Jamesan

10:05 pm: Utah Elder Signs
In Utah it is common to see large signs on freeway overpasses welcoming home a Mormon missionary from their two year missions. For example: "Welcome home Elder Smith!" This afternoon Lorinda, Eric, and I were driving to a hike and it occurred to me I needed to carry poster making equipment in the trunk. If I see a welcome home sign I could pull over at the next overpass and put up a second sign "Elder Smith, I'm breaking up with you. Sorry :-( -Jennifer" I figure that will get motorists either upset or amused. If I were to accidentally get a the name of a girlfriend right that's a huge bonus.

There are probably other good sign ideas, let me know if you think of some.

11:19 pm: Eric Walks
Eric can walk! July 3rd was the big day. Since early June he's been walking around by holding our hand. He walks amazing well with help and we were surprised he wasn't able to walk on his own. It was especially tiring for Lorinda because Eric wanted to walk all day. So when Eric wanted to get anywhere he would crawl over to her, grab her hand, and make her escort him to where he wanted to be. A logical choice for him since walking was faster than crawling. If Lorinda gave him to me to watch he'd grab for my hand and make me walk him to Lorinda. He'd then grab her hand, let mine go, and expect Lorinda to lead him around. ( (Update: Lorinda thinks he wants to take her with him so he knows she's still within sight) Babies definitely know what they want. Interestingly the only way I can get him to choose me over Lorinda is if I'm doing something mechanical like fixing my bike or assembling furniture.

After Eric took his first steps alone we learned he had a secret. He walked all around the house the first night if we followed to catch him. The second day he would walk between Lorinda and I, but didn't wander the house. The third day he regressed to refusing to walk between us. However, a few days after that Lorinda went to the kitchen for a moment while he played in his room. When she went back into his room he was walking around on his own! Lorinda started giving him lots of praise and as soon as he realized he wasn't alone he dropped onto his butt and wanted her to walk him around. Later Lorinda and I were working in the kitchen while he was on the Living room playpad. We looked up to check on him. Eric was tanding in our entryway with his back to us. We started congratulating him and he instantly sat down. Seems Eric walks if he doesn't think anyone is watching.

Lorinda came up with our best theory which is that he doesn't want us to know he can walk because then he wouldn't be able to walk with Mommy anymore. Lorinda and I made a big purchase for us this Summer which was a pair of bikes, a child backpack, and a child trailer. It opened up two outdoor recreation options for us where before we didn't have any. I've been biking to work almost every day for a month and biking in Salt Lake is way scarier compared to biking in Seattle. This is because of some Utahn's belief that "The fastest moving vehicle has right-of-way". Though I timed my four and a half mile commute with my parent's GPS and I get home in 15 minutes on my bike which is five to ten minutes than the car. Mostly because I can cut through a VA hospital parking lot and I gain a lot of ground going to the front of the line at stop lights.

We got a Chariot 2 bike trailer which converts easily to a stroller and we've really like it. Apprehension about the expense made it the last thing we bought. It was worth every penny. We can bike somewhere interesting, detach it, and use it as a stroller. We took it to the Farmer's Market today. At the market there was a science exhibit with a boy putting his hands on one of those spheres Van De Graaf generators (Thanks Matt!) that builds up a static electric charge and makes hair stand on end. As I walked by another boy, presumably his brother, snuck up behind him and reached for the charged ear of the boy using the sphere. As his finger neared the defenseless ear there was a loud *CRACK* followed immediately by a scream of OOooWWW!!! I couldn't help but laugh out load with most everyone else who saw what happened. I think even their Mom laughed. Sorry about lowering your self esteem kid. Your brother is either really clever, was returning an earlier shock, or had the idea planted into his head.

09:22 pm: Eric has great aim!
At the end of May Eric had stomach flu which was no fun. However Eric made it all worthwhile when he vomitted on the cat. Gemini (cat) didn't see it coming. He was at my feet about to walk through the backporch kitty door as I was carrying Eric above him. Eric silently launched the projectile vomit. The vaguely esophogeal shaped tube began landing between the cat's ears and then proceeded down the cats back just to the right of his spine, with the bulk of the vomit attaching just short of the base of the cats tail. The reaction was entirely predictible. I guess it was partly bad to have the cat vomitted on because it's like giving the vomit legs. After a brief moment of shock Gemini launched himself through the kitty door and began racing around the house. As I spun 180 degrees to call out the window for Lorinda's help Eric launched his second stream of vomit which had the benifit of some imparted centrifugal force. This got vomit almost everywhere in the split-level staired backporch. A third and final downward volley thoroughly soaked Eric's clothes.

After tossing Eric in the empty bathtub I caught up to Gemini sitting on our bed trying to clean himself. Locking the cat in the bathroom as I gave Eric his bath I observed Gemini's cleaning routine which was 3-7 licks followed by what looked like the cat equivalent of a gag. Baby shampoo works much better on a cat than adult shampoo.

09:16 pm: First trip to the zoo
I'm trying to decide if Lorinda and I should get a zoo membership and start showing Eric the cool animals now or if we should restict his experiences to common domesticated animals until he's maybe five and then let the zoo blow his mind. I guess he's young enough he'd forget if we took him now, but can we take that chance? It's really strange to think he won't remember any of the first couple years.

To take advantage of the memory lapses I've been telling Lorinda we need to get monthly family photos in front of a green screen so we can photoshop a bunch of great trips he can't remember when he's older. "The Moon? We went there for your first birthday. You don't remember? Here's the pictures."

10:33 pm: Creepy Crawly
The other night Eric and I were facing each other playing on the couch when I felt this tickling sensation on my neck. I thought it was a loose thread from my shirt. Then Eric switched his gaze from my face to the tickly spot. He cocked his head a little to the side and his smile faded to his "curiosity" expression. I frantically started brushing my neck and batted something away which had too many legs and I suspect wasn't fuzzy or cute. Sadly I was unable to find it afterwords to figure out what it was.

10:12 pm: Ice Cream Truck
Saturday I was collapsed on the couch after taking Eric to the park. It was a long trip because he decided to scream and cry unless I carried him home. I dutifully carried him while I pushed his empty stroller the last 0.64 miles home (I checked it on Google Earth). I was thinking a treat would be nice when the world's worst ice cream truck zipped by. It blew down our street doing about 40mph while playing "Ride of the Valkyries" or something. If your an ice cream truck driver and your customers can hear the doppler effect when you drive past you are doing it wrong. I hoped it was just a wake up the neighborhood run and he'd be back at a slower speed, but I never heard him again. I'm kind of hoping his high-speed pass becomes a regular occurrence because if it is I'm setting the goal of stopping the ice cream truck once this Summer.

That brings up another one of my favorite topics "Magnets". I bought a bunch of Neodymium magnets. They are so much fun. When I was in high school I had a fantasy about building a giant electromagnet and burying it under the highway. Something that could be used on a crane at a wrecking yard to pickup cars. In my imagination I could turn on my magnet to stop cars in their tracks, or I could bury a bunch of magnets spaced down the highway and activate them in series to fling cars down the straightaway in front of our house. I thought it would be really fun for drivers to find they had magically been accelerated from 55mph to 100mph in a very short distance. The evil part two of this plan would be to call the highway patrol and complain about speeding on the highway outside our house.

10:10 pm: Spring Break
Lorinda, Eric and I visited friends and family in Washington over Spring Break. It was really nice to see everyone. Multiple people wanted me to revive the blog, so I'll try to get back in the habit. The day before we left Eric was diagnosed with an ear infection and the first day back Lorinda was diagnosed with a sinus infection. I hope we didn't pass on too many germs to our friends. I took a lot of pictures, but I'm kicking myself for not photographing Eric at 5am in the Bellingham airport. He knew it was way too early to be awake and he looked like crap because of it. He kept giving us these stares that looked really funny.

My Mom bought us a Easter assortment from See's candies during our visit. My favorite was the hollow egg with a little white chocolate chick inside. Opening a real egg to find a chick inside would be a traumatic experience I would carry with me the rest of my life. Somehow it's OK if it's chocolate. I don't suggest the Easter assortment. Mom also thought it was too expensive for the amount of chocolate included.

09:10 pm: Idea
So I had a fun idea to try when carrying a baby around. When Mom is out of eyesight (but within hearing range) walk through a doorway and use a free elbow to hit the doorjamb hard enough to produce an audible "thump". Then follow up by saying something like "Oh! Watch your head!" in a cheery voice.

I tried this three times tonight with increasing volume and Lorinda ignored me each time. Somehow she knew I hadn't really bumped Eric into the doorway. I think it still has potential though so I'll try it on the grandparents next. Best of luck if you give it a shot.

10:32 pm: Masonry Project
So I've been trying to be a do-it-yourself'er around the house. Unfortunately I've learned this just isn't a feasible strategy for major projects if you have a three-month-old baby and a spouse in Pharmacy School who has to study every weekend. Another strike against me is that I know nothing and every job is a new experience. Finally it doesn't help that I chose "masonry" as my primary do-it-yourself project this summer. I need swear off projects requiring skills which entire guilds were devoted to keeping secret during the middle-ages.

The original plan was to replace the stucco on our enclosed front porch with brick veneer. This would match the appearance of the rest of our home which is made from real brick. We were then going to paint our home to cover up the light shade of pink the original owners covered the natural unpainted brick with. I had three weeks of paternity leave, and I thought that would be plenty of time to at least complete the brick. With any extra time I would excavate a portion of the shelf basement to create space for a second bathroom. In hindsight this seems overly ambitious. At the time it seemed like a reasonable and even necessary plan of action. I've been told that I wasn't in my right mind before the baby came. Maybe it was the male version of nesting. At any rate the plan seemed perfectly logical at the time.

My paternity leave started out a week before the baby arrived came and I used it to make good progress. Trying to keep this inexpensive and having time on my side I decided to make the brick veneer myself, which involved cutting each brick into five thin slices. Because of the added labor cost buying whole brick is actually cheaper than buying the veneer. The cut face looked ugly, but I was going to paint it so it didn't matter. This plan would also let me use the 80 bricks left in the backyard when we bought the house. I supplimented them by buying 200 new bricks and rented a brick saw over the weekend...

I guess I expected cutting brick to be maybe half the speed of cutting wood. Boy was I wrong. By the time I was done I had averaged five minutes per brick. It takes a while to cut a brick lengthwise four times, and the brick left at the house was made from some sort of adamantine substance which the saw was barely capable of cutting. At some point a neighbor walked by and referred to it as "fire brick", but I have no idea what that means. Trying to speed up the process by applying more pressure on the saw would grind the blade to a halt. I was really glad I hadn't opted for the four-hour saw rental like I had originally planned. After twenty four labor hours of continuously cutting brick with zombie-like relentlessness I finished the last of the brick. This was a good opportunity to meet the neighbors since people kept walking by the back alley where I'd setup the saw to figure out why the nearly continuous scream of a brick saw was ruining the peace of a nice weekend.

Putting up the lath & skim coat over the stucco proceeded quickly, but slower than expected while my parents visited. Even though they helped me out. Then Eric was born and the last ten days of my paternity leave were spent with Lorinda in the NICU cheerleading for Eric. After that I was working on my preliminary exams (which I passed back at the end of August, yay!). After prelims I got back to work thinking I only had the last part of the job to go. Again, wow. Masonry is hard. You have to keep all the brick level and evenly spaced. Then you have to plan way ahead so you don't end up having to cut bricks in half to fit under a window ten rows up the wall. Which looks really dorky (And I know this, because I had to do it). I just keep telling myself the whole thing will look better painted. Compounding this is the fact the bricks will pop off the wall unless the mortar is mixed with exactly the right consistency. Another interesting factor is that women only seem to appreciates completed do-it-yourself projects. Having the front of the house covered in the grooved mortar skim coat over the entire summer seems to be steadily agitating Lorinda. I've been working on it every available weekend, but the last weekend it rained. This weekend it snowed... Yea, I'm starting to panic a little.

I'm looking for a way out. I guess I could start thinking of the front porch masonry project as a hobby. Something I tinker with when I have recreation time for my own edification. Another course of action I'm seeing is to start an entirely new major project. It's time to excavate that basement to add the bathroom. That way when that project stalls I can start another one. Each new project will distract me from thinking about the last one and eventually Lorinda will be forced to apply to that "In A Fix" show where people come and rescue you from the intractable hole you've dug yourself. I guess the third course of action would be to wait until Eric gets older and hope he can finish it.

01:14 pm: Baby Eric
It's been forever since I've added an entry. Sorry everyone. I like writing and I think it is good for me to try and keep the creative part of my brain working. It's just not a habit. At the end of the day I never think "I should update my blog". Partly I set too high of an expectation on myself to write entertaining entries.

I'm a Dad now! Eric was born 6/15/07. He's doing great despite having a rough start. At birth he had pneumonia which triggered a collapsed lung on delivery. This prevented him from being able to breathe, but thankfully the response was lightning fast. We were lucky our room was adjacent to the door to the Newborn Intensive Care Unit. After ten days in the NICU they let him come home with us. He earned a chest-tube scar for the rest of his life, and he's happy and healthy. His not breathing came as quite a shock because Lorinda's pregancy and labor was picture perfect. She barely even had morning sickness. The midwives and nurses were shook up too. After this experience I'm amazed that people have thier kids outside of a hospital. If Eric had been born without quick access to emergency care he wouldn't have survived. There's just no way to know what can happen.

Eric continues to be more fun. He's a very patient baby and rarely cries unless it takes too long to heat up his bottle. We give him breastmilk from a bottle since he never got the hang of nursing after the NICU experience. Lorinda fought with him to breastfeed for a month, but it simply wasn't worth the effort. Then our pediatrician said there's no difference, it's the milk itself that is important. That knowledge instantly ended breastfeeding efforts.

Eric's able to smile and a couple of weeks ago he learned how to be bored and demand entertainment. Usually this means carrying him around the house or playing with the cats in front of him. It's nice that we can interact with him. He's already manipulating his parents. Within a day of getting home he was pretending to be asleep when breastfeeding while making his bottle feeding face. I didn't think this could be intentional, but the pediatrician said it was well within his power. The term "nipple-confusion" is completely misleading. It should really be called "Bottle-preference". Eric understood the difference on his first day with a bottle after learning to nurse. He can breastfeed, he simply chooses not to.

That's about all I can think of. Update in six months?

02:52 pm: xckd
I just discovered a new webcomic called XKCD. Definitely a new favorite.

Update: I should also mention I found XKCD through Defective Yeti another favorite of mine.

10:57 pm: Iraq in Fragments
While watching TV an interview came on with the guy who made a documentary called "Iraq in Fragments." I think it was nominated for an Oscar or something.

Going to Iraq to shoot a documentary must take a lot of self confidence. I would be terrified of risking my life and having nothing to show for it. I can picture myself safely back at home reviewing my footage realizing that in most shots I had the lighting wrong, I had cropped the forehead of the speaker during a absolutely key interview, and the story I wanted to tell about Iraqi backgammon players just did not need to be told.

So now I want to find the other Iraq documentaries that nobody hears about. The unwatchable ones. At least one must exist. I can't imagine the personality willing to film in Iraq would be able to admit to themselves after they got home they were terrible at making documentaries.

09:24 pm: Postal
So I found a great way to risk life and limb at the post office. Wednesday morning I was waiting in line to mail a box to my parents. There was quite a line and the only clerk repeatedly announced to the crowd he was sorry for the wait but the two other clerks had called out sick.

Behind me a middle-aged guy in a yellow raincoat was exhaling loudly and shifting his weight from one leg to the other. I could tell he didn't want to be in line. I was getting tired of the guy because he was standing really close to me and he smelled like dried sweat. As an experiment I decided to see what would happen if I didn't take a step forward when the guy in front of me had his turn to see the clerk. The guy in front of me was already past the "Please wait here" sign. So I decided to stay put at the sign. The guy behind me couldn't handle not moving. He started shifting his weight back and forth faster and after a few seconds he actually nudged me! It wasn't a hard bump, but it was definitely a "you can take a step forward now" nudge. I thought about turning around and asking if he could take a step back because this arrangement wasn't working out and I needed more personal space. I decided not to push my luck.


Anyway, that's my new suggestion on alleviating boredom standing in lines. Have fun.

06:56 pm: Justifiable Homicide
Unfortunately our house was broken into last Thursday. The burglar got my camera and laptop, but I caught him in the act. He ran off. Fortunately the police got his car & cell phone. Hopefully they'll catch up to him. If I'd known he'd had a $25,000 warrant on him I'd of been more aggressive.

Lorinda and I have been trying to fortify the house since the break-in. We've installed metal plates that sit over the deadbolt and secure the wooden door frame to the house frame, which is much stronger. This should prevent anyone from kicking in the door in one kick. We're also going to protect the basement windows with bars and get a metal door & frame for the back.

I was pricing out bolt-down safes on amazon and I spotted this 209 pound beauty. I really want to know how Amazon would deliver it.

I want the 209lb safe to come FedEx. On delivery day I'd sit in a chair looking out the front window waiting for the delivery truck. I'd enjoy the spectacle of seeing the FedEx overnight delivery guy wrestle the giant box up to my door. Then as soon as he rung the bell looking for a signature I'd open the door and stare the box. "What the hell?!? I didn't order this. Who in their right mind orders a 209 pound safe from Amazon.com? I ordered a five-pound bolt-down safe. There's no way I'm signing for this. Take it back."

If I did this I would qualify for justifiable homicide by the FedEx guy. With added justification for the indignant tone of voice I used for being disturbed to sign for a safe I pretended not to order.

Kudos to the guy I work with who pointed out I could refuse delivery on an Amazon order.

12:41 am: Why oh why?
Lorinda has become an incredible cook since we got married. She can be labeled a "foodie". We even recently got home milk delivery from a local dairy. I think the dairy/grocery delivery eliminated the last processed/treated items from our regular diet. We like buying local too.

I was always taught that you had to marry a girl who weighed at least two-hundred pounds to get someone who could cook as good as Lorinda, but apparently I got really really lucky. That or we're going to be the execption that prove the rule, because for some reason Lorinda and I have been gaining weight at a rapid rate the last three weeks. We like to think that we're gaining weight as a couple.

The thing is that nothing has changed in our routine the last three weeks other than the local dairy delivery. We're beating our heads against the wall trying to figure out what in the world is going on. We aren't cooking any differently. The strange thing is I'm heavier now, but I don't feel fat. I feel "Healthy fat". It is hard to describe. I've even been exercising the last couple weeks.

Actually most of my exercise was renting a jackhammer and tearing all of the excess concrete out of our backyard in hundred-degree-plus heat while singing "Somewhere over the Rainbow" at the top of my lungs. A couple weeks later I loaded it all into a pickup truck and made a couple of trips to the concrete recycling plant. That definitely counts as exercise. I am swearing off renting tools from Home Depot for a while. Whenever I rent a tool the job always sucks a lot. The first rental was an insulation blower, the second was a jackhammer.

11:48 pm: Urban Poultry Farming
Lorinda and I went to a class on "Urban Poultry Farming" today. It was really good. A couple months ago after reading Omnivore's Dilemma, which I highly recommend, Lorinda wanted to get our own chickens so we could have fresh eggs. We shelved the idea for a while. Mostly I don't want to clean out the coop. Before I went I let Lorinda that we weren't getting chickens, but now I want a chicken. Some of the breeds look really cool. We'll need to clear the idea with the neighbor first though.

The old guy who taught the poultry farming lesson to the damn hippie communitty gardeners was fun. He knew everything about chickens. He told terrible jokes and puns, which is always a big plus in my book. When he recommended dusting your chicken coop with malathion you could see a shudder move through the audience. The audience immediately asked for an organic alternative and you could tell the concept wasn't one he'd thought of before. He talked about how some chickens develop a taste for eggs, and if things go horribly wrong chickens will happily eat each other if they get a taste for chicken. In those situations, or if you just want to eat your chicken they have to be killed.

I asked the instructor what the best method to sacrifice a chicken was. A poor choice of words. In the lab we say we "sacrifice" animals when we euthanize them to collect tissues or because they are sick. All I wanted to know was the easiest, most humane, way to dispatch a chicken. Which is probably how I should have phrased the question. It didn't sound bizarre to me at all. There were little kids playing with the chickens so I didn't want to just say "How do I kill a chicken?" Once the commotion died down and the misunderstanding was cleared up the couple behind us was very adamant that I not try to kill the chicken myself the first time. I'm fine with that, but who in the world is going to be there for me if I need to kill a chicken?

Speaking of chickens, if you want to see a fun documentary go see The Natural History of the Chicken.

05:33 pm: Cat Laser Pointer
Our friend Mike gave us a laser pointer he got at the dollar store. Technically it is to entertain the cats, but I'm getting just as much entertainment from it. Turning on the laser turns our cat Leo into a guided cat missle. Wherever the dot goes Leo moves to that position along the shortest path at the highest possible velocity and then pounces on it. It is the best cat toy ever.

The target doesn't have to be inanimate either. While guiding Leo around the house his brother Gemini wandered into the living room, stood placidly in the center, and looked away from Leo. I wondered if Leo's desire to catch the red dot was stronger than his desire to maintain cordial relations with his brother. I put the red dot on Gemini. Leo didn't change tactics at all and was sprinting at full speed when he launched into a pounce at the target. Somewhere mid-leap Leo's tunnel vision expanded to realize the dot was on something, and that something was his brother Gemini. He did one of those weird mid-air cat rolls that only cats can do. Instead of hitting Gemini paws first Leo bowled sideways into Gemini's legs. It was a perfect slide tackle.

Since then Leo has learned that the dot is clever, tricky, and wants to get him in trouble. He won't run full speed into Lorinda, instead he'll slide to a stop if the dot stays on her and then nicely paw at it with claws retracted. I also don't need to be so careful not to slam Leo into walls at full speed anymore.

05:13 pm: Basement Remodel
I'm sitting on the computer trying to come up with a better layout for our mostly unfinished basement. The previous owners finished one large bedroom/den in the corner and left the rest. It seems to be a work in progress. I think they were going to add a bathroom next to thier bedroom. The plumbing has capped branches from the water lines and a heating duct in next to the finished area. Then they came to thier senses and realized that to drain the water they'd have to hammer a trench through the concrete floor of the basement. Lorinda and I enjoy speculating on what the previous owners were thinking based on the evidence we have. They did a lot of good work on the house, but once in a while we find something that wasn't thought through. For example our sprinkler system has the pipes running so shallow they run above the ground in one spot. The pressure is so weak it only produces little green circles dotted around the lawn.

Lorinda and I are drawing a blank on how to have a good layout without demolishing some of the previous work. Since water conforms to whatever container it is in without any wasted space I think one solution is to convert the basement into an underground swimming pool. Bingo! 100% space utilization! The basement already has a drain in the bottom even. When we have kids I'm sure the basement pool would inspire envy in thier peers. The only thing stopping me is I am pretty sure a basement swimming pool would make the house unsellable.

10:35 am: Health Care
I am really angry at our health-care system right now. I don't understand why basic health-care is not something our government can do for its citizens when every other developed country does. We have a friend who needs to be in the hospital because of some mental health issues. He doesn't have insurance so hospitals won't treat him. Even if they would treat him all of the psychiatric beds are full, they are always full because there aren't enough beds funded. Right now he is essentially homeless and penniless. He's currently unable to hold a job or care for himself. He can't afford the medicine he needs to get well. Before he got sick he was a productive member of society, with a good white-collar job and a place of his own.

We applied for medicaid, but we're told that could take a couple of months to approve. We're in the process of getting him a tuberculosis card so he can use homeless shelters. We called about out-patient counseling, but they haven't returned our calls. In the meantime we've had to make two ER visits which took hours to get him the help he needs. All of the paperwork and running around takes a ridiculous amount of time, which friends and myself have taken off from work, there is no way our ill friend can concentrate well enough to do it on his own. Our other option is to turn him out on the street.

Wouldn't it be easier and cheaper if instead he could have gone to any doctor he wanted when he started getting sick, back when he was still able to care for himself, and say "Hey, I'm having a little trouble, could I get some medicine?" That way he'd have been able to hold onto his job. He did try to see a doctor when he first got sick, but he didn't have insurance. Now his illness is not under control, he is essentially homeless, and the cost to society will far exceed the cost of the medication he needs to stay stable. I'm sure he'll eventually use food stamps, some form of publicly funded housing, employment services, the emergency room again, and quite possibly he won't be able to navigate the bureaucracy and simply live the rest of his life out on the streets. It's a total waste.

There was an article recently published in the American Journal of Public Health. It was titled Access to Care, Health Status, and Health Disparities in the United States and Canada: Results of a Cross-National Population-Based Survey. The abstract for this article states "US respondents (compared with Canadians) were less likely to have a regular doctor, more likely to have unmet health needs, and more likely to forgo needed medicines." In addition, the US spends more on health-care than Canada, and far more on administration. One penny from every dollar goes towards administrative costs in Canada, fifteen pennies from every dollar go to administrative costs in the United States. Only American's in the top 40% of incomes reported their health-care needs met at the same level as Canadians. All other American's reported more unmet health-care needs. There are also a range of arguments that not having a universal health-care system puts US companies and workers at a competitive disadvantage.

There would be problems with a universal health-care system as well. Nothing is perfect, but I'd much rather be complaining about the quality of health-care than the unavailability of health-care.

10:29 pm: Trains
When I was a kid I used to love trains. We'd see them during our road trips and get excited, count all the cars, and... uhm... counting the cars was about all the excitement trains had to offer. I still really loved them.

Apparently I was too self-absorbed as a child to notice that my Dad apparently loves trains too. We saw dozens of huge trains in Wyoming carrying coal. They had well over a hundred cars. My parents are even travelling to North Platte Nebraska in thier RV to see the world's largest railyard. It's strange finding these little similarities between yourself and your parents.