A large watermelon…..That is the size of our baby to be today. We downloaded a cute little app that illustrates each week what the size of your child is, relative to a vegetable or fruit.
Right now I am having a hard time thinking of a fruit or veg that will outsize a watermelon. We are in the final stretch, no pun intended. Zetta has stretched to the largest I can possibly imagine. In 3 days we will be full term and the baby could come any time between Jan 10 and Feb 20. Our oficial due date is Feb 02 and I honestly will be surprised if we make it that far.
I feel a little bit like a kid the night before Christmas. A little anxiety, a little uncertainty, but mostly an overwhelming excitement. Our bag is packed, we have more baby clothes and diapers than we will ever need, the car seat is installed, and with a little luck, the delivery will go as smoothly as the rest of Zetta’s pregnancy which by all accounts has been as easy as it gets.
Watching the baby wriggling around in Zetta’s belly is fascinating to say the least. There is a little person in there waiting to greet the world.
Bring it on. We are ready to meet this child of ours.
So we have baby shower number 1 with the family. I always thought of this as more of a formality than anything else. I was not prepared for the sheer volume of one-sies, socks, and cute littel blankets that were to come out of this little gathering. Fast forward 2 weeks to the shower thrown by our friends. Twice the volume of clothes, pacifiers, toys and goofy baby decorations. At this point I was certain that we had far more than our little baby girl would ever need. Wash tubs, teething toys, pacifiers, sleep sheep, an actual mountain of diapers, stroller, car seat, extra car seat, diaper bag, diaper kiddy, diaper disposal bag, not to mention diaper cream, diaper wipes and a ton of other little accessories. Our baby has more stuff than we do and she has not even been born yet. This kid’s wardrobe is bigger than her mom’s!
We like pink
You go into having a child thinking that you can be a minimalist, that you really don’t need all this stuff, but the world around you ain’t gonna let that happen. Blinky toys, blankies and books came next Followed by bouncy swings and baby’s first laptop (I kid you not).
This baby is ready for the apocalypse! We’ll little did I know that Zetta’s office would also throw her a shower. 2x again everything we already have and a hundred other things we did’t even know we needed? Even little baby ball gowns and snow season outerwear!
Having a child makes people want to give you stuff. Especially baby socks, and funny baby sized t-shirts that say things like “mommy’s little monster” (which are super cute). It is also a great reason for other parents to unload all their left over one-soes unused diapers and toys that have never been played with. We have already begun donating things to our other pregnant friends that are a few weeks behind us.
I don’t want to sound ungrateful, I AM. To date we have not spent a penny of our money on anything for this baby. Lord knows there will be plenty of expenses down the road, so being set up for an easy start is much appreciated.
As we wait for the arrival of little Ms. Reicker I can’t help but be thankful for all the wonderful friends and family in our lives that have chipped in and provided so much for a person who is not even here yet.
A lot of things go through your mind when you find out the you are going to have baby. Are we making enough money? What kind of parents will we be? Do really want to raise a kid in SOMA? Will it look like me? I hope it looks more like my wife. What will we name it? What can I do to ensure that it will grow up to be an evil super genius? That kind of thing. But probably the thought that obsessed my the most in the first few months was whether it would be a he or a she.
Nowadays you get to go get a photo shoot of your little one every 4 weeks or so and through the magic of ultrasound and a little luck you can find out the sex as early as 14 weeks. Before our last ultrasound my head was swimming with thoughts about the gender. I didn’t really have a strong preference, but I did want to find out the sex. I might just sound like a naive new parent, but it seemed to me I needed to get in a different mind set depending on whether or not you have a son or a daughter.
Of course in wither case you need to baby proof the house, be attentive and nurturing, be patient and flexible and all. But I began to flash forward to having a boy. Would I teach him to fish and play foot ball? Or would I teach him to play guitar? Seems that having a son puts a little more onus on the father to make sure that your son grows up to be a good man. A father needs to be a good role model. I know how crazy boys can be. How would I keep him from being destructive and rebellious in all the ways little boys are?
Then I thought about having a daughter. You still need to be a good role model, but the onus is a little more on the mom. Now I have no illusions, I know girls can get up to just as much trouble as boys, and I’m there is no greater heartbreak than watching your little girl grow up and begin to want nothing to do with you as she enters her teens. But what does a father do with his daughter? Play house? Play with dolls? Tea party? …. I’m not sure I would know where to begin.
Well we decided that we wanted to know. I’m not sure I get the side of wanting to be surprised. I was surprised when we found out. Isn’t that enough? It wasn’t long until the ultra sound came in, showing the clear absence of the family jewels. We are having a daughter! This news made me happier than I expected. I guess I am somewhat relieved know that a little boy won’t me through all the things I put my parents through. No, all of our trial and tribulations will be a complete surprise, at least to me. Zetta will surely have gone through them all already. On second thought, I am not sure which is better…. One thing is for sure, this will make picking a name half as hard as not knowing.
Spending almost my entire life in California, one would think that I would have visited the Channel Islands by now. Until last week, the closest I ever cam was when my ex girlfriend brought me a gold platted buffalo chip from Catalina in 1998.
The Channel Islands are a chain of eight islands located in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Southern California along the Santa Barbara Channel. Five of the islands are part of the Channel Islands National Park.
Santa Cruz
At only 20 or so miles away from the coast, I have seen the islands all my life. On a Sunny day, they looked just a stones throw away, and on a foggy day the peak of Santa Cruz island looked like Mt. Olympus rising up of the Greeks.
Brad Bennet and I had been talking about taking a dive trip out to the islands since July 4th of 2010. A year later we finally got a crew together and charted a boat from Truth Aquatics for a 2 day live aboard to Santa Cruz. Our team was made up of several friends from Santa Barbara as well as a half dozen seasons divers from San Francisco. We all met up at the boat Frida night, stowed our gear and went down below to sleep through the trip across the channel.
The Conception left the SB marina about 3:30am. I have never slept well on boats and this trip was no exception. After 3 hours of rolling around restlessly in my bunk, I rubbed my eyes, got out of my bunk and headed up to the galley. There was a pretty good southern swell across the channel which made for rough seas on the way out but we anchored up at a protected part of the island that offered a break from the wind and waves. The smell of coffee brewing and bacon and sausage on the grill soon got everyone up out of their beds. The islands were nestled under the typical foggy marine layer, but the fog quickly burned off and we were greeted by a sunny day.
Day 2 Santa Cruz
Unique to this trip was the absence of guides or dive instructors. Everyone was on their own to plan their own dives, manage their tables, and look after one another. Not a big deal for the more seasoned divers among us but some of the SB crew was very new, with less than 20 hours logged underwater. Fortunately there were enough advanced divers and a couple DMs to shepherd the group. If you do plan a trip out here, do ensure that you have the staff you need before you go. While we didn’t have any incidents, I was a little nervous and worried for the newer divers.
Cold water diving is whole different experience than diving the warm waters of Asia or the Caribbean. The colder water requires a thicker wet suit with booties, gloves and a hood. The additional buoyancy of the 7mm wet suit requires an additional 10lbs or so to submerge in addition to the 10lb weight belt I normally wear. All in all, it’s about 50 pounds of gear including your tank and BCD and it is straight up exhausting to lug around when you are not in the water. But diving the islands is also a totally different experience than any diving I have done elsewhere. The seafloor here is covered brilliant starfish, urchins and crabs, and swimming through the kelp forests is not unlike hiking through the redwoods of northern California. If you were lucky you might also be visited by a harbor seal while swimming along the reef.
All in all our crew logged about 8 dives in 2 days, including a night dive. The diving was infinitely better on the 2nd day when we found a nice secluded spot called Dead Man’s cavern, named such because there are several dangerous caves that are accessible from about 30 feet beneath the surface. There was a shore entry point here and about 4 other boats moored up. Visibility peaked at about 25′ which is not bad for California. Highlights included numerous seal sightings underwater and some gorgeous walls covered in anemones and soft yellow and pink sun coral.
Unfortunately, the ride home was by far the most exciting part of the trip. The southern surge had grown to about 10′ swells in the hours we were nestled away in the cove. Unfortunately, the boat needed to travel due East while the waves were coming North to South. This made for a VERY rough ride home. A few waves hit us so hard that I thought for a moment or two that we might just roll right over. Guests nervously made themselves feel better by singing the theme song from Gilligan’s Island. In the last 30 minutes though, the seas calmed as we approached Santa Barbara again. I’d double booked this trip with a wedding of my old friend Tenell Matlovsky so I had my gear ready to turn in and my wife waiting in the the parking lot with the motor running and a change of clothes. I didn’t get to say goodbye to my new friends on the boat but it was a great trip.
Hat tip to Brad Bennet for flawlessly organizing this thing from top to bottom, and to Gretchen, the kitchen gal from Truth Aquatics who worked tirelessly all weekend to keep our bellies full and the dishes clean. I don’t know if I’ll ever go back to the islands, but I’m sure glad I went.
Jack Byrnes (Robert De Niro) said in “Meet the Fockers” that he trained his cat to use the toilet instead of the litter box by putting a bowl in the toilet, and over time removing the litter and ultimately the bowl, until the cat began using the toilet like anyone else in the house.
A funny bit, but as it turns out this is a legitimate method of toilet training your cat. While flying back from San Clemente recently I was flipping through a SkyMall magazine and for $19.99 found “The City Kitty” toilet training kit.
With Zetta’s recent pregnancy forbidding her from touching the cat box and my hatred of the stench of urine, I thought to myself, “I have go to try this”. The idea of not having a litter box in our condo was too good to be true.
So a few days ago, the City Kitty training Kit arrived at my office. My team laughed out loud when I opened the box. One of them bet me cash money that I couldn’t do it. But I am not deterred. I took the bet. My cat is smart. When I got home, I took the cat box outside and filled a little toilet shaped tray with flushable kitty little between the toilet and the seat and put my little genius on top of the toilet.
He looked at me like I was absolutely crazy. And so begins the journey.
*UPDATE*
It’s been 3 weeks since we began city kitty training! So far so good. We are on the 2nd ring of 5 and the cat is now reliably going 1 and 2 right in the toilet. He does still play with the litter and I’m a bit concerned that weening him off is going to be the toughest part, but so far so good. Stay tuned!
*UPDATE II*
After 3 months we unfortunately abandoned the city kitty. Kitty was great at peeing in the toilet, but the splashing water on his but when pooping was too much to handle and kitty kept just going next to the toilet on the dry granite tile. Patti, I owe you a dollar.
It’s been a wild ride in 2011. It started out innocently enough with a leisurely group trip to Puerto Vallarta to celebrate my buddy Dave’s 40th birthday. That trip deserved a post all it’s own but I have been too damn busy to think about it. When we returned, life continued in the fast lane like 2010 never happened, and before I knew it, it was summer. There was a revolution in Egypt and Mubarak left office. Qadaffi is in hiding and essentially removed from power in Libya. They finally found and killed Bin Laden to relatively little fanfare. Floods and Tornados leveled much of the Southern U.S. and an enormous Tsunami hit Japan after a 9.0 magnitude earthquake that left 15,000 dead, nuclear reactors melting down, and doubled the size of the Pacific trash patch overnight. In just the last two weeks the US nearly defaulted on it’s debts and the European banking system is on the verge of collapse. The stock market dropped 15% and folks are stockpiling gold and ammo in San Francisco of all places.
It sounds like the end of the world right? It might be, who knows? But amidst all the chaos this year, something amazing has happened. On May 29th my wife emerged from the bathroom with a little plastic stick in her hands and she said “Baby, wake up” I have something to show you. “Two lines”….. There were definitely 2 lines.
Zetta's first ultasound
I have always wanted to have kids. Ever since I was 18 or so I knew I wanted to be a father. But it took me years of self searching and getting my own head on straight enough that I thought it made sense. Then it took a few more years to find the right woman and actually make a go of it.
Now with a giant mortgage, the economy in turmoil and the world getting crazier all around us, I can’t help but smile with the knowledge that in 6 short months we will be parents.
The Mayan calendar says that the end of the world as we know it is on 12-21-2012. Some call this a re-awakening and not a catastrophic end of days. Maybe it’s the singularity.
But I know the truth. The actual end of the world as we know it, at least for my wife and I, is predicted to be on 02-02-2012. And I know for certain that it is not really the end at all. But a beautiful new beginning.
It’s been a bit too long since I made an entry to the Ol’ Life O’ Reicker blog. Not that there hasn’t been anything to talk about. In fact, I have been damn busy. Since April, I’ve launched 2 products, our business has migrated to a new ad server (no small feat), we’ve acquired another organization, and rebranded ourselves as a new modern media company. The Giants won the world series. My bike was stolen, I sold my car, I bought one for my wife, I turned 38, and have been sick with a cold for upwards of 30 days now. As you can imagine, this has left little time for vacation, blog entries and the like.
But that’s all behind us now, Yesterday was November 11. This is an important date for our crew. Opening weekend at Mammoth mountain. My pals Dave and Jon and I split town at 1pm Wednesday and made the 6 hour trek to Mammoth Lakes. This drive is not so painful in the summer. It’s about 200 miles due east of San Francisco normally, through Yosemite across the Tioga pass. But with the recent winter storms, the pass closed the day before our departure and we had to really test the AWD ability of the Honda Element, taking it 329 miles to South lake Tahoe and down the 395. I was worried when buying this car that it would not have the guts to get us over an icy pass but it performed pretty well. That is until we took a wrong turn down a closed road near the resort. Note to self….Snow tires or not, if the icy road has not been salted or scraped by a snowplow, you aren’t getting across it without chains.
We managed to discover our error a mile up the road and were able to reverse course before we got in a bind. We arrived around 8pm and met our friends Robert and Barbara, all of us recovering from various flus and colds, but all of us excited for the day ahead.
Opening Day at Mammoth
Thursday morning we awoke early to fresh snowfall and beautifully groomed runs. It was cold enough that the snow machines ran ALL day long. We did a good half day of riding before the opening champagne toast at 11am. The park had quite a bit more open than we expected, including the terrain park. My mission today? Ariel maneuvers. Let’s hope when I come back to finish this post I have not broken any bones.
Off to the slopes!
**Updated 11/12 – Ariel maneuvers….FAIL
***Updated 11/13 – Terrain park success! Took 3 tries but I am now riding rails and and landed the table top jump. Got a little cocky a failed a 180 toe side landing on my last run. Could be a cracked rib…..but nothing ventured, nothing gained.
It’s been a while since I communicated with you via this medium. This is largely due to the fact that for the first time in my adult life I am truly engaged with my career. I love my job. It’s an exciting business and I feel empowered in the work I do. But endemic to that is the fact I am always “working”. I lay my head down at night and I am thinking of work. I wake up and I am thinking of work. This is not a bad thing. In some ways it is exciting. But everyone needs a break and today I am writing to you from a small island in the Bahamas called Cape Eleuthera. It’s a 100 mile long island in the middle of the Caribbean. It took us 3 flights and 3 bus rides to get here due to a malfunctioning piece of equipment at our intended airport . But that is all behind us now.
Eleuthera beach
We arrived last night with our friends Dave and Christine and Dusty and Laura after a brief pit stop in Miami for the Winter Music Conference. There is not much to do here other than chill out, scuba dive and go fishing. Unlike your normal resort in every regard. This place is essentially a yacht marina for the super rich and a haven for avid scuba enthusiasts. If you are the latter, it is quite affordable. The food and drinks are inclusive, as is the diving. We met Laura’s father who is here with his boat. There are about 6 other people here excluding the staff. It’s paradise with a slice of nothing to do. Ergo this post. I am certainly the most relaxed that I have been in months. But I am compelled to get back to work which is a feeling I have not had in years.
Weird. But enough about that. I woke up this morning to a beautiful scene straight out of a postcard. Hopped on a boat with 3 other people including the dive master and head out to sea. Visibility is as good as any I have ever seen.
Eleuthera reef
There is a flourishing coral reef right off the island, full of acan and gorgonians and other soft corals. We dove a sunken barge, then came upon a sunken drug smugglers plane that crashed here a few years ago.
smugglers plane
We swam through a number of natural reef caverns and were met by a good sized (10-12’) hammerhead on the other side. Sharks are extremely common here. At the fish cleaning station in the marina there are always 8-10 nurse and bull sharks hanging around waiting for scraps. It’s amazing to be up close and personal with these magnificent creatures.
An interesting factoid about Cape Eleuthera. Lion fish have completely overrun this region. Nobody knows how they got here. They are a pacific fish. Theories range from a few being captured in ships ballasts transported across oceans, to Florida aquariums being broken during hurricanes and inadvertently being dumped into the oceans. The lion fish are decimating populations of grouper and other native fish and as a result, these beautiful fish that are a treat to see in any pacific dive location are regarded as rodents. Local fisherman and divers are encouraged to eradicate the species. As such our dive master brings a sling with him and spears 4-10 of them on every dive.
Turns out they are good eating once you skin off the poisonous barbs. Perhaps we will have some tonight with our surf and turf dinner ☺
Talk to you later world, I’m off to jump into the local marina sea, knowingly full of well fed sharks.
So last month I got a little bit older. 37 to be exact. For the past few years my lovely wife and i have been throwing a pig roast party at Mars bar downtown. It’s always a great event and a ton of fun but biy is it a shit ton of work. My poor wife nearly kills herself preparing days in advance. Rent the truck, rent the grill, pick up a 70lb pig, make collard greens for 75+ people, buy the carcoal, rush to the bar and start cooking at 6am. Slave all day, drink too much then try to clean it all up and return everything to it’s original place the next morning while completely hungover. It’s always one helluva party, but does not make for a relaxing weekend. This year we decided to do something a bit different. We rented a house in wine country with a small group of friends and decided to take the weekend down a notch…..Little did I know what was in store.
My wife and dearest friends know my passion for pork and pulled off what may have been the greatest meal I have ever been served. At home OR in a restaurant. While a handful of close friends were enjoying a day of wine tasting around Sonoma, Robert & Barbara (head chefs), Tim and Lori (sous chefs) and my lovely wife Zetta (birthday planner extraordinaire), slaved away in the kitchen from 10am to 8pm preparing the most delectable selection of pork delights ever to grace my lips.
I’ll give you the blow by blow.
The Soup
1st course was a delicious ginger infused pumpkin soup garnished with sage and freshly bacon from a pork belly broiled in its own fat for some 3 hours.
Bacon wrapped pork loin
2nd course Pork tenderloin wrapped with sage and prosciutto accompanied with cream roasted potatoes drizzled with Manganista gravy.
The belly of swine, shed for your sins
3rd course was the ulitimate: Roasted Manganista (wooly pig pork belly) accompanied with bacon wrapped green beans, parsnip puree topped with fried manganista and a veal reduction sauce
The car bomb cupcake
and for dessert, my dear friend Christine made Irish car bomb cupcakes that taste just like my favorite drink (Vanilla Panna Cotta smothered in quince sauce accompanied with warmed Guinness Whiskey and Bailey’s Irish Cream Cupcakes.)
Robert and Barbara and their helpers plated and served this delicious meal to 14 guests. A huge undertaking over a beautifully decorated table. And I’m not kidding ya, this was Thomas Keller French Laundry quality cooking Boy did I feel loved. I think everyone kicked in in some fashion, be it with prepping or cleaning or just general debauchery. Checkoway and Cooper poured us some amazing wines purchased in the valley that afternoon. Being surrounded by a handful of amazing friends was just what the doctor ordered this year. And being treated to a meal like that is something I won’t soon forget.
So I wake up Thursday morning, look outside at the blue sky and smile. “It’s beautiful out.” I decide that I’m going to ride my bike to work. It’s November so how many blue sky days will we have left before the rainy season. So I am coming down Folsom street in the bike lane. As the light before me turns from yellow I have slowed down and have looked up 10th street. It is 7:30 in the morning and there is not a single car approaching the intersection for as far as I can see from Folsom all the way up to Market. It’s a ghost town. So I peddle forward and through the intersection as the light is turning red. It is at this time that a big bumbling jolly cop pulls into the bike lane in front of me and waives me over. I can’t help but think of last night’s south park episode.
Shit, it is the same guy with a white handlebar mustache that had my wife’s car impounded for missing registration last year after her car was broken into. I already hate him.
Officer: “You just ran right through that red light, you have ID on you?” as he dismounts and pulls out his little ticket book
Rick: “You’re giving me a ticket”?
Officer: “That was a pretty thing stupid thing you did, yer damn right I’m giving you a ticket”
Rick: “There’s no need to be rude”
Officer: “That was pretty rude what you did to the people at that intersection”
Rick: “What people????” (gives up) I hate him even more now.
There is no point in talking to this guy, there is no getting out of this. Technically, yeah, I guess I did cross against a red light, but the only people within blocks of this intersection were me and the cop who snuck up behind me. What I want to know is where was this traffic Nazi the countless times I have been nearly doored, killed, or otherwise pulverized in the bike lane? I recognize that being on a bike puts you at greater risk than being in a car and therefore use exceptional caution while riding. But if NOBODY is on the road at all, is it really such a bad thing to cross an empty intersection? Am I not just a pedestrian on 2 wheels? No?
Fine, you’re right. I wouldn’t have done it in my car. But I have no love for the SFPD who can’t bother to lift a finger when our cars are burglarized every other night. The same guys who turn a blind eye to every crack dealer slinging in the Mission. About a month ago walking up market street a guy was pissing on the wall of the Virgin records building about 15 feet from 4 cops on the sidewalk drinking coffee. As I passed them I let them know, “um, that guy is pissing on the sidewalk right there” They looked at me like “what do you want us to do about it?” There is something seriously wrong in this city when I am the guy the cops are spending time harassing instead of the people pissing in the streets. I guess law enforcement isn’t really worthwhile in SF unless they can squeeze a few bucks out of you.
OK I’m done ranting. Maybe this will at least be good for a laugh for ya’ll.
(Vanilla Panna Cotta smothered in quince sauce accompanied with warmed Guinness Whiskey and Bailey’s Irish Cream Cupcakes.)
