Blogging My Life

As a fan of the game of baseball more than any particular team, I place a high value on good sportsmanship. I’ve been watching the Dodgers a lot this season and, despite their rough start, enjoying the players and especially Joe Torre. What a bummer tonight to see their frustration boil over so stupidly. Jeff Kent’s force play at second is ruled safe, his foot apparently off the bag, by an umpire standing six feet away, staring straight at the play, and ruling immediately. Maybe he was wrong, but, hey, he had the best view in the house and it was too close to call on tv in slow-mo. Kent argues and argues, well past the point when he should have been thrown out, forcing Torre to come out and argue too. Then in the next inning he shoots his mouth off again, his face so contorted with rage he looks like the killer rabbit in Monty Python’s Holy Grail. He eventually gets tossed, as he should have, and forces, I assume, Torre to get tossed too, in the late innings of close game. What an idiot. It will take a while for the bad taste of that one to clear. In the meantime, there’s always the Angels to enjoy….

For practically Oliver’s whole first year, I’m not sure I ever looked at him asleep without wondering in the back of my neurotic mind if I could remember the details of infant CPR if needed. With Luiza…



…no such problem. She sleeps for hours in my arms and it’s pure pleasure.
Plus, I took a CPR refresher last month 🙂

He spells his name funny, but I think we’ll keep him. Here’s why.

If Internet spammers and spammers could invest a little in correct English in their emails, they might get a lot more victims. Could the fact that they don’t mean that they get enough victims anyway? Advertising our condo for rent on the open market for the first time ever, we got one of the infamous Craigslist scam attempts yesterday. Something about this inquiry, “sooth my taste,” I think, piqued by suspicion and in thirty seconds on Google I found the exact same fractured text on many real estate sites:

Please let me know if this unit is still available for rent.
I will be living in this unit with my wife and daughter.
Provide me adequate information on your rent
procedures, and the current situation of
this unit. Is this house furnished? I would prefer it
unfurnished as i intend placing order for my own kind
of furniture that will sooth my taste. Can you
send me a few pictures of the house?.
Treat as urgent pls. +44 70457 46081
Cordial
Zoran.

Our daughter, Luiza Maria, was born on Feb. 6. She weighed 8 lbs. 4 oz. Unlike our nearly glabrous first-born, Luiza came out with a full head of dark hair, about an inch and a half long!
Oliver, taking a bath a couple of nights later, heard her crying. “Luiza is crying!” “Why do you think she’s crying?” asked Dad. “Because the dragon eating her!” replied Oliver happily.
Pix are here.

I was sitting in the living room at a little before 2 a.m., listening to Sibelius Symphony No. 5 through headphones. I felt a quick, sharp vertical movement and thought I heard a bit of a bumping noise. Did I doze off? Was it noise from the study lounge upstairs? Or was that an earthquake? I immediately ran to the computer and the SoCal seismic site, refreshed the browser a couple of times and saw this:

I was right! A 4+ (4.2), just on the other side of the San Bernadino Mts. Event Id ci10285533 at 1:53 a.m. There were five more little shocks of 2.0 or less at the same location within the next fifteen minutes or so, but I didn’t feel them. It looks like the first 4+ quake in at least a week, maybe more.
Here’s the detailed list:

Friday afternoon, I’m home after a day – nay, a week – of work, Oliver comes in with my shoes, sets them down in front of me and says, “Papai…sapatos…trabalhar” (“Daddy…shoes…to work”)! Smart kid, but a stern taskmaster.
He’s also figured out that Leda is more responsive to people who call her by her name, and now when he really wants action he yells “Leda, Leda.” He’s also taken to calling me and his Avó by our names as well, “John Norvell” in my case, “Dona Maria” in hers.