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Holy synaptic vesicles, Batman!
Posted by steph on Jun 30, 2008 in Mother
I arrived and things looked as they should: half a dozen people, including a woman older than me in and in bifocals. But then things changed. The kids started arriving. Dozens of kids in T-shirts, talking about philosophy and pre-calculus classes.
I had miscalculated terribly. I had thought summer school would be 20-somethings getting stoned and occasionally opening a text-book. Or ladies-who-lunch choosing science over art appreciation (for this is Cambridge, not New York).
But no, this was Harvard Summer School. These kids are pre-med, getting a jump on the others, spending their summer not traveling Europe, but exploring the highways and byways of olidodendrocytes and potassium channels. They are more concerned with grading on a curve than rounding one on a scooter in Greece.
Suddenly, I questioned the wisdom of talking my way into the class: convincing the professor that I could cope without the requisite medical school biology. Again I wondered: what is a some-time attorney and former actor doing in an advanced neurobiology class?
Taking it one polypeptide at a time, I guess.
greatly exagerrated
Posted by nathan on Jun 30, 2008 in Eckenrode
my illness is not mine. actually, i haven’t even been ill lately, much less in the hospital so any rumors that are spreading through the internets like wildfire are not to be believed. actually things are going quite well on the healthfront. i have joined a gym and regularly go for exercise. i have also seriously invested my time and energy into the services at Google Health including linking additional accounts at Livestrong.com to keep track of fitness and diet. i have ordered my medical records from various locations around the world and willb e scanning them in and adding them to my central repository so that i can easily transmit the full history to any doctors or medical staff who have the pleasure of treating me in the future.
i also have a couple of additional posts which i am planning to inform folks about the steps i have taken to optimize the learning environment for TheBubster on her computer but that’s going to wait for the moment. hope all is well with everyone out there- btw i have comments open on all these posts, you can even leave them without having to develop a profile- but if you do develop a profile you will not have to do it again in the future. anyways, ciao.
BTW, congratulations to Spain for their hard won victory in the Euro Cup, i am sure that Luis, Joey and Jenny are very happy people right now, even if they no longer live in Madrid.
Technorati Tags: health, Google, Livestrong, Euro#2008
music together
Posted by nathan on Jun 27, 2008 in Eckenrode
today we had fun doing lots of things, dancing, watching football on the telly, reading, rolling around on the big blue exercise ball- but the best part of the day was this afternoon when TheBubster was banging around on the keyboard, testing out octaves and other sounds while i blew on my cornet. then she started directing the music by saying “stop” and we stopped, then she would start playing again, and i would start playing again. then she would stop us once more. this lasted for forty-five minutes. totally fun and tuneless but totally fun.
Technorati Tags: music, keyboard, cornet
really truly angry
after a long walk through Townie Town, TheBubster and I ended up in a Starbuck’s where I was looking forward to a nice chocolatey coffee drink and she had a Chocolate Milk in her grimey little hands. I put my hand in my pocket to grab my payment device and discovered that it wasn’t there. It was home- ALL THE WAY BACK THERE!! — so i had to tell the Barista that she could not help me, and put the chocolate milk back in the cooler.
Yes, back in the cooler.
Yes, I got screamed at.
Yes, she pouted.
Yes, she threw a tantrum like never witnessed before.
Yes, she stayed genuinely mad at me for nearly twenty minutes while we walked home.Technorati Tags: anger, chocolate, wallet, walk
Oranje Oriole’s Fan in Fenway’s Garage
Posted by nathan on Jun 21, 2008 in Eckenrode
So today, we went to Boston’s Fenway Park as part of a job perk (Steph’s job not mine). We got there as early as we could because I really, really wanted to watch the Nederlands-Russia match in the Quarterfinals of the EuroCup 2008.We had a pretty decent telly in the corporate box, and I found the remote to switch it over to watch easy enough.Then for teh next 120 minutes my heart was torn apart by the faltering Dutch play. Fortunately, the Red Sox were also torn apart but I was too emotionally exhausted by the loss- and TheBubster was way too wound up from sugar, attention and the energy of the crowd. We left just after the 6th inning. But it was a fun outing all the same.
What’s happening, you ask.
Well let’s see, we have this telly in the living room, and a cable that is connected to a long series of tubes that lets us watch tiny little people put on performances for our entertainment. only nowdays, there are way too many entertainment troupes who have access to those tubes so we need to do lots of research just to know which ones we want to pay attention to. TheWife has a sheet of paper that she writes down her schedule on, me, i’m more simple. the European Cup is on telly this month so all i can down is think about football.Hup Holland! then late at night, i watch some baseball show on ESPN that tells me who won and who didn’t, while catching up on some of the highlights. for instance, the O’s swept the Astros, hooray!
we are also trying to get our air conditioner issues resolved, mostly out of principle because at the moment it is 73F or 22C. this has been a long haul project, which gets more and more absurd the more i think about it, but i’ll save the reports about that until later when i can write a dedicated post on the issues.
TheBubster is doing very well, today she is a little sad and depressed, i think it has to do with being stuck in the house yet another day- see above paragraph for the reason. but she does enjoy being studious on her computer. today i have allowed her to play on the nick, jr web site which has reengaged her for the time being- but i need to get her over to the playground this afternoon for some really child-child interactions.
Technorati Tags: euro2008, TheBubster, telly, AirConditioner, children, family
happy returns
Posted by nathan on Jun 15, 2008 in Eckenrode
we are back from our visit to New York City. We both observed that it was much better to visit NYC than to live there- especially when we went to visit our friends in their hotel suite. we were high above the noise and smells of the street, able to see the park while the rains fell, and watched our kids play together. it was a nice visit, now we are back. the bus ride was pleasant, i had internet the whole way, ej slept on the back seat and steph read a book. now we are back in grey overcast weather and loving it!
a new update
Posted by nathan on Jun 13, 2008 in Father
we are on a bus right now as i write this, headed to new york city for a weekend of gritty, hot city “fun”, hopefully there is not a heat wave. which brings me to my topic, customer service and how not to do it. if you run a company and plan not to have good customer service make certain that you quickly establish a pattern of never keeping your appointments. if you want to go above and beyod not providing customer service, make sure to not inform your clients that you are not going to keep any appointments, just leaving them waiting all day long, wondering if you are going to show, people love that! then after you have blown off the client, neglect to call and reschedule, instead force them to take that action. basically if your aim is to not provide any customer service at all, just do not acknowledge that ou have customers demanding your services.i would link to a company who is a prime example of a firm that follows this model comletey but i fear that some people just might be suckered into their decietful web despite my warnings.
if you have guessed that we still do not have a working air conditoner, then you win a special prize. monday we havea new firm coming in to actually do the repairs after the fiasco with the clowns this week finised.
I wish I had Your Job!
Posted by nathan on Jun 9, 2008 in Father
This morning I woke up after only a couple hours of sleep with a nasty stubbed toe that was turning black and covered in sweat. It seems when the first hot weekend hits the Northeast everyone turns on their A/Cs at once and finds out that they need to call a repairman. In our defense, we just bought the house, it was just renovated, so normal people would make the assumption that a brand new installed A/C would work right!?! wrong. so we are waiting until Tuesday afternoon when our guy will be free to come fix our A/C. Oh well.
I was going to let the toe be my excuse for why I should skip my first day going to the Gym, but soon realized that that would be a mistake, so Bubby and I went. I worked out for a little while, and she played in the play room. Then on the way home, we stopped at the playground where she ran around the sprinklers. Sprinklers, now that’s a heat relief strategy! After a while we made it home and had some lunch while I put on the telly.
Now, you may not know this, but International Football Tournaments are my favorite televised event, ever. I love the month long look at the National teams battling it out just for the honor of winning. I made sure that I was going to be able to watch the World Cup while on my honeymoon two years ago- and we did it in another country which makes it even more fun! Now the European Cup is taking place. On that honeymoon, both Steph and I were pulling for France to beat Italy in the final- alas we did not get the sweet success. I have cheered for the Nederlands for a long time, as my surrogate homeland (no idea how surrogate or homey it is towards me but whatever!) and today the Nederlands handed Italy and big plate of embarrassment [3 goals to none!]
Afterwards, TheBubster and I went to the local pizza parlor to celebrate, and I was going to gloat as well, but turns out they are Greek so this will be an interesting month here in Inman Square! (Greece won the last EurpoCup for those of you not keeping score at home.)
One of my friends who monitors my Twitter stream, noticed what my day was like and felt quite envious and not twenty minutes later, TheWife also wanted my job. Funny how noone wants my job on days that do not go quite this nicely.
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