J. Jason Lazarus Blog

A new creation from our local brewery, this coffee stout comes jam-packed with local North Pole refined coffee and with a surprisingly light taste for a stout - and at that, an imperial. Unlike other lighter tasting coffee infused beers, this one socks you with full-on caffinated blackness - flavor Definately a 4/5.

It’s been about a week or two since our last appointment with the doctor and Aidan is now a week away from being 5 months old - back two weeks ago he was 16 lbs, 10 oz with everything - from length to head circumference, within the 70-75th percentiles. With all the numbers swimming in my head, I believe that he’s 27 inches long which means by September we’ll be buying a new carseat! We started him on solids slowly just the other day (rice cereal) and although we have no plan to take him off of breastmilk for a while, he’s been eying our food pretty attentively and we’ve wanted to get him to the point where he can at least try some things. Unfortunately it won’t be in time for the fair - otherwise we could fill him with funnel cakes and deep fried pickles!

Overall, he’s doing great - figuring out how to roll BOTH ways now, talking even more, holding his head up while on his stomach, wanting to sit up by himself and even can tolerate being on his stomach quite a bit now. He’s still 95% a completely pleasure all the time - I’m starting to dread the next 4 weeks going by and putting him into our friend-ran home-based daycare - a scary day indeed for me - I won’t know what to do without him around all day long. But, alas, it’s back to work soon and so 2.5 days of the week, he’ll be with our friend, 1 day of the week with my parents and the rest we’ll have him ourselves - so it’s not too bad. Nonetheless, he’s starting to look at me wondering why I’m not playing with him - so I best get to that

Another month, another decrease in our average usage of electricity.  We’ve now started using more than just the Kissaluv snap-together diapers and started also using standard cloth diapers with Snappi’s to hold them together rather than pins.  The Kissaluvs retail locally for about $14/piece so we’ve only bought about 20-25 of them - but my mother has been picking up the standard foldables from a variety of stores (mostly on-base) for about $12 for a dozen - or more - so now rather than doing laundry every other day (as well as the expense of drying a full hour and a half) we’ve been doing diaper loads every 4-5 days and about 75% of the time, we’ve been drying them outside.  We’ve even started drying our normal clothes outside to cut costs.  More and more, we’ve also been paying attention to completely killing the power to appliances at night (TV, Game Systems, DVD Players) and I’ve even started turning off my cell phone and laptop at night - all in a concerted effort to “stick it to the Man” I suppose.  At this point, we’re operating at below half the national average for daily energy consumption.

Been having issues with the vehicles lately so haven’t been able to be so… economical with them.  I’m currently driving around (for shame, I know) my parent’s Yukon because our van has, yet again (repeat “yet again” about ten times), given up the ghost.  Phillips Field Truck and Auto mucked the van up when they replaced the heater hose last month when it was leaking fluid all over the place and managed to bend the power steering fluid line so that it was rubbing against the belt - which rubbed for three hundred miles and finally failed - then spewing power steering fluid over everything, which after having it set for a while, managed to cause the belt to slip off as I was driving - all kinds of fun.  Nonetheless, Phillips Field only admits to the PS hose being their fault and rather than fixing the shredded belt, blamed that on the Water Pump and the Tensioner Pully giving up the ghost - I might not be a mechanic, but I doubt everything managed to fail all at once.  After getting the $550 pricetag on fixing everything, we decided (thanks to Deanna being firm on this one) to NOT fix it - we’ll fix the belt enough to where we can drive around town and wait for the rest to actually, really give up the ghost because in their own words they were “getting old” and not dead yet.

That being said, we’re sick of drowning money into that beast - we’re going to start saving now for a new vehicle and hope that the dividend comes early and comes big.  Thankfully here in a couple weeks Deanna and I will be back on a semi-similar schedule and the need for two cars will only occur once a week.  Right now, one car would force both Aidan and I up at 7am to drive Deanna to work just to pray to the Almighty that I can get Aidan back into bed afterwards - a frightful task that I’ve attempted a few times this summer and I dread it each time I have to; or without doing so, I’m forced to stay at home all day long or only walk wherever I choose.  As much as the second idea would boost my personal fitness achievements, Barnes and Noble isn’t too close to home and I needs me some B&N during the week.

I’m also currently discussing (read: frustratingly loosing the battle…) with Deanna about what our next car should be - I want some super small Yaris/Fit type car and she’s bound and determined to convince me that we need a “hatchback that can easily fit two kids and a dog”.  As much as that pretty much gives me  a through outline as to what she’s got in plan for my future, it also firmly thrusts a finger toward the fact that she’s eyeballing a Suburu…. and, well, if you know me at all, you know my bitter avoidance of Suburus and … scruffy dogs in them…. *shutter*

Decided to take a walk with Aidan out at Creamer’s Field for about an hour today. Goregous day - just had to cease it! Also posting this directly from my iPhone via Wordpress’ iPhone application - photo taken with iPhone as well.

After writing a pretty lengthy blog about our trip to Anchorage, I realized how boring it really is to throw out a play-by-play out there - so here are the highlights:

•  The trip up and back with Aidan wasn’t too bad - some issues southbound near Healy because he didn’t fall asleep like we had hoped at his normal bedtime and on the way back because, to be honest, he was stuck in a carseat for 7+ hours - anyone would be cranky.
• Had Indian food and Bombay Deluxe (always good), got to show off Cafe Amsterdam’s beer list to Deanna and had a nice “beer lunch” there - least I did, and tried Tibetan for the first time (and Nepalese for the second time) at Yak n’ Yeti’s.  Also had an amazing pizza at Moose’s tooth.
• Got loads of new beers to try - several singles courtesy of La Bodega from France to Austrialia - practically every corner of the world.  Managed to hit up Midnight Sun Brewery for two growlers (one full of my all-time favorite porter) and one from Moose’s Tooth.  Between the dozen odd beers that I’ve got to try / tried at the Cafe, I’ll have a breakdown of all the beers hopefully later on this week.  Some great ones and some complete duds, too.  I think I found some foreign PBR equivalents - lets just say that.
• Got to get together with Deanna’s parents - had dinner with them at Bombay Deluxe - it’s been great introducing them to different ethnic food - and it’s been shocking how open they’ve been to the whole thing - my parents aren’t nearly as open about foods as they used to be.  Nonetheless, also got to see Deanna’s brother, sister-in-law and Aidan’s cousin as well - the first time that Aidan has seen his cousin - and man was Landon ever happy to see him - at almost two years old, all Landon wanted to do was gently poke or touch Aidan’s leg, retract his arm quickly, start giggling uncontrollably and then do the whole thing again - after a while, he wanted Aidan on his lap so that he could give him big hugs - cutest thing I’ve seen - Lord knows why I didn’t go out to the car and grab our DVD Camcorder…  nonetheless, 3rd time her parents have gotten to see him, so meeting up in Anchorage does facilitate a grand-parental need.
• Met up with Brian (the friend previously known as Yos), Dave, Sevak, Lindsay and their little one.  Was crazy seeing how huge Aidan is (at his 75th percentile weight) at 4.5 months compared to Minerva (and her 35 percentile weight) at 14 months… he almost dwarfed her which was extra odd cause she could walk…

• Got to pick up a few neat things from Titlewave and other stores but the crowning achievement had to be picking up Chronotrigger from Bosco’s for $50 - the original cartridge version for the SNES - after hearing during E3 that they were planning on re-re-releasing it on the DS, me being the purist that I am, decided that I was going to get it on the cart - something special about playing a game as fast as you can knowing full well that fate could deal you a hand where the interior battery backup gives up the ghost (cause the game is nearly 15 years old) and you lose your 35 hour save point… something about it…

Nonetheless, all is well, we had a great weekend - now just dealing with the realities of getting back into the standard groove of things here in Fairbanks… more later - just wanted to update.