Busy, busy

It has been a long time since I posted anything, but that is not because nothing has been happening! Rather, we've been so busy (and I've been so tired) that I've had a hard time finding time to sit down at the computer to compose a short blog post.

I'm going to try to be better about posting pictures here, but only when I find that elusive free time. Maybe when Dale can walk and drive again?

One reason I haven't had time to post much lately is Dale's knee surgery. The surgery was almost three weeks ago now and was (according to the surgeon) a great success. The surgeon removed part of Dale's patellar tendon and used it to fashion a new ACL for him. He was also able to repair the torn meniscus in his knee, which makes his short-term recovery harder but will allow Dale better use of his knee in the long term.

Dale did great after the surgery -- his only job was to lay on the couch and let us take care of him for two weeks, which he did fabulously. Of course, I couldn't have managed those two weeks without my mom and Dale's mom's help -- they both came out to stay with us and did most of the work around the house: cooking, cleaning up, serving Dale, playing with Adelaida, and just about everything else that needed to be done around the house. Thank you so much, Mom and Charlotte!

After the first two weeks, Dale was able to get up and move around quite a bit more, although he was still on crutches and will be for another week. He also went back to work last week, with mid-day rests to ice his knee and do his physical therapy exercises.

Here are some pictures of Dale's surgery and recovery:

the "before" shot -- note the lack of incisions and presence of leg hair ...


I was able to sit with Dale after they prepped him for surgery but before they started cutting on him. We tried to talk about anything other than the upcoming surgery!


Dale's knee about 24 hours after the surgery. His eight incisions (one long incision to remove the patellar tendon, four small incisions for the arthroscopic meniscus repair and ACL replacement, two small incisions to drill holes through his bones, and one small incision to drain excess blood) are held together with staples. Has Dale mentioned yet that they drilled holes through his femur and tibia?


Dale's knee surgery has been one reason I haven't been able to post; the other reason is that I'm just tired all the time right now! Of course I knew that gestating babies is hard work, but didn't appreciate how physically exhausting it is! I'm now 29 weeks, and my doctor assured me on Monday that if the babies were born right now they would be just fine with no long-term problems. At only 29 weeks, they aren't really ready to be born yet and I'm certainly not ready for them to be born yet, but it is reassuring to know that, if they were born now, they would be OK.

This is a picture of me at 28 weeks. Just imagine what 12 more weeks of pregnancy will do to my belly!


Of course, I wouldn't dream of leaving you without one cute picture of Adelaida. Here she is in March showing off her ability to put her hands in her pockets. She had to pull her shirt up to her chin to find her pockets, but she is getting much better at finding them now!

Gimpy Dale

Many of you will remember that Dale injured his knee last summer playing kickball. He rounded second and was heading for third when he looked up and saw a player from the opposing team standing in the base path. Dale tried to cut to go around him and ended up on the ground with a knee the size of a cantaloupe. That was the end of his plans to run across a Colorado mountain last fall, but the swelling slowly went down and the limping went away eventually Dale was able to do normal things like walk and straighten his leg and even run (in a straight line).

He was feeling pretty good about his knee when the soccer season started in early March -- he went to a few practices, showed up early for his first game, and was excited to be playing again. That lasted about five minutes into the first game, when he tried to change direction while running and ended up collapsing. By the time he got home, his knee was swollen so badly that he couldn't wear jeans anymore -- they simply wouldn't fit over his knee.

It only took a little bit of prompting to get Dale in to a doctor, who manipulated Dale's knee for about 30 seconds before declaring that he had torn cartilage and would need surgery. A few days later, Dale got an MRI to see how bad the cartilage tear was, and when the doctor saw the MRI, he realized that Dale had not only torn cartilage, but also a completely ruptured ACL.

A normal knee ligament is nice and black and has well-defined edges:


Dale's ruptured ACL is grey and blotchy and looks like something exploded inside his knee:


Dale had his first appointment with his surgeon last week (the initial doctor was a surgeon and would have repaired the cartilage, but doesn't do ACL replacements, so Dale had to find another surgeon who would do the entire knee reconstruction). Since the reconstructive knee surgery will involve four weeks during which Dale won't be able to walk, bear weight on his right knee, or drive, we wanted to schedule the surgery as soon as possible so that Dale would be well on his way to recovery before the twins are born.

So, a week from Wednesday, Dale is going under the knife for the first time in his life. The doctor will remove the middle third of his patellar tendon and small plugs of bone on the kneecap and tibia, and use the patellar tendon to replace his ACL. He'll come out of the operating room with a four-inch incision below his knee and two or three small incisions around his knee. He'll be bedridden for several days, after which he will be able to get around on crutches for a month. Full recovery may take 6-9 months, but the doctor assures him that he will be able to run and play soccer eventually.

Please think of us next Wednesday and in the weeks following as Dale has surgery and begins his long recovery!

In the mean time, Dale still limps and can't straighten his leg, and it bothers him if he has to stand or walk on it for a long time. Fortunately, it hasn't kept him from playing with Adelaida! Adelaida enjoys her swing but needs an adult with her to push her and be available if she falls off. Today, Dale pulled a chair up to the swing set and positioned it so he could sit down and push Adelaida while she was swinging. She was perfectly happy and he was staying off his knee!

Being daddy's hairstylist

Adelaida is pretty good about obeying when we ask her to do something (or stop doing something). This afternoon, she pulled a hairbrush out of a drawer, chased Murphy into a corner and started brushing his fur; when I realized what she was doing, I asked her to stop brushing Murphy and told her that hairbrushes were for people, not dogs. She backed away from Murphy, yelled for her daddy, "Daddy, sit down!" and crawled up onto the couch behind him. Hairbrush still in hand, she began brushing her daddy's 1/4-inch-long hair.





Eventually, she demanded that he lay down, so she could reach his head better. He happily complied!



I never thought I'd see Dale sit still so well while being unnecessarily groomed. He really adores Adelaida!

Sitting on the Sofa with Daddy

For the past several months, Adelaida has delighted in mimicking us. This takes many forms -- when she sees us eat, she will move her jaw up and down as if eating; when we give her food that is too hot and blow on it to cool it off, she blows on her food; when we jump, she jumps. This has even extended to something as simple as sitting. Several times, when Adelaida has seen Dale sitting on a sofa, she has asked to be picked up onto the sofa, then arranged herself next to him, in the same position. I've managed to get photos of this a couple of times:

She starts by sitting next to him ...


... but soon bores of sitting and wants to stand up ...


... and finally get down and play. Adelaida likes to sit on the sofa with Daddy, but only for a few minutes :)


Snuggling on the sofa -- look at the grin on Dale's face! He loves it!


She stayed on the sofa with him for quite a while, watching a World Cup game. Dale has been teaching Adelaida to say "Goooooooooooaaaaaaalll!!!" whenever a soccer goal is scored. She loves to say it with him, but she can't pronounce her Gs very well and always stops a word after the first vowel sound, so it comes out more like "Dooooooooooaaaa!!!!"


Dale put his hand near Adelaida's belly and she reached up to hold his hand.


Adelaida and her Daddy ... aren't they adorable!

The sound of a baby laughing

Dale, Adelaida, and I were eating dinner this evening when I suddenly heard a baby -- my baby -- laughing. This was noteworthy mostly because Adelaida was sitting on my left and the unmistakable sound of Adelaida's laughter was coming from my right.

For several milliseconds, I was very confused.

Then Dale reached over and picked up his cell phone and it all became clear to me. A week or so ago, Dale was tickling Adelaida and she was laughing and laughing. This continued for several minutes before Dale remembered a nifty little feature on his phone -- the voice recorder. He set his phone up to record, tickled Adelaida, and captured her beautiful laugh on his phone. Not content with just having this recording, Dale wanted to hear it often. So, he set it as his ring tone! Now, every time Dale gets a phone call, he hears the beautiful sound of Adelaida laughing.

I tried to add a recording of her laugh on this blog, but couldn't figure out how to do it. So, you'll have to be content with a picture of her smiling face.

The Second Bottle of Mead

After seeing this in our beer closet earlier this week, we were quite cautious with handling our last two bottles of mead.


The ideal gas law states that the pressure of a gas in a fixed volume is proportional to the temperature of that gas; not wanting to experience any more explosions (they are great to write about but not so much fun to clean up), we carefully lowered the temperature of our two remaining bottles of mead. The first step was to don the appropriate gear -- I had visions of a bottle exploding into Dale's face, so insisted that he wear full personal protective equipment, including leather gloves and his welding face shield. If we owned body armor, Dale would have been wearing that as well. We don't, so I settled on a thick jacket.


Having at our disposal a couple of acre-feet of solidified water, Dale filled a cooler with snow and prepared to transfer the bottles.


I documented the mead transfer for life insurance purposes while Dale very carefully transferred both bottles of mead into the snow-filled cooler.


He carefully packed the bottles in the snow and we let the cooler sit in the garage.


Six hours later, Dale decided to open the first bottle. Not convinced that the sink would hold the explosion fizz-over (or at least, convinced that it would be difficult to clean the sink after the mead exploded over it), Dale decided to open the first bottle over the dog bath in the garage. I somehow forgot to enforce the personal protective equipment policy and Dale opened the bottle wearing only his leather gloves and jacket. He did, however, point the neck of the bottle away from his face (and away from mine!).


He carefully opened the bottle ... and nothing happened.


Sure, there were a few small bubbles rising to the top of the bottle, but no fizzing and certainly no explosion! It was one of the most anticlimactic moments I've experienced in a long time. In fact, I was almost sad that it didn't explode at least a little!

Dale poured two glasses and we enjoyed our very slightly fizzy mead, wondering as we drank it how one bottle became so highly pressurized that it exploded with such force that it launched itself off a shelf and embedded itself in the ceiling, while another bottle was so slightly pressurized that it barely fizzed when we opened it. Lowering the temperature should help, but lowering the temperature from 75F to freezing should have resulted in only about a 10% reduction in the pressure, which shouldn't have accounted for the vast difference we saw. This may be one of life's mysteries that we'll never fully understand!



By the way, we opened the third (and final) bottle the next day; like the second bottle, it barely fizzed.

Feeling Better

Thank you to everyone for keeping Adelaida in your thoughts and prayers this week! She has recovered quite well from the scary times on Monday and Tuesday when she was having trouble breathing. She is still not 100% better, but is getting back to her normal self. She is still congested and coughing and more tired than normal, but has enough energy to walk around the house and laugh at the pups and close herself in various rooms. (Why are kids so fascinated by doors?)

I was happy to have Dale come home from California a day early. Although he was scheduled to return on Friday, he finished everything he needed to do in California on Thursday and was able to come home Thursday evening. I don't sleep as well when Dale is gone (I somehow hear every little sound our house makes and wake up often!), so was very happy to have a restful night's sleep on Thursday night! I also went in to work on Friday afternoon, after a full week's absence, while Dale kept Adelaida.

Adelaida certainly missed her Daddy! She was so excited to see him when he walked in on Thursday night and spent quite a bit of time cuddling with him Thursday and Friday. Here are some pictures I took of them together:

Beware Exploding Bottles of Mead!

On Monday evening, I was doing some overdue cleaning, including cleaning the floor in the sunroom. I opened the beer/sports closet (it's a closet that we plan to use for sporting equipment, but currently holds beer equipment and home-brewed beer in various stages of fermentation) and realized the closet floor was covered in dirt and dog hair. (How does all that dirt and dog hair collect in a closet that stays closed almost all the time anyway?) I cleaned the floor, closed the door, and moved on.

That night, I was up late with Adelaida and heard a very loud noise (like a loud bang, or a door slamming, or something really heavy falling to the ground) coming from inside the house. With Dale gone, I was naturally more sensitive to such noises, but almost convinced myself that I had imagined it -- after all, the dogs would be barking if anything suspicious had happened, and we have an alarm on our house that would sound a siren and call the police if any of the doors or windows had been opened. I made a quick check through the house to make sure everything was in its place, talked to the pups a bit, confirmed that I had set the alarm and that the doors were all locked, and went to bed.

Fast-forward to today. Being stuck in the house all week, I've been catching up on cleaning and today was organizing the kitchen. There were a couple of empty beer bottles on the counter -- rinsed and waiting to be refilled with beer -- that really belong in the beer/sports closet. I took them to the closet, stepped inside the closet to put them in the "empty beer bottle" box, and realized that my slippers were sticking to the floor. Given that I had just cleaned the floor two days ago, that was especially puzzling to me. I checked the floor in some other areas -- also sticky -- and followed the stickiness up to the top shelf.

That's when I saw this:


Yes, a bottle of mead had exploded, leaving the bottom of the bottle sitting on the shelf, the body of the bottle embedded in the ceiling, and mead everywhere.

It must have been a pretty big explosion to embed the top of the bottle in the ceiling as well as it did!


Looking back, I shouldn't be surprised that this happened. Mead is honey-based wine and, like most wines, is generally not carbonated. Dale prepared the mead the first week in October, transferred it from one fermenter to another several times, and let it sit in the final fermenter for several weeks without seeing any evidence of further fermentation. We bottled it in early December, two months after starting the process. We opened a bottle in late December and drank it without noticing anything unusual. Six weeks later, we opened another bottle with friends in Colorado and noticed immediately that the mead was carbonated. That was weird, but we thought perhaps the fermentation process had continued in the bottles, so we realized we might have slightly carbonated mead (like champagne, a carbonated wine!). Apparently the fermentation process has continued even more, enough to cause a bottle to explode!

It even makes sense that the explosion happened in the middle of the night. The beer/sports closet is an interior room on the ground floor, which is heated by radiant heat in the slab. In the winter, our radiant heat comes on in the evening and runs overnight. The beer/sports closet has a heating pipe running under the floor and the closet door is kept closed, so the heat stays in the closet and the closet actually gets quite warm. Heat will increase the pressure of the gas inside the bottle, increasing the likelihood of an explosion. In retrospect, this shouldn't have been a surprise!

One final note: we've been distributing these bottles of mead to people since Christmas -- if you received one, it might be best to go ahead and open it now (over the sink, in case it fizzes over when opened), before you end up with a similar mess!

Dale's Program Lases a Missile

Note: this post has a video, which may not come through on email or Facebook. If you can't see the video, go to our blog at http://parkesranch.blogspot.com/

Many of you know a little bit about the program Dale works on; for those of you who aren't familiar with his work, here's a brief synopsis, as I understand it:

The program is designed to shoot missiles out of the sky. Presumably, the missiles will be launched by bad guys and aimed at good guys. This works by having a very large airplane (a modified Boeing 747 that contains a laser instead of seats and such) detect a missile after it has been launched, track the missile as it flies, and shoot a very high-power laser at the missile to make the missile blow up before it reaches the good guys.

Sounds simple, right? Well, Dale explained to me that it is actually a very complicated problem, for several reasons:
1. The missile is moving, and the airplane is moving. So the laser airplane has to track the missile as both are moving, at different velocities and in different directions.
2. The missile is a pretty dark item -- it isn't as if the missile has headlights that the airplane can "look" at; instead, the laser airplane has to illuminate the missile in order to see it, and has to continue illuminating it as both are moving in the atmosphere.
3. The laser airplane is really far away from the missile (more than 50 kilometers), and the missile is pretty narrow (a few feet across). This is like seeing a motorcycle (without its headlights on) from over thirty miles away.
4. The laser has to travel across that distance through the atmosphere, rather than through a vacuum. Every molecule of nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor, argon, and carbon dioxide that the laser encounters will distort the laser beam slightly, making it pretty diffuse by the time it reaches the missile. To compensate for this, the laser has to be extremely powerful as it leaves the laser airplane and Dale's group has to apply "atmospheric compensation" to the laser to correct for that.

More information about the program can be found here: http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/military/abl/index.html or at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1

Dale has been working really hard lately to demonstrate that the laser can illuminate, track, and fire a high-powered laser at an actual missile for long enough to blow it up. And recently, they did just that.

Here is a video showing the airplane firing a laser at a missile. The missile is the really bright dot that starts in the lower left; the airplane is the bright double dot that starts in the upper right of the screen. You should be able to identify the laser. The video was shot in the infrared part of the spectrum; the laser isn't visible to the human eye.



By the way, this was a demonstration of the capabilities of the laser, with a missile that wasn't armed and was launched by the US, from the US, toward an uninhabited part of the ocean. No bad guys were involved in the making of this video.

And no, the laser cannot be used to pop popcorn. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Genius)

Las Vegas: Kickball!

Two weeks ago, Dale's kickball team (Team Mandrake X) competed in the World Adult Kickball Association's Founder's Cup tournament in Las Vegas, NV. Every WAKA team in the nation that finished in either first or second place in their division or won the division tournament in the previous year, qualified to compete in the Founder's Cup. Team Mandrake X qualified by finishing first in their division and winning the division tournament three consecutive seasons. In the four seasons Dale had played for Team Mandrake X, they were undefeated.

The tournament started out with four-team round-robin group play. Team Mandrake X won the first and third games easily (17-0 and 10-5) and lost the second game pretty badly (12-0). That was the first game Team Mandrake X had ever lost, but they took it pretty well. The team they lost to was ranked fourth (out of 72 teams) going into the tournament and ended up placing second in the tournament overall. They were really, really good.

The top two teams in each group advanced to a single-elimination bracket, and Team Mandrake X's first opponent here was a team from the San Francisco Bay area that was actually very good, and this was probably the most exciting of all the games of the day. Kickball rules state that a game will last five innings or the end of the inning after the game reaches forty-five minutes, whichever comes first. At the end of the fifth inning, the teams were tied, six-six! With single-elimination play, a winner has to be declared, so the tie is broken by playing one additional inning, with fewer fielders to make scoring easier.

In the tie-breaker inning, Team Mandrake X was kicking first and scored three runs (one of which was Dale's), making the score 9-6 going into the bottom of the extra inning. The other team scored two runs, bringing the score to 9-8, and had two runners on base in scoring position. Dale (who normally plays outfield) was playing first base and caught a pop fly for the second out, and got the ball back to the pitcher quickly enough that the runners couldn't advance. The next runner bunted toward first, Dale got the ball and tagged the runner out, ending the game with Mandrake winning 9-8 in overtime! I was keeping score for them and my heart was pounding with excitement.

That game lasted a long time so we gathered spectators as other games ended and word went around that an exciting game was happening on field 1, so there were a lot of people around to witness our spectacular victory. The next game started soon after that one ended, and this time we were playing the #1 ranked team in the nation, a group from Maine that had won their pool-play games 12-0, 11-0, and 2-0. They had an excellent defense, and again the teams were very evenly matched. I'll spare you the play-by-play and jump to the end of the fifth inning. The game was tied 0-0, so we again went into extra innings to determine the winner. We kicked first again, and this time their excellent defense prevented us from scoring. All we had to do was keep the other team from scoring (which we had been able to do in the first five innings), but unfortunately they had a runner who was too quick and made it home. We lost 0-1, but it had been another exciting game!

It had been a great tournament, and although I was a little disappointed that we had been eliminated in the second round of the playoffs, we still had a great day, winning two of our three group play games, winning the first round of the single-elimination bracket in a heart-racing extra inning, and holding the first-ranked team in the nation to zero runs in regular innings. And, as the sun sank below the horizon during our last game, I was secretly glad that we were able to leave the tournament at 6:00 (the final game ended around 2:30am!).

On her daddy's shoulders

I walked into the bonus room a few days ago and saw this beautiful sight. Dale was on the sofa reading a book, with Adelaida on his shoulders! She was playing with his ear, completely content just hanging out on her daddy's shoulders.

This wasn't a new place for Adelaida, as Dale has been putting her on his shoulders for several months. She seems to like it, especially when his hair is long enough for her to pull on. (When Dale has had a recent haircut, she generally goes for his ears instead.) Here are some other photos of Adelaida riding on Dale's shoulders.

On a walk around our neighborhood:


On that same walk, wearing Dale's hat:


On vacation in Colorado:

Touring Southern Colorado, Part 1: Pagosa Springs

This post and the pictures I'm including here are a little bit dated, but I wanted to share a trip we took this summer with all of my dedicated readers :)

Back in the middle of July, the stars aligned with Dale's work (he had a two-week lull on his program), my work (I was waiting for someone to fix my glovebox), Grant's work (he was being laid off and his company didn't really care if he went to work anyway), and Jamie's pregnancy (she was still able to fly and was seeing her doctor only every two weeks). Rather than just talking about what we might all do with our free time, we actually acted on it and took a ten-day vacation together in southern Colorado.

Our first stop was Pagosa Springs, which was a pretty neat small town -- in the mountains, with a sulfur spring in the middle of the town and several nearby hikes. The most memorable part of Pagosa Springs was "Vince Guitar," a waiter at a Cajun restaurant that we almost walked out of before we even sat down (it had a bit of a dank to it). Instead, we decided to stick it out and each ordered something different from the menu. And wow! it was amazingly good! The etouffee, the okra, the gumbo, the catfish, the sausage, it was all soooooo good. "Vince" made it even better with his antics, like proclaiming that he was the best thing on the menu and offering me himself, drenched in etouffee. A good time was had by all that night.

We took one long hike near Pagosa Springs,
up a canyon to a gorgeous waterfall. Although she was very pregnant at the time, Jamie did great, and of course Adelaida loved sleeping in her backpack on her daddy's back.

Pagosa Springs also has a very nice wild animal park that we visited, and we were lucky enough to be there at the time of their daily feeding tour. We saw a brown bear, several black bears, coyotes, wolves, an elk, mountain lions, and several other animals being fed. The keeper talked to us about the different animals and several of them performed tricks for us before they were fed.



Dale and Adelaida are ready to find the waterfall.


If you look really closely in this picture, you can see Dale (wearing a blue shirt) and Adelaida (wearing white), just to the right of the base of the waterfall, framed by a darker patch of rock.


This is another of my favorite pictures of Dale and Adelaida, taken on our Pagosa Springs hike. I have this picture set as my computer background on my home computer.

Vacation in Indiana, Part 2: Independence Day

By Thursday of my vacation, I was feeling better and was quite relieved that Adelaida hadn't caught my illness. By Thursday evening, I was ready to get out of the house and do fun things. Mom, Mikel, Adelaida, and I were all sitting around the living room Thursday evening, when the doorbell rang. Mom answered the door, and I head her say, "come on in" to someone. Then, I heard Dale's voice! Yes, my dear, beloved husband had surprised me by joining Adelaida and me for our vacation! Dale wasn't able to stay the entire time that I was going to be in Indiana, but he did stay through the weekend and joined me for both an Independence Day party at Mom and Mikel's house and a quick trip to the farm to see my dad and Mary Jo. (Dale is pictured holding Adelaida and Brooke, the 16-month-old daughter of my friend from high school. Adelaida and Brooke were quite taken with each other and we hope that they grow up to be good friends!)

Friday was the big Independence Day party. We set up a tent outside, a volleyball net, and carried all the chairs out to the grassy area under a big deciduous tree. We made way too much food and had family, friends, and neighbors join us for a perfect relaxing summer holiday celebration.


Brooke and Adelaida both wore red, white, and blue American dresses for the occasion and were both so happy to run around (Brooke) or sit happily (Adelaida) outside with the adults. This picture was taken just before Brooke decided to sit on Adelaida's lap! Her daddy saw it happen and jumped up to stop Brooke, although Adelaida didn't really seem to mind.






One highlight of the party was Pinky, Mom and Mikel's next-door neighbor who is a henna tattoo artist. She came over with her henna supplies and quickly gave several of the girls (Rachel R, Jennie, and me) tattoos. Billy saw us getting tattoos and thought it was really cool, so Pinky gave Billy a tattoo on his arm, in a masculine design, of course!

Billy and I posed with our tattoos. Mine is a butterfly and Billy has a yin-yang and lightning bolts.


The next day, Dale, Adelaida, and I went down to Owen County to spend some time with my dad and Mary Jo. Dad put Dale to work installing stepping stones at the lake house while Adelaida supervised from her blanket.





Dad and Mary Jo both enjoyed seeing, playing with, and holding Adelaida. Mary Jo taught Adelaida to play peek-a-boo, which she just loved. It is so wonderful to hear Adelaida giggle!


Before we left, Dale had the privilege (I guess) of moving the cows to a new pasture and feeding them. I was a little worried at one point that he would be run over by the cows, but he survived the ordeal!