Baking with Ben

Posted on August 30, 2009 by Jolene

For the past couple of months, Ben has wanted to make Chocolate Chip Muffins. He had never had chocolate chip muffins… but he just KNEW they were going to be good.

I looked around for a recipe for him, and found one- I won’t post it because it wasn’t good enough that we will ever re-use it… but he was a happy, happy boy. His sister was away at camp so he had the kitchen and mom all to himself. This is rare- with Maddie wanting to be a pastry chef… she thinks she’s an expert already and constantly bosses him around.

I was able to sit back in my chair with my camera and let him go to town. I offered advice if I saw he was about to do something that would kill the muffins (tablespoon instead of teaspoon kind of stuff) and take pictures.

They turned out exactly as they should have- they had cinnamon in them and I think that none of us were fond of that- but they were edible.

And not one picture of the finished product… We were too busy eating them while they were warm!

Week 28-29, Camping, First Week at CMU

Posted on August 28, 2009 by David

Lest you think I have been remiss about posting on this blog, I have an excuse: I have been quite busy! Last week we went camping. Of course, there was no internet, so there was no way to make the normal posting

More pictures here

It was wet, and not just because we were on Lake Michigan – it rained nearly the whole time we were there. Still, it was nice to end the summer. On the last night there, the clouds finally cleared off just as bedtime hit. We were able to see tons and tons of stars. I used an application for my iPhone to locate items of interest, and we were able to find Jupiter and other constellations.

Week 28-29

During camping the baby was spending her time developing wrinkled brains. Apparently, they start off smooth like a rock on the shores of Lake Michigan, and later develop the wrinkly look that we think of when we think of brains. She’s also getting fatter, and should be head-down now. Some people say that during this time the infants start to get REM-sleep patterns, which means that she might be dreaming. Not sure what she’d have to dream about. I don’t think there’s any movies being screened in there or anything.

My First Week at CMU

Everything went pretty much as planned. Parking wasn’t an issue. I found my classes ok. I am pleased with most of the rest of it.

BIS 228 – COBOL Python Programming

This class was intended to be COBOL programming, a language that’s from the stone age. Nobody but big banks really use it anymore, whereas Python is actually actively used. The professor in this class seems nice, and on the first day he told us that we could do the entirety of our classwork online and didn’t need to show up. Also, he refuses to teach COBOL, hence the switch to Python. Sounds good to me.

FIN 302 – Integrated Financial Analysis

An interesting professor and class, we started off with a chapter on ‘what is finance’ and have finished the rest of the week off with some Net Present Value of money equations. All review, basically. I don’t have the calculator he demonstrates things with, but my trusty TI-84 has all of the functions. I just need to figure out how to best use them.

MKT 304 – Integrated Marketing Management

A very friendly professor from Romania. The book is, as you would expect from a marketing book, slick and to the point. This class will be very involved with active participation, I think. I’m not really ‘into marketing’ so it’ll be interesting, for sure.

MGT 303 – Integrated Supply Chain Management

This class hurts my brain. What I’m being told in here goes against what I’ve learned in the past.

BUS 301 – Integrated Business Experience

This is where I’ll learn SAP, work on simulations of running a company, and more. This takes place in the DiamlerChrysler computer lab, which is one of the nicer ones. I’m not going to enjoy how late at night it is, though – I will be getting home around 10 PM on Thursdays.

I’m told at the end of my integrated business experience I am going to have to present my company to 90+ people in an auditorium, including the dean of the business school.

Week 27 – Cauliflower, or a Boot?

Posted on August 16, 2009 by David

Cauliflower.

Yup, the baby is apparently the size and weight of a 2 pound cauliflower head. The baby sites always, always seem to concentrate on the fruits and vegetable stands at the supermarket.

I’m not the only one to notice this.

Thankfully, someone has taken the time to setup a new, guy-friendly measurement metric.

I present to you, this weeks guy-friendly fetus-equivalent:

A boot. A 13 inch work boot.

Ok, I can jive with that. However, he doesn’t go into much more detail (nor should he) about the development during the weeks. So I’ll still have to look at pictures like these…

… which (I assume) is what our baby would look like if they were a who from whoville.

Anyway…

This week the baby is beginning it’s slow turn around. Soon, she’ll be loaded into the chamber and ready to be fired!

Sorry, got carried away with this ‘guy’ stuff. She can fully breath now, so she’s more viable now than ever.

We started registering at babies-r-us, and are getting all the final stuff in place for the arrival. It’s getting exciting!

The Decemberists and The Heartless Bastards – 8/11/2009

Posted on August 16, 2009 by David

The concert finally arrived! The day I had been waiting for. Early on that day 11th I was sitting at the computer and saw a couple of updates at twitter.com. I basically use twitter as a means to follow updates people of interest to me. Two of those are members of The Decemberists.

They had gotten to Royal Oak early, and decided to pass the time busking for dollars

It’s not every day that you see a major-label signed band play on the street. They earned two dollars.

Then, they got busted for busking! Apparently the cops took a dim view on them playing on the street. This was kind of odd, because when we arrived there was an italian street festival going on.

We drove down to the Royal Oak Music Theater later and got there just as the doors were opening. Because of our pre-printed tickets, we got to enter in the VIP entrance rather than wait in the line. This secured us a spot right up next to the stage.

The first band was called “The Heartless Bastards”. Interesting name, but they definitely put heart into their playing

I was looking forward to seeing their opening act, since I have quite enjoyed their newest disc, ‘The Mountain’. They played a reasonably long setlist, with lots of songs that I knew and had heard from that album. There was only one issue – the vocals were fairly low and we had a hard time hearing what she was singing. We were so close to the stage that we were underneath the big PA system that the venue had installed, so we were worried that we weren’t going to be able to hear the concert from where we were.

Finally, the Decemberists came on stage after a short break.

They played The Hazards of Love in it’s entirety, from start to finish. It’s better in person than it is on the CD, for sure. An interesting thing to note: we were close enough to the performers to see their eyes and what they were looking at. It was interesting to see that they were basically people watching throughout the performance. I guess I didn’t expect that.

The entire concert was high energy, even though the theater was extraordinarily hot. The crowd up front was closely packed. After drinking 3 bottles of water and standing in the heat for several hours, we decided to retreat to the relative coolness of the middle of the theater after the intermission. The full setlist for the concert was:

01. Prelude
02. The Hazards of Love 1 (The Prettiest Whistles Won’t Wrestle the Thistles Undone)
03. A Bower Scene
04. Won’t Want for Love (Margaret in the Taiga)
05. The Hazards of Love 2 (Wager All)
06. The Queen’s Approach
07. Isn’t It a Lovely Night?
08. The Wanting Comes in Waves / Repaid
09. An Interlude
10. The Rake’s Song
11. The Abduction of Margaret
12. The Queen’s Rebuke / The Crossing
13. Annan Water
14. Margaret in Captivity
15. The Hazards of Love 3 (Revenge!)
16. The Wanting Comes in Waves (Reprise)
17. The Hazards of Love 4 (The Drowned)

Second Set:

01. Intro
02. California One/Youth and Beauty Brigade
03. The Sporting Life
04. Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)
05. The Bachelor and the Bride
06. The Calamity Song
07. Dracula’s Daughter
08. O Valencia!
09. Crazy on You*

Encore:

10. Eli, the Barrow Boy
11. Sons and Daughters

The second hour of music was amazing. The band commented on the Royal Oak police force being kind of a drag. The entirety of the concert was recorded and can be found online here

All in all, it was an amazing concert, and definitely ranks up there with my favorite performances I’ve attended. This was a most amazing way to finish our summer vacation.

Does the baby not like Tori Amos? Concerts Continue, Week 26

Posted on August 9, 2009 by David

Finally!

I’ve been waiting for a kick from my daughter seemingly forever now. She’d kick, I’d put my hand where it was, and she’d stop. She seems to be a very contrary baby!

Last night Jolene went to a Tori Amos concert in Detroit, about two hours away. After she got back late last night, we started dozing off to sleep at the late hour of 2:30AM.

Suddenly, we felt a ‘thud’. She was up, kicking, and had miraculously kicked the exact location my hand was in. Finally! I was half asleep, but it was sudden and obvious what happened. We waited for a second one, and she delivered yet another to me.

She must’ve missed me, or didn’t like Tori Amos or something.

More Music

The night previous to this, Jolene and I and some of her friends from work all went to go see Lacuna Coil again:

We had all seen them previously as an opener to Disturbed, but everyone in the group felt that they didn’t play nearly long enough. We got our full dose of Lacuna Coil Friday, as they played a regular length set. The opening bands were local groups that were pretty good as well. As you can see in the pictures, it was a small club event and not a large stadium event like the Disturbed concert. This is a good thing – you get much closer to the artists and see how they really are.

It was a great concert.

We’re going to our last scheduled concert this Tuesday – another Decemberists concert. I missed the last one, and so I just had to get tickets. I’m looking forward to it very much!

Week 26

No more fruits or vegetables – I am having a harder and harder time finding posts about fetal development that deal in the metrics of fruits and veggies.

However, this week she’s developing eyebrows and fingernails and the like. Also, some hair might be starting to grow on her head. More importantly, her blue eyes are opening. They’re blue because all infants eyes are blue at this time, not having a chance for the pigments to take hold yet. She can see around her now, and knows when it’s dark and when it’s light. Now she truly knows her mother likes to stay up too late at night!

Everything else is going well, we excised the desks from our house and I have built a new desk to make room for the chair that we’re going to be using a lot in the next few months

It was quite a project. When I originally put it together, it was far too tall for use as a computer desk. I would’ve had to sit on phone books or something to get high enough to use the computer. In the end, I had to jigsaw off the bottom ‘kick plate’ area of the cabinets. It all came together nicely in the end.

The Cooke Family Website

Monthly Archives: August 2009