some nesting

No less than two people asked this week if our baby had been born yet.  Nope, and I agree that time is slogging along.  On the other hand, there is a certain terror rising for my impending fatherhood that need not accelerate.  36 weeks today.  Jill is off the meds.

But that doesn't mean that I'm sitting around in a nervous pool of dread.  Oh no!  Baby equipment has been assembled, understood, and tested with Raggedy Ann.

My latent green thumb has slightly surfaced.  These flowers had been in planters on our porch until I got the gumption to dig up some grass and put them in some fine IL soil.  Mercifully, they are still alive after 3 days.

Softball playoffs started this week, and Jill made her glorious return to the stands on Monday.  We won our first round game, but I am sad to report my performance: 4 bad plays in the outfield and only one hit.  Had the 4th bad play been good, the game would have ended.  Instead, we scored 3 runs in the bottom of the inning to win, the winner resulting from an outfield error with 2 outs.  I know how you feel, friend.

ahead of the curve

Today was another successful visit to the doctor. Clara's performance in the non-stress test absolutely dominated; people are now questioning her age. I'm not sure that I can handle the pressure of raising a prodigy, so I offer up a couple of possible explanations. First, we gave her steriods. Probably she would test negative since it happened nearly two months ago, but I'm coming out a la Fausto Coppi rather than, say, every other pro athlete. Second, she may actually be a week or so older than listed because we just don't keep accurate records of these things.

The upshot is that Jill doesn't have to visit the doctor next week.

The updated mixte is on the road. I traded the unwanted parts from the bike to the seller in exchange for the front basket and rear rack. The white stripe on the black fender was Jill's idea, spray paint by me. Eventually, we'll get some shopping panniers for the rear rack.

I harvested about 6 plum tomatoes from our tomato plants at Raisin and Kiwi's house. At the time, Matt was in the backyard talking to a home repairman, so there was much excitement happening outside. I saw bright, smily kids watching the action from the window. Here's what it looked like from inside.

more action

Good news from today's visit to the dr. Jill is no longer on official bed rest! This does not mean that she will help reroof your house, but she may well be interested in taking a short walk. Baby weighs 5 lbs 6 oz, give or take 20%. Doctors continue to be impressed with her heart rate surges.

We also had our milestone 16th ultrasound of baby Clara. Due to her increasing size, it's getting harder to move away from the detector. She seems to have made peace with it for now.
After watching the TdF race up Mont Ventoux, I rode myself to the tallest hills around, the town of Block, home of Mont Block, if you will. I've been negligent in reporting the corn growth over the summer, but here it was as of Saturday. Yes, it really is that tall!

substitute mixte

In this college town, a citizen can find any number of low to mid-quality bicycles to replace one that disappears or breaks. Via craigslist, I found this lovely Sekai amidst the pile of bikes for sale at a house not 4 blocks from ours.

I say more power to anyone trying to make a buck refurbishing and selling old bikes. However, for the love of the brotherhood, have some pride! As purchased, the bike had Shimano mtb brake/7 speed shifters (a fine component), Suntour friction rear derailer, 6 speed freewheel, and brake casing rather than shifter casing. The shifting was predictably miserable. The v-brake levers were connected to sidepull brakes. Unless you can tear a phonebook in half with bare hands, this gives terrible braking. And for a bonus, the only marking on the new brake pads said 'for alloy rims', and the rims were steel.
I replaced almost every part on the bike with parts from the late Suteki, so the setup was immaterial. But I wouldn't advise any friends or enemies to buy from these guys.

All that said, the bike is quite nice. I will eventually paint the Suteki fenders black (and perhaps add a white stripe along the center?) and add a front basket.

We joined a CSA upon moving here and have been enjoying the locally grown produce. Did you know that IL can grow crops other than corn and soybeans? We also signed up to receive a bouquet of flowers every week. Here are the flowers from this week.
We're at 33 weeks today. Looks like Jill has a basketball under her shirt.

Field trip

The reinvention of my career from modeler/deskman to real world engineer/labman took a leap forward this week. My coworkers and I drove all around southern Illinois and Indiana collecting water samples from oil production facilities.

So your first question is, there are oil fields in IL? I can proudly answer, YES, about 0.1% of the oil used in the US is produced in IL. The oil fields here are far along the path to depletion, but there are still thousands of stripper wells pumping about a barrel of oil per day along with about 40 barrels of water. The current IL oil production rate is 8 times less than the maximum historical rate, which was achieved in the early 1960's. A handful of small oil companies (most have less than 40 employees) maintain the pumps, pipes, and tanks.
The above photo shows both oil storage tanks (smaller) and oil/water separator tanks (larger). Oil is lighter than water, so it floats to the top of the tank where it is siphoned off to the oil storage tank. Tanker trucks collect the oil and haul it to a nearby refinery.

At this particular site, the oil mixed reasonably well with the water and left a sludge on our bucket. The rocks in the photo are black because of oily waste.

Next week, we'll visit a few coal mines to collect water. I'm hoping that we'll get to go inside the mines.

Why are we collecting this water? That will be a topic for future discussion.

fine 9

We celebrated our 9th anniversary on Wed with pizza and brownies. Maybe we'll have a bigger celebration when Jill can leave the house. One of these days I will scan the photos (those paper things with images) so that we can show a year zero vs. year current. I think the comparison will be positive as marriage has been very good to us.

Of course, the year ahead should be quite different than the first 9.

Another event this week was the Tour de Champaign bike race. On Saturday we raced in a Noahanic rainstorm. The wet and oil-soaked road made for some very sketchy cornering. My rear wheel slid a couple inches on at least 1 of every four turns, but I stayed upright. Our team took 3, 4, and 5 (me).


Our team helped patrol the course for the later races. Tom and I watched the Pro-1-2 race together and were duly impressed.


A good number of friends hung around downtown Champaign to watch the race. The photo below was taken by Nina.


Today we raced day 2 of the Tour in pleasantly dry conditions and teammate Mark won! Our first win of the season, hurray! The highlight of the race was watching Alexei take a turn very wide then bunny hop the outside curb onto the grass. I asked him after the race what happened. Turns out he just wasn't paying attention. He took 2nd place.

bell tolls for the Suteki

The Suteki has ridden its last. Today on her way home from the grocery store, mom rode it straight into a curb. She heard what sounded like a blown tire, turned to check what had happened, and finally looked forward just in time to brace for impact. The damage: bent down tube and top tubes and a dented fender. Everything else looks fine.

And for the more important question, how did mom fare? Lots of bruises and a cut finger that bled profusely. A jammed toe is bothering her tonight. One lady witnessed the event and asked if she could help. Historic East Urbana truly is 'neighbor to neighbor'. Our camera did a poor job capturing the swelling and overall purpleness of her hand.

Is there some cosmically negative force acting on residents of our house? I crashed mightily, Jill had a minor fall (before bedrest was administered, and she (excepting her pride) and the Suteki were unscathed), and now this. The other coincidence is that all the bikes were blue.

Conveniently, today was Jill's dr. appointment. An obgyn nurse investigated the wounds, brought some ice, and suggested that if no worsening occurred, there was no need to see a dr. Also during the appointment, we learned that Clara is now a whopping 4 lbs, 2 oz. In one week she jumped from the 40th to the 60th weight percentile. Boooooom!