I miss you both

It's Portland, Round II for me now. The city is nice, this whole area is so pretty. Does it rain a lot? Yeah, I guess so. Is it cloudy a lot? Sure. The alternative is to be buried under five feet of snow which then builds up in dirty piles for six months a year.

But it's nice. I've always found rain relaxing. Unfortunately, we don't seem to ever get thunderstorms here.

It's just a lot harder to be away than I expected, and it gets harder every day. It'll be worth it, though, in the end.

Look who started walking a month or so ago...


And I believe there's a little tooth coming in on that cute little jaw...

A hard year on the horizon

Ahoy ahoy! I'm not dead!

I've just been out and about. For example, celebrating Lenny's first Christmas (version 2) in Germany. Then I flew back and had two more interviews in (wait for it) Portland and Albuquerque. And I got the Portland job. But it's in Albany, New York. Until it's in Portland. Although it starts in Portland.

Huh?

Well, I am going to Portland for four weeks of training starting Feb. 15... because my job and the Albany branch both don't exist yet. Then I'll come back to Austin, maybe for a week but no longer, then head to Albany full time for a few years. (Then full time in Portland is the plan.)

That sounds fine and dandy, we'll have some time to explore an area that's new to both of us, hopefully frequently visiting New York City, Montreal, Boston, Buffalo/Niagara Falls, the Adirondacks, and Cooperstown. Plus, Toronto, Philadelphia, DC, beaches in New Jersey, Ottawa, and Wilmington, DE, are all also within weekend-trip distance, if a bit further away. (Just kidding about Wilmington. Nobody wants to visit Delaware.) I think it will be fun to watch lots of lacrosse (UAlbany and Siena are both local and apparently good, Army and Syracuse are close, too), and I'd hope to go see an Army football game at West Point.

But that's a ways out, because Ariane and Lenny will be in Austin for the bulk of the year. She's determined to finish her degree, and I'm 100% behind her. I can't wait to be down here for her graduation in December. When she sets her mind to it, she can be Superwoman. I've seen it before - specifically Fall semester '08, carrying a full load and working every day while dealing with morning sickness and the insane exhaustion of the first trimester and Spring semester '09 taking a full load while having a rapidly expanding tummy and swollen feet. We're talking about the same woman who was ready to go to regionals last year just days before, you know, pushing a small human out.

There will be family in and out while school's in session, and I'll try to take some trips back here and there where I can, although I expect the work load to be heavy (but interesting). It's going to be hard for all of us for a variety of reasons. I miss them so much when they're gone, it's going to be nothing short of major suckitude to be apart from both of them for such a long total time, and I'm kind of worried that Lenny will forget who I am. By the time she's 1 1/2 years old, I'll have been away from her for something like 9 or 10 months. Makes me feel bad, man. But I know that this is for the best.

So what's going to happen with the ol' Kinderbloggen? I dunno. It's not like I've been typing up a storm here anyway. Life's just a wee bit more important. Maybe it will just become dispatches from south of Quebec (the location sounds more attractive if you can refer to it as "southern" and block out the long, cold winters with 5' of snow). Maybe I'll try to teach myself Mohawk or Quebecois French and post some donde esta la biblioteca-type entries. Maybe I'll post daily updates on how much weight I've lost (since I'm too lazy to cook and don't plan on having TV to distract me from working out) and how much I can military press. Maybe I'll just miss my wife and my daughter and come on here to bawwwwww! about it.

We'll see, but I've got no plans of going away entirely.

Oh, October's almost over, you say?

I really ought to post more. So much is happening with a quickly growing Lenny, who can now readily roll onto her stomach... in her crib... which is terrifying. And she roars and growls, she sings when Ariane sings. She's awesome. The days flow into one another at this point. By now I've lost all my regular readers, so I might as well write nonsensical things, like anything Tracy Jordan says. I'm at work less than I should be, that I know.

It's been so long since I posted that in the meantime I have:
Had an article published in Microelectronic Engineering (nerdy title!)
Had two (two!) more accepted (one in the Journal of the Electrochemical Society and one w/o revisions, awesome sauce, in the Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology A [super nerdy title, awesome])
Killed one before finishing
Finished my dissertation (first draft, excellent)
Been politely turned down by DuPont (your questions were ridiculous!)
Not heard back from the first interviewer (didn't want to work in the Mojave Desert)
Had another campus interview (still waiting)
Visited Oregon* for an interview (nervously waiting... very, very nervously)

(Quick aside: I left for the interview on Monday morning to return Wednesday - can you believe there are no direct AUS-PDX flights? I know!, so I sent an email to my boss, the building manager, and the other guy on my project [i.e. the guy who now owns the system since I am DONE, BUDDY] saying, and I quote: "I will be out until Wednesday, I am heading to the Oregon Country. Don't worry, I won't ford any rivers. I've lost too many oxen this way." My boss emailed back: "Don't waste too many bullets shooting buffalo along the way." I've always liked my boss.)

You might notice that "have been offered a job" is not listed. Right now, all of my eggs are in the basket for the job in Portland. Got to feed the baby some way.

So that this isn't just about me, here's some pictures (makes for an easy post). As always, click to embiggen.

Lenny's preferred sleeping position once she learned how to get up on her side and rotate her entire body. Her feet are sticking out.


Somebody got a highchair so she can join dinner conversations. She likes to talk politics, and I am trying to teach her that is a faux pas, but since she doesn't speak French she goes on and on about it. She's got interesting ideas and opinions (End Mommy's monopoly on breast milk! It violates antitrust laws!). Still no solids.


And a play thingy. Which has sounds! Loud ones! That's going to be such a regrettable decision!


Hoodies: get them started early.


Sometimes you don't have a free hand when you are walking from one room to the other...



*As obnoxiously noted earlier this week via phone, I have now defeated Zack in the race to visit all the west coast of the US and Canada. He didn't know we were competing, but you snooze you lose. That puts Alaska (Inside Passage + Denali + Fairbanks), BC (Vancouver + Fraser, which isn't a city), Washington (Seattle), Oregon (Portland... but really just Hillsboro), and California (San Diego) under my belt, with Yukon (Carcross) thrown in for good not-quite-Pacific-coastal measure. TAKE THAT, ZACK. Also, I think I'm probably beating you in airports: Fairbanks, Seattle, Portland, LAX, San Jose, San Diego, Anchorage, Dallas-DFW, Dallas-Love, Houston-IAH, Houston-Hobby, El Paso, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Harlingen, Little Rock, STL, Indianapolis, ORD, Minneapolis-St Paul, Detroit, Atlanta, Toronto, Newark, JFK, Albany, Memphis, DC-Dulles, Zurich, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Split, Heraklion, London-Heathrow, Austin, Cincinnati, Raleigh-Durham
Oops: Forgot Vancouver, Calgary, and Cancun.