Finally, the top half of the project is done. We have been using the buffet (the bottom half of the project) for about two years now. I built the buffet in about two months while looking for work. Once I landed a job, it took two years to complete the top half (the hutch). This just goes to show how having a job can cut into one's free time!

How I spent my first free Wednesday

I just went from five, eight-hour days to four ten-hour days at work. My first extra day-off was March 1st, Ash Wednesday and my sister’s birthday (who I still need to call).

The first part of the day was identical to any normal work-day: Vaishali drove off to work around the time I got out of bed. I got the girls up, gave them breakfast and helped them get ready for school. It was very cold out so I drove them all to the bus stop and saw the two elder ones onto the bus, then drove the mile to Jill’s house and dropped-off Jemma there. Normally, I would then continue on to work. This day, I just drove back home. I was home by about 9:00AM.

When I got home I began to sink into lethargy—a nap in the sunny patch in the middle of our bed enticed…I fought off the urge but still wasted a good hour reading the WSJ and working a soduko (curses on the grave of the inventor!). I broke the spell by making a fried-egg sandwich and washing it down with hot coffee and orange/pineapple juice.

It was now 10:00AM. I decided to revive a furniture project which had sat idle since last summer. A china hutch is complete except for sanding and finishing. I began to sand. For the next four hours I sanded, with the only interruptions being to relieve corners with the block plane or scrape-off bits of glue with a chisel. I did a once-over with 100 grit paper and only neglected the inside shelf—which was on the other side of the basement, forgotten.

I was covered in dust, it was 2:15, I had to pick-up the girls at the bus stop at 3:30 and I wanted to go for a run. I did a good 5 mile loop and made it to the bus stop 15 minutes early. (If I had been more ambitious, I would have showered before meeting the bus) Surenna, always solicitous of my feelings, pointed out later that I looked geeky dressed in black running pants, white running shoes, sweatshirt and gloves at the bus stop. She was probably right, but I was too hot to put on a coat, plus I wouldn’t want to get a coat all sweaty…

Once we got home, I enjoyed a long and hot shower: Really best to wait until after picking up the girls—I was fully cooled down and could take my time. After my shower and dressed in an un-geeky style, I set about making dinner, chicken pot-pies. First I Made the crust: Flour, butter, salt, and sugar were cut together and then three tablespoons of cold water gently added. I made the crust into a ball, put it into a plastic bag and let it rest in the fridge. Next, I peeled and diced one large potato and put it on to boil. Then I finely diced one large onion and began to brown it over ghee and then added a few crushed garlic cloves to the onions. Next, I peeled a carrot, diced it and added it to the boiling potatoes—turned off the onions. My time was up: Time to go and get Jemma, back by 5:15.

The next stage was to prepare chicken. We had left-over roasted chicken, so all I had to do is separate bite sized pieces of meat from bone and skin. Once I had accumulated a respectable pile of meat into the cold onion pan, I threw a handful of frozen peas into the potato and carrot pot and then drained it. After mixing all the ingredients in the pan I got out the dough to roll out the pie crusts.

To make one large pot pie is an easy mistake to make. It is not much harder to make a series of single serving ones—which are easier to serve and more pleasure to eat. Once I started to roll out the dough, I realized I should have doubled the crust recipe. It was all I could do to make sufficient area for two stoneware cereal bowls (adult pies) and three metal dessert dishes (little girl pies). Final assembly: meat and vegetable mix plus a healthy dollop of left-over gravy, then the top crust laid-on and sealed to the bottom crust. I got the pies into a 400F oven by 5:45 and had the kitchen cleaned and was upstairs helping the girls with their showers by 6:00.

Vaishali was home in another 15-20 minutes and whipped-up a salad for the adults—I gave apple sauce to the girls as a side course.

All in all, a fine first free Wednesday. Doh! Still need to call my sister!

Pecchia Christmas Letter 2005

Dear Family and Friends, We hope that this letter finds all of you in good health and good spirits! It has been a while since we last wrote a Pecchia Family letter. We may not have kept in touch with all of you very well, but please know that you have been in our thoughts and hearts. The last couple of years seem to have flown by. The children have grown, of course, and they delight us daily as we see the world and enjoy life through their points of view. We've experienced a lot of "firsts" with them – first slumber party, bike ride, and ribbon in a horse show for Surenna; first tooth lost, play date by herself, and school for Dahlia; first hair cut, airplane ride, and trip to Washington for Jemma. I think our most significant "last" has been diapers! Surenna, our 8 year old, continues to enjoy school as she is in the third grade this year. She is evolving into a mature, studious, and a generally quiet girl (when she isn't wrangling with her sisters or belting out pop songs with her friends). Taking after her father and her Grammy, she has found great joy in reading. She gobbled up all the Roald Dahl books she could get her hands on last summer and "The BFG" was by far her favorite. She's working her way through the "Chronicles of Narnia" and screamed when she got book the 12th of the "Series of Unfortunate Events". She also loves to write small stories and poems (in cursive), create beautiful pieces of art, and she has been scrap booking too. Dahlia, our gregarious middle child, has found kindergarten to be the perfect social outlet, full of small, like-minded people who hang on her every word. Being a November baby, she had a painfully long wait after turning 5 to start kindergarten. Like her big sister, she adores school and learning in general. Her interests are toward nature and science. She constantly challenges our understanding of these matters, not to mention how to appropriately word our answers to a 6 year old. "Mamma, how do babies get 23 chromosomes from their Daddy when they are growing in their Mommy's tummy?" Our youngest, Jemma, is just as spunky as ever. She is proving to be a handful – defiant and aggressive. She doesn't let anyone get away with anything. But her high-spiritedness is thankfully tempered by her utter sweetness, and she is, after all, the baby of our family. She turns 4 in less than a month and has two more summers to go before starting school. But seeing her sisters in their academic pursuits has inspired her and she does have an interest in learning. She can quite nicely write her first name. David and I are still working full time. He has been with Millipore for 1.5 years now. He enjoys his job working with the clients and has been on several trips for on-site training and meetings lately. In February, he goes to Puerto Rico (lucky). At home, he has been spending time on home improvements, most notable of which are a lovely stone patio in the back yard and an entire new room (an office) on the back of the house that he is constructing from the screened porch. Last year, he created several pieces of furniture by hand – a table for Dahlia's room, a cabinet for Surenna, and a buffet for me. The china hutch is in progress! I have been with Emdeon Corporation (formerly named WebMD) for 3 years, working with the Practices Services division performing quality assurance on medical information reporting and analysis software. I feel blessed to have a job that affords me the autonomy and freedom to work from home whenever I choose. I am home when the children get off the bus and I can attend any school function. What a gig! David keeps a great blog on www.pecchia.blogspot.com where he recounts events in our lives and includes photos too. Take a look every so often to see what we're up to. Most likely, you will see a picture of you there! Please do keep in touch with us and remember that you are always welcome in our home whenever you would like to visit! Take care, God bless, and best wishes to you in the coming year! With Our Love, David, Vaishali, Surenna, Dahlia, and Jemma

I hope that we sent our Christmas picture to everybody we have the addresses for, but just in case; here it is! This is the day before Christmas in our porch--which is in the process of being converted to an office. Vaishali dressed them all up in Indian outfits for the occasion. 

Trying to catch-up on my posting...

Toward the end of last Summer my work sent me to DC for a conference. The ony time I had for tourist activities was during a break in the middle of the day. My turn to man the booth had ended just a few minutes too late to go to a conference session, so I had a couple of hours free. I went for a camera tour/jog (I like to get in my daily road-work). The hotel was only about 5 blocks from the Mall, about half-way between the Capitol Bldg and the Washington Monument. So I ran to the Mall, then towards the Capitol and around it. Then I ran to the Washington Monument, then over to the White House and then back through the city to my hotel. The previous day when I had just flown-in, I ran (sans camera) in the opposite direction toward Catholic University and then back by way of Howard University. There were some scary neiborhoods there, but it was Sunday afternoon and things were pretty quiet. Just about the only people I saw that run were people all dressed-up for church. After my run and a much needed shower, I met up with an old friend from the Marine Reserves. It was great to catch-up on what he had been doing. He has been to Iraq a couple of times in his capacity as a Navy dentist, among much else. We are lucky as a nation to have folks like this.

I met up with an old pal from when I was in the Marine Corps. He is now an officer in the Navy and his lovely wife works for the same company as my lovely wife. 

The Supreme Court Bldg. is right across the street from the front of the Capitol Bldg. I didn't get any shots of the front of the Capitol Bldg. due to construction all around the front. 

The back side of the U.S. Capitol Bldg. 

Washington Monument from the Capitol Bldg. Notice the white pavilions which look like they are at the base of the monument? Two pictures below this one is a shot of the Capitol from the Washington Monument. From this shot you see that the pavilions are about halfway between the Capitol Bldg. and the Washington Monument.

Here is the Washington Monument at its most monumental. Hey, sometimes 'a monument' is just 'a monument'. 

The Capitol Bldg. from the Washington Monument. 

The White House from the Washington Monument. I think this shot illustrates why the hijacker went for the Pentagon instead of the White House. You can hardy see it from the air, it isn't very large and all the buildings around it are taller. The only clear approach is from the Washington Monument and then youv'e got a giant tower in your way. 

Lincoln Memorial from the Washington Monument. 

Aha, the classic front of the White House shot. 

An Old Card Trick, Explained:

I must have seen this trick a couple of dozen times as a kid and I never found it even slightly impressive. It just seemed like there was a bit of sorting or memorization at play and I never felt the urge to figure out how it worked. The trick: Fan out 21 cards for your mark and have him pick a card—often he will pick up the card and show it to a group while the magician is blindfolded. The magician then deals out the cards face-up into three piles and had the mark point to the pile containing the chosen card. The pile chosen is placed between the other two piles and then the cards are dealt into three piles again, etc. The cards are dealt 3 times and each time the pile chosen is placed into the middle. The whole reason for this post is that I came upon this trick by accident while looking for other information on the web. The trick was not explained on the site except that it was described as above and posited that the chosen card would be the 10th one in the pile. For some reason, I decided to work out exactly how the trick works. I did this and found that it is not the 10th card, but rather the 11th which will be the chosen card! What is odd is that on the website, there were a few comments which purported to show mathematically that it is the 10th card. Maybe these folks are all in on the real joke, which is to make sport of some novice magician. Who knows? Maybe they are just idiots. The Explanation: We shall number the cards when they are all stacked up as 1-21, with 1 on top and 21 being the bottom card. After the first deal and pick, the chosen card will be 8-14 (the 7 middle cards). When the cards are dealt again, the stacks will have 2, 2, or 3 cards each before the middle stack cards are put on top. So the middle cards will end up in positions 3, 4, or 5 in the three new stacks. When the cards are all re-stacked with the chosen pile in the middle the chosen card will be in positions 10, 11, or 12. When the cards are dealt for the last time, the first nine cards will form three stacks of three each, the chosen card will be the 4th card in whichever pile contains it. When I practiced the trick on my wife and kids, I just chose the 4th card from the pile they selected. If you were to stack the cards, it would be the 11th card since 7+4=11. I thought about this trick and I think it would also work for up to 27 cards rather than the 21 used here, but I haven’t tried this # yet, but the chosen card would be card # 14 by my calculations.

The Mind of a 3 Year Old

How does the mind of a 3 year old work? Last night we had dinner ‘in family’ which we do at least a couple of nights per week and increasingly more often as the kids get older. Vaishali prepared B. coli (my term of art for that foul weed), spaghetti with sauce and a variety of meats. She baked sweet Italian, hot Italian and turkey sausage as well as some turkey cutlet. When dishing-out the dinner, all the girls were required to have spaghetti and B. coli but could have the meat of their choice—most common being the sweet Italian sausage. Jemma was the last to be served meat. “What kind of sausage would you like,” asked the attentive mother? “I want the dessert sausage,” Jemma replied. The carebear clock ticked a couple of seconds, and I realized first what the 3 year old meant: “She means the sweet Italian sausage Waish,” I informed my wife. The little girl figured that if it is called “sweet”, then it must actually be sweet and since desserts are always sweet it is therefore a dessert sausage. Well, why not? We explained to her that it is only called “sweet” because it is not spicy like the “hot” sausage—which is still spicy even when eaten cold. dbp

Biased or incompetent?

The bible says, “…seek and thou shall find.” I have little doubt that this saying is true, in that to find something you first must be looking for it. It does not necessarily hold however that one will find every thing sought-after. Perhaps this little gem of obviousness should be conveyed to the Washington Post: In a story from yesterday by Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writers Tuesday, October 25, 2005; A03

Wilson's central assertion -- disputing President Bush's 2003 State of the Union claim that Iraq was seeking nuclear material in Niger -- has been validated by postwar weapons inspections.

It is hard to imagine how postwar inspections can show that Iraq had not sought uranium from Niger, only that Iraq apparently did not acquire any. A further minor gripe: President Bush said in his famous 12 words that Iraq sought uranium from Africa. For sure, Niger does reside in Africa, but there are lots of other countries in Africa and Mr. Wilson only visited Niger. It thus seems that even if he ruled out the possibility of Iraq looking at Niger as a source of yellowcake, he has hardly proven anything about the veracity of Mr. Bush. Update: Sigh, the media will never get this story right. Here is commentary from April 26 2007 Opinion Journal

The Associated Press casually slips a falsehood into a story about congressional efforts to investigate the administration: By 21-10, the House oversight committee voted to issue a subpoena to Rice to compel her story on the Bush administration's claim, now discredited, that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa. The New York Times, in a story posted on its Web site yesterday, similarly referred to the claim as "discredited," but this reference later was edited out. Reuters refers to the "administration's warnings, later proven false, that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger for nuclear arms." In fact, the claim has not been disproved or discredited at all, as the nonpartisan Factcheck.org explained in 2004: After nearly a six-month investigation, a special panel reported to the British Parliament July 14 that British intelligence had indeed concluded back in 2002 that Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy uranium. The review panel was headed by Lord Butler of Brockwell, who had been a cabinet secretary under five different Prime Ministers and who is currently master of University College, Oxford. The Butler report said British intelligence had "credible" information--from several sources--that a 1999 visit by Iraqi officials to Niger was for the purpose of buying uranium: Butler Report: It is accepted by all parties that Iraqi officials visited Niger in 1999. The British Government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium. Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger's exports, the intelligence was credible. The Butler Report affirmed what the British government had said about the Niger uranium story back in 2003, and specifically endorsed what [President] Bush said [in that year's State of the Union Address] as well. The erstwhile Iraqi regime's quest for uranium appears to have been in vain. But the claim that Iraq didn't seek uranium is simply false. News organizations that repeat it are serving, wittingly or unwittingly, as propaganda outlets for those who oppose the U.S. war effort.

Day 6: We Go to Riverfront Park

Riverfront Park, the site of the 1974 World's Fair hasn't changed in any way that I can tell since the late 1970's. The park is a great place to relax on any day, but a sunny Summer weekday when there are no crowds is best. Just large perfect lawns and lots of river frontage. The Spokane River divides into two channels and three of the four banks are inside the park.

Ecology was the theme of the 1974 World's Fair.

A mountain sheep welcomes us. I remember this out of the way sculpture from back when I passed by this spot in 1974--while the World's Fair was going on. I also had my tonsils removed that summer. I only remember that it was that summer since there were fireworks every night at the Fair's closing time and I remember seeing these from Sacred Heart Hospital while I was there.

Crossing into the park

Mom and the girls pause on the bridge ovet the raging Spokane River. It was a good thing we took the picture on the way into the park: A gust of wind blew Surenna's hat off on the way back and it landed on the river bed.