It started to rain heavily tonight as I got the kids ready for bed. Rebekah looked up at the ceiling in her room, furrowed her little brow and said quizzically:

“Who up there?”

=)

We’ve been working on potty training of late, but being a smart little 2-year-old, Bekah has learned how to turn this to her advantage. No, she still pees in her diaper more often than not, but she has discovered the power of words. She can, in effect, alter just about any situation by announcing: “Go potty! Go potty!” I should note that Daddy has grown wise to this and can usually assess real calls for the potty (sadly, approaching 0%) from those pleas designed to get her out of situations she doesn’t like. Buckling her in the car? Go Potty! Going to bed? GO POTTY! Stuck in the shopping cart while Daddy gets the week’s groceries and staples? Go Potty, Daddy, pleeeease go potty!

Now, I’ve dropped everything and rushed her to enough public toilets to know she doesn’t need to go potty, nor does she ever, ever want her petite derierre on those big public toilets. I have paid my dues and learned when she’s trying to work the situation. However, I can feel the gazes burning my back in the stores; the horrible Dad who ignores his cute daughter's pleas just to go potty!

So, tonight, we’re going through the going-to-bed, must-go-potty, put-her-on-the-potty, no-pee, re-diaper, put-her-in-bed, must-go-potty routine. I’m used to it and we typically sit on the toilet two or three different times during the course of any given bedtime. In between trips to the potty (where she pooped!) she peed liberally in the nighttime diaper. Okay. So I change her and know now that she’s certainly empty. I rock her and put her in the crib. She starts up with a new line:

“Need go potty right now! Please!”

The ‘please’ is the killer. So polite, it just stabs me in the gut. She's pretty adamant about it, but I figure I just need to let her work it out and go to sleep.

I go to check on her later in the night only to find her buck naked, with her little butt shining like an alabaster moon. There is the tiniest bit of pee in the diaper she’s torn off, but otherwise it’s situation ‘all-clear’ and we stow the haz-mat suits for another day.

So, I guess we need to finally get potty trained, or I need to get some duct tape.

yesterday, as i sat down for a sandwich at the ravenwood cafe, i had a bit of a loveburst for my little city. the ravenwood is new transplant in staunton, and the best way i can describe it is what i imagine edgar allan poe's kitchen would be like - a little dark, but very southern, yet progressive, as well.

anyway. i have such acute aches for new york sometimes that they are practically physical. but now that i have been in staunton for a year and a half, it's found its own place in my heart, and i love that.

i have "my" things in this town now - my routines and places and things. i've realized this sense of belonging is crucial to my comfort in, or with, a place. when i poke around at celebration!, the owner asks me how my crazy german relatives are doing. when we greet the door guy at clocktower, we talk about what's going on with big boots. i order my usual at blue mountain without glancing at the menu. i have my nice little artsy movie theaters, my crunchy veggie-friendly grocery, my favorite route to walk at the park.

i might not wear a staunton, VA shirt with the feel i'd have advertising my brooklyn pride across my chest, but at least the idea of wearing that t-shirt doesn't seem quite as foreign as it once did.

'vacation' almost over.

i flew out east for carter's graduation and spent friday in nyc before training it up to new haven on saturday. three days there and now i am sitting in the jet blue terminal to head back home. ill spend today/tonight with jason, andrea and finley. i never switched my computer time to east coast…it currently reads 3:30am. carter drove us to the airport — we got up at 3.30am. east coast time. translated, i went to sleep at 7pm and got up at midnight. yeah, i'm going to be screwed up.

a lot to think about over the last 5 days since i last posted. the reason for a lack of updates revolves around the fact that new haven has very little in terms of wi-fi. or the internet, it seems. so a lot of writing in my notebook this weekend. ill see what i can do here in talking about the highlights:

• new york, as always, was great. (and as i type those words, miles davis comes onto my ipod, which seems somehow perfect.) friday was spent in this order: breakfast at good enough to eat with rachael's family, a walk through central park where:
• we met tyghe jogging around the reservoir. seriously, i can't go into the city anymore without randomly running into someone i know. it's actually a really awesome thing but it happens enough now to freak me out.
• a quick taxi ride down to satellite records. we hadn't been record shopping in a while and it seemed like a good way to spend the afternoon. it turned out though that we arrived at almost the exact moment dj culture, true electronic dj culture, died in new york. satellite sells mostly hardware now, out of their front room. the back room, the record room, the room that should be packed with djs looking for white labels when you are in there at 2pm on a friday afternoon was empty. there was 1 other person there. the shelves were about half empty and what was hanging up was motley at best. i didn't think i would see the day that the klf's 'shag times' was hanging in a top spot there. i picked up 1 record, a house remix of 'welcome to the jungle'. considering my great love for 'appetite for destruction', it seemed fitting it would be my last record from my one-time favorite record store. chris and i were shaken.
• so we found a bar in the village with 2 for 1 margaritas. of course, it turned out the happy hour was full of inane rules (like the special was only good at the bar and we couldn't take the drinks out on their patio) and the owner seemed to be an asshole. but whatever. margaritas in the village, esp 2 for 1 ones is just the way to do things.
• we headed back to brooklyn and ate dinner and ended up at united, a pretty sweet bar — decorated like an old british study/library with several bocce ball lanes in the back. chris and i made friends with a couple of girls (who were there with their boyfriends) and then tyghe joined us for more beer and then we headed back to chris' where i fell asleep.
• saturday was spent by having brunch across from chris' place, training it to new haven and having dinner at carter's friend bethany's apartment.
• but everyone went home around 11 and i was still awake. so i decided to head out by myself and look for some adventure. and behold, adventure was found. i ended up finding the strip of clubs and bars near the new haven green. wandered into one of them, for 2 reasons: 1. no cover, 2. they were playing 'sweet home alabama'. got a beer and ended up next to a small group. the place was packed and one of the girls was looking for somewhere to put her gum. i offered the bottom of my beer glass, but it was too wet. so i found a receipt in my pocket. this led to some talking, some more talking and when they asked who i was drinking with, i said i was by myself. so they adopted me.
• there was a couple, josh and keri (the same girl who was trying to get rid of her gum), in this bigger group. i didn't talk much to the other people, but josh, keri and i hung out the rest of the night. we all skipped to another bar, where we danced and took some random pictures:
  
• josh finds a receipt at the atm that lists someone's checking account balance as $52,744.18. who does this? i mean, other than someone who doesn't understand how things like interest and investing work.
• last call, josh buys all three of us a drink, keri, drunk, flashes us and we are off to an after-hours club. except on the way, keri (drunk remember?) says some things that, unsurprisingly, upset josh. the evening goes into a tailspin of sorts, after public urination in new haven green and keri mooning us. the two of them bicker. we trade email addresses, josh's pals appear, tell me i should probably leave as the couple is 'unstable right now' and then eventually drive them home. i hang out long enough to make sure there is no drunk driving going on.
• i wander back towards carter's, stopping at louis' lunch and listen to some guy tell the best story: he is dating a girl, a nice girl. they drive 30 miles to new haven for dinner/drinks/pool at rudy's. he sends the girl up with some money to the bar to buy them drinks. she takes the money. and then keeps walking through the door, gets into her car and leaves. this poor guy is left with no money, no ride and is 30 miles from home. it is also almost 3am now. he said a taxi would be 70 bucks and i was only eavesdropping on the conversation, so i wasn't sure what i could do to help. (i had 10 bucks and my id, as carter convinced me to leave my wallet at home in case i got mugged.)
• i left and walked back. a couple of blocks later, there is a car alarm going off. i walk and walk towards it. and then realize there is someone in the car, with the alarm going off. then the alarm stops. then the car stops. i am up on it now and it pulls up to a stoplight about 30 feet from where it was parked. i keep staring, finding this all very odd. the driver notices me staring and i try to quickly memorize the license plate. the light turns and he pulls through it and then immediately over to the side of the street. i turn the corner and duck into the first alley and then walk through, coming out around the corner from where i went in. the car was gone. i call 911 and report a suspicious incident. the dispatcher tells me i dont need to stay, so i dont. its 3.30am.
• i'm also fairly certain i saw a bike get stolen. a guy is getting on a bike from a bike rack and as i walk up, was fiddling with chains. he couldn't get some off of a different bike and i could swear he said to me 'i'm going to come back and get that one.' this actually happened before the car thing and, for some reason, made me laugh a little. though i suppose it isn't actually funny.

i've been typing for 45 minutes now…and gotten through 2 days. the rest isn't exciting, but it will have to wait a while. you'll live.

the title of this post is a combination of words i never thought i would write. actually, it is a combination of words i never considered stringing together. and yet, here we are.

so. since finishing grad school, i have had clear plans about goals in regards to money. (the trouble with these plans, of course, is that i can come up with the plan faster than i can come up with money.) the most recent item on the plan was to buy a new bed.

i have never bought a bed. college meant the mattress was there waiting for me. after college, i took the double that i had used in high school. and then i moved to la. for a while in la, i slept on an air mattress. then my back started hurting some and i decided i probably should get a proper bed. miat, through john, recommended this place called 'm&m furniture' down on wilshire. they have refurbished mattresses and i bought a double — a mattress, box springs and a frame, all delivered, for 80 bucks. this was a purely functional purchase — a great deal. the bed isn't too bad, but it's nothing to write home about either. and i'm not just saying this because it is going to be mike's bed soon.

anyway. the point is that i have never gone through the mattress buying process. but i realized at some point that i should have a nice bed. the bed being the place where i spend the single most amount of time. and i finally decided i had enough saved up to buy one.

so we went mattress shopping on sunday.

we started at sleep train, in palo alto. to be fair, i've never even been in a mattress store. it turns out that there aren't that many options. this seems due to the fact that every design comes in 3 models — basically a firm, plush and ultra plush. the ultra plush just means it has a pillow-top, which is just a pad sewn to the top of the mattress. genius — when you wear that padding out, you can't even replace it because it is sewn to the mattress. so the real question is: do you like you mattress firm or soft?

we found a sealy we liked. but for 1600 dollars, it was out of the range i considered to be my budget. not hugely so — i had budgeted about 1200, so we were close, but it was too much. and i felt very odd throwing down 1600 for a mattress when we hadn't shopped around at all.

roxy and i had read the articles about buying them months ago and had a general budget and idea about what we wanted. so we went into the whole process with an idea about what it was about, but no specifics. so we went home to brush up.

and then went to manconi's sleepworld. man. allow me to do a quick review, in case you ever want to set foot in there:
1. we were ignored when we went in. that's ok, really, because i hate being pounced upon and they were busy. however, i also got the impression that they were not taking us seriously as customers because they either thought we were young or looking to spend nothing. and those kinds of judgments make me insane.

2. after criticizing sleep train, where we had just been, the salesman tells us that 'we stopped carrying sealy 14 years ago.' and then walks away. great. he did mention that he had 5 mattresses that were similar to things sleep train sells, but his disinterest and the fact that they are placed in the back of the store did little to inspire confidence in us. for the most part, every mattress in the store was over 1000 dollars, most over 2. i wanted a good mattress, but general consensus seems to be that anything over about 1200 starts getting silly.

3. we left. quickly, but not before laying on the mattresses in our price range. the salesmen, seeing us walking to the car, chases us outside and says, 'i forgot to ask, what is your budget.' i say 1200, though it really doesn't matter since we aren't going to buy a mattress from here. he asks which one we like and we point, a serta in the front that is about 1200.

'what if i knock 100 off the price right now, could i get you to come back in?' i smile and tell him i will think on it. 'what if i make it an even 1000, will you come back in?' i decline and we leave.

ug.

costco was next. they had a sealy that isn't awful. it was made more-so by the pricetag — 589. this doesn't cover the frame or delivery, which would add another 110 to the price. the downside? we had to drag the mattress out from the shelf on the wall and lay on it on the concrete floor, the mattress still in the plastic. less than ideal. but, ladies and gentlemen, we have a second place winner.

go home. call sleep train. tell the guy that was helping us that we found another bed and that, while we didn't like it as much, the price was right. he pulls up costco.com where the bed is on sale for 699.

silence on the phone.
then he says 'i cant beat that, we pay more than this for the bed.'
more silence.

i don't say anything, just let him run. i hear typing. and silence on the line for minutes and minutes.

finally, he says, 'the best i can do is match it.'

he just price matched for me. on the floor, this is a 1600 dollar mattress. and he is willing to sell it to me for over 50% off.

'sold. we will be right there.'

and we were.

now, sleep train says they will beat any price by 5%. we didn't get that. we didn't get a free frame either. but those, to me, are negligible — about 30 bucks for each. i didn't feel like pushing any harder — we got the bed we wanted, for much less than we had planned on spending. we are getting free delivery. if there is a warranty problem, we contact sleep train; we don't have to go through sealy.

and seriously, we bought the mattress for 57% off the price they listed.

the salesman points out it is a referral business and he just made a customer. and he did. and i am referring. now, maybe, when it comes time for you to buy a mattress, you can get a better deal. we might have been able to. we didn't go to sears or jc penny or even ikea. but again, i got what i wanted for a price i didn't mind paying.

New Balance Joy Division

bwahahaha. really?
a joy division sneaker?
by new balance?

this must be a april fools joke or something.

i had a nice, relaxing dsy with the roxy, shopping and doing not too much. i only ended up buying new headphones for my ipod — i have broken 2 pair now. this time i opted for ones with a case. sadly, they set me back 50 bucks.

they came from the apple store in teh standford shopping center. it holds the record for the smallest apple store i have ever been in. someone helped me, offering one set over another. and then asked if i wanted to ring up. i was somewhat surprised by the forwardness of this, until it became clear he was rining me up right there. he whipped out a small handheld device and scanned the headphones, asking if i was paying by card or check. he did not offer cash as an option.

he swiped my card and then asked for my email. i was hesistant to give it; i hate handing out my email. but then he said he needed it — that they send out receipts through email.

welcome to the 21st century. i said it was a long email and offered to punch it in myself, but he wouldnt let me take the device and i ended up spelling out my absurd hotmail address to him.

i hate the idea of being forced to dole out my email address. at the same time, of course this is where i want my receipts, mailed to me as a pdf, including how long the warrenty lasts on my new headphones. aside from my recluctance at handing it out, this is ideal.

apple wins by getting my info, i win by getting a digital copy of a receipt. paper isnt wasted and im sure to have it in the future should i need it.

are all the apple stores doing this? can anyone tell me?

then we watched (finally) syriania. my only (odd) complaint was that it was too long. rachael asked how i would have shortened it and i dont have a solid answer. but the story and the style dont really work for a 2.5 hour movie. cut 30 minutes and then i think you have something compelling. as is, i kept checking the clock.

but it was worth seeing, esp now that the middle east is once again a hot bed of stress.

a b. i think.

i drug rachael out to the balcony to sip martinis and talk for a while, before she got cold and tired. now im up as she snoozes. and i thought i was the old man in this relationship. well, i hope im the man. at least.

tomorrow, we see the carter. (and maybe the other carter as well.) and hit up the sfmoma to see the matthew barney show, including his new movie with the bjork. good times, should be a fun day. or at least an inspiring one.

rotosketch
very cool app to sketch on top of a movie, something i have wanted to do for a long time. ill be playing with this over the course of the week.

United States Patent: 5,920,923
penn jillette's 1999 patent for a spa-based sex toy

worst (best?) concept art ever
i like bad movies. im excited for 'snakes on a plane'. but im not sure im prepared for this movie, even with my limited 13 year old mind. and yeah, my version also had ninjas. (im not kidding — this actually looks like a drawing i have by felix gill

gnarls barkley's 'crazy' video
one of the nicest, coolest videos ive seen recently

youtube postmodernness
im sure the idea of videoblogging celebrities on youtube surprises very few people, but it does raise some real questions and thoughts in real life (as opposed to the theories i put forward in my thesis)

why?
gladwell reviewing why? by charles tilly, going into the different reasons we tell stories and how we explain things

superman isnt the only dick
his friends are pretty awful to him too.

another example of how evil lois lane is
i mean, really — with friends like these….

tom cruise to eat placenta
keren, im looking right at you.

how to trade
the guy started with a red paperclip on craigslist and has traded up to a years rent in phoenix.

15 best skylines in the world
andrea wins, chicago is #2. nyc is #4. and san francisco didnt even make the list. out of the 15, ive been to 5.

the science of 'girls gone wild'

* * *

feds pounce on student 'ninja'

neat things about la
i cant believe how many of these i didnt hit while i was there. i knew most of them, but i feel like i missed out somehow.

judas asked to betray jesus
you do a favor for a friend and this is how history ends up treating you…i wonder if we will reach a point with the historical knowledge we have where we have to reevaluate the christian belief system?

the movie timeline
syncing up movies into one historical timeline. pure nerd.

* * *

the birds are doing well. they are learning to fly and keep hitting the windows, which makes me laugh every time. (and before you protest, they arent flying fast or hard; no harm done.) i took some pictures last night, ill try to throw them up tonight or tomorrow.

last night, r and i went to the container store. we wanted to get a wall hanging pantry rack thing for the kitchen. target didnt have it, so we drove to san jose to hit the container store, which did have it.

and, by goodness, if i ever have to step foot in that store again, ill poke my eyes out.

it was the single most frustrating experience ive almost ever had shopping in a store.

see, i expect stores to help me. youre called the container store, right? so i expect you to actually help me organize my life and present to me solutions. but what do you do? you sell way overpriced boxes that no one other than bored housewives with no actual belongings would buy.

there was a row for 'media'. great! i have a bunch o dvds. i want to put them on the wall somehow — some sort of shelving. yet the container store offers no solutions for this, save for a few shelving 'systems' that would cost me about 150 dollars to install. just to put some dvds on the wall. everything else that have comes down to boxes to put dvds in. yeah fine, those are containers. but it sure isnt making my life any more organized.

most of the store is made up of products no one could use in everyday life. its made up of overpriced, complex 'systems' of boxes and shelving that only make sense if the actual containers are all you own.

i feel my blood pressure actually rising as im typing this, so im going to stop.

but while im on the subject — does anyone have any cheap (sub $50) solutions to shelving for dvds? id like to wall mount over a bookshelf. thoughts?