John Lindal’s Blog

New Furniture

My daughter’s new furniture arrived yesterday. She has outgrown her toddler bed, and we found the perfect bedroom collection at easylife. It was discontinued, so we got the floor model at 40% off. Of course, that meant scratches, and after it was delivered, we discovered that the bottom of one of the drawers was broken loose, but nothing that a few nails couldn’t fix!

Since we want her bed to be against the wall, away from the window, one of the two under-the-bed drawer sets wouldn’t make any sense under the bed, so we put it in the closet. It fits so perfectly that I’m tempted to start believing in Intelligent Design

Snow

We drove up to Mount Wilson this afternoon to give our daughter her first taste of snow. It’s a rather rare commodity here in sunny Southern California. The biggest patch we found was about the size of two bathtubs.

It was especially interesting because the top of the mountain was inside a thick cloud. It felt like a completely different world as we built tiny snowmen and tossed snowballs inside our little bubble of visibility.

Hopefully, we’ll make time for a longer trip soon…

Disney Magic

I enjoyed Disneyland as a kid. But I never truly understood Disney Magic until yesterday, when we took our 3½ year old daughter on her first trip to Disneyland. Her reactions to meeting Mickey Mouse (her primary goal, and clearly a transcendent experience), riding It’s a Small World, watching the parade and seeing Goofy (her secondary goal), riding the train and riverboat, etc. were priceless. And so not only did my wife and I not grumble at all about the ticket price, but we are also going to use Disney’s custom photobook system for this trip instead of Shutterfly. That’s the real Disney Magic: making parents happy to spend money!

Update (1/9/2008): The Disney photobook site does not appear to work.

Gastroenteritis

If I remember correctly, our bodies are 70% water. At 3AM Friday morning, my body decided to see how low that number could go. By the time I went to the ER at 9:30AM, it took 3 liters to get me somewhere close to normal. OK, so I should have gone sooner, but I was in such bad shape that I didn’t even realize it. Thank God my wife did.

After they stabilized me in the ER, the doctor’s statement was priceless: To be safe, we should check you in to the hospital overnight for observation. What’s your insurance? Aetna? Let me check…OK, we can check you in here. If it were Kaiser, they would want to move you, but you have good insurance.

Yeah, as if I could have tolerated moving to a different hospital. And I ended up staying there until Sunday evening. Clearly, it’s just not possible to have health insurance that is too good. Thanks, Jerry!

Oslo

I finally managed to visit Oslo again this August after 11 years! It rained a lot more than last time, but there were still some wonderful days with sunshine near the end — and then it rained the day we flew out, of course.

My daughter loved eating wild raspberries and blueberries and also proved herself to be a great hiker, despite being only 3 1/4.

A bed-and-breakfast is the cheapest, family friendly option for an extended stay, but if you want to stay closer to downtown, Cochs Pensjonat is a great place. The room we stayed in had both a refrigerator and a stove, and with a Kiwi across the street, we saved a lot of money by eating at home.

If you want to eat out cheap, Tullin’s Cafe has great Italian food. If you take streetcar 11/17/18 from Oslo S, get off at Holbergs plass (not Tullinløkka!), and it’s right there.

Los Angeles Zoo

We visited the San Diego Zoo during the Memorial Day weekend, and today we visited the Los Angeles Zoo. I’m happy to report that I was very impressed by the L.A. Zoo. It was actually a lot more fun than the San Diego Zoo. I don’t want to knock all the great research done at the San Diego Zoo, of course. Perhaps it was only because the San Diego Zoo gets so much hype, so my expectations were too high, while the L.A. Zoo gets none, so my expectations were too low, but the view of the animals and the ease of getting around seemed much better at the L.A. Zoo, and it’s much cheaper, too!

Fish

So our experiment with a pet goldfish ended in failure after less than a week. We had to return the poor little creature to the pet store, so it could be treated for both parasites and fungus. It was sad to see it go, because it was already part of the family. My wife was trying to give it a name the first day when my daughter discovered it and, without even batting an eye, christened it Nemo. So we fed it, changed its water, and (towards the end) worried about the growing bump on its tail while it learned to recognized us. Hopefully the medication will work, and it will find a new home!

My Daughter, the Monkey

Tonight, we went to the last concert of the season at the local park. My daughter is 2 1/4 now, so she is no longer content with just sitting with us and listening to the music. She wants to explore. So we ended up in the playground section of the park. So what does she do? First, she heads straight for the section marked Ages 5 – 12. Then she finds the most insane way to climb up to the platform, the spiral ladder with rungs spaced apart by half her height, and proceeds to climb it fearlessly and unerringly. Of course I’m proud of her! But the deeper lesson is that, while any sane adult would have claimed it impossible for a two year old to climb such a contraption — you’d better believe I was hovering as close to her as possible — nobody had told her that, so she went ahead and did it.

Business Savvy

My daughter is clearly a maverick genius. At 20 months, she is already reading Business Week, which shows that she is a genius. But it’s the way that she reads it that clearly marks her as a maverick. She always reads it upside down! In case you’re still not convinced, almost every fortune cookie she eats — and she loves ‘em — predicts that she will be wealthy/successful/etc.

I’m looking forward to retiring early…