Meeting Bennett in person

Merry Christmas! It's been a busy week for us so far. We went to Sarah's Grandma's birthday party, met our friends Liz and Jeff for dinner, drove to Boston to see Bennett, came back for Christmas Eve with the Petersons, ate a great Christmas dinner, and just caught our breath this morning.

Finn has seemed as tired as we are napping more than he has in quite some time. That hasn't kept him from playing with all the new toys and books that he got. He's had a fantastic time with a xylophone, a piano, a drum, blocks, more blocks, touch books, a shirt, and a sweater. His first word was "Thanks!".


Nana's birthday party gave a good opportunity for Finn and great Nana to hang out. He got to see his cousin Kate and Emily and aunt and uncle too. There were touching toasts from Nana's daughters, but to me the show was stolen by the best cheese plate I've ever had and duck breast slices on bread with orange marmalade.

The morning after the party we headed east to see little Bennett and his family. The rip went well and reminded us about the life new parents. The parents never get much sleep even though the baby sleeps almost all the time. We found it nice that those days are over.



For another couple those days are about to come. Our friends Liz and Jeff are expecting their first child this spring. We had dinner with them and Liz's parents to catch up and for them to see what fun a kid can be first hand.

The trip photos will be posted more completely when it is over. This is just a mid-trip update.

What's this wintertime favorite?

Hello Bennett

Congratulations to our friends Jill and Rich who just had a baby boy named Bennett. He was born December 15th and weighed 7 lbs 2 oz and was 19.5 inches long. It looks like he's got some nice hair already in place. Hair is good for those Boston winter nights.


We'll be headed out to say "hi" to the new guy next week. We'll be sure that all our diseases are cleared up by then. The recent lack of posting is directly attributable to one of the family being sick which dramatically reduces disposable time to do things like blog.

Also remember to check out Wait a Minute and Yell for Help from Rich's Farmhouse Films. If you like it you should get a t-shirt from the online store. There's a new mouth to feed.

How big is Finn?

Keep all of those steriod users out of the Hall of Fame!

I'm joining the cry to keep all of the players who used steroids out of the hall of fame. Some were clearly destined for a spot and need extra pushing to keep them out. I'm talking about that portly pitcher making the headlines from Fox Sports to ESPN Deportes. You know who you are, Bart Miadich.

Page 212 of the newly released report says
Radomski described Miadich as a frequent purchaser of small quantities of testosterone and Winstrol from 2002 to 2005. Radomski also said that Miadich advised him that he was getting human growth hormone elsewhere. According to Radomski, Miadich called him regularly, including when Miadich was playing in Japan in 2005, when he called to buy performance enhancing substances for use during the upcoming off-season.

My personal goal is to keep him out of the Hall of Fame. If he gets in I will take it as a personal assault. It will be tough given his career stats:

Year Tem W L GM S CG INPI H R ER HR BB SO HBP WP IBB BK ERA WHIP
+-----------+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--+------+----+----+----+
2001 ANA 0 0 11 0 00 10.0 6 5 05 02 08 11 0.0 01 000 0 04.5 1.400
2003 ANA 0 0 01 0 00 02.0 5 4 04 00 01 03 1.0 01 000 0 18.0 3.000

Let's remember Bart Miadich as proof that massive steroids use can't turn just anyone into a great baseball player. And Let's keep him out of the Hall.

Christmas in the City

Sarah is sick and yesterday Finn and I needed to get out of the house to let her rest. That's pretty easy to do downtown. I packed up my hockey skates and set off with the boy.

We went to Fountain Square first to see if the ice was OK for skating. The rain had really messed it up so we decided to skip the skating and go on to the next activity. We watched some people working on the fountain. It looked like they were changing the lighting, maybe hanging lights from the lady's hands as I've heard they used to do.

Next, Finn was amazed by the display in the entry to the building that stands where the Albee Theater once stood. He stared and pointed at the giant Christmas tree and waterfalls of twinkling lights.

After a while we went through the skywalk to the Hilton lobby where there is a gingerbread village of downtown Cincinnati. I didn't expect Finn to think much of it, but he pointed at it and said something in baby language.

Next we stopped in at the Dixie Terminal Building whose lobby is most known from its appearance in Rainman.

Our main event was the holiday train display at the Duke Energy building (pictured above). The trains were a big hit. There are 50 engines, 300 cars and almost 40 feet of track. There is even a Thomas the Tank Engine train.

The whole trip wore Finn out and as we headed home, he laid his head down on my shoulder and dozed off.

Finn's Friends

On Saturday, Finn had Elena over to play and later went to Rowan's house. By the expressions on their faces in the picture above, you can see that Elena and Finn had a great time. They played a game called "not sharing" or "gimme that" for a while. Finn also had lunch while Elena played by herself. He's a great host.

After lunch and playtime, Sarah and I took the kids on a walk to fountain square which was packed with people who were there for the skating, shopping, Santa, and fireworks. We took some pictures in front of the big tree and made our way back home.

After Elena's dad came by to pick her up, we made our way up to Dayton for a hockey game followed by dinner at Rowan's. The hockey team won again bringing their record to 6-2-1.



Finn and Rowan played the same games together on the floor in the kitchen. After a while the boys got tired and went to bed.

Sarah and I often talk about our memories of what the adults might have been up to after the kids went to bed. In our young minds, at this point the night gets crazy. Clowns appear, games begin and endless amount of candy is thrown around.

Now on the other side, we see that it is much more mundane. The parents ate lemon squares and agreed that we were tired. After trying to prolong the evening, we gave up, scooped up the boy, and went home.

Dorktastic calculation

Angela asked about the expected fuel efficiency difference for a 300 ft uphill drive. I'm a dork and thought, hmmm...I wonder.

Turns out a gallon of gas has 125,000 BTUs of energy which is about 97,000,000 ft-lbs. Assuming a standard internal combustion engine efficiency of 20% (thanks Gary Smith), there is almost 20,000,000 ft-lbs of produced energy from the car.

Now, given my car's empty curb weight plus my 140 pound nerd frame we have to move 3000 pounds up 300 feet. Sounds like that is 900,000 ft-lbs or the equivalent of 0.046 gallons of gas.

Then, if my overall average gas mileage is about 49 mpg, I would use 1.22 gallons each way. However uphill would require 1.22+0.046 and back would be 1.22-0.046. That would have me expect to get 47.2 on the way to work and 50.9 on the way home.

So no. The difference is more than I would expect. And I'm still a dork.

Dayton is uphill

The new car is working fine. Here is a picture of me being a hip-hop master in our garage.

The hybrid technology is pretty good. I'm averaging about 48-50 mpg per tank. What I have noticed is that my mileage going to work in about 45 mpg and coming home I get about 53.

Now, I know I am not going faster to work than coming home, so the difference must be the change in elevation between Cincinnati and Dayton.

So that is the great benefit of my new car; I figured out that Dayton, on the Miami River, is higher in elevation than Cincinnati, near where the Miami flows into the Ohio river.

The second benefit is that I get about 25% better mileage than the old Civic. At $3-4 per gallon that is almost a dollar a gallon cheaper. That helps when you commute 120 miles a day.

Christmas tree fun

We went around the block to City Roots, the best urban garden store in history, to get a Christmas tree on Saturday. We found the perfect one and brought it home. We estimated that it was 2 Finns tall.



After letting it settle, we decorated it. In this case "we" means Sarah and I since Finn's not all that helpful yet. It made us tired. The cats have ignored it so far. Let's hope that continues.



The next morning we brought him out and told him that Santa came and brought our tree much like how the grinch steals the tree in How the Grinch Stole Christmas.



He seems to like all Christmas trees including ours. We went down to Carew Tower and saw the displays there. He liked all the lights and dancing bears. He even saw the real Santa. He was hanging out he mechanical bears "playing" music a la Chuck E. Cheese. Just like the stories.

What a difference 34 weeks makes

On Thanksgiving, Finn got to play with his 2nd cousin Kai. The last time we saw Kai was during our first trip to the States with Finn back when Finn was 12 weeks and Kai was 6 weeks old. Here's a picture from that trip:

And from this one (in the same chair):

Both times, the kids were difficult to keep in the chair. The first time it was because neither boy had any control over his own body. Now they have control and know for sure that they don't want to sit anywhere long enough to pose for a photo shoot.