theparkerfamily.org

Month: April 2009

  • travel: scotland, uk

    [Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.]
    ECPA20090426_8378, originally uploaded by [ecpark].
    so, ended up not blogging the trip to Scotland the same way I’ve done trips in the past.

    this was partly because the schedule was a little too packed for much writing time, partly because I’d just fallen out of the habit of blogging daily due to the baby-talking-embargo, but mostly because the whole not-sleeping-through-the-night thing means I now spend all my sparetime asleep.

    as a result, instead of my witty commentary, you are just stuck looking at the pretty pictures. suffice to say, the trip was beautiful, spectacular, and perfect in every way.

    UPDATE: this turned out to not exactly be true — i’ve finally gone back and jotted down most of my thoughts about the trip, and uploaded them (along with the pictures) to the site. I’m sure i’ve missed some things, but i’ll update them as the come up in family “do you remember when” conversations.

  • preview: tottenham hotspur @ white hart lane

    white_hart_laneit’s hard to explain what it means to follow Tottenham Hotspur Football Club … but i should start at the beginning.

    before 2005, it doesn’t matter how much of a soccer fan you were, because it was pretty hard to follow the English Premier League from the States. media coverage was absolutely non-existent, and the matches themselves relegated to premium channel (Fox Sports World) that practically zero cable systems carried.

    but by 2005, i had moved to a more benevolent cable monopoly, was able to start following the Premier League, and set about finding a team to follow.

    there were ground-rules in my search:

    • character — good team, but not too good. great players. storied history. good stadium. great fans. (a low bar, i know.)
    • no “big” teams — the are four teams in the league that even the uninitiated have heard of (manchester united, arsenal, chelsea, liverpool) because they win everything that isn’t strapped down. you can’t pick one of them, because everybody hates someone who jumps on to a winner.
    • team that you can watch — following a team means being able to see them, both this season and those to come. if the team is too crappy, they won’t make it onto the telly. Worse yet, each year the bottom three teams get kicked out of the league … so a really crappy team won’t even be around to be followed.

    … and said ground-rules led to Tottenham.

    at the time, they were good (finish in the top 10 more often than not), but not too good (no major championships since 1991). they have great players (at the time, more members of the England national squad than any other), a storied history (first team to win two championships in one year, and first Brit team to win Europe), great fans (loyal through decades of mediocrity), etc.

    fortunately they are still good (won a league championship in 2008 while we were in Australia) but not too good (were in deep, deep danger of relegation as late as February this year) and my healthy interest in Spurs has grown into an obsession.

    and, of course, at the center of this obsession is Tottenham Hotspur’s 109 year-old stadium: White Hart Lane.

    … and we got tickets.

    ever since we found out we were going to Scotland (or more importantly, London) the one place at the top of my list has been White Hart Lane. unfortunately, it’s a bit out of the way … and seats a ridiculously small 36,000 fans each match day.

    the weekend we are in London (may 2nd) there is a home match against West Bromich Albion, but it sold out even before tickets made it to general sale. turns out West Brom sucks, and everybody wants to see Tottenham beat up on the sucky team.

    as for me, i’d love to see them play a sucky team, but i really needed to see them play in the next year, because they are getting ready to rip beautiful, historic white hart lane and replace it with a new, oval monstrosity that we can only hope will have more character than Fed Ex Field.

    so, it took about two weeks and more than a dozen visits to Spurs ticket site, but a couple seats finally came open on their ticket exchange (from people selling tickets they bought but can’t use).

    of course, the two seat aren’t together, so i gave the lady sparkler the option to drop out — and spend the day at the spa — but she’s become sufficiently fascinated by Spurs (including steamy Robbie Keane and young/virile Gareth Bale) that she wanted to see what all the fuss was about in person.

    such a good wife.

    she did mention that she didn’t want to be seated with a bunch of drunk hooligan Brits, so I am giving her the fancy pants ticket, in the new (west) stand with completely unobstructed views, and its cucumber sandwich crowd.

    i, however, will be in the east stand … with it’s obstructed views (two large posts hold up the roof over the stand) and it’s (hopefully) drunk, merry and singing Tottenham fans. apparently, it’s the east and south stands that have all the “character” and my wife is married to enough of a character to not seek out more in the English capital.

    so, if you happen to subscribe to a channel that carries it, look for us. we will be in section 30, row 1, seat 189 and section 10, row 9, seat 37. i have no idea where they are, but sure am (incredibly) excited to be there.

    UPDATE: and here’s what happened.

  • ultrasound

    11_weeksthe lady sparkler had her first real check up yesterday, where they did all the things that make a boy blush (even during the recounting, after the fact) but in the end they gave her (and sparklet) a clean bill of health.the one thing they were funny about was they wanted to get sparkler under the ultrasound as soon as possible, and its a good thing because we are apparently a little farther along that we thought.

    we went into yesterday thinking we were at about seven or eight weeks, but we were counting since ovulation … and they count from the date of the end of the last cycle before you get preggers. seven quickly became ten.

    … which they adjusted up to eleven weeks when they saw the size of little sparkler on film.

    they kept using the term “really well developed” and “advanced” when they we poking at sparklet with their little sono-wand, and I know they were talking about *timeline* and not *intellect* but still, it’s hard not to be proud.

    the whole sonogram took 10 minutes tops, but it was fabulous. we had heard from half a dozen sources that sparklet would be an odd looking kidney bean with a heartbeat, so we were pretty amazed when we got the first images back.

    sparklet started the process standing on her head (I’m thinking the lady sparkler laid down too fast…) but soon settled into the chill, reclined position you see above. she waved through the first half of the show (obviously showing off at this point, like the headstands weren’t enough…) but started wiggling around by the time we tried to listen in on the heartbeat.

    I got a brief snippet of the heartbeat which we’ve posted, but la madre de la sparklet had to pee, wouldn’t stop giggling, and the little one was obviously growing weary of performing. as a result, what we got isn’t quite Grammy-worthy.

    but the biggest news (by far!) is the revised timeline. due date has been bumped up to November 2nd, we will be in the second trimester by the time we get to Scotland, and we are just six days from being able to officially tell people.

    healthy mama and sparklet is one thing, but not needing to panic every moment that I’m going to accidentally rocket the cat out of the bag (yet again) will be the best feeling in the world.

  • nesting, pt 1: into the closet

    img_7955pregnancy 101 says that the lady sparkler and i are supposed to start nesting pretty soon … although apparently we are to hold off as long as possible, so that we have something to do in the last couple of months when we are both going to be mentally insane.we’ve already identified some of the things we “need” to do:

    • fix our fuse box — during the buying process, our home inspector begged us to replace the fuse box, pointing out that it had a bad habit of bursting into flame as opposed to tripping the breaker. seems like now might be a good time.
    • do something about the (until recently) spare bedroom — we’ll want to paint, we need to do something with the closet (currently t.l.s. dressing chamber with no room for baby stuff), and we need to kill a 12 year old ikea wardrobe that is an accident waiting to happen.
    • do something about the hall closet — it is a complete waste of space, and we need to move a bunch of crap in there from what used to be the “spare” bedroom.
    • think about the car — we love our jetta, but it has a tiny trunk that is already too small when we travel. we’re thinking maybe a $200 roof-top rack would allow us to not buy a new $12,000 car.
    • water filter — for some crazy reason, t.l.s. wants to get a water filter. (for those not in the know, D.C.’s tap water was once so bad it qualified as hazardous waste, and has a history of both lead and chlorine contamination.)
    • baby proofing — funny, but we are already most of the way here due to our anti-clutter lifestyle … but there are some basics like anchoring some bookcases to the wall, wrapping up electric plugs, boxes and cables, etc.

    but, good news … this past weekend, we ticked one item off the list, and managed to not add any new ones.

    we got a couple of shelving units (one set of industrial strength wire shelve procured by my father, and a hanging wall unit from the Container Store) and all of a sudden, we can fit (quite literally) four times as much stuff in there.

    i could get used to this “nesting” thing.

  • The Tiffany Trophy Cup

    ecpa20090411_0559
    The potential for proper European football is still a couple of weeks away, so it was a little shocking when I heard that Spanish legends Real Madrid were taking on English stalwart Blackburn Rovers this weekend. In Arlinton, Virginia. On artificial turf, at a high school.

    Turns out it was their academy squads over for a tourney hosted in association with D.C. United, but that didn’t deter the lady sparkler and I (and at least 12 other curious bystanders) from looking on as the two squads threw themselves up and down the pitch.

    There wasn’t a scoreboard, but near as we can figure “Los Merengues” were up three at the break … and Blackburn would have been farther down the whole if it wasn’t for a dozen standout saves by the Rover’s keeper.

    Real won handily, but both sides showed real class. It was hard to believe they were all under the age of 17, and yet still had skills that could have embarrassed a lot of professional squads in the States.

  • Good Friday in Columbia Heights

    We were walking back from the Target tonight, when we got caught up in a Good Friday procession in front of the big Catholic Church on the corner of Park and 16th Streets NW. It was amazingly intricate, with floats on flat beds, a pick-up truck with a generator and loud speakers, and what must have been a couple of thousand people. Shut down the neighborhood for blocks in all directions.

  • pregnant passover

    ordernow_30mslgbookfunny story … the lady sparkler and I went to a Passover seder tonight thrown by Mighty Baby Boig, and sat at the foot of the table with three pregnant women and their husbands.

    best of all, no one there knew we were pregnant … we hadn’t been able to tell the hosts (and figured that major religious gatherings weren’t the best time to bring it up) but the lady sparkler’s avoidance of alcohol is probably giving her away to anyone silly enough to pay attention.

    if women are really serious about this not-blabbing-for-12-weeks thing, they need to sink some investment capital into a way to look like they are consuming alcohol without actually doing it.

    maybe a fake stomach with a second, external esophagus … or some kind of secret additive that turn alcohol into sugar, while still in the glass. where is a pregnant venture capitalist when you need one?

  • my.nature.org

    things are always a little nuts in march, but this we used earth day to launch a brand new engagement site.

    we are using my.nature.org to serves relevant, personalized content to the Conservancy’s online supporter communities, as well as to post a ton of user-generated content we collect from our flickr efforts, the message of hope campaign, and our everyday environmental tips.

    UPDATE: In the 18 months since the campaign’s launch, my.nature.org has garnered nearly 800,000 visits and 1.5 million page views. The site’s user generated content campaigns have become fixtures on the Conservancy’s social media presences, including Facebook, Flickr and Twitter. i’ll take it.