Unbelievable!!

I simply can't believe this. When I had first made this post, I had thought it was a foregone conclusion that Jill Carroll would not survive her kidnapping. Tish called me this morning with the news that, wonder of wonders, Jill Carroll had been set free. Amazing. I am so happy and relieved for her. It also seems like that she came through this fairly unscathed.

Right now I am sitting at the bus terminal at O'Hare airport. Without a car, I am relegated to finding creative ways of getting around. I missed the bus by five minutes, so now I have to wait around for an hour before the next one gets here. Thanks to my iPod and wirless access, I can at least while the time away. The really sucky part is that I won't get to see Priya till tomorrow evening now. Aaargh. The torture.

I pulled up this interesting statistic on my Google videos. Take a look at the picture:

See that? The most popular videos that I host are the short clips from Buenos Aires. I should dig up more stuff from Argentina!

Almost there

Greetings from Minneapolis. I've been here for a few days already. The trip is going well, but not too exciting. So far I've eaten at a Red Lobster and a local steak house. Fun stuff.

This whole video thing with Google needs some rethinking in my part. It's incredibly easy for people to see the videos once they are online - all you need is a Flash player. But it takes so doggone long for Google to verify and approve the videos. There are some other sites out there that will host videos, and I might investigate them sometime. In the meantime, Google it is.

The first video is of Priya coming to a standing position by herself. It's the first time she did it, and we were lucky to get it on video. She can stand in place now for sometime, but steps are still a challenge.

The next video is of her waking up in the morning. She has taken to sleeping in this strange position with her butt up in the air. Doesn't look too comfortable, but seems like she likes it. I wish I was this chirpy when I wake up in the morning.

Family Day

This past weekend we went to the Chicago Flower and Garden Show at Navy Pier. We had first gone there a couple of years ago, and had really liked it. So I took a day off on Friday, and we decided to make a family day out of it. We had a really good time, and Priya thoroughly enjoyed herself. Her favorite time was at the end when we sat by the vast carpetted area outside the exhibition hall. Priya was crawling all around, going up to people and letting out her characteristics squacks. It was so cute, and everyone loved her.






Here's a short video of Priya enjoying herself.

This past Sunday Priya took her first official step. Now let's not get too excited because she hasn't shown any interest in repeating the feat. But at least both Tish and I were there to witness it. The funny thing is that earlier in the day I caught her playing with her walker. I grabbed my phone and shot a video of it. In the first attempt (unfortunately not on film), she had walked all the way across the breadth of the basement. Here you see her stumbling a bit, but still - the mechanics are all there.

A Hiatus

I know I have been a little quiet lately. Not a lot has been going on, so there's not a lot to say. I still don't have my car back after more than two weeks. Don't ask me for a referral. Last night I spent some time video-conferencing with David Swart on his new iMac. He has the sexiest legs I have ever seen. Hehe.

I bought my tickets for my trip to Germany in May. To be honest, the only reason why I am excited about going is to refill my dwindling number of German wine bottles. I love to share my collection of Franken wine with friends - especially the spätlese (late season grapes) kind.

I will be heading out to Minneapolis for a week at the end of the month. Fun. The best time to visit Minnesotta is early fall. Upper-state Minnesotta has probably one of the best midwestern foliage after the north-east.

Ok. Now some pictures.

Priya with Grandma Reay

Hangin' out with papa

Her favorite thing is to reach into drawers and pull out things

Not quite ready to climb up on the bed

One of my favorite bath pics

Not Quite Ready For Primetime

These are some pictures our friend Sherry took with Priya and her daughter Skyler. Notice both have the same outfits. Sherry ended up using the wrong flash setting, so all you see is the foreground. Also, Priya wasn't having her best of days. Still, I think the pictures turned out interesting...

Light entertainment fare

Fridays... Yea.. We love Fridays. In the immortal words of Loverboy, we're "working for the weekend"! More bad news on the car - it's gonna take more time, and it's gonna cost more. Great. Break out the credit cards.

Ok. I found some short clips that I took with the camera when we were in Argentina. Street life is so fun over there. Move over Drew Lachey. Enjoy.

Priya's Adventures in Rolling

This is a video that I took over three weeks I think. We had been trying for a while to get Priya to roll over. As you can see, she hated being on her stomach - so much for belly time. So since she didn't like being face down, it was challenging for her to learn how to start rolling over. As first time parents, we were kinda freaked out that she wasn't learning quickly enough how to roll over. Now that she is almost ready to walk, we look back at this video and long for the days of limited mobility! The last 15 seconds of this video are more than worth the three minute viewing time!

Encouragements and Discouragements

This has been a fairly challenging week for me. I realized again just how poorly I deal with stress and the unknown. Common human conditions both - just the response differs.

• Coming home last Friday, my car suddenly started shuddering in the middle of the road. I lost most power and the Check Engine light blinked like crazy. To make a very long story short, the engine is damaged, and the repairs are in the thousands of dollars. So much for tax refunds, huh.
• Until Thursday I didn't know what the cost was going to be. I found myself obsessing over how much money I was going to spend, and how it was going to be tough, and so on. I finally decided that money was supposed to be my servant, and not my master. To prove that out, I decided to abuse my servant - by going and spending some money. I had been promising to get Tish a pink Razr forever. I finally did. And I got myself a new phone too. So here are our new phones. The thing I like about my phone is that it has WiFi built in. So even though the screen is small, it's cool to check out email, and 'surf' the web.

• I spent yesterday staring at this machine in the little town of Morris, IL.

The end result was a stack of sheets perfectly lined up. Look at the registration marks on the right side.

• I added more memory to my home PC. I now have a grand total of 1.5 GB. Circuit City was selling 512MB memory modules for $24.99. For fifty bucks I couldn't resist adding in a gig more of memory. Smokin...
• Michelle beat me to it (as usual? - hehe), but here's a video that I wanted to play during Priya's dedication (during lunch), but totally forgot about. So now, here for your viewing pleasure, is Priya...

Some brief updates

• My taxes are done for the year. I mean, not only did I file them, I also got all the refunds. So the federal government and the states of Illinois and Indiana are happy with what I showed them. And I now know what having a child does in regards to tax liability. A child under 17 is useful in two ways (at least as far as taxes go). They get claimed as a dependent (makes sense), but you also get a $1,000 tax credit for each one (take the total federal taxes that you owe, and deduct $1,000 from it).
• Within the span of a week (the time from my last post to this one), Priya is pulling herself up and actually liking it. OK. We all know Addy will be doing sprints in a week, but hey - we all have to proud of our own kids, right? :-)
• I wish I had a secret blog that no one knew about. There are some things I am wanting to rant and rave about, but I can't. Hence the great irony of writing blogs. You are supposed to be able to say whatever you want, but most times hold back because of the people that pass through - this makes it no different than real life.
• A friend of ours wanted to play scrabble this weekend. In thinking about it, I realized I haven't played that game in 15 years. We used to play it as a family. I don't think even now 'distactic' has been accepted as a word.
• We have recently been hooked on 24. I can't believe we let four seasons go by without ever watching it.
• A priest was walking in the woods when he came upon a bear. The priest fell to his knees and cried out, "Lord, please let this bear be a Christian bear." The bear looked at the priest, and then fell to his knees. He looked up to heaven, folded his paws and exclaimed, "Lord, thank you for this meal I am about to receive!"
  

Priya at 10 months

Studio Pictures at 10 months

Grilled cheese sandwich. Mmm...

Priya being... well... Priya

She can stand up, but hasn't really shown much interest in doing it by herself.

OK. We do feed her - it just doesn't show too well.

She loves having teeth - biter biscuits don't stand a chance.

She can't wait for winter to be over.

Word Cloud

TS had an interesting post on word cloud. This is an image that's generated through all the words in your blog - it picks up the most frequent ones and makes them a bigger font, etc. OK. So why is Michelle's name so big? Must be the thousands of comments she puts in. Haha. I think I need to talk about Tish more often. Priya did pretty well, but guess who's the biggest... Yep. Me! You can get your own cloud here.

Early Morning Thoughts

• I find it amusing that my last post was so depressing that I didn't even get one comment on it. Still no word on Jill, by the way.
• It's 7 in the morning, and I've been at work for a half hour already. Most people don't start filtering in till 8, so I don't have a lot of conversations till then. Does talking to yourself count?
• Here are the two pieces of software I stare at most of the day. Don't they look important and exciting? :-)

• Ok. Not as exciting as pictures of Priya. I saw some new ones in the digital camera last night, but forgot to upload them. So stay tuned.
• Priya is definitely developing a very willful side. She also knows when something must not be done. This comes out most often with pulling out books from bookshelves, or playing with cables in electrical sockets. Before reaching for them, she will look back and see if we are watching. When we say "No", she will hesitate, and then reach out anyway. Tish does a good job of disciplining her by flicking on her fingers and saying "No". One of the funniest things is when Priya is almost done eating, and she tries to tear her bib off. She does it once, you say no. She does it again, you say no with a flick. Then the third time, her hand starts to move towards the bib. You pre-empt it and say no - she then just lightly touches the bib and starts to stroke it - pretending she never meant to yank on it anyway. It's hilarious when you actually see it happen.
• I have been asked to make a presentation at our worldwide sales meeting in Germany in May. I guess that means I'm off to Germany again for a week. Let me know if you want to see the presentation when it's done. Haha.
  

It is Painful

I don't know how many of you are following the fate of Jill Carroll, the kidnapped freelance journalist in Iraq, who mainly worked for the Christian Science Monitor. I am personally feeling very anguished. For some reason I feel a strange connection,and I'm trying to figure out why I feel so torn. If I explore my thoughts, then I think the main reason is the fear I get when extrapolating Priya's life. I mean, as parents you try to raise your daughter with the idea that nothing is impossible for her. That whatever goal she sets her eyes on, she can achieve it. If you don't give that sense of expectation, then you may as well raise her to believe that at 17 she will be given off in marriage to raise children for the rest of her life. Not that there is anything wrong in it, but you know what I mean. So here's Jill Carroll - trying to be a world-class journalist in the middle of a conflict with no rules. A woman in a world where women are considered "properties". Doing what she wanted to - set her heart to. Surviving in a mans world. Kidnapped at gunpoint by ruthless men who shot dead her interpreter. Used as a pawn in a senseless war. That land is soaked in blood, and it's thirst is not quenched. With all my heart I hope she is able to go free with her life. This is one death I won't be able to forget too easily.

Random Friday Thoughts

• So I guess I'm talking in my sleep again - last night I was encouraging Priya to walk towards me. I go through periods where I talk a lot in my sleep. You can even ask me questions and I will answer back. Tish hates it when I talk in Hindi though - then she can never figure out what I am talking about.
• So does eHarmony really work? I've been encouraging a friend of mine recently to sign up, but I'm skeptical of my own advise. I mean sure - there are lots and lots of desperate guys out there (I should know... hehe). But, are there as many desperate women? 'Cause then the cool guys will still get the girl, while us nerds get left behind - so to speak. Maybe desperate is not the right word either... I don't know.. What's a good word for it?
• I wonder how much the child tax credit is? This will be the first time that I will be filing taxes with a dependant child, and I'm curious as to the effect on my tax liability. By the way, I have filed taxes through eSmartTax for the last couple of years. This year, if you file before 2/15/06, the federal eFile is free. What a deal. Actually, every year I look for ways to eFile for free.
• Tax time always makes me think of how much we depend on money. For almost the entire month of January I go around with Abba humming "Money, money, money.. Always sunny.. In the rich mans world".
• I also realize how God has blessed us incredibly - I am undeserving of it all.
  

Some pictures

I don't know how many of you check out the Yahoo! picture page consistently, so for your viewing pleasure, here are some pictures of Priya.

The last one is of us at my office holiday party held in January (well, it's cheaper that way). It's nice to get out once in a while!

300 caps? Wow!

On January 18th, Kristine Lilly became the first person (that means male or female) to play in 300 international games in soccer (representing the US). She did it in style - she had a goal and an assist. This number is ridiculously insane. To put in perspective, the record for men's appearances is 173. Kristine started playing when she was 16, and now at 35 is still going strong.

Yay for women's sports.

An expensive toy?

I have to admit it - I am a gadget freak. I'm not as bad as I used to be. I think it's because our discretionary income has gone down with Tish not working, so I restrain myself more. Otherwise, I'd be the poster child of someone having anything that requires batteries to run.

So what happened was that we went to Michigan over the weekend and I got a couple of belated Christmas gifts - cash. It was enough that I was tempted towards the one thing I'd been eyeing, but not considering. Until now. Yep. Within two hours of my having cash in my pocket, I was at Best Buy getting the 5th generation iPod - the 30GB video one. I already have a 1GB MP3 player, so the only reason I was wanting this thing was for the videos.

So I've had it now for a few days, and I have to say it's got some great points, and some not so great points. Memory is virtually limitless - I downloaded a couple of DVDs to it, and they were about 600MB each. The biggest problem is battery life. When playing MP3s, it's no issue - 10 hours or so. But playing video... So far I'm seeing that it's no better than 45-50 minutes before it needs a charge.

As a toy, it's pretty cool. I just don't know if I should keep it. Any votes?

Falling for "chain" blogs

Were you the kind of person that believed if you passed on an email to a million other people within 2 seconds of getting it, your true love would kiss you? Or that someone was dying of horrible skin disease and Microsoft had pledged to pay for their cure if they could get a zillion emails going around the world so that they could track them? You know what I mean. If you were, you probably stopped copying me a long time ago, because most "chain" things died with me.

So now Michelle 'tags' me in her blog, and I have to write five random things about me. On top of that, I believe the idea is to send this to other people so that they also do the same. OK. I've given you a fair warning - this was something Michelle didn't do. If you don't want to find your name at the bottom of this list, click away and come back next week when there's another entry. Don't tell me later that I didn't warn you. Hehe.

OK. Five random things about me. By the way, 10 points each if you knew this about me. The person with the most points gets a surprise gift!

1. My middle name is "Harold" after my dearly departed grandfather.
2. I am a rocket scientist - though I've never even been close to a rocket.
3. In high school, I came third in every event I would took part in: 200m, 400m, long jump, high jump.
4. I have the genes (which not every one has) to both metabolize white asparagus, and to smell the after-effects of it. Not very pleasant, I can assure you. Lucky you if you don't have the smelling gene.
5. I was a week away from joining the merchant marines as a deck cadet, and spending the rest of my life on a ship. God had other plans. He wanted to make me a rocketless rocket scientist.

Ok. Now it's my turn. I hereby tag Lisa, Josh, Rebecca, and Alicia.

Time passes unequally

One thing that I think of often is how 2000 was a defining year for the apparent motion of time. I mean, it took forever for 2000 to get there. I remember thinking in the mid-90s how exciting it would be to use dates like '00 or '02 and so on. Then starting in 1998 the whole Y2K scare started. The following two years seemed soooo long with all the predictions of world chaos. Then we breathlessly waited at 11:59p on 12/31/1999. Two minutes later, the apparent motion of time accelerated. We are six years past 2000! I find it unbelievable. I mean, so much has happened in between. But still - to me it seems like these six years sped by way more quickly this side of the millenium.

What I don't have any idea on is whether this is only apparent to me (having also crossed my 30th birthday in these last six years). Or do some others also share this strange phenomena of physics?

Fatherhood emotions

It is a commonly known psychological fact that one of the hardest persons to know is oneself. Why do you think self-help and self-discovery books are so popular. If we can all find the buddha in ourselves, we'd be much better off... Etc, etc, etc. Where I was going with this was an observation I have made about myself. I am realizing that with the birth of Priya, I am getting more and more 'emotional'. That, in the sense, that I hit emotional highs and lows more quickly, and feelings are more sharply defined. Women, are probably more used to feeling this way, but to me it is a strange new way of being. Now I don't know if I was always like this, but never realized it, or if this is something new. Aha... now the opening of this paragraph makes sense. :-)

My latest weepy moment was while watching King Kong. For crying out loud... As I was going to complete that sentence, I was struck by the irony of it. Anyway. For crying out loud, falling apes from tall buildings should not normally cause emotional swellings in me. Maybe it was the background score, maybe it was felt loneliness of both the characters (wait.. can an ape be a "character"?), or whatever... But throughout the movie I was feeling tuggings on my heartstrings.

So last day of 2005. I feel obliged to summarize it. Does "a lot happened" do an adequate job? The biggest event of all, of course, was the birth of Priya. Most others are corollaries of that. There, that should do it.

Oh. I had to show this picture. Here's Priya surrounded by Christmas gifts. Most of those are actually hers. Can we say doting grandparents? :-)