Greg Titus

Sick sick sick! Oh so sick! Schedule all messed up, woke up at 2:48am. Doesn't feel like I can sleep any more, since I was sleeping basically all day. And I will spare you the list of symptoms why my rest is, shall we say, fitful.

Pre-Dinner Conversation

Miles: I want waffles.
Me: But we're having pizza for dinner.
Miles: I don't want pizza, I want waffles.
Me: But you like pizza!
Miles: I like chocolate pizza the best.
Me: Chocolate pizza? We don't have any chocolate pizza.
Miles: Exactly! Which is why I need to have waffles!

... at this point I was defeated. How can you argue with impeccable logic like that?

I haven't posted in a while, so an update:

Hollie's recent difficulties with her panic disorder mean that I'm not out much or doing much (not that I'm usually doing a whole lot....). Her mom helping out with Beth during some weekdays does mean that I actually have more uninterrupted work time than I'm used to having - that's awfully nice. Other than that I've been reading a lot of books and playing a lot of World of Warcraft.

(As you can see my life has just been so full of fascinating and riveting life experiences that I simply haven't had time to post on LJ. Ha ha.)

Work is going fine. We're just about done with OmniPlan 1.5, which means I get to stop fixing bugs and start working on new features again. That's always the best part of the job.

Miles is completely awesome. He's started just reading random stuff that we don't expect - like reading what shows are on the TiVo, or signs on the street. We had a meeting with his teacher and school counselor and such and they raved about how smart he is and how he has such an impressive attention span for a five year old boy. There's just no reason to have him doing any of the special ed stuff, even with the hearing loss, and his teacher doesn't want him to leave her class any more. So he's down to just 30 minutes of speech therapy a week, and otherwise totally mainstreamed.

Beth has lately been giving us a preview of what she's going to be like at 13. Oh the drama! The faked tears! The running off to her room and throwing herself on her bed because life is just so hard! She's getting tall, and doesn't look at all like a baby any more - she's 100% kid now. She's also very smart, but you can tell that she's going to be an actress or perhaps a politician or marketer. Or perhaps an evil genius taking over the world. Whatever it is, she'll be bending us all to her will.

I went to my regular doctor to have the stitches removed. A nurse took out 1..., 2..., then 3... and the wound started gaaaaaa-ping right back open. So quickly we pressed it back together and stuck on some sterile sticky tape stuff to replace the missing stitches, and I go back next week to see if it is healed enough then.

It does curve up and back down almost over the heel of my hand, so just mechanically speaking, it does seem like a hard shape and location to keep closed. My body isn't quite up to it on its own yet.

(Oh also, recovering from the sick. Tired and sniffly, but mobile.)

So I was taking out the garbage tonight, when suddenly a ninja assassin appeared before me, there to end my life. I quickly dodged his thrown shuriken, and leapt forward to face his sword barehanded. With a quick clap of my hands I trapped the flat of the blade, taking a minor cut in the process, and twisted to disarm him. He ran for his life.

That makes for a much manlier story than swinging the garbage bag up into the can and on the way down my arm accidentally trapping a tin can lid (on edge) between my wrist and the top edge of the can. The lid sliced through the bag it was in, and into the right inner side of my left wrist, producing a bit over an inch long and inch deep gash. Oops.

Hollie the trained EMT handled everything great, of course. I missed my ulnar artery by a hair, so I wasn't bleeding all that much. So we didn't realize at first how deep it was. We tried just washing out the cut in our sink and the water pressure just made it FLOP right open and expose my arm innards. Yep, time to go to the ER.

Since I apparently wasn't going to bleed out, they let us sit around in the ER forever (with a brief intermission for a nurse and a tetanus shot) before the doc finally showed up. He examined my lovely gory wrist and then, because it was so close to the ulnar artery and he needed to check to see if I needed a vascular surgeon to repair the artery and not just a sewn up cut, he PRODDED the artery from both the outside and then VIA my convenient new internal access just to see if he could get it to spurt blood. This was my least favorite part of the evening.

Fortunately, the artery was intact, so he shot the wrist up with novocaine (AFTER the prodding, you understand) and then left to get a nurse to clean out the wound before he stitched it up. She had me go over to the sink and pour water into it (FLOP, again) and then took soap and a sterile, spiny scouring pad and scoured around the edges and into the wound. She made as if to hand _me_ the scouring pad and have me do it, and I think I said something smart like "you want me.... to scrape inside?" and she heard the disbelief in my voice. So she did it. The novocaine was kicking in at this point, so I was feeling more consternation at seeing soap squirted into this hole in me than I was feeling pain.

Finally, the doc returned and gave me six stitches. I turned away for the first one, but really it was easier to watch the other five than to have just the weird pulling sensations to concentrate on. (These were my first ever stitches. Wooo!)

Meanwhile through this whole thing, Hollie was asking the doctor and nurses questions about medical school and how busy they are during Thanksgiving and was it okay if she watched the cleaning and the stitches and basically having FAR too much fun just being interested in the whole process. She was also great and comforting, of course.

And so that was our fun-filled evening.

These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users (as of today). As usual, bold what you have read, italicize those you started but couldn't finish, and strike through what you couldn't stand. Add an asterisk to those you've read more than once. Underline those on your to-read list you intend to read (again if necessary).

( I've just read 36 1/2 of 106 )

So we just got back from meeting with Miles' teacher, school counselor, and speech therapist for his IEP (Individualized Education Program). This is where they tell us where he is now, we set goals for the next year, and arrange resources (like the speech therapy) to meet those goals.

When we did this last year for the developmental pre-school it was back when Miles didn't have enough words or clearness of speech to be able to talk very well with other kids and he'd end up playing dinosaur or monster and just running around and roaring at other kids on the playground. So a lot of that IEP was about socialization and being able to play and interact with kids his own age. By the end of last year he'd made a ton of progress (I've posted a couple times about that kind of thing in visits to the playground, etc.).

So this year the experts were kind of at a loss as to what needed doing. Socially Miles is doing great in kindergarten so far. He's playing with other kids and making friends. He sometimes doesn't hear teachers if he's paying attention to something else, but if they call him to get his attention first he follows directions very well. He's still got some errors in his speech, but in the chart they showed us, all of his errors were things you typically pick up at 5 years old or later, and he just turned 5 in August, so he's not actually much behind his peers there either. Academically he knows all his upper-case and all but 3 lower-case letters, written numbers to 19, counts to 29, shapes, and so on and so forth. They had given a "pre-reading" test to all the kindergartners and Miles was the only kid out of both kindergarten classes at the school who successfully completed the whole thing.

So he is doing AWESOME and is still loving school. And it's not just our parental bias that we think he's smart. :-)

They want to continue giving Miles all the help that they can, and kind of beat around the bush for a bit about it, before eventually asking whether it would be okay to exaggerate his problems a little bit in the paperwork so that they could continue the speech therapy and visits to the counselor. Which of course was okay with us. They were mostly concerned that it was still very early in the year and he's just in kindergarten, and it's a lot easier to keep existing services going than to drop things and then try to get them back if he needs help later. But it was pretty clear that he is doing great and they don't think he needs much special help.

So yay!

Those of you who are bigger Bruce Campbell fans than I, or bigger John Hodgman fans than I might already know this, but it was news to me. Turns out that John Hodgman (the PC in Apple's Mac and PC ads) used to be a literary agent, and he's the one that got If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor published.

There's an old public radio This American Life episode about it here.
(skip ahead to 32:45 on the play link)

If you like either of those guys, it's worth listening to.

Miles had his first day of Kindergarten last Friday, and his second day was today. It's a full day Kindergarten and he takes the bus, so he leaves us at about 7:45am and isn't home until 3:30pm. That's a long long time for our little guy to be gone!

But he loves it. He comes home so happy, and he's so grown up all of a sudden. He has this comfortable man-of-the-world air about him, like he knows exactly where he is and what he's doing that makes him seem so much older than five. He shows off all his school stuff to Beth, who is _so_ bouncy to see him after being gone all day. He tells us about his day, just quietly pleased - like of course he's doing important work, but nothing to get overly excited about.

And apparently he's doing well. His teacher left us a message after the first day (to tell us he left behind his spider man lunch bag) and said he's a pleasure to have in class. His "Bee-havior chart" that comes home in his folder each night is all smiley faces for "I was kind and respectful", "I was a good listener", "I did my best work". And zero time outs so far.

No idea yet what the academic angle will be like, but that's not really why he's there. He's a smart kid, and we read and do things with him quite a bit, so we're not all that concerned about any academics - he can catch up on that on his own time. We mostly want to give him a chance for more socializing, lots of practice talking to kids his own age, following directions and so on. Anything to help boost his language skills, which are delayed because of the hearing loss. Plus he'll get weekly speech therapy through the district and has use of an FM system for his hearing aids, which helped him a ton when they got one the last few months of preschool last year.

Via lirrin:

Your Penis Name Is...

Beefy McManstick

Ah, the things you can learn on the Internet...

Another day, another couple hours at the park. No new girlfriends for Miles today. All the little girls wanted Beth to be their baby sister instead. She spent the whole time holding hands with one little girl or another, wandering back and forth and being fawned over.

As for me: nothing to report. Life is ehhh, okay.

Another day at the park, another girlfriend for Miles...

Today we spent an hour and a half playing at the park with the stream running through it. Beth got the bottom of her dress filthy from dipping it in the water while wading and then dragging her hem through the dust. Miles spent the whole time playing with a cute girl about his age. He wanted to play "dinosaurs" and she wanted to play "marriage", and so they compromised and played married dinosaurs. Really! They'd walk around holding hands for a few minutes at a time, and then suddenly out of nowhere would come the fangs and claws and roaring at each other until one was defeated. The other would help them up, and they'd be back to holding hands again. Over and over and over.

Oh frabjous day, calooh calay, he chortled in his joy.

My iPhone just arrived! Activating now...

FurReals

I can really see the appeal for the poor parents of horse crazy girls who can't afford real ponies, but my god, I don't want that creepy thing in my house!

Miles met his soul mate tonight at the park. You heard it here first - in 16 years or so he'll be marrying Justine.

He was playing monster and chasing and growling and this girl about his age just roared right back. Miles leapt back in surprise, and then did a convincing death scene as he collapsed from fright. Justine giggled and told Beth that her brother was silly, and then Miles and Justine were off chasing each other for the next hour.

Beth happened to be naked from being outside in the kiddie pool and for the very first time ever (!!) she announced that she had to go, ran into the bathroom and went on the toilet! Like she knew exactly what she was doing the whole time.

Oh to be done with changing diapers... there is light at the end of the tunnel. Someday soon...

flamingnerd was telling me a few days ago that she doesn't think she knows any other smart guys who are non-Asperger-esque, so when I saw schizokitty post this earlier today, I had to go take the tests to actually see...

From http://glennrowe.net/BaronCohen/MaleFemale.asp
Empathy versus systemizing

"Simon Baron-Cohen's recent book The Essential Difference: Men, Women and the Extreme Male Brain proposes that 'The female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy. The male brain is predominantly hard-wired for understanding and building systems.'"

--------------
Systemizing quotient: 33
0 - 19 = low
20 - 39 = average (most women score about 24 and most men score about 30)
40 - 50 = above average (most people with Asperger Syndrome or high-functioning autism score in this range)
51 - 80 is very high (three times as many people with Asperger Syndrome score in this range, compared to typical men, and almost no women score in this range)
80 is maximum

Empathy quotient: 54
0 - 32 = low (most people with Asperger Syndrome or high-functioning autism score about 20)
33 - 52 = average (most women score about 47 and most men score about 42)
53 - 63 is above average
64 - 80 is very high
80 is maximum

Autism Spectrum quotient: 9
0 - 10 = low
11 - 22 = average (most women score about 15 and most men score about 17)
23 - 31 = above average
32 - 50 is very high (most people with Asperger Syndrome or high-functioning autism score about 35)
50 is maximum

Reading the Mind in the Eyes: 26
A typical score is in the range 22-30. If you scored over 30,
you are very accurate at decoding a person's facial expressions
around their eyes. A score under 22 indicates you find this quite difficult.
--------------

So apparently, while I do happen to be slightly more systematizing than the average bear (but in the normal range), I'm not at all autistic (isn't that a relief!). I'm supposedly pretty empathetic too.

But really the most interesting test is the last one. Skip the rest if you want, but go and take the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test. It tells you that "Most people surprise themselves by how well they do in this test. Even if you think you don't have a clue, just choose the one that 'feels' right." And it's true. After looking at the test, it seems miraculously psychic to me that I managed to get 26 out of 36 right, but that's only an average score.

Check out those lines:
http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/29/iphone-multi-city-lineblog/

Work is buying me one so I don't have to wait in line, but I also won't get it for another week or more probably...

I just had 3 fillings done at the dentist, and then went and picked up lunch for us. The whole left side of my mouth is just starting to come back and report in. Muscle control is there. Pressure sensitivity is there. But taste buds on the left half of my tongue and heat/cold sensitivity are completely dead. And I'm drinking a blackberry milkshake.

It is a bizarre sensation. Half my mouth reports cold, tasty milkshake. The other half reports tasteless, viscous substance at body temperature, which my brain tries to insist must be blood.