Home Cookin'

My friend's little sister visited us from India and cooked us some real Bangali food. Jals whipped up "chorchori", "malai chingri", "mushoor dal", and "maacher jhaal". That's a vegie medly, prawns in coconut milk, lentils, and fish in mustard sauce.

Ask any Bangali what his favorite dish is. There's a very good chance that it's one of the above.

It didn't take long - about an hour and a half. Eeverything was from scratch. I even pounded mustard seed on a stone grinder by hand.

Vivian loved the food of her peeps.

I totted my camera but the pictures were terrible. Here are a couple of my own and several from Jal's album: food, Mt. Bonnell, the Domain, Barton Springs, downtown. Thanks, Jals and looking forward to seeing you on your next trip.

Twinkle Twinkle

Vivian's favorite nursery rhyme is "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star". Or really, just the first line of it. She has recited the "...like a diamond..." line to Jo but I haven't heard it.

But she really gets into the first line. When she repeats it multiple times, each new rendition is performed on a higher scale. It's all quite serious. So I was surprised the other day when she sang:

Twinkle twinkle little star
bright start in the sky
name is Venus

Venus

Last night at about 7pm I was headed to Rosedale School with Vivian. When we got out of the house Venus was glittering like a diamond - you couldn't help but notice how bright it was. So I pointed it out to Vivian and told her that it was a very bright star. But not really a star. Venus the planet. Blah. Blah. Blah.

A little bit later we were walking across the parking lot at the school. And Vivian raised her arm at the western skies and said "Daddy, bright star. Venus". I wonder if she'll remember this evening...

Greetings

We took Vivian to the doc for her 2 year checkup today. Old Griggs walked into the exam room in his crisp white lab coat and stuck his hand out to greet Jo and me. And Vivian took his hand and shook it and said "Hello Dr. Griggs". You could have knocked the good doctor over with a cotton swab.

OK - it wasn't spontaneous. We stopped for a quick sandwich before the appointment and had I asked Vivian to repeat "Hello Dr. Griggs". After a couple of "Dr Greens" she got it.

Happy 2

Vivian turns two at 758 pm today. She celebrated her birthday yesterday with a some dear friends who are within a few months of her age. Jo planned an elaborate Dora adventure (with a bamboo forest and tunnel and flashlights and Swiper and a star-shaped pinata). There were cup cakes from Hey Cupcake. And beautiful weather to help us to lounge away the afternoon on the deck. And I'm just going to go ahead and say it. Vivian is the happiest and loveliest 2 year old in the universe.

Some pictures: we start out with the Dora adventure. Getting instructions from Jo and calling on Map, crawling out of the tunnel with flashlight shinning, and grabbing goodies from the pinata.


Then it was time to blow out the candle and contemplate cup cakes.


And then Vivian got to open her loot and play with her friends and cousins.


And here's what you looked like a year ago, Vivian. Happy 2, princess.

Sunset on Travis

I envy those who enjoy beauty silently. I feel a need to speak up and point out the obvious - thus usually ruining the moment. I went sailing on Friday. Just as we were returning to the marina the wind died and we witnessed a glorious sunset. Here are a couple of shots taken with my phone.


Vivian - if you had been around, I would have enjoyed pointing out every reflecting ripple in the lake and every glowing could in the sky....

Conversations with Vivian

Vivian is getting chatty. Some conversations from the last month or so:

Vivian and I are playing. Vivian:"Daddy, you happy?"
Me: "Yes."
Vivian: "I happy too."

Vivian is sitting down to dinner. Vivian: "Mom, tastes good."
Jo: "Thanks."
Vivian: "Daddy cook?"

Vivian is at Nicolle's house and sees Devyn and Grace dressed up for a dance. Vivian: "Mommy, I want party dress too."

Vivian is riding on my bike carrier and Carol's riding ahead and grumbling. Vivian: "Grandma grouchy?"

Vivian and Carol are doing their morning chores and Carol is throwing out yesterday's coffee. Vivian: "Grandma coffee yucky."

Vivian is watching Dora and the show ends. Vivian: "Daddy, I watch more Dora."

Vivian sees some of the taffy that she and Jo got back from Savannah. Vivian: "Mommy, I need candy."

Vivian is at Robbe's trying on a necklace that Robbe made for her. Vivian: "I see more necklace?"

Vivian is back from San Antonio Zoo. I ask her what she saw. Vivian: "Hippo. Potamus."

Quantum Teleportation

Like the note on "Mind Reading" in early Jan, here's another geeky newsworthy event so that someday Vivian may marvel how primitive we were. This is about quantum physics which I won't pretend to understand. It was reported in Science on Jan 23rd.

It all starts with Schrödinger's cat. You can't tell whether the cat in the box is alive or dead until you open the box to look at it. Till a quantum orientation of a particle is read, it is in a quantum superimposition of all the states it can be in. In 1993 a scientist at IBM postulated that this enables us to willingly entangle multiple quantum particles and then move them apart at which point they continue to have this spooky action at a distance thing - and if the experiment is cast in terms of reading and writing information, then the information from one seems to get written to another, and voila - you have teleportation.

It's taken 16 years to produce a working experiment in which information was magically moved between two atoms almost one meter apart. Two atoms were placed in two boxes about a meter apart in a lab in Maryland and some quantum information was written on to one atom. Then they were put in quantum entanglement by using an interesting process: a laser pulse was used to simultaneously excite each atom to produce a photon. Every once in a while (OK - once in every 100 million tries) a system of optics and a semitransparent beam splitter trapped one "red" and one "blue" photon being simultaneously emitted by the atoms. The optics prevented you from knowing what atom emitted which photon and the two atoms were thus now entangled. The graphics below are from the NYT.


Next the scientists went back to the atom on which the information had been written and read it's quantum state. This destroyed the information. But due to entanglement, the information could now be measured on the second atom.

Vivian - they may still be making crappy Star Trek movies long after it actually becomes possible to beam Kirk up.

Plan B?

Jo and Vivian went to Savannah to visit with Laurel and Jess (why the emphasis - see comments). Here's an incident that happened on the DFW-Savannah flight, as related to me later by Jo.

It was a small plane. Vivian was very excited when the wheels touched the tarmac during landing. Apparently she said "Wow" with much enthusiasm several times. This lead to several comments about how cute Vivian was.

And then the cabin was plunged into darkness for an instant when they switched to airport power at the gate. For that moment all was absolutely quiet - except Vivian, that is. She exclaimed "Oh Shit!" rather spiritedly. Everyone heard it and there were some laughs and chuckles and comments. This spurred my little angel to keep on repeating the phrase over and over again much to everyone's amusement.

Safe to say the Oopsy Daisy thang ain't workin'.

Orange Kitty

A couple of months ago a stray cat wandered into our neighborhood. He was strong and orange and friendly and pretty soon he wasn't going hungry. Jo took him down to the shelter to get him scanned in case he was chipped - but he wasn't. So Orange Kitty became a regular fixture around the homes where he collectively lived. This morning, he meowed at our bedroom doors at dawn and was at the front door when I let Abe out. Abe and he didn't get along. They screamed and snarled at each other.

On the way back from dinner tonight we discovered Orange Kitty's still form on the sidewalk on 45th street. He must have been hit by a car and then someone had laid his body out on the sidewalk as nicely as he could. He was still warm. We called Robbe - who had put a collar or two on Orange Kitty and fed him frequently. And in the moonlight we buried Orange Kitty in the yard under a big pecan tree.

Vivian would see him and say "Orange Kitty"! Will she wonder what happened to him...?