Green Building

After some serious soul searching and a rut-busting trip to New York, I finally figured out a professional focus: green building. Now I know what you're all saying, "but Frank, why focus on green building? Ever since I've known you, youve been a banking temp, real estate agent, office manager, project manager, barista, building manager, bartender, bike messenger, school assistant, coaster maker, hiring consultant, researcher, political consultant, machine gunner, why settle on that?" Well, because I gotta choose something for Pete's sake.

Oh yes, and because I genuinly enjoy construction administration and management, believe in sustainability and believe this to be an area of amazing growth in the next two to three years or whenever the market stops crashing.

Currently I'm studying for my LEED Accredited Professional certification and I'm pumping all of my contacts for people who are in the field. All of this would be very exciting except I have a wicked bad cold and my head feels like it's huge.

The Ferber Method or I HATE YOU DAD!!!

Freddy is healthy, he's in the 90th percentile for height and is finally getting some serious baby chub. He is not however, going to sleep very well and apparently it's all our fault. The nighttime ritual has been: bath, change into pj's, I hold him in my arms for about 20 minutes until he falls asleep then put him in the crib whereupon he wakes up inside of 30 seconds. Repeat the last two steps until he finally goes down. It's been taking about 45 minutes to put him to sleep, but then he'll sneeze, startle himself and it starts all over again.

So now we're going to try the Ferber method where we start off with him in the crib awake, settle him in and then leave. When he cries, wait three minutes, go in for two, then wait five minutes, go in for two then wait seven minutes etc. etc. The point is that eventually he'll figure out how to put himself to sleep. It sounds pretty easy but it's amazingly hard on your nerves. I'm currently trying to put him down for his morning nap and he's screaming his head off and writing this post in the now 7 minute intervals. Last night it took an hour and fifteen minutes to get him to sleep and then another hour after we went to bed. It's supposed to take about seven days. Seven long, long days.

Gene Simmons Eat Your Heart Out

Sometimes I wonder what my brother's students make of him.

Heading Back To The City

In an effort to get me out of a career rut, Laura has sent me off to New York to recharge my batteries. Sarah Pailin was just taking office the last time I was in the city and I've missed it tremendously. A slice of real pizza, some coffe from a cart and seeing good friends should do just the trick. And of course there's the matter of biking through the city I cut my teeth on.

Giving Back To The Web

I took a six mile hike with my friend Matt and among the myriad things we talked about was keeping up with blogging. It was easy to do it at the Wine Press since I equated it with being part of my job (no matter what I'm doing, I'm slavish to job duties). Anyhow, we came to the epiphany that the entire world wide web is an empty place if you don't put anything into it and only sit and watch it like TV.

And so, in an effort to give back a bit, this is what's new:

Freddy is more adorable than ever. He can follow things with his eyes, do flirty smiles and most recently he can laugh. He has lost almost all of his original hair and now looks more like actor Wallace Shawn than his mother or father.




That has done little to diminish his attractiveness. Josh's mom, Leigh sent me a congradulations on Facebook and added that he had a beautifully shaped head. I didn't quite get it until I went to dinner and ran into two other babies of simular age who had serious cone heads. Gulp!