bengt-erik norum

explaining that appearance isn't everything, nicole told celeste she was beautiful on the inside. celeste responded "my teachers are beautiful on the outside and they are bloody on the inside. they are heart-y and brainy, too. we're all filled with bloood."

when she says blood, she really seems to enjoy dragging the word out.. "bloooood."

born in mid-january of 2000, celeste has the luxury of being easily able to compute her age based on the last three digits of the current year. "i'm 5 because it's 2005. in 2094, i'll be 94."

her grandfather gave her an offset for his age and helped her figure out how old he'd be in 2007, 2010, etc. he asked her how old he'd be in 2055. she said, "i'll be 55. you'll be died, already."

i've been in idaho falls with the kids for the week.  nicole's in new york with one of her friends from college, who is in the process of moving there, so i'm alone with the kids.  this week has been amazing.  i haven't had this much time alone with the kids in over a year and i've really enjoyed the time.

quick aside: my kids are the best.  they're smart, funny, strong, caring, cute, and resourceful.

before this week, i set a goal to get eva, my 2 year old, totally potty trained by the end of the week.  nicole suggested it a couple weeks ago, after i was already determined to do so.  she's said she'd tried, but with the time shortage from school, hadn't been able to make it work.

to put it succinctly, mission complete.  two days since an accident and she's continuing to get more confident.

i'm sitting in the san jose airport waiting for a delayed flight to seattle. my work mail is syncing slowly, so i decided to clean up my personal inbox. doing so, i noticed a trend.

i've received a relatively large number of messages from people that read similar to: "hey, how've you been? haven't talked to you in awhile. life's good here (insert details). i ran across your blog. how's your health?"

i'm horrible about replying to personal email. i get distracted with things that aren't nearly as important and lose the mail behind a few hundred pieces of spam. i think i need to adopt some work habits for my personal mail. in the short term, i'll post here and reply to these people that think i'm ignoring them.

having tapered off to a slow trickle of posts, there's alot of "big" or "important" life events that have passed unmentioned:

• i'm engaged to a beautiful woman, katherine brown, i met through work. wedding isn't until sept. of 2009, mostly because we've been busy with the rest of this list
• we moved to duvall, washington, a town of ~7000 people
• we bought a 3 bed, 2 bath house on 15 acres.
• kat is working in redmond, i haven't changed jobs and am still working in microsoft's silicon alley campus. i fly alot.
• my kids still live in idaho falls, id. celeste turned 8 a couple weekends ago and eva turns 4 in march. did i mention that i fly alot?

on the health front, in short, i still have barrett's and am looking for a gastroenterologist up here. the aciphex has done a pretty good job of controlling symptoms (and further damage), as long as i'm careful about what and when i eat. i'll post more on this, later this weekend.