Looking at the world through gray-colored glasses

It's a gray morning in DC: light drizzle from low, flat clouds. Walking down L street this morning, everything was gray: sky, buildings, road, people. Oddly, I found myself really enjoying it - big, wide grin enjoying it - to the point that I was avoiding looking at the few spots of saturated color. Mackey's red bar-front, yellow umbrellas in front of Au Bon Pain, an orange car, these tried to disrupt my perfectly muted cityscape.

Time to retire?

I saw this week that Chris Webber is retiring, at the age of 35.

From time to time I've thought about professional athletes - the non-golfers, anyway - and how strange it must be for them to have to hang it up in their thirties. I remember being in high school and reading an SI with a cover story on Michigan's Fab Five, of whom Webber was one. Since then, in my professional life, I've gone to college, decided on a major, found a job, went back to school, found a job in a new field, and now think ahead to what, potentially, the next 30 or 40 years of that career might hold. Chris Webber has played basketball. Not to say that there is no more to him than ball, but he has been focused on that job the entire time. (At least, I figure he's been focused to compete at that level.) His entire professional life has been as a player, and now, one year older than me, that life is over, whether he wants it to be or not.

Maybe it's only a difference of expectations. Webber certainly didn't expect to play in the NBA until he was eligible for Social Security, and maybe he thinks, "My word, how strange that someone one year younger than me could contemplate doing his current job for another 30 or 40 years."

It's good to be dad

Owen was having a hard time getting to sleep tonight. After the changing and the book-reading and the bottle, when alone in the dark, there was lots of crying. When I went in to try to calm him down, some holding and Happiest-Baby-On-The-Block-brand shushing (tm) was enough to get him to stop crying (even though he's supposed to be about six months too old for that to work anymore). Once he wasn't upset about being upset, Owen started squirming, which is his bedtime way of saying, "Geez, I'm trying to go to sleep, here. Why are you holding me? Let me be in my crib, man." OK, good, I laid him down on his back, but instead of of grabbing Sheepy (one of his three, rotating crib companions) to his face, he held on to my forearm and hand. After a couple of minutes, he turned onto his side, away from me, in a typical sleeping position, and shortly thereafter, I extracted my hand. I waited for another minute or two, in case another round of crying started up. And when Owen rolled back on to his back and opened his eyes, I thought, "OK, well what will we try this time?" But he just looked at me for a second or two, then turned back to the wall and fell asleep.

I'm still floating.

Puerto Rico

So it’s been awhile since I’ve blogged (again). But I’ve been thinking about a lot of different blog posts, hence the multiple postings in a 15 minute period. Travis and I had our 1st date last week since December! Mom and Dad came and stayed with Owen for a few days and Travis joined me in Puerto Rico.
I was there for a week for a work conference, which was great. The conference speakers were very interesting, I got to meet with research collaborators, and Puerto Rico is beautifual and have great food. I also got to teach at the hands on course that was part of the conference, which included teaching attendees how to freeze parts of the GI tract with CO2. Nifty.
Travis joined me on Friday and we took advantage of our extended date! Lot of good food, basking in the sun, and hanging out with friends.
I missed Owen a lot since I was gone for a week, but having some time with Travis sans-baby was great.

8 Month Update

Owen is 8 months old. He has more hair and is much more mobile. He now eats Oatios (organic cheerios). His favorite place to play is the kitchen, which has led us to create an Owen cabinet with Tupperware, water bottles, and large plastic utensils to bang. It’s made it much easier to get ready in the morning now that he’s happy emptying his cabinet. He’s 22 pounds and 27 inches long (at least at 8.5 months, when I finally got around to posting this). He babbles, army crawls around the kitchen, and rocks on his hands and knees. He has 2 teeth and now sleeps from 7:30 pm to 6 or 6:30 am (hope I didn’t just jinx us by typing that).