bonnie & jason

25 random things about Alissa

Some of you who are active Facebookers may have noticed a “25 random things about me” thing making the rounds. Well, Dennis did one for him… and then for his dog, Bailey. Since I never have an original thought and steal all of my ideas from other people, I thought it would be fun to do a “25 random things” from Alissa’s perspective. Besides, with the twins’ imminent arrival, this seems like a good way to capture some of the things that I’ll probably forget about with the craziness about to befall us.

1. I have a new little blue stool that helps me get into trouble in ways I never thought possible. However, when my stool isn’t handy, I just look up, point, and say “Reach!”

2. Usually, when I need my daddy, I just yell, “Daa eee!!!” But sometimes, when he doesn’t respond, I try yelling, “Jay shin!”

3. When I first started counting at about 18 months, I used to start with 2 and skip 8. Now I remember both 1 and 8 and can go to 20 but usually skip 13 through 16.

4. Thanks to Po Po and Gong Gong, I know some Cantonese. My favorite words are Juju (banana) and Baobao (bread).

5. Most people think I look a lot like Daddy. I even have the same part in my hair. But actually, I look a lot like Daddy’s mommy when she was little.

6. Even though I’m 25 months old, I still fit most of my 6-12 months clothes.

7. My favorite veggie is corn. But I also like peas and edamame, especially if ketchup is available for dipping.

8. I know a lot of animals and the sounds they make. Dog, cat, duck, cow, fish, horse, pig, bird, are all fun but monkeys are my favorite.

9. I took to my potty immediately. For a week. Since then, I’ve refused to use it. Instead, I just run off to a quiet corner of the house and do my business. A girl needs her privacy.

10. When I got in the car after my Daddy installed two more car seats the first thing I did is point and say “Two babies!”

11. I think I’m pretty empathetic for a toddler. When I was not even 18 months old and Mommy didn’t feel well because the two babies were making her sick, I would realize it and go find Daddy. Also, when I go out and hear a baby crying, I immediately tell Daddy that the baby is crying. Sometimes I even tell Daddy to give the baby a tissue.

12. I’ve known my Do-Re-Mi’s for a long time now.

13. When I come home after going to the park with Daddy, the first thing I do is go tell Mommy what happened. Usually in one or two word phrases. Swing! Slide! Run fast! Fall! Ouchee!

14. I have a bedtime routine that starts with dinner around 6:30, bath around 7:30, milk at 8:00, and “The Upside Down show” till 9:00 when I pick out the pacifier for the night, brush my teeth, read a book, and then go to sleep with Monkey.

15. When I’m a bad girl, I get put in my crib for a few minutes. I cry.

16. I like to play hide and seek but I don’t know how to hide and I’m not a very good seeker.

17. Daddy has a singing dancing Homer Simpson that is one of my favorite toys.

18. I also have an “Elmo knows your name” that I love. Not a big fan of the “Elmo live” though. Scary.

19. My parents named me Alissa with the thought that they would call me Ali for short. They never have.

20. I used to call myself “Sa.” Now I call myself “Asa.”

21. I’m big into doing things myself these days. I can put on my socks and shoes. I can sort of put my pants on and brush my teeth. I also like to buckle myself into my car seat and high chair. Haven’t figured out how to get myself out yet though.

22. My Daddy uploaded 4160 images to flickr in 2008. Guess who is in at least 95% of them?

23. Almost all of my cousins around my age are girls. Almost all of my unrelated peeps around my age are boys. Weird.

24. I’m not only empathetic, but I’m also sensitive. When I feel that people are laughing at me, I get all self conscious and will be embarrassed to the point that I’ll cry.

25. I like to kiss the babies through mommy’s belly. But I’ll probably want them to go back in there in another couple weeks!

Archiving 2008 resolution

Just archiving my old resolution as it’s now 2009 (For the record, I ended the year around 152). Haven’t figured out the 2009 resolution yet… maybe I’ll try to get abs of steel.

They say that if you write a goal down, your chances of meeting it increase dramatically. I also learned that goals should be S.M.A.R.T. Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Time constrained. So, this is me, writing down my goal.

Get to 160lbs by September 1, 2008 by managing portions, eating healthy, exercising 5 times a week.

That’s pretty smart I think.

I’ll be posting updates here so check back to monitor progress if you’re curious.

6/11: Ran 4 miles
6/15: Played 3 hours of tennis

WEIGH IN: 171LBS
6/16: Worked on the yard for 2 hours
6/17: Worked on the yard for 1 hour
6/18: Ran 3 miles
6/19: Walked 1 mile, ran 3 miles
6/20: Ran 3 miles
6/21: 2.5 hours of tennis

WEIGH IN: 169LBS
6/23: Walked 1.5 miles, ran 2 miles
6/24: Ran 3 miles
6/25: Ran 3 miles
6/26: Walked 5 miles
6/27: Walked 5 miles
6/29: 2 hours tennis

6/30: Walked 4 miles
7/1: Walked 4 miles
7/2: Walked 5 miles
7/3: Walked 3 miles
7/4: Walked 2 miles
7/5: Rode bike 10 miles, Tennis 3 hours

WEIGH IN: 168LBS
7/6: Walked about 2 miles
7/7: Rode bike to BART for work
7/9: Rode bike to BART for work, walked 3 miles
7/10: Rode bike to BART for work, walked 3 miles
WEIGH IN: 166LBS WOOT! ABOUT HALF WAY THERE!!!
7/11: Rode bike to BART for work, walked 3 miles

So it’s been a month and I’ve lost about 5 lbs. My pants are starting to fit a bit better again but I still have a ways to go. The last 6 lbs will likely be a bit more difficult than the first 5 lbs. That being said, I think the biking to work thing will be a nice surge in activity and I’ve been pretty disciplined in not overeating. It’s not like I’m starving, I just haven’t been doing any of the random opportunistic eating that I have had a bad habit of doing. Anyway, time to kick it up a notch and make sure I can get to 160 by Sept 1 per my goal. That’s about a pound a week… doable, but I’ll have to stay focused. No lapses!

7/12: Ran 4 miles with Alissa
7/13: Rode 16.6 miles

7/14-7-17: Just been riding my bike to and from BART for work.
WEIGH IN: 164LBS
7/18: Ran 4 miles with Alissa
7/19: Rode 9 miles (to Ranch 99 and back)
7/20-7/24: Just been riding my bike to and from BART for work. A couple walks to the store and back.
WEIGH IN: 162LBS
7/26: Walked 1.5 miles, ran 3.5 miles with Alissa
7/27: Biked 37 miles

WEIGH IN: 160LBS!!!
So I officially reached my goal today a month ahead of schedule! The biggest difference I think has been not eating to extremes. I eat when I’m hungry, BUT STOP when I’m not. That’s a simple but not so easy thing to do I guess. I’ve been pretty good about exercise as well but it’s not like I’m hard core about it. Ultimately, it’s not so much that I’m on a diet, but more so that I’ve made a lifestyle decision to not overeat. I think I can keep it up although I may cheat a bit more now that I feel like I have some buffer. It’s not that I haven’t been cheating already. Pizza and dessert at the Chiang’s last weekend didn’t help. But even then, I could have eaten an extra slice of pizza or had a few more brownies.
Anyway, with a month left to go to the official “deadline” I think I may try to get down to 155. I’m pretty happy at 160 given my pants are fitting nice and loosely now. But I might try doing some more weight lifting in addition to the cardio to try to get a little stronger. Maybe I can get my gut to go away entirely at that point… although I think I’ve had this gut since elementary school. We’ll see. I’ll likely maintain this for at least the next month and then re-evaluate at that point.

7/28-8/1: Nothing serious, just biked to work and did some walking to the store.
8/2: Played three hours of mixed doubles (but then ate too much BBQ.)

WEIGH IN: 160LBS
I seem to have plateaued… slacking off after reaching the initial goal.
8/6: Ran 3 miles with Alissa
8/9: Mountain biking at Skeggs Point: 5.5 miles, 3000 ft of climbing, 1600 calories burned

WEIGH IN: 159LBS
8/15: I’ve been reverting back to some old habits but seem to be maintaining the weight. Time to inject some new vigor into my motivation!

9/17: Hmm… still slacking a bit on the exercise front but weighed in at 157 the other day. Eating habits are doing ok I guess. Went for a 25 mile ride today though, so that should help. Still think I can get to 150 if I just try a little harder. I’ll try to make that happen by the end of the year.

11/10: Well, I weighed myself yesterday and came in at 154.5. So I guess I’ve reached my goal. In all, I’ve lost almost 20 lbs which seems like a lot although I think I can probably get to 150. Not that I feel like I need to lose more, but it’s such a nice round number. Plus, I feel like I need a little “holiday buffer.”

11/27: 153.0 today! But that’s probably back up to 154.5 after today’s Thanksgiving dinner.

Walk around the ‘hood

It was too cold to go to the park today but I wanted Alissa to get some fresh air so we just went for a quick walk around the block. It’s amazing how much stuff fascinates her around the perimeter of such a boring block. Among the highlights, she managed to kick a large pine cone almost all the way home.

She also tried replanting this small flower in all the random drain covers along the way.

DIY headphone amplifier – JDS labs CMoy bass boost version 2.02

With the stress of Alissa’s terrible twos and the impending birth of the two terribles, I’ve been taking on little projects here and there. The bike was one of the more ambitious projects. My latest project, though less ambitious, is new territory for me.

It’s new territory because it’s an electronic device which is not intuitive to me at all compared to the mechanical things I’m used to tackling. Anyway, without further ado, here it is:

What is it? It’s a headphone amplifier. Stuffed into an Altoids tin. Much like big speakers need amplification to sound their best, headphones also can sound better with stand alone amplification. It’s based on a simple inexpensive home brew design originally dreamed up by Chu Moy (which is why these are called CMoy amps.). Since the original incarnation, many folks have tweaked it to suit their needs. Some have built and sold them on ebay. Others have started small businesses providing parts and advice.

One of those businesses is JDS Labs. They provide the assembly guide, bill of materials, and the printed circuit board to guide you through the process. John, the man behind JDS was super responsive and really helpful in answering my questions and getting me parts quickly.

After reading the instructions multiple times and picking up some ancillary supplies, it took me about three hours to put the whole thing together. And to my surprise, it worked without having to do any trouble shooting! I probably could have taken my time a bit more on getting the holes in the tin more exact, but it’s not bad.

As for performance, it definitely improves the sound quality of my ipod and even the signal coming out of my Mac Pro. Everything is more detailed and “live” sounding. I will say that different combinations of songs, headphones, and sources provide different levels of improvement. The bass boost is thankfully not boomy or obnoxious at all. As a matter of fact, with the cheapo headphones I’m using now, I’d probably just leave the bass boost on all the time. I might feel differently after my new cans arrive next week though.

Since this is my first headphone amp, I don’t really have anything to compare it to. But as far as DIY projects go, this one was fun, rewarding, and not that expensive. And actually, since the parts were relatively cheap and I figured I would break something along the way, I ended up buying enough parts to make three. So I guess I have to start eating some Altoids!

EDIT: 1/25/09
I ended up finishing the other two amps. One is simpler in that I eliminated the bass boost knob. Here’s a pic before putting it in the peppermint altoids tin.

The other retains the bass boost knob but moves it to the stock location. This one went into a wintergreen altoids tin.

Alissa and Megan playing together

We had a breakthrough today as Alissa and Megan actually played together for the first time. Usually, they just play around each other and try to stake claim over the toys that happen to be around. But today, a strange thing happened.

Alissa and I were playing “sleep” in her room (when one of us pretends to sleep… tons of fun) when Megan walked in and kinda watched for a minute or so. Then Megan started climbing up the crib. Not a big deal… she just stepped up on the lower rail and hung on the vertical slats. Alissa saw this and you could almost see the light pop on over her head. “Whoa! Why didn’t I think of that?!” After pointing and saying, “Climb!” a few times, she decided to give a shot herself. So now I have two toddlers hanging from the side of a crib.

A few minutes later, that kind of got old, so Megan decided to take a shot at playing sleep as well.

Well Alissa wants in on that action too.

So to make sure Megan knows how to play, Alissa demonstrates.

Megan, being a quick study, gets the hang of it pretty quickly.

Of course, you can’t really expect two toddlers to play “sleep” for very long so they were both up and about shortly thereafter.

And Alissa decides it’s time to teach Megan game number two… Hop-hop.

Once again, Megan catches on pretty quickly and they proceed to hop-hop with squeals of delight for the next ten minutes.

Eventually, the grandmas get suspicious and put an end to this (not in a mean way, it was just time for Megan to go home.) In any case, it was very interesting to see Megan teach Alissa something and vice versa. I’m sure this will continue with both good and bad results for the next couple decades with not only these two usual suspects, but also Abigail, the twins, Devyn, Rylee, and who knows how many other little cousins. *Sigh*

The next Mia Hamm?

With the 70 degree weather today, I thought Alissa might want to go try out the new Astroturf field next to our local playground. So we took her purple ball and I introduced her to soccer for the first time. She’s actually pretty decent at kicking and even figured out that your supposed to get the ball in the net. Before long, however, she started looking longingly through the fence at the swings and slides so we abandoned the field for the playground. Doesn’t she look like a big girl with her jeans and her hair up?

Alissa’s new kitchen

Our house is starting to look like a daycare center and the twins haven’t even arrived yet! The latest addition is the play kitchen Benita and Alan got Alissa for Christmas that we put together yesterday. Eric and Alan helped me assemble it… so far, it’s still in one piece. Or actually, I should say, it’s still in a million pieces with all the utensils, cookware, cups, produce, etc. Although Alissa loves all the generous toys she gets, we really need to start asking people to just give Alissa books. Or other small, quiet things (like college tuition.) However, with the imminent arrival of the twins, I don’t think it’s going to happen anytime soon. Oh well… at least we can get rid of stuff the twins grow out of vs. saving it like we did with Alissa’s stuff.