Liza’s lunch yesterday was curried peas, mashed potatoes and onions with chicken and Mandarin oranges. Sounds like one of those Lean Cuisine commercials.

I’m back from my conference and am all kinds of tired. I did want to note the passing of Arthur C. Clarke, whose novels I enjoyed and who had the audacity to invent the concept of the geostationary communication satellite.

In honor of LanaBob! visiting this week, here is her mom’s breakfast casserole which sits somewhere between eating cheesecake and an omelet for breakfast. I love breakfast dishes like this and I’ve made tons of them but this one with 14 lbs. of cheese in it is my all time favorite. The best part is it reheats well in the microwave.

8 oz. softened cream cheese
1 dozen eggs
1 1/2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
1 1/2 cups shredded monterey jack cheese
12 oz. cottage cheese
small can mushrooms
1 lb. cooked sausage

Blend eggs and cream cheese in mixer. (I’ve found the best way to do this is to have cream cheese at room temperature or a bit warm and then beat it for several minutes with the mixer and then add the eggs one at a time.) Mix in the rest of cheeses and mushrooms. Spray a 13×9 baking dish with cooking spray and then spread the cooked sausage on the bottom. Pour egg and cheese mixture over the top. Bake 350° for 1 hour or until done. This can be made the day before, refrigerated and then cooked the next morning, in fact, that’s what I recommend.

I’m away at a conference for the first part of this week, which is why I haven’t been posting and why Misty has been going just a little bit crazy. For your entertainment, I give you my favorite conference talk so far, judging on title alone:

Cybersickness determines the affective appraisal of a virtual environment.

Sadly, the talk is taking place after I leave. I’m pretty sure I know what the authors are aiming at, but I’m curious to hear what y’all think the talk would be about. Bonus points for the most creative misreading.

Liza got her first tooth yesterday and all I got was two lousy nights of not much sleep (and counting)…

Why yes, I am bitter, why do you ask?

Really? We have this incredible computer-mediated network of information, and that’s what you want it to tell you?

In any case, I hope our site was helpful. Jerkface.

Well, drat. I missed Talk Like a Physicist Day yesterday. Luckily, I talk like a physicist every day! The Talk Like a Physicist site doesn’t actually have that many good examples; luckily, Chad Orzel is here to help. He’s collecting examples of physicist speak in the comments.

Ones that I use on a non-zero basis:

Canonical. The usual example of something or answer to a problem. “The canonical example of talking like a physicist is to use the word ‘canonical’.”

Orthogonal. Two or more things that are mutually exclusive or don’t affect each other — in effect, are at right-angles to each other. “In his case, the effort expended on a job and the outcome are orthogonal.”

Non-trivial. There are tough problems. There are difficult problems. Then there are non-trivial problems: problems so hard that you’re not even sure how to begin. “It turns out that finding the lowest-price airline ticket is a non-trivial exercise.”

High order. When someone’s reaction is all out of proportion to what caused the reaction. Usually used when someone becomes very excited or very angry. “All I did was make a little joke about his tie and he went high order.”

Nonlinear. See high order.

Not even wrong. Someone is making an argument using assumptions that are known to be wrong, or are making an argument that can’t be falsified. Courtesy Wolfgang Pauli. “Wait, he’s assuming Ron Paul can still win the Republican nomination? That’s not even wrong.”

Varies inversely with. As one quantity increases, another decreases. “When presenting a paper, a physicist’s credibility varies inversely with how well-dressed he or she is.”

Inversely proportional to. See varies inversely with.

For very small values of. This one, I’m afraid, I can best explain by example. “So there are four of us going to dinner.” “Three.” “Okay, so there are four of us for very small values of four.”

In future lessons we’ll teach you how to dress like a physicist.

I finally gave up and decided that Liza was a bad sleeper. Not that she was a good sleeper and that we were in a bad patch, but that truly she was a poor sleeper and that chances are decent that it might not get a whole lot better. Not for a while anyway.

So just like my epiphany with Eli and pull up diapers, this realization has made my life a whole lot easier, if for no other reason than it takes the pressure off. We don’t have to get back to our right routine of sleeping; we have to make up a whole new one. So I’ve been doing some reading. I’ve been reading the same books as before but this time with an eye to what will work with my slightly separation-anxiety prone, highly dramatic girl child who doesn’t need as much sleep as Eli did.

One of the first things I read about children with separation anxiety is that when you leave them to cry it out it makes the separation anxiety worse. This seems like common sense advice now. But again, I kept thinking that it worked with Eli so if we only toughed it out a bit longer it would work. Three months later I am finally able to admit that it wasn’t working.

So what do you do with separation anxiety prone kids? The Baby Whisperer has a few things to say about that. Her big method for correcting sleep problems is something she calls “Pick Up/Put Down”. The gist of it: you stay in the room with the baby and pick her up when she’s crying. As soon as she is calm, immediately put her back down. Eventually she will fall asleep on her own. There are some finer points to it, but that’s the basics. Early this week I showed this chapter to Stephen and asked him if we could work on that this weekend. (The book recommends starting on the weekend so both parents are available to switch off as needed.) He said we could try it and see if it worked since we’d had such bad luck with other methods.

Right around the chapter on Pick up/Put down is a few pages on wake-to-sleep, which I talked about in a previous post. As we were sitting on our bed talking about our strategy, I was flipping over those pages and thought, “Why not try this? It’s the easiest thing ever and if it doesn’t work we can move on to the more labor-intensive Pick up/Put down.” Stephen and I talked about that and I was concerned that I wouldn’t be able to hit the “one hour before” her regular wake up time. But the worst that could happen was that she would wake up and we’d have to get her back to sleep–but hey, that was going to happen anyway, so why not try it? Also, we were ready for something easy to try.

That was Monday night. I jostled her around 11. (She didn’t wake up, just sighed and turned her head to the other side.) She slept until around 6 am.

Tuesday night I jostled her around 11 and she woke up at 4:30 and was up for the day. Ugh!

On to Wednesday night, Stephen jostled her at 10:45 and I set my alarm for 3 and jostled her. She woke up at 5:30.

Last night, we jostled her around 11 and then at 3:30. She woke up at 5:45, talking instead of crying! At least three times last night she cried out but put herself back to sleep. I think. I hope.

Turns out the one hour before isn’t the magic part. The jostling that resets her clock is the complete and total trick of unbelievable magic.

So how long are we going to do this? Well, the book says three days to reset her habit and then one night to see if it works and if not, then another three days. I think with Miss Stubborn we’re just going for the six days before we test her new habits.

What have I learned from this? Liza is a very deep sleeper! Often when we go in to jostle her, we nearly have to pick her up to get her to stir. Setting my alarm for 3:30 am sounds like the crappiest thing ever, but I’m actually getting more sleep because it only takes about three minutes to do the jostle and then get back into bed. Never scoff at a technique because it seems completely counterintuitive; sometimes the craziest thing works.

Here’s hoping that she doesn’t have another cold this season to mess up her sleep and that easiest technique in the whole history of the world solves her sleep difficulties.

I confess: I have a Twitter account. It’s a fun little AIM-like application that’s a lot like leaving your brain on speakerphone. Some time ago I found Barack Obama’s Twitter feed. That didn’t surprise me that much — the Obama campaign has been savvily using social networking sites since the beginning.

I was more surprised to find that Hillary Clinton was on Twitter. What’s really amazing is how often she updates. Obama updates once every day or two. Not Hillary. True to her type-A teachers-pet personality, she updates a lot. Just look at what she posted yesterday, March 12th.

• 06:13 In DC to address Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Looking forward to DC being my next hometown!
• 07:07 WTF, Mississippi? Thought white Southern bigot vote would put me over the top.
• 08:39 We should count FL and MI delegates FTW.
• 13:55 Steve Inskeep is a total douche.
• 14:37 Sorry, MS. Unfairly taking it out on you. When I was from AR we were always thankful for MS!
• 14:48 @barackobama Have You Ever Been Experienced? cause I have!
• 16:50 @gferraro Sorry you had to resign. Everyone knows womanness > blackness.
• 17:01 OMG did you see Wall-E trailer? Soooo cute!
• 17:12 @gferraro Ha ha yeah, womanness > blackness > John Edwards!
• 19:44 Looking at @johnmccain’s natl security plan. Way more awesomer than @barackobama’s.
• 21:47 Thinking about letting Bill out to see some news for a minute before I lock him away again.
• 22:40 Unwinding before bed. Making notes for my sequel to The Prince.

Here’s a candidate who is truly invested in Web 2.0 social networking.