Let Go

The CEO of my company was let go today. I have seen the same movie in Office Depot before. They laid off 180 employees in 2000 and then the CEO was fired. We laid off 40 employees 2 weeks ago and the CEO resigned today on mutual agreement with the Board.

When a company doesn't perform well, the only one to be blamed is the CEO. There is a reason why CEOs get paid so much more than a normal employee. They're charged to lead the company to success. Most CEOs in the market are mediocre. A lot of times they do not care whether their companies perform well or not, because they get a huge severance package when they fail their jobs. This is called "succeed by failure" in Warren Buffet's term.

In the previous bad channel, Office Depot's CEO got 2 years' salary as compensation package when he left the company. He could play golf everyday and still live like a king.

In today's situation, our company will pay the CEO so much money that the amount will far exceed the total salary expenses of the 40 employees who got pink slips a couple of weeks ago.

RAY-BAN

We were at Costco for lunch today. It's so hard to paw through suitable sunglasses for me because I have typical oriental nose with low bridge.

We finally bought a pair of Ray-Ban for me. Biajee said this is a very famous brand. Obviously I'm too buried in my database and finance world to have heard of it. On the frame, it actually says "Made in Italy" and the case feels like leather as well.

It started snowing last night. We already got about 5 inches in the morning and there is more coming.

"How are they going to install the A/C in the snow?" Biajee was worrying this morning.

"Honey, for $3,200, they should be able to figure out how to dig, wire the coils, lift the A/C over the fence and make us dinner."

Air Conditioning

We went over to CHC Tech during lunch to compare the different air conditioning units. A/C will be installed in our house tomorrow. We're going to get a Lennox AC13 with 5 years warranty on coils and 10 years warranty on compressor. We didn't opt for the more expensive unit that'll qualify us for tax benefit because we're not planning on living in this house forever.

A/C is a seasonal business. Price will go up 5% on April 1st. We'd like to save some money by purchasing it now.

It's going to take two workers 6 hours to put an A/C unit in our yard. They'll have to level off the ground, lay the pad and sit the unit on it before they connect all the wires and coils.

It's a lot of fun to have a house. We have to learn so much and every time we decide to do something, it costs thousands of dollars.

I want to be a DUMMY

I had an eye exam on Saturday. Dr. Walters said that my left eye is perfect while my right eye is bad. If I don't wear contact lens or glasses for my right eye, it may decide not to work one day. She prescribed me one contact lens for my right eye and had her assistant teach me how to use it.

For the first time in my life, I tried to put on and take off this transparent little thing in the Doctor's office. I wasted nearly 2 hours there and still made no progress.

Yesterday after I told Susan about how difficult it was to put on contact lens, Susan commented on this huge deal in my life, "Pei, even a dummy can do it. It's quite easy. Just think of icecream cones when you're putting it in so that you won't feel nervous." Obviously I wasn't a dummy on Saturday. Dr. W finally kicked me out of her office and told me that I could go back and practice there next Saturday.

I took the advice and tried this morning. It only took me 10 minutes to put it in. The icecream cone worked! I'm so impressed with myself. I can be dumb if I want to.

Now I'm facing another dilemma: how do I take it out tonight?

More Gymboree

Gymboree gave me two coupons when I purchased the class for Arnold last Saturday. We could go to a Gymboree store and buy $50 worth of products and get $25 off. The discounts increase by $50 tiers: $50 off for $100 commodities, $75 off for $150 commodities, and so on.

Biajee and I are both shopping freaks. We went to the mall during lunch today and picked up a sun-hat and four different onesies for Arnold. The problem is a Gymboree store is just a clothing store for children. There are limited choices. We couldn't find too many things to buy even if we want to spend more money.

Dr. C's nurse made it clear to me that Arnold cannot have any seafood till he is one year old, mainly because of the mercury in the fish. Strawberries and nuts may cause problems as well. We've been feeding Arnold beef every day this week. We think he'll need to try pork next week and maybe lamb afterwards.

Late Again

We've been to work late two days in a row. The alarm clock wasn't set up and we simply slept through 6:35 am today. Arnold would sleep till he poops or becomes hungry.

He is the laziest in our family as of today. Although he has mastered the skill of crawling, he refuses to go anywhere further than he is interested in. Most of the time he sits there playing with his toys and gets a kick out of it.

Our job is to child proof all the cabinets this weekend. We need to have different kind of vegetables and fruits in the house every day to satisfy his diet needs. He usually eats till he has a round stomache like Winnie-the-Pooh. Biajee and I are always wondering whether his belly will explode because of excess food someday.

His favorite things to do are clapping hands, high fives and crawling over to me for breast milk.

Crawl

Arnold started CRAWLING at day care yesterday. We're so relieved. He's been crawling backwards for weeks and we thought he'd never figure it out. Of course he hasn't realized he could crawl yet, otherwise he'd be getting to everywhere in the house.

He can eat four jar meals these days, trying to make up for the loss of enjoying food due to last week's diarrhea. It looks like he's gained quite a few pounds overnight.

Biajee brought a whole jug of sunscreen to school for Arnold. It's the brand I use, Banana Boat for Babies, SPF 50. We used to have a lot of these around the house until Biajee threw one away at Denver Airport on our way to Hawaii. The inspection officer didn't search our carry-on bags for such lotions. Biajee felt that we got unfair treatment and volunteered to show him everything we had in our carry-on. It was quite impressive that we got so many stuff that need to go to the trash can after he did that.

Gymboree

Our new couch got delivered yesterday. It is the firmest couch that we can find in town. And it is a futon bed as well. It had black pleather-made cover and is quite modern in style.

I took Arnold to a free Gymboree class while Biajee was busy re-arranging the family room. We sang quite a few English baby songs together while I hold Arnold to dance, applause and even going down the slide! It's magnificent. I have registered Arnold as a Gymboree member and paid for 24 Saturday classes for him. It's good to know that he's covered till late September.

Gymbo is this friendly, funny, artistic and music-driven clown that sits in the Gymboree play room all the time. They have free open gym time four days a week. Most of them are during the day while we're working though. I'm hoping that sometimes Biajee could take Arnold to the Wednesday 5 pm open gym hours if he can get off work earlier.

More Poop

Arnold got thrown out of school for 2 more days again. His diarrhea still hasn't gone away. I'm having him with me at work today and I'm taking tomorrow off as a sick day to be home with him.

My coworker advised us to buy some anti-diarrhea medicine to give to him. The doctors in this country normally wouldn't want to administer any medicine to babies. Biajee got the drug during lunch hour and we gave Arnold a few bites. He still poops but no longer vomits. We think he is getting better, but his stool stinks. I had to skip gym today to be with him, but I'm taking him to 24 Hour Fitness with me tomorrow morning.

Arnold behaves so well when coming to work with me. He is sleeping next to me now. Most employees in this company are downstairs in the quarterly employee meeting. I finally have some quiet time to finish work.

It's such a beautiful day outside. I wish we could enjoy more if Arnold was not sick.

Neighborhood Party

We went to our neighbor's house for a party last night. It's a babies' party. There are over 10 babies in this neighborhood with children under 2 years old. I hope Arnold gets someone to play with when he is older.

He got thrown out of school again due to diarrhea. I took him to work for the rest of the day. He had fluid fecal evacuation while he was next to my desk. It smelled aweful. I took him to the restroom for a change.

Biajee took today off to stay home with him. Arnold had a sleepless night and finally vomitted in our bed this morning.

I called Dr. C and she suggested that we buy Pedialype for this. It's water mixed up with sugar and salt for babies mainly to prevent dehydration. If he gets better, we can feed him rice with water. Biajee slept till 9:30 am before he took Arnold to the grocery store for the medicine.

If Arnold doesn't get better, I may have to take tomorrow off as a sick day.

Tax

"If it's breathing, tax it. If it's not breathing, find its children and tax them."
-- George W. Bush Jr.

We worked on our taxes yesterday and still haven't finished it. Uncle Sam is brutal. We're paying more taxes every year. We're obtaining Arnold's day care receipt for 2006 today and hopefully can deduct some taxes.

Day Light Saving took effect yesterday. Suddenly we lost a whole hour. Arnold and I never even stepped outdoors yesterday. Biajee only took out the garbage in the evening.

Poor Arnold had sick stomache due to the duck he had from the party the night before. Dr. C said he could pretty much eat anything now except for nuts, honey, fish and shell fish. We got excited and fed him a lot of party food at a friend's house. He threw up and pooped for the whole day. It's stupid to introduce to many varieties of food to him at the same time. Obviously he cannot handle oily food.

9 Month Check up

Arnold had his nine month check up today. I waved at Biajee on his way back to Montessori with Arnold, but he could not see me. Of course I was in my workout gear jogging around with my coworker. I finally managed to knock on his window at the red light to obtain Arnold's measurements:

Measure Percentage

Head 17-3/4 40%

Length 28.5 52%

Weight 19 lb 12.5 oz 40%

Doctor said he need large toys he could climb on to play with. And we need to speak single word like Doggy or Mommy to him so that he could grasp it.

Our van is still at the body shop because they need to take it to the dealership for programming.

My company blocked all the IM software except for Skype. Skype is the software we use to talk to our Asian office most of the time. Chat and phone functions are both available.

We're going to a party tomorrow night and hopefully we can finish working on our taxes this weekend.

Women's Day

Today is Women's Day. I have a choice to go to a Chinese restaurant in Denver with a group of girls for Dim Sum or to go to the gym. I think gym is a better choice. I don't need to beef myself up to a mammoth now that I'm not pregnant any more.

We took our Sienna to the body shop. The new cruise control module had arrived and we'll have it installed so that we could drive long distance hassel free again.

Arnold's 9-month checkup is tomorrow morning. We're so looking forward to weighing him and measuring him again. Biajee fed him more jar food last night because I had to work late. Soon they'll both look like jars.

Biajee and I picked out Number 23 for my soccer player number. It's the number for both Michael Jordan and David Beckham. I'll be bringing Biajee's white jersey and my red T-Shirt of Houston Rocket's 1994 Championship to every game. I'll wear red or white each time.

Class Reunion

Daddy's college classmates came into town yesterday for APS. They made their way to our house, greeted me, played with me and brought me gifts! It was a blast because it was the first time in my life to meet all these nerdy physics PhD people except for Uncle Ran Ying, who arrived after I went to bed. They shared a lot of interesting stories in different schools, institutes and academic circles.

I pooped a few times while they were here to show them how productive I could be in a normal day. They finally digested the idea of how disgusting a dirty diaper could be. Nobody even volunteered to change my diaper for me.

Everyone tried to have me taste beer so that they could play cards after I got put to sleep. I got so much attention because these uncles were so good to me and they knew so many fun things to play with. When I can walk and talk I'm sure I'll have a lot more fun with them.

Crazy Uncle Didibaba made me laugh with all his stupid jokes and funny faces. Uncle Mud Dog tried to watch soccer with me, but got stopped by Daddy. Doesn't he know TV is actually bad for babies? I sucked on Uncle Luo Kang's cell phone, but got caught by mom. What on earth does she expect an eight-month old to do?

Uncle Zhu came in late because he had to go to El Dora ski resort to experience snow in Colorado. I was lucky that I met him and said Hi to him before I went to bed.

We didn't get very good pictures taken though. None of these uncles are good at taking photos. As a matter of fact, Daddy became my idol super photographer after I see all the pictures taken by Uncle Didibaba.

Receipt

I lost my receipt for the USB headset last month. Obviously it's a necessity for my corporate expense report.

"You can go to Best Buy, give them the credit card and ask them to reprint it for you." Biajee suggested.

"How do you know they can do that?"

"I watched Seinfeld and in one series Krammer called in asking people to reprint a receipt for him in 1984."

I like Seinfeld. He is a funny guy. His speech to all the celebrities at the Oscar was so true: You get an invitation for this event being told you MIGHT be the best. You're dressed up in your best outfit and put in the same room with the crowd so that everyone can watch your facial expression when it is announced that you are not the best.

Soccer

I just registered for a Co-Ed soccer team this season. By scanning in the photo for my player card, I actually do not need to go to the South Boulder Rec Center for registration.

We'll be playing every Sunday and on some week day nights. According to the rules, shin guards are required of all players, no slide tackling is allowed and a fine of $50 will be assessed for a red card. Two red cards means suspension from the remainder of the season. It is another way to say I cannot kick other players.

Kyle winked at me after learning that I signed up for the soccer league.

"Hey Pei, I have 12 soccer balls. You can borrow a few if you need something for practice."

"No thanks. We paid $68 for ours and I'll use my own."

"So you have a good ball. Can I trade two of mine for yours?"

"NO!"

"How about five?"

"Absolutely not. You have a dozen junk in your closet."