Offer

Back again in Minneapolis, for the third time this month! This funky building is the McNamara Alumni Center on the U of M campus. I was called back for another interview, and this time, they told me they wanted me to take the job. We spent the next few months negotiating details, but we knew that it was time to leave California.

Cruisewear

Ellen models an adorable outfit for our upcoming Florida vacation and Disney cruise. We couldn't resist buying the pink straw hat.

You know what I could really go for? Canadian.

I spotted this in downtown Toronto. This just tickled me. How often have you thought of going out for some Canadian comfort food?

Just dropped in

This turned out to be my season for visits to Minneapolis! I was actually en route to a conference in Toronto, and my 30 minute connection in Minneapolis became an unplanned 30 hour layover, due to a fire in the airport that disabled most of the systems there. I took advantage of the stop to visit with friends Scott, Patrick, and Ilene for brunch.

Unhappily, my luggage went AWOL for most of the trip, and I got to wear these clothes for four straight days.

The lineup

In the faculty lineup in Pasadena for the annual commencement ceremony. I march in with the College of Allied Health faculty and don't really have anything to do other than clap for the graduates. I still enjoy the ceremonies, long as they are. This was my last ceremony for Western, and I felt that was going to be the case, even if I didn't know how my interview in Minnesota would turn out.

Mission Control

Back at work, we're testing a teamwork simulation assessment I developed. It was a lot of fun being in the control room monitoring everything on four-way split screen.

So we loaded up the truck and moved to...

We went to Bouchon in Beverly Hills for Mother's Day. I think it was our only visit to Beverly Hills while we were in LA. We walked down Rodeo Drive and had a lovely champagne brunch, feeling (for a moment) like LA people.

He's checking it twice

On my way back to LA, I spotted this gentleman in the Delta Sky Club in Salt Lake City.

I didn't realize that Santa flew commercial during the rest of the year.

Science!

I snapped this shot of the forecourt of a new biomedical science building at the U, on my way back from the job interview. It was good to be back on campus.

A change of scenery

After a year in California, I decided to start applying for other positions. My job was pretty good, but Rachel was unable to find work, and we still felt like our life was a temporary situation. I wasn't looking for any new job at all, but something that might take us back home.

In December, I applied for a position at the University of Minnesota. I heard nothing in response and forgot about it. Then, in February, they reached out to me for a video interview. In March, they asked me to come out to Minneapolis. If nothing else, it was a free trip and a chance to visit the place I thought of as home. (I hadn't been back since a weekend in September 2009, when I was still trying to sell our old house.)

So, May 4 finds me admiring the mountain view from the Salt Lake City airport, on my way back to Minnesota.

One for the pizza, one for me...

Ellen likes making her own flatbread pizzas. Her current pizza of choice: bacon and kalamata olives. The kid definitely has her own tastes.

Order up!

April 24
Sometimes, to entice Ellen to come down to breakfast, I text Mommy a picture of her plate. Yes, this is how I'm harnessing the power of the 21st century ...

Fairy tale

I mentioned back in October that we bid on a "date night" package at the elementary school charity auction. It included, besides gift certificates for dinner and a movie, babysitting from an actual princess in this year's Rose Parade Court. Ellen was excited to have a "real" princess babysitting for her, though slightly disappointed that she wasn't wearing her sash and tiara.

Jonah's not a Disney story, is it?

But I guess Pinocchio is. That's the one with the whale, right?

Another visit (from my good friend Scott), another Disney trip! Ellen's tiny arm is trying to pull Scott down before the whale eats him.

Self-distortrait

I got to fly my geek flag by finally buying an iPad! (I'm sure I justified it for some mumbledy-important reason.) Ellen and I love to play with Photo Booth, the self-portrait software that lets you distort your image in funhouse ways. I often find dozens of new Ellen portraits saved in the app.

Mincing meat, not words

The Ferry Building has been reinvented as an upscale food market. I browsed there for gifts (and lunch) a few times. Besides all the usual specialists in cheese, coffee, sweets, etc., there is the pork stall. Or as they put it "Tasty Salted Pig Parts."

City by the Bay

I'm in San Francisco for a few days for a conference. Unlike most of my conferences, this one's actually at a really awesome location -- in the Embarcadero right across from the Ferry Building. I took this from the elevator lobby in my hotel.

Gutsy

Hanging out with cousins at the Pretend City children's museum in Irvine. I particularly like the "Brain" headband.

Home alone

Rachel is off to New York for her grandmother's funeral. Ellen and I went on a "date" to Johnny Rockets. I took a few pictures of us to text to mommy to let her know she was missed.

Carnival

Not a great shot of our local synagogue's Purim carnival. Games, prizes, costumes, hamantaschen, the usual.

Mission Control

At work, I'm running a study on a new assessment battery for simulated healthcare patient encounters. In the control room, a bunch of faculty are observing the student-doctors at work and taking score.

Batteries very definitely included

Another trip to Disneyland, this time with an old friend I hadn't seen in almost a decade. We both have five year old daughters now, and they hit it off famously.

Where Seuss shops

As usual, shopping at Target. We came across storytime, so Ellen grabbed a beanbag and took a literature break.

Proud papa

I've been doing a lot of baking using the five-minute artisan bread technique. One of my experiments was to create filled breakfast rolls. Here's a ham-egg-cheese bun for Rachel's breakfast.

Bottomless pit

As Rachel likes to say, "Wow, your kid can sure put away breakfast." I'm surprised the bacon lasted as long as it did.

Tower of treats

For her birthday, we took Rachel out to fancy tea at the Scarlet Tea Room in Pasadena. Unfortunately, she was sick and lost her entire lunch shortly thereafter.

Old Abe Lincoln

One of Ellen's many construction paper costumes from kindergarten. She performed a rousing "Old Abe Lincoln" song for us. I don't remember this from elementary school. Somehow between the 70s and the 10s, Abe Lincoln earned the "old." I guess we just keep aging -- even after death.

Key to the world

For our upcoming cruise to the Bahamas, Ellen needed a passport. She was happy to pose for her photo and pestered us until the passport arrived in the mail.

View from my front door

This winter morning, everyone on Facebook was posting pictures of the blizzard that had blanketed the Midwest and East Coast. I took this picture of sunshine and lemons for contrast. Imagine how little gratitude I received for posting it!

Clustertruck!

We decided to check out the gourmet food truck fad that is sweeping LA (and, to a lesser degree, many other cities). They usually don't make it out to our neck of suburbia or do so at times inconvenient to boring-married-people-with-a-small-child, but there was a food truck "festival" at the Santa Anita Park racetrack, with twenty of the beasts.

Fail. Twenty trucks and 5000 hungry attendees meant lines that were 2+ hours long and trucks that couldn't keep up with demand. They ran out of stuff and shut down. I spent two hours in line to place an order, waited another hour in vain for the food, and finally left, grumpy and starving. We ended up getting a salad at a sit-down restaurant nearby. No wait.

Burgers al fresco

  

One advantage to living in LA is the practically year-round outdoor dining. At a local gourmet burger shop, we have a warm and sunny lunch in mid-January.

Why don't waiting rooms ever have THIS month's issue?

At the vet. No, really. I'm not sure if this is a real magazine or an (intentional) joke. I'm afraid to Google it to find out.

Sunday in the Park

Griffith Park, that is. We finally got out to one of LA's iconic recreation areas, a big hilly park in the middle of the city. We didn't go to the LA Zoo (I'm told it's almost impossible unless you get there first thing in the morning) or the Griffith Observatory, but we went to an historic carousel and Train Town, and had a nice picnic lunch. In this shot, Ellen and one of her friends are enjoying a miniature train ride.

Birth of a food blogger

She decided she wanted to take a picture of her meal. Is this the start of her career as one of those food-porn bloggers?

(For the record, the mass of unattractive beige is baked chicken schnitzel, spaetzel, and roasted Brussels sprouts. I get four stars out of five on Yelp -- please "like" this review, blah blah blah...)

Toy Story: After Dark

I came home from work and found this scene on the bed. Apparently, I missed a hell of a party.

The Retrospective That Wasn't

It’s mid-August, and I’m writing the retrospective post for January.

I wasn’t planning on doing this. My contribution to this photoblog began to taper off around the end of 2009. In part, that was because I was using Facebook more and more to upload photos and post commentary on my life or things that amused me. But mostly, it was because I wasn’t sure this blog had anything interesting to report.

When I started a Project 365 blog in 2008, it was to take up the challenge to take a picture every day to document my life. The first year became more interesting than intended, when routine was completely disrupted with the loss of my job. 2008 became about the search and the adjustment to unemployment and consulting life. Early in 2009, we made the decision to take a job in California and try to make a life there. The blog in 2009 documented the moving process and the transition to a new way of life.

There wasn’t really a story in 2010. We continued to rent a home in California. Rachel got some part-time work that was out of her field (and paid not that well, to boot). Ellen’s behavior problems posed real challenges in preschool and kindergarten. We felt that we were getting by but not really settling in or making a future. And, as the economic news continued to be bad, it didn’t seem like there was any change to the new status quo coming. 

Our family aspirations are pretty boring – stability, a nice home, friends, family, health, good jobs. Since I was let go from my job in 2008, we haven’t had all of that. We’ve made it through each crisis, but it’s felt like we have been in survival mode for a long, long time. 

There wasn’t much I felt the need to photograph. Routine is boring – get up, go to work, come home, sleep. I wasn’t about to start a running log of my lunches. If Rachel had been able to find a good job in her field, that would have shaken things up, and we would have started planning for the future. But our hope for that outcome was dimming. I figured I’d eventually finish uploading pictures from 2010, write a wrap-up post, and let the photoblog end.

Then, well, this opportunity came along …

Keep reading. 2011 is NOT more of the same!