Life of Spud

I just arrived at the Excelsior Hotel in Berlin for the start of this trip. On my way, though, I blogged offline for a bit, so I'm going to paste those entries here. I will update it at the end. Travel 6/29/08 It’s so hard to say goodbye… but I just did that to my wife and daughters and now I’m at the BWI airport. And of course, the experience has been “an experience” already. First off, I got pulled aside for a “random” security check. It seems like every time I travel alone I get pulled aside for these security checks. I don’t think I can complain about racial profiling, but it does feed into my general paranoia that my youthful looks cause me more harm than they do me good. As I was going through security I noticed that the air-conditioning had mysteriously ceased. I wrote this off to some weird security measure necessary for properly screening bags and assumed that the AC would reappear on the “other side”. But no, I was sadly mistaken. Turns out, the air-conditioning...

Enticing title, for once, eh? Those subjects pretty much sum up the day, though. Of course, the day started with me taking the 2 and 5/12 year-old to camp. And, of course, she was really excited all morning and in the car ride over. And, of course, she ran ahead of me to get to the front door quickly. And, of course, she cried when it was time for me to go. At least we have a routine. The next move was home to prepare for our trip to the post office to get the baby's passport. The last time we had gone through this process was in Palo Alto, when we had a less-than-memorable experience... Although we remember it quite clearly: The long line, even longer wait and the bureaucratic organized chaos that seemed imported from somewhere in Asia. So I wasn't looking too forward to this date. And I guess that sometimes you fear your fear into happening, because we went to the Post Office with what I thought were all of the documents necessary and, Lo and behold, the birth certificate wa...

Yesterday was a wash. I awoke to continuing back problems. After dropping Elana at camp I headed over to Patient First to get some medication to soothe my ailing back. While I do have a primary physician, I don't really like him because he thinks that all of my physical ailments are stress-related. It's not that he's necessarily wrong; it's more the manner in which he dismisses my symptoms. Like I think that my stomach problems are caused by some weird Asian virus that somehow managed to track me down on a flight from Paris to Tel Aviv and he sits there and listens to my theory and then scoffs and says, "it's stress". And then he charges $55 for the visit, which doesn't exactly ease the stress. So it was off to the clinic to get some meds. They prescribed a muscle-relaxant, some ibuprofen and a painkiller. I took the muscle-relaxant and some ibuprofen around noon, and that was pretty much it for the rest of the day because that knocked me out! I think ...

Yesterday was Elana's first day of camp. She has been going to the same babysitter for almost two years and she was getting a bit too old and active for the place, so we decided to sign her up for one of Pikesville's many backyard camps. These camps are run by local H.S./Seminary girls, out of their parents' homes. They're not always the most professional endeavors, but the price is right. We were really nervous about how Elana would handle the first day of camp. We had talked it up a lot for about a month before she actually went and bought her many new things especially for the experience (new bathing suit, swimming diapers, a backpack, sunglasses...), but we were unsure how she would handle the adjustment. I took her to the camp for her first day. She was talking excitedly the whole way there, but when we got to the front door she refused to walk over the threshold and the fear in her eyes was palpable. I ended up staying for 20 minutes to get her a little oriented a...

Once again things have been moving too fast for me, so I haven't blogged in a while. This blog is an update. Four weeks ago we welcomed another little girl into our family. She was born at 7:29 am and weighed in at 8 lbs. 3 oz. We named her Ariella.