That which fades into the ether.

Sandy Eggo trip log, Part 1

Call us crazy, but, we loaded up the Bee and the Twinkies and ~200 pounds worth of stroller, diapers, luggage, pack-n-play, and camera gear and were on the open road at 0645 — which was a miracle all in itself considering we didn’t get our “pre-trip todo list” finished until midnight.  When the Twinks woke up for their 0500 feeding, it was game on. After pulling Maia from bed, she sleepily rubbed her eyes and said, “we’re going on adventure. Go to beach” as she was plunked into her chilly car seat.

We debated about how to go; the conventional route takes you down I5 until your frustration of people zooming up the right lane and cutting you off causes you to want to start plinking their tires. Instead, we decided to take the slightly longer, but more scenic 101.  An added bonus was there’d be more opportunities for the “ohh crap, we gotta stop now” excursions that many parts of I5 would mean the middle of nowhere.

The Frommer’s Califonia guide book lead us to the Big Sky Cafe, in San Luis Obispo. Not only was the breakfast delicious, but, they also have beignets; served as we’ve come to expect in a checked paper basket just like Cafe Du Monde. Steamy, doughy pillows of heart attack heaven — what more can you ask for?

Back on the road, the trip through the hills and down the coast left me wondering why I’d ever want to drive I5 again. Traffic was fairly relaxed and the comparatively few trucks kept the right-lane-zoom-n-cut-in assholes to a minimum. There was some fret about getting stuck in LA traffic during rush-hour, so, we just kept the hammer down as long as the Twinks would go; which wound up being the Hunting Beach Mall. Orange County; blecl. The abundance of boob jobs was about the only thing worth while.

We finally rolled into the hotel parking lot about 1745 with not but a few minutes of stop-n-go traffic the entire trip.  Only a few tears from the Twinks, and none from the toddler. Maia was appeased for most of the trip with her moose and a bag of “raw” cereal, as she likes to call it prior to the introduction of milk.

We stayed at the Sommerset Suites, which had quite reasonable rates on …. you got it: multi-room suites. ‘Twas a bit of a splurge but, having a seperate livingroom to hang out in while the kiddo’s sleep in peace was worth it.  Plus, the location couldn’t have been more perfect; walking distance to lots of old haunts from years past when Valerie lived here. The only bummer with the hotel is its location: next to the Scripps Hospital with the coresponding random emergency vehicle sirens.

With the kids and bags schlepped up to the room,  thoughts turned to dinner. Over the years Lex has mentioned several times that Bronx Pizza is the best in all of San Diego. At a mere 2 blocks away,it was a no-brainer to try out.  While I’m more of a Chicago style pizza man, there’s always a time and place for thin-crust New York style, and this was one of them.  That said, the canned/frozen spinach did nothing for the first impressions of the joint, but it was cetainly worth giving it a second try.  Best in the city?  Meh.

The next morning, Maia woke up ready for adventure. We strolled the troop down Fifth street to our favorite breakfast joint — ever:  Hash House a Go Go.

There’s always a wait; about a half-hour this time (note the above picture was from 2 years ago). Maia kept saying, “let’s go inside, eat pancakes!” Bad parents that we are, we didn’t get her anything to snack on prior to what turned out to be a very late breakfast.

But, we made it up to her by strolling over to Balboa Park where she proceeded to make new friends all over the play ground. By the time we strolled back to the hotel she had passed out in the back-pack carrier and napped till ~1700. Plans for Sushi Deli 2 were abruptly changed when we drove by to find ~30 people loitering in front — why do all the best places have to be so, you know, popular?

No problem, a quick trip over to another old haunt, Shakespeare’s, for pub grub and beer. Valerie carried Maia in and I lugged a carseat in each hand, which never fails to garner attention and the inevitable, “ohhh, look. Twins!”  But, on top of that, I overheard, “Don’t they know this is a bar?”.  Well, yes, there *is* a bar, but, it is *not* a bar. They even have a kids menu, so phbbbbttt!  Our watress was a mother of twins herself and wholeheartedly thought we were doing the very best thing for them by bringing them out and getting them aquainted with the world.  I’ll drink to that!

For the record — I’m utterly pooped today

For the singleton parents out there, let me just say that having twins is not twice the effort of having a single baby and puts a distintly non-linear increase of stress on parents of multiples. My present state of sleep deprivation is doing nothing to help this opinion.

I didn’t sleep prior to the 1 AM feeding, which is my own fault because I chose to read TDIClub forums and get things prepped for the evening.  Both kids fell asleep on half-full bottles. Not 15 minutes after putting them down, they decided it was “non-productive poo time” and proceeded to grunt and scream for the next hour. Failing to find any useful appeasement, another round of bottles was warmed in hopes that they just hungry. Stella powered hers down and contentedly dozed off; Elise found no such satisfaction.  She’d calm down just long enough to think, “FINALLY, peace and quite”, and just as I was about to nod off she’d belt out more screams.  Valerie had been getting small bits of sleep throughout this, but, she’d been up since 5:00 AM that morning and was dragging too heavily to be of any help for Elise. So I returned the favor of sending her to the office as she had done for me the night before.

The discomfort continued on. Elise would not stay quiet. Somewhere along, Stella filled her diaper (literally — it’s unreal the volume of poo she saves up) and proceeded to wail from the discomfort of all that smelly gooey goodness left for me. By now, it’s 5:00 AM; both are in high grump for food.  At 6:00 AM with the twilight glowing behind the curtains, both kids are quietly pulling on pacifiers and slumber falls upon them.  That left me pondering if there’d be any value in getting 1.5 hours of sleep (best case) before Maia woke up. I’d convinced myself that I might as well just start my day without a wink of …

7:15 — Wah! Wah! Wah!

As I groggily woke up and searched for Stella’s pacifier, Maia and Valerie bound into the bedroom. A brief synopsis of the night was exchanged, and was sure she’d have pity on me and take the terrible twosome away to let me sleep under the silence of my earplugs. Work would be there at noon, or whenever I’d be rested enough to be functional — I’d be useless with only an hour of sleep.

And she did take the screaming Stella. And then she brought her back, with two bottles in hand. And a toddler in tow. A toddler that was very happy to see me. And the lot of them climbed into bed. My night was clearly over and so the day started with a brusque departure from bed and hardly a word to Valerie as I staggered out the door for work.

I wasn’t totally useless at work. Absentmindedly stumbled through the day; dumped coffee and cocoa on a wall, of all places. Dumped soup on the kitchen table as sat down for dinner.  It was like being drunk, but without the warm fuzzy happy feeling.

Those with triplets or more, my hat’s off to you. I’d have rolled the dice to figure out who goes up for adoption.

If the potty was like batting averages, Maia would go pro

We gave potty training an earnest try yesterday. Maia batted a 429 for the day. Not a bad start.

But, today started with a revolt followed by incessant bouts of giggling and screaming — combinations that do not lend themselves to relaxing for the call of nature. Ohh well, back in the diapers for a while longer…

Naptime

We recently installed a “night vision” camera in Maia’s room.  It’s been rather telling about what happens when we turn the light off and say “good night”.  Now we no longer have to wait for the tell tale sounds of toys to know she’s off on a mission gathering sundries to extend her wakefulness.

This 1 hour time lapse was today’s attempt to get her to nap. Valerie was busy tending to the babies, so, Maia had the run of her room.

On tankless hot water heaters and sizing a natural gas pipe

Researched tank-less hot water heaters and their voracious demand for natural gas. Decided to go for the Takagi T-K3-OS because: 1) it is for outdoor installation — no fancy exhaust flume required, and 2) its *minimum* BTU rating of 11K was one of the lowest I’d seen (considering that the maximum side was more than capable).

I worried about the minimum rating because there’s a dirty little secret about tankless hot water heaters: they completely shut down when the flow is too low and you get no hot water. Yup, your water conservation efforts of running a trickle of water will be for not with most gas fired tankless heaters. And after having the T-K3 in use for a few days now, I’m glad I did worry –0.4 gpm doesn’t quite go low enough for my liking. It’s probably just me, but the small stream of water I use when washing dishes is not enough to keep the water heater from turning off due to inadequate flow. You don’t read about it often, but, this is one of the cons to a tankless hot water heater.

A second negative to the tankless setup is the amount of natural gas they consume at full water flow — 190,000 BTU’s for the T-K3. That’s more than my furnace, oven/range, clothes drier, and old water heater… combined. Most installs are going to need to upgrade the gas plumbing to provided enough gas flow.

Here’s an online natural gas flow calculator that takes into consideration more than the standard 0.5″ water column pressure drop that most flow tables use.

Here’s is a good paper that illustrates the application of the low-pressure gas flow formula [1] used in the above calculator, and gives some helpful information about how to account for discontinuities. For example, a 90° elbow adds 2 linear ft of “equivalent pipe length” of resistance. Things that make you go, “huh”.

[1] found here.