, who had proved handy with a blade earlier in the day upon peeling six pounds of apples, carved up Omar, cooked to a just right 165 after three days of brining and flipping and close attention.

In a forced rank, the consensus put the turkey and the stuffing on top, followed ever so closely by the brussell sprouts and roasted root vegetables, and further down the list, a good bit further, was the apple pecan streusel I cooked for dessert, enjoyed in front of a warm fire, our first ever in San Francisco.

Omar

Grizzly and Wood Duck are in town. They're full of stories of southern Utah and early snow in Park City and they're off with Baleen now at the Civic Center Farmer's Market buying six pounds of apples for our bourbon pecan apple streudel. It's as Thanksgiving as Apfelkuchen.

I'm home alone with Omar, our 10-lb bird, but I'm not doing what Shrimp Jr had to do in 2009. We're doing a dry brine again, or I should say Baleen is, but back in 2009, Baleen kept calling Shrimp Jr from work the day before Thanksgiving and asking, how does Henry look? Is he laying on his chest or his back? Will you pat him dry and salt him again?

This year, Baleen's been home to tend to Omar herself. I'm not sure what she's done so far, but I know he's in our fridge looking like this. That's not the only difference from 2009, either. We won't bring out the scale and have our pre-dinner weigh in and post-dinner weigh off like we did in 2009, not because Baleen wouldn't play to win again, but because she would, and Baxter might get a little crowded down there sharing space with cranberry sauce, apfelstreusel and Omar.

80/20

If Woody Allen said that eighty percent of being successful in life is showing up, then my twenty percent was pushing up Hawk Hill that final little bit when I looked back and saw Mr Baldwin chasing me. There weren't the all-stars out, Nick at Nite, Merlin's Beard and JayBird were kept away by the weather, cranberry sauce, or maybe something else, like sleep or a lungy baby, but I got the jersey that Baleen thinks I've long deserved.

I'll attribute it to persistence, but Baleen, or Hausfrau, as she may prefer to be called in this week without work for her, may think it has to do with last night's dinner. I came home to a balanced meal of protein, veggies and starch that was made special by that extra step, in this case a sauce made mostly of Crispin's super premium quality hard cider.

She's at home now, doing the things she never can with that long commute, like sleeping in, getting groceries and maybe even getting a pre-natal massage. Those are the mundane, workaday things that I save her from with my job in the same place that I live, except for that last part.

Some Assembly Required

Baleen did not prematurely give birth to a giraffe. It's Ollie, the long-necked gift from Jamie and Lorna, testing out Baxter's crib that we put together this weekend. Baleen and I are trying to get a head start on Baxter's arrival as everything we read says get done now what you can, while everybody we talk to says try new restaurants now and watch movies in the theater while you still can.

Nonetheless, Baleen read to me from one of her books that 90% of couples experience significant troubles in the four weeks after their first child is born while half of those experience major troubles. We're hoping to be in the 10% there, a co-hort that will keep us happy without occupiers pitching tents in our driveway.

So check back with us on April 5th, as long as Baxter arrives on time, and see if I've called Baleen anything worse than the largest mammal on earth or if she's called me anything worse than a bowlegged bandit.

Brummehnkce

As written and sung by Matt Abbot and Meghan Shapiro, 11.12.11, in Austin, Texas

Brummett was a student at the college here in town

She was the class vice president, university renowned.

A brilliant blonde go-getter, taking politics by storm,

She walked the walk and talked the talk, but still she wanted more.

She’d eventually leave Austin, but she didn’t know quite when

The road goes on forever and the party never ends.

When Behncke went to law school, he was older than the rest

He was playing Professional Soccer when he took the LSAT test.

Had he been a little faster, or made a few more plays

He might still be playing soccer with Real Salt Lake.

But he moved himself to Austin and he made a few new friends

The road goes on forever and the party never ends.

Behncke first met Brummett at a 4B meet and greet

At romantic Double Dave’s down on Duval street

Brummett wasn’t looking, but Behncke didn’t mind

‘Cuz when it comes to dating, he takes his own sweet time

He’ll ask her out at some point, God only knows when

The road goes on forever and the party never ends.

Get-togethers at the swanky Crown and Anchor Bar

With some drunken out of towner, some pilot from Lemoore.

Study groups and bar reviews and broken collar bones,

It’s frankly quite a wonder you didn’t give up and go home.

They finally got together, or so we understand,

The road goes on forever and the party never ends.

They graduated law school, they had to move away

Hoping they might get to live together again someday

She to New York City … to do tax law??… lots of fun!

He to old Kentucky, nothing but boredom

But Texas was a’callin and they met up in Houston

The road goes on forever and the party never ends.

Then came the proposal, a romantic evening in

Brummett was all sweaty –pretty – just back from the gym

Behncke thought he had conceived the world’s most perfect plan

Suggested to Brummett, “You should shower and get dressed.”

Brummett said, “No thank you, I’m just fine the way I am.”

The road goes on forever and the party never ends.

Brummehnkce’s getting married, some things will probably change

No longer will Brummett pretend to enjoy soccer games.

There couldn’t be a better reason to be here tonight

Not even this song can ruin it – ‘cause when it’s right it’s right.

All our love and our best wishes to the happy newlyweds

The road goes on forever and the party never ends.

All our love and our best wishes to the happy newlyweds

The road goes on forever and the party never ends.

Pepin, Pere de Paul

There were yolks all over the place. Mostly in bowls, a little just barely on the sleeves of Paul's Pladra, and then in pans on very high heat for three minutes, four for Alex, who liked less jiggle. As a veteran, my third night now of Pepin's omelettes, I've gotten comfortable with three eggs, down from that first pan of five, but Paul did the inconceivable, the kind of thing that when Baleen does, I dont' think, why didn't I think of that, but how did she think of that.

He cooked a one egg omelette. There was the rush of the unknown as we all gathered around, seeing what it looked like, then trying not to notice as he brought it back to the table and we talked about Occupy Oakland or Three Cups of Tea, but without listening to each other's response because all we cared about, while trying not to care, was the one egg omelette.

Turns out we should have listened a little longer or gotten in a Jagwa with Lord Percy Pennyworth on this rainy night as a one egg omelette is just that, a third of an omlette with a third of the herbs, like a 6pc Chicken McNuggets is just a third of the 20pc'er. Or something like that.

Spinach and Shrimp

There's a new midweek meal over here in the Mission suburbs. It takes all of two stops on the way home and costs 18.14, as long as your spice cabinet has paprika and cumin, or a third stop and 22.14 if you want a simple gruner salat by its side.

The key is to buy pasta from the place that makes it, tall order for those back in Williamsburg, while the  shrimp takes no more than twenty minutes, including walking outside to throw out the shells so they don't make Baleen barf the next day or the day after that.

7,034,123,845

Apparently, the world's seven billioneth person might have been born on October 31 in a place that might have been India. They predict baby eight billion will come in 2015.

By my calculations, Baxter will be the world's 7,034,123,845 person. That's my imprecise estimate that eight billion in 2015 means about 71 million net population gain a year, but that the population curve won't follow Margarine's current fitness regime, start slow and taper off, but will accelerate into the finish.

I think we just might have a party on or about March 8 of next year with a cake and a little more than seven billion candles.

Pavel Rahman / Associated Press

B&B United

Margarine married Big Emma on Saturday. It was a wonderful weekend shared with wonderful people. I don't have a picture of the new man and wife, but when I do, I'll post it. Until then, it's worth knowing that Baleen beat me in that other event, the speech.

She spoke on Friday at the rehearsal dinner and told Big Emma what it's like to be married to our family. She made sure to make fun of Wood Duck, gently, and brought the house down when she told Big Emma that she'd need fluency in a second language, military jargon, to be able to understand Grizzly's emails. There's MRE for Meals Ready to Eat and AO for Areas of Operation, both of which she found in Grizzly's emails, and the third one that Grizzly doesn't use, that she put in there for all of us but especially for Grizzly was CAPE, Corrective Action through Physical Exertion.

I spoke the next day in front of a wider audience, and only one person told me that my speech just might have been better than Baleen's, which made me feel pretty good for a second, until his wife shouted as he was speaking to me, "William, you're drunk! Get back over here and stop standing in the bushes."

Margarine's Final Wedding Week Preview

Tomorrow Margarine's getting married. S2B can look forward to a lifetime of ski forecasts. Nothing gets Margarine talking quite like talk about winter weather. Ask him about the moisture content of Utah snow, but don't do it when you're waiting for an elevator because the answer will last a whole lot longer than that.

I think he gets it from our maternal grandfather, Pop, the Alabama corn and tomato farmer. Back when we were tiny things we'd head to Jasper, Alabama, having saved up all our McDonald's happy meal toys and little made in China figurines which then turned into target practice for Pop's 22. While that's what all the boys shared when we got together, the women staying inside, fretting a little and making ice tea, but letting us go for all the wise adults with us, what just Pop and Margarine shared was the weather.

They'd talk about it first thing in the morning and just before bed and a little in between. Pop had a rain gauge on the fence behind the house. He and Margarine would head out there to see how much it had rained during the night, Margarine reporting that it had rained 1/2 of an inch, the most of our trip so far. I can't predict where he and S2B will end up and where they'll in between, but I do know that she'll hear what the weather's gonna be like.

Margarine's Wedding Week Preview: Day 4

The first taxi I ever took was with Margarine, Shrimp Jr and Wood Duck. It was in Calais, France. The four of us had taken the ferry from the White Cliffs of Dover to Calais for a Continental two weeks with Grizzly, who had skipped our British Isles adventure to keep working. This was way back before cell phones and internet connections and ATMs and when you still had to do math when crossing borders, in addition to bringing your passport, and find banks to exchange your American Express Travellers' Cheques for local francs, lira or deutschmarks, so the plan was to meet in the ferry terminal in Calais on that Wednesday morning.

What we didn't know, and what none of the friendly French told us, was that only ticketed passengers were allowed at the docks. Apparently, there was another passenger terminal a few miles away that a bus went back and forth from. That's what we found out afterwards when we were figuring out why Grizzly wasn't there to meet us and Grizzly was wondering why we didn't get off the bus.

When we finally got our luggage and found ourselves on an abandoned dock, some Frenchman pointed off in the distance to the ferry terminal. There was nothing to do except walk. Each of us shouldered our bags except for Shrimp Jr, still just Shrimp Jr and not yet Jumbo Shrimp, who took my small backpack and I took her bag. We were two weeks into a four week trip with bags full of things for soccer, beach and the Alps, so Margarine's bag weighed nearly as much as he did. About a half mile into our dockyard hike, Margarine started falling behind. Then further behind. And further still. He got louder, too, telling us we were all morons. There was about ten seconds of silence, and ten seconds of progress for the rest of us until we heard a shout, "Hey," and saw Margarine stepping into a taxi, saying he was coming to pick us up.

Margarine's Wedding Week Preview: Day 3

Back before Baleen and S2B came along it was a family of five. We went most places together, usually in a minivan, but sometimes in a C-151, which would generally get you close to where you wanted to go in less time than if you rowed there, but more than if you flew coach.

For my sixteenth birthday we spent a few weeks in Maine, where we ate our first lobsters, marveled that McDonald's had it on the menu and dared each other to go in the ocean. We also took a family hike to Mt. Washington, the tallest mountain in the NorthEast. About 3/4 of the way to the top, we stopped at a hut for some food and drink, and a discussion of whether we should push for the peak. It was getting late, the fog was rolling in, and it's not like the first 3/4 of the mountain had gone quickly and easily. We settled on a vote.

Grizzly and I rose our hands. Wood Duck's was down and was staying down. Those votes were guaranteed, like Texas and New York in the presidential elections. It's the swing states that matter. Shrimp Jr. looked around. She thought about it. She thought some more. Margarine sat to Shrimp Jr's left, facing forward but with his eyes looking left. Just as Shrimp Jr. capitulated and she started to raise her hand, Margarine's shot up like GMO corn. Four to one. We were headed to the top*.

* Postscript: we made it about twenty more steps up the mountain, long enough to pass a group of 4 boys in Dartmouth sweatshirts asking where we were headed, then saying "No way!" when we said the top, but not nearly long enough to make it anywhere near the top as the fog really rolled in and we could barely see the family member in front of us

Margarine's Wedding Week Preview: Day 2

I was outclassed on the hill this morning and too late on the sprint. 1:10 into the 1:45 sprint I kept telling myself, patience, patience, patience, then when I made my move, it was too late. I had waited because patience was something I hadn't shown much of on earlier rides, and something I didn't need to show much of for my first fifteen years in any competitions against Margarine. 

I was, and always will be, seventeen months older. At the beginning, that meant I was a whole lot taller, faster, and stronger. Margarine, whose favorite book for a while was, [When I'm Six], I'll Fix Anthony, thought he'd catch up to me, if not in age, then those other things. So he kept swinging long after his cause was lost, then quit in a huff when it didn't turn out as he'd envisioned. 

Just after the summer of '84, when Carl Lewis and Mary Lou Retton got all those medals and the country was covered in red white and blue, every event between us became the Olympics. A race to the school bus, a sprint to the car out of the supermarket, first one to the bedroom after dinner; they all became a race for gold. Except by the end of 1984, becuase Margarine had quit our Olymipcs in a huff five times, before he was awarded gold he'd have to say, I'm playing, I'm playing, I'm playing, I'm playing, I'm playing, gold. A little patience and he would have had a few more gold medals.   

Margarine's Wedding Week Preview: Day 1

Margarine's getting married on Saturday in Austin, Texas. I've known him for thirty-one years. This weekend I wrote my Best Man speech, trying to entertain a little, but also to bridge the gap with a few anecdotes. Six and a half minutes can't make up for the twenty-seven year head start I have on S2B. So here's to a week of what I couldn't fit in there, starting with a little crabbing off a dock in Hampton, Virginia.

We had just moved there a few weeks before. It was summer, school hadn't started and we were living on B.O.Q., military speak for Bachelor Officer Quarters, on Ft. Monroe, Virginia. I was going into fifth grade and the three of us kids spent most of our time together, learning to back flip off the side of the pool and playing soccer against the locals, including soon to be best soccer buddy Matt Neely.

What we really loved, as we'd never done it before, was dropping a chicken leg tied to a string off the dock. When we'd check the lines and find a tug, we'd slowly pull it up to the surface then out of the water, the crab holding on like he thought he was getting a ride to the whole bird. Then we'd drop it on the dock and dare each other to pick it up from the back. We didn't always win, and sometimes they'd scurry off the dock before we could get them in the bucket or pick them up for a look. A big one took a chunk out of my finger when I was trying to separate him from the chicken. Margarine, seeing the blood pouring out of my finger, shouted, You make my brother bleed, you Die! and kicked the crab about to North Carolina while Shrimp Jr. almost fell off the dock laughing.

Chicken Curry

Baleen cooked up a chicken curry last night as Jimmy O told us that Sao Paulo has the world's worst traffic, at least of places he'd been. I listened and listened as he and Baleen talked about shopping in Igautemi, Jimmy O having walked down it, Baleen having studied it and its demographics for work, before I interrupted.

I would like to try my speech for my brother's wedding, I said. I had written it that afternoon in a flash and wanted to see both how long it was and get some first impressions. I read it, and got worried when they didn't laugh when I thought they would, and laughed at a part I hadn't expected. I've got some tinkering to do, which I'll do this weekend, but they both agreed that the one part should go. My icebreaker.

It would have been, I've been told that all wedding speeches must do one thing if they're to be a success: flatter the bride and groom while not offending anybody, least of all the two you're meant to flatter. But in Texas, I've been told the rules are a little different. It's still important to mind that first rule, but a truly successful speech mentions Texas as much as possible, and depending on the audience, the great University of Texas plenty, too. So here goes...

Toast Masters

Our soccer team had our end of year banquet tonight to celebrate our enormous amount of ties and they gave me this shirt for being the tallest player on the team. There was a microphone and I was up there standing in front of everybody so I felt like I had to say something.

It's not like here at the computer where I get to delete misspellings or whole phrases, it's impromptu and I can't take anything back. Put on the spot, I feel like I did okay, but if I had it do over again, and with these last two hours to have intermittently thought of what to say, I think I would have added this intro, said what I said as the middle, and then followed with some sort of closer.

[Leaning on the lectern into the mic] Wow, it's great to be here in front of all these familiar faces. [Step back. Reach in my navy blue sport coat]. Wait, my brother's getting married in Austin next weekend and I'm going to be wearing this jacket, we're wearing sport coats and khakis, and this feels about like that might, everybody nicely dressed and looking at me, so do you mind if I practice my wedding speech? I've got it right here with me...