tfl: The Flatiron Life

1. What do the Care Bears do when low pressure systems move through?

2. Pickle Me Elmo. Accessories include a jar and pickling salt.

The old hood is getting violent. A real gang war is underway.

Maybe our crazy neighbors wanted to keep Labor Ready out of the area for their own good?

IMG_0798, originally uploaded by flatiron32.

I know. Jonah’s public is clamoring for new photos and we don’t have that many new recent ones to share. I think this one is funny, though. This is a glimpse into one of Jonah’s new favorite pastimes - pulling books off of our shelves and eating them. As soon as we get a chance, we will be making a trip to the land of Thor and cheap furniture to purchase doors for our bookcases.

Nothing in our house is safe these days. If it’s dangerous or dirty (think George’s food, litter box, toilet bowl brush, electrical cord, disgusting tennis ball wedged into the drain in the basement) it’s the most fascinating thing Jonah has ever seen and he would like to eat it. I have pretty thoroughly baby-proofed Jonah’s bedroom, which has greatly improved my productivity. Several times a day Jonah and I shut ourselves in his room while I compute or fold laundry and he plays contently.

Jonah is getting very fast and steady when he stands up and walks along the furniture. It still kind of weirds me out when he wakes up in the night and I find him standing in his crib, peering over the edge with his sad little face.

Speaking of sleep, Jonah’s not doing it. This has made for trying times in the Tomaw household. He still wakes up 2-3 times a night normally, but the last few weeks have been littered with nights that almost felt like he was a newborn again, awake and restless for hours at a stretch. Needless to say, we’re exhausted and frustrated and at times tempers have flared.

As far as eating, Jonah’s doing pretty well on the whole. He can be very opinionated and still clams up for green vegetables, but he likes all of the fruits and yellow vegetables he’s had and has recently taken to pureed meat combinations for dinner. Now that he has almost eight teeth, it’s fun to give him little bits of things from the table; no matter what it is, he always makes the most awful face at first and then opens his mouth for more if he likes it.

Life is tumultuous with Jonah at 8 1/2 months. It ain’t easy, that’s for sure, but to watch him discover the world is an amazing thing.

Last week I found ping.fm thanks to a friend, Eric. This allows users to update statuses and micro-blogs across sites. So my status on twitter, facebook, and pownce are the same.

That was not enough for me. Ping connects to about 20 different services. So I have been adictivly registering to all these services. Today was bebo. What does bebo do? I dunno, but I had to sign up!

Most of these sites give you the option to scan your address book to see if anyone is already on their service. Bebo had this two. I found bebo’s screen quite confusing and that is when tragedy struck. I spammed every email address in my address book!

Crap! I wonder what fallout there will be from this and how long it will last.

Well it has been a while since I have felt like a total failure, my time was due.

Today, I help my old friend Justin move back to Chicago. Justin and I met as interns at AMS in 2001. We then roomed together our first full year out of college.

He has been in Virginia for the last 5 years and it is great to have him back. Though it is a little weird, because it is as if he is all of a sudden back in my life. (Note: I don’t communicate often with people I don’t see regularly, even if I still call you “one of my good friends”. Shout-out to Tory and Corey.)

I also met his girlfriend. She is very nice and seems like a good fit for him. She handles his fits of rage well.

Justin is back because he is starting his MBA at U of C. And get this, the little punk does not start school until September, but has a week long “team building” trip for school to Argentina! I hope he builds strong team bonds while skiing the Andes!

I discovered Muxtape today, via Kevin Rose.

Basically, you can put together online mix tapes and then other people can listen to them. Pretty nice, if you just want to listen to random music. I really like it, but it probably helps that I like just about any music that does not sound like it would be on the radio, and that these people making the mixes seem to mostly like un-pop music.

Yesterday I hung out with some of the 3 guys in Jos’ family and we went to a Cubs game. It was a lot of fun. Two of the group are from St. Louis and we saw the Cubs kick the Cards.

Like I said, a lot of fun. However, as is often the case when I am with non-tech guys I begin to feel inadequate.

I like sports. I like to watch sport. I like to cheer for sport. I know the rules and can play sports. I know when something is a pretty good play in most sports. I even like to watch Sportcenter, if nothing else is on. But, I have never had any interest in following sports.

Usually this only manifests itself in people saying “Good/Tough Year for the Cubs/Hoosier” when I am wearing a cap. I usually just a agree or say “Oh, I didn’t see the game today.” Not a lie; I didn’t see that game, but I also did not see any of the other games, or read about them, or watch the highlights, or memorize the box scores like it seems like everyone else does.

So when I hang out with guys, they will start talking about some great trade some teams made, or how so-and-so is a on a streak. Oh, and didn’t he play on the Animals a few years ago. Man, the Nowhere Native are playing as well as they did in the 80’s!

I can follow along and pretend like I get it, but wow! The nerdy math part of sports appeals to me, but it is the formulas I am interested not remembering every pitcher’s ERA.

In the end I am torn. I understand the appeal of closely following something. It is a form of nerd, just not one I have ever found attractive. I think I would like to know more so I can participate, but every time I have tried in the past I have tried I just loose interested.

Also I think of the good points to not knowing anything. The best being when I watch a game, I have no idea how someone is going to do. As far as I am concerned every batter might hit a home-run. Every pitcher has a good change at a shutout.

I wonder if there ais an RSS feed I can read that would give me just enough info to take me to the next level of guy-dom, with very little effort.

If you merged the two smallest creatures in our household, bath time would look something like this.

Joe Tucker sends along this message and video…

If you think politics is anything but political theater I invite you to watch Paris Hilton present a sound idea in a more clear and straightforward manner than either of the other politicians, but I advise against voting for her because I fully expect her to break her campaign promises. But wait, I expect the other candidates to do that too……

This really improves my image of Paris. I don’t think she wrote this, but clearly she is better at reading speeches than I would have thought. She might even be better than the average politician at speech reading. Also she must have smart advisers around her who can come up with a decent compromise idea and write an ad about it.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has started a program to allow people to present themselves to ICE agent to be deported without being arrested.

The “Scheduled Departure” program allows immigrants who have been ordered to leave the U.S. but have no criminal history and “pose no danger to the community” to return to their home countries without first being arrested or detained, ICE said.

For the moment, I am going to ignore the absurdity of people who have so far successfully avoided ICE deciding to just leave.

So, ICE is making it really easy for people who have done nothing wrong, other than want to live and work here, to leave. However if you might pose a danger to the community, please for God’s Sake stay in the shadows and hide from authorities.

If we are going to have all such strict immigration law, let’s let anyone out of the country who is willing to leave.