To my friend and former colleague Paul Ruggeri, who is 48 today.

To blogger Dave Schuler.

To my cousin Sandy’s son Ruben, who is 18 today.

To my cousin Larry in Germany.

To my cousin Brad, who is 52 today.

To blogger Lemuel Kolkava.

To blogger <a href=”http://www.jaygarmon.net/” target=”_blank”>Jay Garmon</a>.

To Sheila Oranch.

To my brother Gary, who is 55 today.

To my cousin Chris, who is 46 today.

To Deb’s brother Doug, who is 32 today.

To blogger Aliza Sherman.

To blogger Rob Sama, who reminded me I’d intended to bring back the birthday tradition Real Soon Now. One place or another.

This is a test post, following some troubleshooting of broken post and category permalinks.  Turned out to be transient, I hope, since i have no idea when the problem started.

I have reason to believe that we can add macadamia nuts to Henry’s list of allergies.  And that it’s at least as bad as any of the others.  I’ll try to have them add it to the battery of tests when he goes for his yearly retest in February.

To review, the official ones that are “oral allergy syndrome” are:

Dairy
Eggs
Peanuts

The one that tests fine for OAS but provokes a strong reaction in keeping with a crossover with latex allergy (of which he’s shown little sign) is:

Banana

He seems to have outgrown, or mostly so, a sensitivity to salicylates and azo dyes, degree of which depended on which color, and to some component of screen printing ink on contact with it.

One problem we’ve had lately is exactly this dead zone, which you can see as a sharp drop in the 30s before the steadier line upward. You have to click the chart to see a bigger version.

And basically if I do anything other than what I am now and/or work at home/online work as allowed, we then run into daycare issues. If I were on my own, I’d keep what I have for security and bootstrap from it. A part time other job even if I could get nothing full time. Return to being available for unpredictable side computer/support or other gigs. Use any spare time for building more passive but by no means self-constructing income streams. Six months and I could probably be back to “real money” without even relying on a single “full time” thing.

Right now our net effective income is actually down because our income went up, but not enough. A full time job roughly opposite the other full time job would net less than I do now up to hourly rates that start to approach those of a “real job.” It’s a conundrum.

The good thing is the kids are becoming more self-contained, so I’m starting to see clear to being able to do some of the passive side stream and work from home stuff without having to leave for on-site/emergency work of the sort I used to do. Just trying to work out a system where that is organized and balanced against housework…

Update:
This is the source and has more, and a second, more impressive chart of how implicit marginal tax rates fluctuate.

If it’s not 35, then when is it?

Happy birthday to Deb.

Cake tomorrow, maybe.  It’ll be cold, so baking is good, and the kids will be happy.  She works late today and goes out after, thus not today.  Though baking would be good today, too, before I freeze.  Which I’d probably be feeling less like doing if I weren’t sick, but hey.

To Sadie, who is 5 today.

Okay, so this is retroactive, but who’s counting.  I’d post birthday picture(s), but none were taken.

Seriously, though… time flies.

Henry turned two today! Time flies. Well, kind of.

It’s been kind of hot for baking, but I made a cake we had at my grandmother’s Sunday, and you’ve never seen a kid more delighted to be the center of the happy birthday song. Sadly, the leftover cake is keeping ants fed on the lawn near the car, where the cake holder my mother put it in for ease of transport back here failed on me. Deb didn’t get any, and I was going to make another, but she didn’t think it was worth it in temps high eighties and above recent days. She did get to eat my experimental lemon spice cake based on the same Henry-safe recipe for chocolate cake. It wasn’t bad, but too mildly flavored and with a baking soda tinge. I still need to work on the frosting for the non-dairy non-egg cake. Even with less honey, it tasted overwhelmingly of honey.

Anyway, grandparents brough Henry a cool Spiderman sweatshirt for cooler weather, and it lights up the way Sadie’s beloved Cars shirt does. All three of them got bouncy balls that are like snow globes inside, so the glitter and color will settle when idle, then go nuts when they are used.

Sadie picked a cool stacking peg set with pegboard, which he loved. She shopped with Deb, and they also got him a wooden toolbox with wooden nuts and bolts, wood strips with holes, screwdriver, wrench, hammer, and wooden pegs. They loved playing with that today. Finally, a coloring book and crayons of his own, which also went over well. I supplemented it with a small plastic chair, red with Mickey on the back. He loves litle chairs that are more or less his size, so he appreciated it.

Poor kid has a checkup I have to take him to tomorrow. I should probably arrange to drop the girls with someone, but they’ll probably all come along as usual.

I’d like to post more pictures, even just recent ones, but I’ve been lucky to write this post. He has twice tried to occupy my lap, and part of the way through it he and Valerie played with and spilled a pitcher of red Kool-Aid all over the kitchen and living room, while Sadie neglected to mention this to me as I’d expect. Even if I can remember what needed to be worked on, it’s hard to do anything, sometimes even the most urgent of things, with them taking all of my time. They’re like free radicals mutating cells of productivity.

Anyhow, one of the best Henry pictures ever, at the playground in Lakeville recently: