A Consumer in the Making

I've been home all this week, which in itself is great! It's weird not to get up and go to work, and also not be at a "vacation." We decided it was about time to introduce Priya to her first theater experience. Here she is - at the movies!

We went to see Happy Feet. By itself, it was somewhat entertaining. But for a toddler - BO-OO-RING. The problem was that it was about penguins in Antarctica. Can you figure out the problem? Yep. It was mostly shades of black and white. So there wasn't any color besides that. But Priya did pretty well. She got a little restless towards the end, but all in all, it was a fun outing. Maybe Flushed Away would have been a better choice.

And now some more fall pics...

Priya pretending she's sleeping

Weddings are fun

On Saturday, Tish and I got to be padrino and madrina for Alejandra at her wedding. We had met her when we were in Argentina a couple of years ago. It was a great time; the food was outstanding. Priya did really well too.

My little monkey

Mowgli Priya

Me Tarzan, Not Jane

Our little monkey is living up to her name. She has discovered that coordinated use of hands and feet means a gain of elevation, and escape. In the last couple of days, Priya can climb up to her high chair, and from there to the table.




But more interestingly, she has found out how to escape from her crib. (Side note: Try as I might, I wasn't able to find a single picture of Priya in her crib. Strange).

With the help of our video monitor, we saw how she does it. First she hooks one leg on the top. Then she pulls herself up until she's straddling the top. Then it's a twist until both legs are over on the other side. She hangs for a few seconds, and then lets go. It's a fall of about a foot, and after that... freedom.

Time for a bed.

How the news was broken...

Ahem...

...does this mean something?

A Visit at Work; Some Unpleasantness

Tish, Priya and Christy came to visit me at work on Friday, and then we all went out to Macaroni Grill. I'm surprised we haven't seen any of these restaurants make it by us yet. Tish makes the hike up a couple of times a year just so we can go there (with a detour along the way for her to Ikea and the Container Store).


This was the weekend of eating out. On Saturday night, we went with a couple of friends to one of our all-time favorite restaurants - Pars Cove. I highly recommend this place to anyone looking for a place to eat out. Notice the lady on the corner in this surreptitiously taken picture? Yea well - we had a little incident with her.

It had been a little bit of a rough day for Priya, and she was acting a little bit fidgety. As you can notice, the restaurant at this time was pretty much empty. So I let her get down and walk around a bit. She wandered over to this lady and pointed to something she had. Boy, I wish I could have caught the scowl that showed up on her face. Ok fast forward 30 minutes. We're pretty much done with our meal, and Priya is getting tired and crabby. I had her on my lap, and one of the things that kept her occupied was taking a spoon, dipping it in water, and licking the spoon. I guess as time went on, her dipping the spoon against the glass started making noise. I look up to the sound of "Excuse me," and see this lady standing by our table. "Do you think the young lady can play with something else because this noise has gone on far too long." . Things happened pretty fast then. I took the spoon away from Priya, who immediately started howling. Tish had her hackles raised. And we were all pretty much shocked at what just happened. Luckily for all of us, the dessert ice-cream came, and Priya was content with licking the chocolate syrup off her newly acquired spoon.

I won't editorialize here, but stuff like this happens all the time. Kids will be kids, and one way of thinking goes that if parents can't control their children, then they shouldn't be seen in public with them. Until your kids learn how to behave and be mini-robots, no taking them to restaurants, airplanes, parks, or any public places. God forbid we disturb the peace and quiet for others. There's lots to be said about children misbehaving, but sometimes it's taking things too far when some insist that their rights trump other peoples.

Gauging Fame

Like many engineers, I don't necessarily like math, but I do like numbers. Numbers quantify (well, that much is obvious). But the quantification isn't always absolute. The realm of statistics is based on positing statements based on frequencies and such. The "laws" of thermodynamics aren't laws per se - they are observational statements.

Ok. So how did I get on this topic. Well, I was looking at my site statistics, and wondering - Gee, I get a lot of visitors. But why don't a majority of the people comment? What are they looking for? Are they entertained? Are they bored and never come back? - only to have others take their place. All these questions can't be answered by the numbers I see.


Unique visitors to my site jumped 72% in September, and another 22% in October. So I'm gaining viewership.





Michelle gets the honor for the most people visiting my blog after having first visited hers. Otherwise people are just Googling me.




The majority of my visitors are from the US. The others are from countries that are not part of the UN (just kidding). I'm surprised I'm that popular in the UK. I think I attribute that largely to people visiting me through Susanna's blog.


And a final pictorial of all the visitors to the blog.





Now that was a nice bit of self-indulgence! I feel two conflicting emotions. The first one is: Hey I'm not that popular as I hope I would be. The second is: Hey, I'm more popular than the content on my blog deserves!