Griffin has learned how to say “yeah”. This is so awesome. I can ask “do you want to play with blocks?” or some such thing and he’ll answer “yeah” or shake his head for no. Yesterday he was smiling at the woman behind us at the supermarket and we started talking. I told her he’d just learned to say “yeah”. She asked “really?” and he responded “yeah”. So much fun.

Like many folks (12 or 13 of us), I’ve been anxiously awaiting the next generation DVD technology, such that I may enjoy my NetFlix movies in High Definition. The introduction is near, and has suffered the inevitable brutal format war already. HD-DVD (lo-tech) vs. Blu-Ray (hi-tech). Blu-Ray appears to have won even before getting out of the gate, as it should have, as DVD appropriately did over Divx (what were they thinking!?), and as Beta should have over VHS. Blu-Rays will hold up to 50GB of data, over a typical DVD’s 4.7GB.

Only now it seems as though holographic discs may be out next year that dwarf the storage capacity of the not-yet-even-available next generation technology.

In other news (i.e. things that keep me from thinking too hard about reality), my computer that’s been dead for 4 months appears to simply need a replacement stick of RAM. Grrr. Arg. Hours of diagnostics, troubleshooting, repairs, reinstalls, tear downs, rebuilds, replacement motherboard and video card bought and returned, all come down to a lousy $40 stick of memory to plop in a slot.

A few weeks ago we took Griffin on his first vacation. We flew into southern California to visit Julian’s dad Geoff and his wife Dawn, then we drove up the coast and visited Julian’s mom Joanne and Corky. The trip out there went smoothly despite a rough start. We had to wake up at 4:30 in the morning to catch our flight out of Milwaukee, it was a switch to be the ones waking Griffin up. We learned an important lesson for future trips – leave the kid in his pajamas. He did really well on the flight, reading, playing with toys, watching a DVD, and generally charming all the people around us on the plane. I think I’ll post mostly images since it’s already taken me this long to blog about this, and I’ll just do the southern California part today. Here are pictures from Griffin’s first visit to the ocean:

Our friends Scott and Maureen and their 19 month old son Sean just moved back to California and in a happy coincidence live only 10 minutes away from Geoff and Dawn. We visited them on our second day, taking a trip to the Orange County park where we played on a playground, visited a small zoo, and took a train ride:

We were planning to drive up the coast and spend a few nights in Big Sur, but we soon realized that was too long to drive with a small child. So, we spent a night in San Luis Obispo instead. We walked around the downtown and had a great meal, here’s Griffin leading the way:

The next morning jet lag and Griffin had us wide awake at 6:00. It was grey and drizzling outside but no matter, we had the hotel attendant let us into the outdoor pool. We mainly just hung out in the hot tub until – bonus – Julian spotted a bear. We could hear the garbage trucks while we were in the hot tub so we’re assuming it came down from the mountains to steal a snack.

The next day we drove up the coast again, stopping at Nepenthe for lunch. This was high on my list of things to do on our trip. The food is good but the location is astounding. If I had to pick the three most beautiful places I’ve ever been Big Sur would certainly make the list and Nepenthe is as beautiful as any spot along that gorgeous coastline.

Robert Louis Stevenson described Big Sur as “the greatest meeting of land and sea”. Here are some images from the rest of the day’s drive:

This snap is symbolic of my state of being these days. A 13-foot outdoor antenna balanced precariously on a dustbin, 4 feet off the floor. Lest it be construed as particularly negative, I point to the fact that we’ve been able to view the latest Raiders game and most recent episode of Lost in High Definition thanks to this state of the art set-up.

Tonight I’m taking another stab at assessing what parts of my computer work, so as to determine exactly what I need to buy with the proceeds from unused music equipment currently for sale on eBay. Crouching on all fours in the process (the only way to navigate my office, as is clearly evident), I was practically molested by both cats, crazed at the notion of finding a human unpreoccupied by an 18 month old toddler with an unhealthy (by feline standards) obsession with household cats.

Griffin, today you are 18 months old, a whole year and a half. All over the internet I see people writing these beautiful letters to their children, and I’m sorry you don’t have a more eloquent mother. I hope you know I love you more than I thought possible and that every day I’m grateful for you.

We went to California last week and have tons of pictures and things to talk about. However, we’re still getting back on our feet and catching back up on everything, so I’ll just do a quick update. Griffin has started pushing himself forwards on his car toy, previously he just went backwards. He’s started saying his first two-syllable word, baby. He can now say hot and cold, for cold he says “cuuuuld” and shakes his head like he’s shivering. This comes in really handy, tonight after the bath he let me know he was cold so I bundled him up. We’re working on a new bedtime routine to replace driving him to sleep, we should know how well it’s working after a week or so. More updates and trip pictures as soon as possible.