Park No More

Yesterday, I arrived back at Hobby from a trip up to Denver. I have been using the Parking Spot to leave my car for years now and, even though they are a little more expensive, have always had great service. Well, now they have starting parking cars in the aisles and blocking others in when all the spots fill up. These car owners leave their keys and then they get jimmied around when people come and go, which I frankly would have a really difficult time being comfortable with myself. This time though, I was one of those blocked in cars and spent 15min waiting for someone to move the car behind me (they didn't) and finally Austin Power-ed my way out of the spot and around the car that was parked half behind me.

On the one hand, it's only 15 minutes and seems pretty trivial to get upset by. On the other, at the end of a trip when I make it to my car I really, really am ready to leave and don't like being inconvenienced by someone else's greed in over filling the lot. I guess I will be voting with my dollars and find somewhere else to park, that should help them figure out their overcrowding problem.

Frozen Assets

I have been making Zara's food (and drink for that matter :P) since we started solids which is actually pretty easy. We were starting to run low and I am going to be on travel again for a few days this week, so I got caught up today and restocked the freezer. This is the fullest it will ever be as we are starting to dip into the frozen milk as well. So here it is, Zara's freezer complete with veggies, fruits, and meats and everything a growing girl needs. I should say everything a growing, army crawling (officially mobile, but limited range), toothy (1 of em) girl needs.

There is Always Something Worse

I know I've previously had a conversation about how awful this consumer product is: Smucker's Uncrustables.

But, leave it to someone to come up with an idea even more terrible: Candwich.

Seriously, cannot think of a single redeeming quality about this thing.

Healthier How?

Last night I was watching "The Next Food Network Star" because I find myself on the Food Network a lot but am not necessarily a frequent watcher of that show. One of the contestants is a "healthy" eating guy, that's his schtick. At one point he said something along the lines of "if you make something a wrap, it's automatically healthier." At which point he lost all credibility with me on healthy food since it appears he hasn't actually done any research on what he's pushing.

Personally, I think the whole "healthy" wrap thing was an awesome marketing campaign because everyone generally assumes it to be true. But let's examine the facts with two comparitive options for making a sandwich:

1 Mission brand 96% Fat Free Heart Healthy 10" Tortilla, 180cal, 18 from fat, 2g Fat, 0.5g sat fat, 450mg sodium, 35g carbs, 5g fiber, 2g sugar, 5g protein.

2 slices Orowheat 100% whole wheat bread, 200cal, 20 from fat, 2g fat, 0g sat fat, 420mg sodium, 38g carbs, 6g fiber, 8g sugar, 8g protein.

Seriously the numbers are nearly a wash and if anything you get the benefit of extra protein in the bread. I think a tortilla is healthier, if you compared it to say Wonder Bread. But I also believe reasonable test and evaluation methodologies, just that engineer part of me that kicks in.

p.s. I like Chiptole burritos but there is another place the tortilla = healthy thing falls on its face. Their flour tortlla has 290cal, 80! from fat, 9g fat, 3g sat fat, 670!mg sodium, 44g carbs, 2g fiber and only 7g protein. Seriously, save yourself and order the bowl in which you can throw some lettuce in and actually make it a reasonably healthy meal if you eat there.

We're Feeling Hot Hot Hot!

This weekend we figured out that the large A/C (downstairs) unit in our house wasn't working. Even before the peak heating of the day (which was 91) our A/C wasn't keeping up and it was only blowing hot air. So we had to cancel plans for folks to come over and watch the World Cup at our house yesterday since most people don't want to sit inside an 80+ deg home to watch TV. By shutting the blinds and the curtains on all the windows and with the small upstairs unit going we peaked at 83deg inside yesterday. It is just barely tolerable during the day. At night, we are retreating upstairs and closing the doors to Zara's room and a guest room to sleep so the cold air can build up in the rooms from the small unit and they stay comfortable.

The units are still under our home warranty we got when we bought the house, so that's good. But this is the THIRD A/C repair since April we've needed. Clearly, these units are on their last legs and need to be replaced. But whether we can get the warranty company to agree is probably a long shot. Repair company won't be over until tomorrow morning so we have at least one more night of this.

Mo Betta Mo Hawk

I forgot I took these pictures a couple weeks ago during bath time. I was having a little fun while washing her hair and snapped a couple pics of Zara's first up-do on her hair. Crazy hair is too long to get it to really stand up, we'll have to break out the egg whites for that some other time.

Daddy Day

For John's first Father's Day, we had tickets to the Astros and the three of us plus my cousin Grant headed to the ballpark. It was a good game, especially for Grant since the Rangers won. But it was also Zara's first baseball game. I think daughter and daddy had a good day. Zara has also started making her "d" sounds but I don't think we are quite ready to call it a word yet when she says "da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da". But I'm pretty sure I'm going to 'lose' in the first word battle.



I also spent Monday through Wednesday in Boulder doing some software testing for work. It was a short trip again but we had dinner one night at a pretty cool teahouse from Boulder's sister city in one of the "stans", Dushanbe.

California Dreaming

Monday I headed out to the other, larger Bay Area for a meeting at NASA-Ames. I'd previously never been in the area, so I was looking forward to it. We got in early enough Monday to head up to Napa Valley for a little sight seeing/tasting before the sun went away. My favorite stop was at V. Sattui where they have a deli and we also picked up some great cheese, salami, and bread and enjoyed a mini-feast on the picnic table. We also had dinner at Michael Chiarello's restaurant Bortega. I had oh so yummy braised beef short ribs with Meyer lemon spinach.

Tuesday all day was the meeting and we also got to tour the unitary wind tunnel where they were getting our model setup for testing. After formerly working in a wind tunnel in college it was neat to see the Ames tunnel, too bad I couldn't sneak into the 120x80 foot tunnel I've always wanted to see. In the evening, some of us headed into San Francisco for dinner, we made it to Fisherman's Wharf just in time for sunset. The rock below is actually The Rock, Alcatraz from the end of the pier. And that was it with a return to H-town the next morning. Didn't get to see much, but it was pretty what I did see.

Reverse Psycology

We must be close to crawling... because we started out just an inch out of reach.

EVOlution

John and I have finally joined the 21st century and are now proud owners of smartphones tapping away with our thumbs. Our contract was up so we could get whatever phone we wanted. With all our research we settled on the HTC Evo 4G. Ummm.... it's awesome. It's is blazing fast, especially on 4G, has a huge screen, and other bells and whistles like 8MP camera/camcorder, HD 720P HDMI output, and a whole lot of goodies. Having owned an iPod touch for awhile now, I also think the HTC sense Android interface is way better than the iPhone. The iPhone 4th generation (not actually 4g) is coming out soon and I'm sure a lot of people will like it. But really, the phones are if nothing else comparable but ours comes without the apple overlord at least.

Oh and minor correction, Zara wasn't teething so much as she was sick two weekends ago. how do we know? Because she gave it to us this last weekend. It's special, 8months old and already giving us presents.