We think Maya could be teething. I've read that it could start as early as 3 months, so it's not entirely out of the question... there's lots of drooling, fussiness, and generally fist-to-mouth behavior. We'll see...
I'm in Trinidad this week. So let's do the geek-travel check list:
- Cell Service? Yes. Roaming on Digicell (I found out that Digicell just started here recently, and previous to that time there was a monopoly run by the TTST, which is 51% state-owned). I heard there's a buck-a-minute surcharge, but I don't really care. I'm on business travel! (Note to upper-crust work types that may read this, and you know who you are, you didn't read this).
- SMS? Yes. Multimedia SMS? No - so no pix via cell phone. I'll have to do it the old-fashioned way (snap-snap, download, upload) to get you some quality Trinidad, digitally.
- Blackberry? No. So no checking of the work email.
- Internet Access? Well, you're reading this aren't you? So that's a yes - the Courtyard here has complimentary WiFi, and I also wrangled a complimentary beer from the front desk - I am that good!
Alright, enough on Miami and it's seedy airport (at least the international terminal for American Airlines anyway)...off to Trinidad! And business class at that. I watched Pirates of the Caribbean (and why not?) on the ol' iPod, and read X-Men Ultimates volume one. I think I'm going to get back into reading comics again, now that I have all this free time on my hands :) The flight was uneventful, that is, until landing.
When I travel internationally, I do so as a seasoned traveller - I don't dress up for plane flights since this is not 1960 - so I typically tell the customs people that I'm here for vacationing. And by that, I mean spending big bucks and not taking work away from the indigenous people. That goes for when I'm on business too. But I wimped out this time and told the guy I was here for some business meetings, and then he asked to see my return itinerary. Of course, I'm living in the age of electronics! It's in an email somewhere, I'm sure...I mean, I'm pretty green so I don't print stuff out unless I have to - so no, I didn't have a printed itinerary. Luckily Yvette had one.
So, we got past customs. Y and I are walking down the hall and all the lights in the airport go out for about 5 seconds. And when I say all, I mean all. No emergency lights or anything. So that was a bit of a scare. Y grabbed onto my arm and screamed like a little girl for a bit - but let's face it, she's not that tall, so that's not unexpected. As I was reaching into my pocket for my trusty Treo flashlight (a/k/a screen of backlit-goodness), the lights got power again, and all was good. Or so it seemed. I don't think there's much in the way of backup power around the airport in Port of Spain - or perhaps they just shut things down after 9pm: the lights were mostly out in the bathrooms, taxi stand, and outside the airport. So, overall, the airport experience was only slightly seedy and unnerving. Then comes the taxi ride.
I had to stop by the ATM at the airport - I only had a few USD, and no TTD. I read in my Rough Guide to Trinidad & Tobago that the cab ride from the airport to the hotel should be USD$30, and that's exactly what the driver quoted. That wasn't so bad. The cab was an old BMW 5 series diesel from about 1986, white, with a maroon velour interior, and power windows! I noticed there was no air freshener - no crown-in-the-rear-deck, no evergreen tree rear-view mirror hanger, no nothing. That was not such a big deal, and I found out why later. We loaded the suitcases into the trunk and hopped aboard. The taxi started on the second try, which isn't bad for a 20 year old diesel. Apparently the cabbie was ready for this, because he didn't shut his door until the car started. Oh, and FYI - this is a left-side-driving, right-side-seated country. So we're off like a herd of...something that herds. I whipped out the laptop and GPS to track our progress (not that it mattered because I haven't installed Eartha Explorer on this laptop, so I basically got GPS tracking information and little else. I did manage to see that we drove about 40mph for most of the trip).
Y and I traded tidbits we learned about Trinidad prior to the trip. I noted the leatherback sea turtle nesting grounds on the north side of the island, and the roti sandwich stands. Y informed me that Trinis love them some fried chicken! KFC is the fast-food restaurant of choice on the island - so much so in fact that Trinidad has the highest KFC per capita in the world. I would've thought we could beat that in the southern US, but hey, I've been wrong before...once.
So we're tooling off down Churchill-Roosevelt Parkway, and that's when we are treated to a veritable, no, friggin' cornucopia of nasal delight! Perhaps delight is too strong a word. No, the word I require is more like...yes, that's it: we were treated to a friggin' cornucopia of olfactory overload! It started first with the diesel fumes, and the Jet A fuel from the airport... then we passed a swamp...then a chicken farm...then some sort of chicken processing plant, which we learned was a KFC warehouse/facility (for what, I don't know...chicken nugget fabrication? I don't eat KFC so I have no clue what's on the menu... chicken lips and toes for all I knows). Anyway, then there was a bit of skunk for a bit. Then more diesel, this time from a bus or two and an old truck. And the grand finale: a garbage dump. Literally. Right on the highway. Which got me to thinking: Curacao, for all it's polarity, was actually a pretty nice island. Sure, there were really poor people, and really rich people, but overall the land was nice. Yeah, there are a lot of petroleum processing plants, but that's mainly in Willemstad. I like Curacao.
Thus far, I am not so enamored of Trinidad. Granted, I've seen it from the back of a cab, for 30 minutes, at night, after two plane trips and waiting around and being tired. So I'll hold off on judgment just yet - after all, who knows what lies in store when the sun comes up...
Ack. I'm sitting in the Fort Myers airport ready to head off to Trinidad and I'm updating my blog. Turns out that my fancy pre-departure pix that I snapped of the kids didn't make it to the blog! Drat!
Hopping on to Blogger reveals some errors in publishing. Usually the SMS messages from the Treo happily plop themselves into my blog without error - but now I'm seeing "Unknown Host" problems when I try to republish those MIA messages.
Well, I am happy to report that I will be changing hosting providers to something a little more reliable. ANRHost have done a fine job thus far, but they have been pretty lackluster in terms of domain renewal - in particular, my own domain went into "unrenewed status" without so much as a cursory email to let me know. So, I'm moving all my domains from ANRHost to 1&1 Hosting. It's about the same price, and they are a "real" operation that can be counted on for long hold times, unresponsive support and the usual bureaucracy that comes with a big-time service provider. Well, that and their interface for remote management is far superior, which includes a domain control panel and unlimited MySQL databases (gasp). Ok, well the latter isn't really important at all. But what is important is that people get to see more of me. And by me, I mean my kids - because that's what's really important.
PS. If you've never seen the bottom end of this page, take a moment and scroll on down. Look for the ping map that tracks all of you, my loyal friends and readers, and realize how small this world really is.
PPS. Ok, so I think the posting works now. And my plane is boarding.
I have to admit it - the retro Beatles infant Tee is pretty swank. I mean, can you blame me for wanting to swaddle Maya in a phat Allman Brothers mushroom/tie-dyed Onesie? Devin in a black Led Zep onesie with the Swan Song emblem (you know, Icarus falling from the sky).
I am going to invest in some quality iron-on paper, and will be busting out my silk-screening kit whence I return from abroad.
To capture Devin smiling. With a cell phone that is.
This article is a fantastic story about elephants exacting revenge on humans. It also contains some interesting information about pachydermal social groups. I'll save all the comments and just let you read it and then walk away amazed. And you thought only humans and dolphins were smart!
Devin watches The Band performing on the Last Waltz DVD. I actually had him facing the other way and he craned his l'il baby neck around to see it.
The swell of Robbie Robertson's solo on Up on Cripple Creek grabs Devin's attention. He's seated with his back to the TV.
Just a little trivial knee surgery on a Friday afternoon. Right before tea. This was to address a recurring problem with a meniscus and anterior cruciate ligament. The latter will require reconstruction (perhaps a cadaver's ACL?) and 3 weeks' recovery time so we opted to table that pesky business. I'm actually putting the details about this in here 3 days afterwards - oops.
Today we'll take off the bandages and inspect, and perhaps not take any more percoset.
Heh heh. This l'il feller has the buggiest eyes I've ever seen. Well, except for his mom of course. :)
Here's a neat little box made from paper. I know the picture isn't that good, but this is basically a PDF that I got off the internets, printed, cut, folded, taped and voila!
Check these out. I found some nifty PDF files, printed them out, and with some fancy scissor-and-tape work, I have an instant optical illusion!
Pulpy The Purple Paper Dragon
Scully the Slightly Decomposed Paper Zombie
Halloween preparations are underway. I procured some templates from zombiepumpkins.com, and over the weekend the Little menfolk created some pumpkins that are, in a word, phat. Check them out!
That was a few hours' carving, with the cheap tools. Since we left all of these at Dad's house, we will certainly be carving our own for the house. This will be our first Halloween spent at home in 5 years - usually we are on a cruise or trip somewhere. We will be carving some interesting pumpkins this year, for certain, and I'm sure BJ will too.
It was a long trip, but we got back home Saturday night around 1am. Not bad - 12 hours for 650 miles. I am still happy about the van's performance during the trip, save for the roofing nail in a tire, but that was easily fixed with a trip to the local hardware store.
I might've mentioned earlier about the kids' sleeping habits - they did two nights in a row where they slept from about early evening to early morning (roughly 7 hour stretches). We thought we were approaching the clear zone, but I think the 12 hour car ride did that in for a bit by screwing up the twins' sleeping patterns. :/ At any rate, I'm hoping tomorrow's appointment yields good news and perhaps we can start introducing some rice cereal to the ol' evening bottles.
In other news, I've started moving all the picture galleries into a central location that I can control. You'll notice the Photos link over there on the right goes to Valence-Pix, where I have started posting photo albums. I've still to move the kid's photo log over to Valence-Pix, so you will still see the Picasa web link available. In the meantime, you can always ride on over to Valence-Pix to check out the latest photo logs, or subscribe to the RSS feed.
TTFN!
No, not the Hopper from Easy Rider and, more recently, Speed and Waterworld, rather, a Grasshopper. This "little" fellow was on the lanai screen down in Sanibel and measures about 3 inches from head to tail, and about 1¼ inches across the thorax. Quite a colorful character; he didn't mind me getting right up next to him for some macro shots - albeit without a true macro lens. At any rate, still very cool pix. And fishbait.
Here's something neat! While vacationing in Sanibel, we were treated to a floral show provided by the night-blooming cereus. I'm not sure of the genus and official name of this particular variety as there are quite a few. This variety is a creeping cactus which blooms once per year at night [turns out this is not the bloom-once-per-annum variety, which is pretty rare, but it's still a beautiful and fragrant bloom. -Ed]. The blooms close up by morning. Click on the picture for an album of several blooms.
For a part-Lab you'd think Stella would be at home in the water. Alas she is not, but she is quite enamored of the water temp ducky.
Though it's still in beta, GrandCentral might be the Next Big Thing in phone applications -- for some people. The premise is pretty simple. You get a single number which you can then distribute to your contacts. Then, you input your phone numbers where you can be reached (e.g. home, business, cell, etc). When a call comes in to your GrandCentral number, it will ring all of your numbers (and caller ID is preserved) and if you pick up, you'll get to screen the call or pick it up.
There are some nifty features: you can set up different voicemail greetings by caller group (e.g. friends, family, work, other) and you can set ringback tones (what your callers here while your phone rings) by caller group. You can upload any mp3 file to use as your ringback tone too.
The cool part? Voicemails are stored in GrandCentral's servers and you can play them back via your browser. Everything is well-categorized and the user interface is pretty slick (AJAX is all the rage, isn't it?).
For me, I don't think it's that something I'll use too much. I don't change jobs very often (2 jobs in 12 years), and my cell number and home numbers don't change. And, I don't want to have to do a mass emailing or calling to alert all my contacts. So, don't write this number down in ink for your Rolodex (heh - analog contact databases are so retro!) but you can try it out and give me a call on my new GrandCentral number (404) 704-0087.
