I took Tau to the park to ride the train yesterday and took a few snaps along the way.

Thought I’d post them for the family who haven’t had the chance to visit. They are in our La Casa set on Flickr.

Enjoy!

I don’t believe it! I’m standing by the Greek philosopher Heraclitus who said, “The road uphill and the road downhill are one and the same!”

We had a wonderful time in Palm Springs for my 40th birthday this past weekend. Dave rented a gorgeous place with a pool and a hot tub, and we spent the weekend relaxing, sleeping in, going for coffee and yes, the three of us ate a whole birthday cake! It was mostly fruit and sponge cake, or so I keep telling myself.

Also, I have been wanting to buy a digital SLR camera for a long time now and with birthday contributions from various family members (thanks again all!), I was able to order my Canon Rebel XTi and a 50mm lens last week. It arrived in time to take away with us.

Thanks for your lovely cards, calls and flowers all!

Halloween art from daycare

Sometimes life gets in the way and I don’t get to report back on a major event. Like Halloween.

Which for Dave and I is neither here nor there, not having grown up trick or treating and so feeling no real connection with the holiday. In our pre-Tau days, we were the people who turned off the lights and curled up in bed early with a movie. Or went out for dinner so that we could see everyone dressed up but not have to wrangle with the challenges that Halloween presents.

Like how many pieces of candy to give each trick or treater. And whether you hand the treats out or just hold out the bowl and let kids help themselves. And what kind of candy is deemed acceptable anyway? All that and gauging how much candy to buy upfront, so that you don’t have a mountain of Kit Kats and M&Ms left over. Not that that’s a tragedy in my opinion — I can always find a way to dispose of Kit Kat bars.

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This post is part of Blog Action Day, a day of environmental discussion and participation by bloggers around the world.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

No, it’s our laundry. Our humble jeans, shirts and towels hanging on a $9.99 clothes horse, saving us a bit of money and helping to fight global warming.

Did you know that dryers use five to ten percent of residential electricity in the United States? That cutting the number of times you use your dryer by just one load a week reduces CO2 emissions by 200 pounds a year? Hard to know what that means in the global scheme of things but every little bit helps, right?

Dave and I were both raised in South Africa, where the hot, mostly dry climate means that the vast majority of people dry ALL their laundry outdoors in the sunshine on washing lines. Our childhood memories are of folding crisp, bone-dry towels, of chasing our siblings through lines of flapping bedsheets and of learning to hang t-shirts so that they didn’t dry all pulled at the peg marks. (more…)

Oh my. I’ve been trying to tell you all about our lovely week away in Santa Barbara for two weeks. And every time I do, we end up having to take our kid to the emergency clinic and so I tell you about that instead.

So, the short version, lest we be interrupted again. And to be honest, it’s Sunday evening and I’d like an early night but I really want to tell you about the fabulous time we had away.

We love Santa Barbara. Love it more every time we go there.

This time, Dave booked four nights in a snazzy little condo he found on the Internet. A property belonging to a couple that have clearly traveled extensively, as evidenced by the eclectic decor and shelves and shelves of travel books. I should mention the gourmet kitchen and the comfy couch that was big enough for all three of us to sit on to watch Clifford the Big Red Dog and the toddler-proof, easy-clean hardwood floors. No carpet to stain. But instead, I’ll suggest you go and take a look at our Santa Barbara set on Flickr. It really felt like home without, you know, feeling like home. (more…)

Today I wanted two photographs printed. ASAP. Within reason.

So I went online at lunch time and logged into my Shutterfly account. I ordered the two prints I wanted, grumbling all the while that I was going to have to pay the base shipping rate for TWO measly prints.

Why? Because I am too lazy to burn them to a disc (keep meaning to get one of those mini-USB thingies) then drive to a photo finisher, drop them off and then have to go back tomorrow to get them.

When I clicked Check Out, Shutterfly asked whether I wanted the pictures shipped or whether I’d like to pick them up in an hour at the Target store closest to me.

Uh, the one right across the road from daycare? Where I need to drive to pick up my kid this afternoon anyway?

Yes, that one.

Um, yes please.

And sorry Internet. Love you. Really I do.

I posted recently about the shoes I won from Ryka, which should be arriving any day now.

For those of you in the US, Ryka has another great giveaway starting today. As part of their “Good For Your Sole” program, they will be giving away 50 pairs of shoes and 50 performance tees every day for the next 50 days.

Yay free stuff!

Oh, and for every pair they give away, they’ll be donating another to the Women’s Sports Foundation to distribute to organizations across the country providing health and wellness programs for women.

Register to win at http://www.ryka.com/main.asp

Yesterday afternoon we met our friend Joslin and her dog Doug at Kate Sessions Park for a picnic dinner. We hadn’t met Doug and she hadn’t seen Tau in a while.

Kate Sessions Park is probably one of San Diego’s best kept secrets. Take a look at this view (random shot found on Flickr) of downtown and the bay.

More of our pics of the play date are in our Flickr stream.

I am too close to this to blog objectively. One TN visa, two H1-Bs and six years later, we are still playing the Green Card waiting game.

And trust me, more than most I know that this is a complex issue. But this news is so big and feels so very surreal for folks like us (especially seeing that we moved here from British Columbia) that I couldn’t not touch on it.

From their press release yesterday:

“Microsoft Corp. today announced that it intends to expand its presence in Canada by opening a new software development center in the greater Vancouver, British Columbia, area. The Microsoft Canada Development Centre will open in the fall of 2007 and will be home to software developers from around the world.”

Bill Gates and Co. have long been lobbying government to make things more viable for the thousands of technical professionals working and living in the US on H1-B visas or standing in that ever-so-long line for a Green Card. I guess they know nothing’s going to change soon.

More in the National Post today:

“The company has long been pressuring U.S. immigration officials to increase the number of foreign workers it can employ in the United States. The U.S. government typically issues about 85,000 visas annually to foreign workers with specialized skills and warned in April there would be a shortage this year. Canada, meanwhile, does not impose similar quotas.

Microsoft and other companies have been saying for a long time, ‘If you make it so difficult for U.S. companies to bring in talented foreign nationals that they need, companies are going to fill those positions abroad’ said Ted Ruthizer of U.S. law firm Kramer Levin Naftalis and Frankel.

‘This is just the fulfillment of this promise,’ said Mr. Ruthizer, who runs [Microsoft's] business-immigration practice.”

Dear Aimee,

Thank you. You said what I wanted to say but didn’t feel up to saying.

Just that morning I’d been listening to NPR in the car and caught the tail end of a discussion on the reluctance many Americans feel to speak out for fear of seeming unpatriotic. Fear of pointing out that the emperor is butt nekkid when everyone else is wrapping him in the flag.

As someone still standing in line for permanent residency, I feel it even more keenly — the reluctance to say too much, for fear of seeming ungrateful or rude.

My fourth of July post? I made two of those cartoons. One with a regular flag and one with a flag that had a peace sign where the stars should be. But then the whole Scooter Libby thing just wiped me out — I felt frozen by the audacity of it and exhausted by the sheer arrogance. When stuff like this happens, I often say to Dave, “Why aren’t people rioting in the freaking streets!?”

And so I posted the safe one and hoped you’d all notice the weary look in my cartoon eye.

So thanks Aimee for saying it out loud.

Your friend in the computer,

Sue … uh … Simpson
Springfield, USA

Create your own Simpsons Avatar.

Just back from a week on the Oregon coast.

You know you’re in Portland when …
Dashing from awning to awning in a downpour, you see a sign in a store window advertising their Birkenstock repair service.

You know you’re in the tiny beach community of Manzanita when …
Locals rolling up their mats at the end of yoga class chide their neighbor Bill for burning without a permit and bringing out the whole darn fire department.

You know you’re in transit in San Francisco when …
The heavily accented software engineer sitting across from you at the departure gate is discussing the philosophy of search algorithms and it sounds like poetry.

And you know you’ve landed back in San Diego late at night when …
You see girls pritzing along with their purse dogs, wearing halter tops designed to show off tattoos on the smalls of their backs.

We had a grand time at the beach with the family. Very relaxing. Stories and pictures to follow!

… you’ll see the large L (for Loser) in the middle of my forehead.

I’m always looking for ways to fill in my cultural blind spots. Stuff we’ve missed out on, not growning up here. Especially from TROA (The Rest of America) — not the altered reality that is California. Because (cringe) I’ve never been east of Palm Springs.

So I’d heard good things about Prairie Home Companion, the movie. And some time back I’d read a bit of Garrison Keillor, and though life away from the ocean always seems a bit foreign to me, I kinda liked his down-home sense of humor. It sort of reminded me of Stuart McLean’s CBC Vinyl Cafe series, which I liked.

Other reasons I added it to our Netflix rental queue:

• I’m a home-drive NPR listener, so even though I’ve never heard Prairie Home Companion the show, I figured the fact that I appreciate public radio probably boded well for a film written by one of their longtime team.
• Also figured it would be a sort of Cliffs Notes version of the real thing. Serious culture in a palatable form, like buying multigrain toaster waffles because they’re a good way to get fiber in your diet without having to eat tablespoons of bran husks.
• And then the cast was promising: Woody Harrelson, Kevin Kline, Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin and Robin Williams, among others.

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There are approximately 301,765,999 people in the US.
How many have your name?

To find out, visit How Many of Me?

Apparently there are 395 people in the US walking around with
my first and last name. Dave is more common — 1,180 of him.

Our son? Not so many.

I guess that’s what you get for crossing a
Tswana/Sesotho first name with an Irish surname.

This past Saturday, Democratic presidential candidates visited our fair city.

Hillary Clinton speaking on the current administration:

“Let me be very clear about what happened: The president took us to a pre-emptive war of his choosing based on his assessment of faulty evidence and trumped-up facts. He ignored the warnings of senior military advisers and he retaliated against those who tried to stop it. And once he got the authority to put inspectors back into Iraq, he ignored their findings. And it is something that will stand in American history as one of the darkest blots of leadership we’ve ever had.”