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Archive for May, 2006

May 31st, 2006 6 comments

Baby is out! May I introduce: Charles Matthew Hearn.

I’ll have more details tomorrow, including a lengthy description of the process, which started out Nicely, moved into Painful, spent a lot of time in Surreal, and finished in Exhausted but Happy, for all parties. Right now it’s 3 in the damned morning and I just got finished uploading all the pictures on Charles’ site, so I’m going the hell to bed.

And before you ask: Yes, it feels really weird to be a father, in the awesomest way possible.

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May 26th, 2006 2 comments

Baby’s still in there, and really, really, REALLY does not want to come out:

We had one more ultrasound, and then our doctor tried to lose his watch inside my wife, and has informed us that we will be getting induced on Tuesday, if the baby hasn’t try to wiggle out sooner. She was dilated all of 1cm, so I’m thinking Tuesday is GO DAY, people. The bag is packed, the iPod loaded with good delivery room jams, the camera has fresh batteries. I would not expect to see anything here before Wednesday, at which time there will be Much To Discuss.

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May 25th, 2006 1 comment

The kid continues to be irritating, what with its steadfast refusal to enter the cold, angry world, breathe deep the sour medicinal air, and submit itself to the incompetent care that only I can provide it. So I took the opportunity to buy some consumer electronics.

The Radio Shack near us, in University Plaza, is going out of business (aside: Radio Shack basically screwed itself by moving away from the electronic hobbyist business towards the consumer electronics business, particularly the cell phone concentration. As soon as the major cell phone providers opened their own local stores, Radio Shack was screwed. If you want a Verizon phone, would you go to Radio Shack, or would you just go to Verizon? Plus their selection of stereos, TVs, etc. is never EVER going to rival that of Best Buy, and the fatal decision to carry videogame components [controllers, video adapters, and the like] but not actually carry the consoles or games was flat-out stutarded. Aside over), with the attendant 20-50% off everything in the store!!!! sale. I’d been planning to try and keep track of the goings on during labor (“We’ve entered our 14th hour, and Sarah is demanding to be killed. She has ripped off my right arm and has beaten a nurse to death with it. The doctors plan to increase her epidural dose”), and I realized that typing on a keyboard while Sarah is attempting to push out our progeny might be suicidal. And if I wrote it on a notebook it would be illegible. So I decided to buy a small hand-held voice recorder to use for the purpose.

Radio Shack had ’em, and on sale, so I bought this beauty:

I am pleased to report that it is heck of rad. It has enough flash storage to hold 6 HOURS of data at the highest quality, and something like 19 hours at the lowest. So far I’ve been able to use it for work to record some information at the data center, and used it to remember Sarah’s dinner order yesterday (although I still managed to screw it up), along with recording songs in the car to play back for Sarah later to make her giggle.

Hopefully in a couple days I’ll be able to released the uncut, monosonic recording of Sarah screaming “GET THIS [censored] THING OUT OF ME BEFORE I CUT OFF YOUR [censored] AND [censored] YOU IN THE [censored] WITH IT YOU [censored] [censored].” It’s gonna be AWESOME. Particularly after I produce the remixes.

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May 23rd, 2006 No comments

Okay, this baby is just f&%#ing with us now.

Last night we went out to dinner, and when we got home, Sarah started having what she described as “something.” So we waited to see if it would turn into actual contractions, but eventually it stopped, whatever it was. So we went to sleep.

Of course, as a result, I dreamt about the baby all night long. I was feeding it, and checking its diaper, and all that stuff. At some point in the dream, it turned into a cat. It was a weird dream. Then the dream switched to a Walmart or something and I’m carrying the baby around and I notice that Chase Utley (2nd baseman for the Phils) has apparently changed his uniform number, so the nice new jersey that Sarah got me for Father’s Day is obsolete. Of course, in reality, he has not changed his number. Although Sarah did get me his jersey, and it is frickin’ AWESOME.

By morning, we decided that the baby must have dropped down into the pelvis a little bit, because the top of the basketball was squishier, and the bottom was firmer. (We’re very scientific over at Hearndom II.) So that’s somewhat thrilling, and hopefully an indicator that something might happen in the next day or two. I’ll keep y’all updated as best I can.

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May 22nd, 2006 3 comments

My homeskillet Craig normally doesn’t send these around, of course, but this was so awesome he just HAD to. Which means, DUH, that I had to post my reply online, because this is one of the few things I do in which I’m actually semi-funny.

1. What time did you get up this morning?
About 7:35, when I reached over to hit the snooze button for the 6th time (my alarm clock, unlike any other made by man or beast, has a 7-minute snooze instead of a 9-minute one) and knocked a glass off my bedside table, which shattered on the floor. The morning started out AWESOME.

2. Diamonds or pearls?
That’s a toughie: with Diamonds, you know you’re getting something that was dug out of the ground by African slaves; with Pearls, you know you’re getting something that was forcibly torn from the shell of a screaming mollusk. Diamonds are usually more valuable, of course, and are Forever. I’m gonna go Diamonds, I think.

3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema?
I broke my almost 6-year theater boycott to go see “Failure to Launch” with Hearnwife. This is a lot like saying “I broke the Montgomery Bus Boycott because I needed to get to a sale at Ed’s Bait and Tackle.”

4. What is your favorite TV show?
Ooh, that’s a toughie. There are so many! Scrubs, The Simpsons, 24, Good Eats…right now I’m gonna have to go with Scrubs, because every single time I tune into that show I become happy. THE SCRIZZLE…yeah, boo, that’s my doggle.

5. What did you have for breakfast?

6 eggs and a Diet Pepsi. Let’s sing The Cholesterol-Sodium Blues!

I woke up this mo’nin’
Had six eggs, dat’s de troof
Washed ’em down wit’ a soda
Now my blood pressure’s through da roof
Oh I got da blues
Sweet Lord Almighty, I got da blues
I’m gone have a heart attack and diiiiiie
But I’ve lost 30 pounds so I’ll leave a pretty corpse, oh YEAH

6. What is your middle name?
“The Balls.”

7. What is your favorite meal?
Hm. That’s a toughie. I eat almost everything, with some minor exceptions, and I get random cravings for just about everything. When in doubt, I’ll usually make myself a steak, but really, I could eat roast duck at almost every meal. Mmmm…make my quacker medium rare, baby, with extra crispy fat chunks.

8. What foods do you dislike?
Don’t much dig on nuts; that’s about it. Even with nuts, if they’re already in the brownie, I probably won’t pick ’em out, although I used to.

9. What is your favorite Potato chip?
Grandma Utz’s. No question. Ever since the sad demise of King’s and the relative unavailability of Stehman’s (who may also have gone out of business, I’m not sure), Grandma Utz’s are the way to go. Potatoes, lard, and salt. That’s all I need. I have a bag of them at home, unopened, that has been calling my name for weeks, but I need a special occasion to get up ins those bad boys.

10. What is your favorite CD?
Lordy, who knows. This is like asking about my favorite fried chicken joint. So many are so good, that it’s hard to choose. I’ve been listening to the same Joey Eppard CD, “Been To The Future,” for a while. Honestly, though, I’ve mainly been listening to one track on it (“Balloon”) over and over, trying to figure out how a guitar with 6-strings can have that many harmonics.

11. What’s your favorite word?
“Malfeasance.”

12. What characteristics do you despise?
People who simply have no understanding of the concept of “not getting in other people’s way.” This can include people who park their carts at the grocery store such that nobody can get by; this can include people who sit in the left lane of the highway so no one can pass. Makes me go batty.

13. What’s your favorite movie?
Who knows. I quote “Anchorman” and “Napoleon Dynamite” quite extensively. Also on the list: “Bull Durham,” although it’s not as quotable.

14. If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation, where would you
go?

I’d like to go back to England. There’s a metric butt-ton of stuff I’d like to see there; I got a taste back in 2003 and have been hoping for a return trip ever since.

15. What color is your bathroom?
We haven’t really done anything with either of them. Basically cream-colored with wooden cabinets and mirrors. The upstairs will probably get a ladybug theme if I ever get around to painting it on.

16. Favorite brand of clothing?
Probably Old Navy, although mostly just for pants. Last time I went I got two really awesome pairs of jeans, although unfortunately I was kind of between sizes at the time, so I bought the larger size, and then they stretched. So now I have two awesome pairs of jeans that bunch up in the back when I cinch my belt. I wanna go back for the next smaller size, but Sarah keeps dissuading me. She’s hateful like that.

17. Where would you want to retire to?
Actually, I’d like to continue to live around here, where my friends and family are, while maintaining flats in New York and London and traveling frequently to remote locations. Clearly I need to figure out a way to acquire extreme wealth.

18. Favorite time of day?
The afternoon. I can look forward to hours of daylight, get things done in the yard, have time for a cheap cigar and a beer in the backyard.

19. Where were you born?
I was born in 2074, the first child born in the newer dark-side moon colony. It’s cold there. Wait…no, that’s not true. I was born in Upper Darby. It was cold, though. There was a blizzard.

20. Favorite sport to watch?
Right now? Baseball. It changes biennially, though; back in the late 90s it was NASCAR, for most of this millenium it’s been football.

21. Who do you least expect to send this back?
This is SO not a valid question, since I haven’t sent it to anyone. I’m going to have to say James Lileks won’t send it back, because he’ll have no idea that I posted it.

22. Person you expect to send it back first?
I expect my father to post the first comment pointing out a spelling error, that’s probably the next best thing.

23. What type of detergent do you use?
We are a Tide family.

24. Coke or Pepsi?
Diet Sunkist. I go through a 12-pack every 2 days.

25. Are you a morning person or night owl?

I wish I was a morning person, but the truth is I have a hard time falling asleep and an even harder time waking up. So I end up staying up late and getting up late. This would make me a night owl. That is all.

26. What size shoe do you wear?
It varies widely (haha! a pun!) by manufacturer, because the width of my feet is rather extreme. If they have a EEE or EEEE, like New Balance, I can wear a 12. If they do not, and I’m trying to force my toes into a C-width, I’ve been known to buy a 14. Fitting clothes to my body is a losing battle; I have a huge butt and big thighs, wide feet, and the largest head in Christendom (size 8).

27. Do you have pets?
Four increasingly annoying cats: Pete, Poly, JD, and Veronicat, aka The Cheat.

28. Any new and exciting news you’d like to share with everyone?
Gimme a few days.

29. What did you want to be when you were little?
Dame Judy Dench.

30. Favorite Candy Bar?
Three Musketeers. Chocolate and nougat, how can you go wrong? Man, I want one of those.

31. What is your best childhood memory?
What is with this list? How can I pick one thing out of 12+ years of highly enjoyable things? Probably any one of a dozen Christmases. Let’s make with teh non-suxx0rz questions, list.

32. Nicknames?
That’s better. I’ve been called many things: Waffu, That Leviathan, The Hearn, Oliver “Junk” Bonds, “He Who Dare Not Be Named,” J. Crispin Featherworth IV. I’m hoping that at some point in the next week to acquire a new one: “Daddy.”

33. Piercings?
No; I’d prefer not to be blamed for the premature demise of my grandparents and in-laws. I think my father-in-law is already getting concerned about the length of my hair.

34. Eye color?
Azure.

35. Ever been to Africa?
I have never blessed the rains down in Africa.

36. Ever been toilet papering?
Yes, many times. Marching Band tradition. Shut up, I know I’m a dork.

37. Love someone so much it made you cry?
Every single day.

38. Been in a car accident?
Yeah, it’s getting to the point where giving me the keys to a car is like giving a nonagenarian…well, the keys to a car.

39. Croutons or bacon bits?
Bacon bits all the way, man. Croutons have their place. That place is a trash bin.

40. Favorite day of the week?
Saturday, obviously. I’d say Friday, but I have to go to work. Any day I have to work is a bad day.

41. Favorite restaurant?
Probably the Corner Bistro up in Wilmington. Totally awesome.

42. Favorite flower?
Bright-ass red geraniums.

43. Favorite ice cream?
Anything, with about 2 cups of Hershey’s syrup on top.

44. Disney or Warner Brothers?
Warner Brothers, no doubt, with Hanna Barbera taking second place. Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, and Daffy Duck vs. Mickey, Minnie, and Pluto? No contest, man.

45. Favorite fast food restaurant?
McD’s. Can’t argue with the $1 double cheeseburger, doggle.

46. What color is your bedroom carpet?
I despise wall-to-wall carpeting, so we pulled it up to reveal nice hardwood underneath.

47. How many times did you fail your driver’s test?
Zero, surprise surprise. Although in DE you don’t really have to take a regular test; if you take driver’s ed through the public school system (which everyone does), you get judged on performance through the week of on-the-road driving, and unless you are completely retarded you get your “license” after that. (License in quotes because it’s basically a learner’s permit that automatically upgrades after two months; you can’t drive without a parent or at night, no non-family members allowed in the car with you, all that good stuff. Now they’re talking about limiting teen drivers even more, which sounds like a great idea that’s going to reduce teen driver accidents by like .05% in Delaware while forcing more parents to drive their kids around. And yet it’s still technically legal (as far as I can tell) in this state to drive in the left lane without passing anybody. I love this place.)

48. Before this one, from whom did you get your last email?
My father-in-law. He sent me a funny joke about a redneck that went to Paris to purchase furniture. It’s rather lengthy, so I won’t duplicate it here, but rest assured, it wasn’t up to Charles’ normal standards.

49. Which store would you choose to max out your credit card?
Target. No doubt. I may end up outfitting an entire room in cheap-ass Target furniture, not because I can’t afford anything better, but because I just LIKE it.

50. What do you do most often when you are bored?
Get impatient and start wandering around aimlessly. Really goes over well in staff meetings.

51. Who are you most curious about their responses to this questionnaire?
No one really. I’m not gonna lie, most of these questions are boring and trite. I wanna see questions like “if you had to have sex with a midget, what gender of midget would you pick?” and “What if Elvis came back to life and recorded a cover of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit,’ wouldn’t that be weird?”

52. Last person you went to dinner with?A large group of college friends and extended family. We went to Kahunaville, which was surprisingly good, although, like most restaurants, understaffed.

53. Ford or Chevy?
I have no congenitally implanted preference, although my mother-in-law’s father sold Fords for like 8,000 years, and I bought a Ford truck a number of years ago. Never owned a Chevy, other than the Caprice Classic that Stefan gave me after it died so I could take it apart.

54. What are you listening to right now?
My coworkers arguing. I need a radio or something.

55. How many tattoos do you have?
I plead the fifth.

56. Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
The egg. The first chicken HAD to come from an egg, but the first egg did not necessarily have to come from a chicken; the first chicken-producing egg was a genetic mutation of something that was a non-chicken.

57. How many people are you sending this to?
I guess it depends how many people read this. 10 or so, probably.

58. Time you finished this e-mail?
12:38pm.

And there you have it! Sorry that this particular batch of questions was so crappy. Let’s come up with our own questions. In the comments on this page, leave your suggestions, such as the ones listed above, or even crazier ones like “If you woke up one morning and discovered that you had miraculously switched gender, what would you do first? Call the doctor? Test out the apparatus, if you Catch My Drift?”

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May 18th, 2006 No comments

Computers are frustrating devices. Sometimes they work; sometimes, they don’t. Sometimes, it rains. Think about that for a minute.

Sorry, lost my train of thought. Anyway, I’ve been having problems with my laptop at work, based on the fact that it was hand-me-down when I got it, and that was in late 2002. So this is probably a 5-year-old machine, and the performance lags a bit, although a memory upgrade I got early on helps.

I realized the other day that the disk is probably fragmented; what this means is that files and free space are broken up wildly and spread all over the disk. This does bad things for performance, because the computer has to search all over the place to find things. So I figured I’d run a defrag. I opened up the tool and ran an analysis. So you can figure out what’s happening, here’s the legend:

And here’s the pre-defrag analysis:


Basically, all the parts that are red are defragged, and all the parts that are blue are fine. Ideally everything is blue (and green). So I fired up the defragger, which chugged along for the better part of an hour (making the laptop pretty much useless in the process), and when it finished, here’s how the analysis looked:


I think I’m going to be running this for days.

Still no baby news, although Sarah got some good news about her job yesterday; one of her favorite people is coming back to work her project, and it looks like she might get a really nice payraise. Also, my old Brigadoon buddy Dave Munch came through in a big way and gave her a signed photo of Scott Bakula, so it’s actually a wonder she didn’t go into labor right there. She’s due on Sunday, so I think it’s safe to say that sometime in the next 2 weeks we shall have us an infant. AWESOME.

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May 16th, 2006 No comments

Baby production update: no change. Sarah went to the doctor on Friday, and nothing much is happening in The Area, as it were; no dilation, no dropping of baby, none of that good stuff. Of course, that can all change in a matter of hours. The best the doctors can tell is whether the baby is definitely going to come out within the next day, or if the baby MIGHT come out in the next day. So we’re still basically at DefCon 4 all the time.

The good news is that Sarah completed her class last night, and right now she’s working a big conference. Once these things are done, she has no scholarly or employer-related responsibilities that would keep her from having the baby guilt-free. This is a good thing; while your wife is laboring, you don’t want her thinking “Dammit I wish I’d gotten that report finished.” You want her thinking “Ow this hurts.” Focus is very important, or so I’ve read.

Her mother came over last week and the two of them teamed up on completing the nursery while I puttered around in my newly electrified garage, so now the nursery is pretty much done. We’ve got enough washed baby clothes to last few at least the first week or so, and I’ve got dozens of baby bottles cleaned, even though we hope to be on a boob-only feeding paradigm for the first three weeks. We even picked up a breast pump on Saturday at Target, along with a speaker thing for her ipod so she can listen to the Indigo Girls while screaming.

It’ll come in handy during labor, too.

Speaking of Target: I love Target. I love the selection of men’s clothes (they focus more on the “young and hip” demographic, which is nice; if you go into Kmart and Walmart, they focus on the “middle-aged, immigrant, and poor” demographic, which means they have a wide selection of jean shorts and ersatz sports tshirts); I love the dark cheapo furniture; I love how they have all kinds of kitchen supplies; I love how we furnished our entire nursery there.

The only thing I hate about Target is the fact that the nearest one is 30 minutes from us. Although really, that’s probably for the best; every time I go I seem to spend at least a hundred dollars on Crap That I Absolutely Must Have But I Didn’t Know It Until I Went To Target. For example: do I really need a paper shredder? Do I deal in espionage and have thousands of classified documents laying around the house that I need to destroy on a moment’s notice in case Homeland Security pulls up? Nay nay. Did I drop $24.96 on one? Of course.

Mother’s Day was a resounding success; we went to my parents’ place, handed out gifts (including a New Kids On The Block towel that I got at the Booth Corner Farmer’s Market that appeared to be made out of roughened, bleached burlap), ate ribs. I made Créme Brulée for dessert, which was delicious, and there was much laughter and drinking of wine.

Yesterday I awoke with a migraine, which may have been the result of red wine, or it may just have been my body saying “Please stop moving.” So I used a sick day, slept in, did some light cleaning about the house, picked up a bunch of balloons for Sarah’s conference today, and printed out a great many photos on the nifty printer that Sarah got with some birthday money.

And that is the story of Matt’s life as of Tuesday, 2006/05/16. And you should be DAMNED glad I let you read it. (Just kidding.)

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May 11th, 2006 3 comments

After 4 months of low-carb dieting, here is what I have been reduced to: this morning, I ate chocolate pudding for breakfast.

No sugar, no calorie pudding, but pudding nonetheless.

When I started the diet, I was almost looking forward to it: eggs and bacon every morning! Woohoo! I love eggs!

I no longer love eggs. I loathe eggs. I have 3 18-egg cartons in my refrigerator that I bought 6 weeks ago and haven’t had the nerve to throw out yet, even though the yolks inside must, by now, have all the consistency of whale oil.

I still have nothing but love for bacon, but bacon is a hassle. You can fry and egg in about 2 minutes, but bacon, at its fastest, is going to be an 9-10 minute job (if you don’t mind it spongey and teaming with trichinosis critters), and the cleanup is another 5 minutes while you scrape burnt pig chunks out of the pan. For a while I was making it in a huge batch once a week, but that’s a hassle too; either you bake it on cookie sheets, which works pretty well, but leaves you with 2 massive bacon-encrusted metal sheets (adding a fun flavor to all your Christmas cookies), or you fry it, which takes 45 minutes because a pan can only hold so much bacon and you don’t dare leave it for fear that it will burn.

So this morning, I walked downstairs, opened the refrigerator, spotted the oozing bowl of chocolate pudding that I mixed up on Tuesday, and said “heck yes this is breakfast of some ilk” and watched a Daily Show while ladling chocolate dessert into my mouth like a 4-year-old fatty watching cartoons on a Saturday morning. All I needed was jowls.

On the other hand, I look pretty. So there’s that.

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May 10th, 2006 1 comment

Not surprisingly, I have allergies. Seems like everybody in America has them, which I think is one way you can tell that Darwinism has been pretty much wiped out by modern medicine and the welfare state. Someone who periodically finds they can’t breathe isn’t going to make it past age 10 in 18th century New Jersey. I guess this is a good thing, despite overcrowding and all.

But back to me. I didn’t always have allergies; I first noticed them when I was going to school in Baltimore. Due to the air pollution, I got a cold in January 1997 that lasted until approximately July 1998. Ever since, I’ve basically suffered a certain amount of sinus cloggage, interspersed with periodic bouts of downright sinus blockage. Every so often I’d be blessed with a remarkable nasal clarity, usually as a result of getting a cold and treating it with massive amounts of decongestants and occasionally sticking an oiled pipe cleaner in there. (Just kidding.)

I finally got fed up with it and made an appointment to see an allergist, Dr. Gregory Marcotte, who is very tall. This morning I appeared at the healthcare center, he took my history and gave me a short examination (including having a nurse weigh me: with clothes on, a healthy 234 pounds, meaning that naked I’m probably around 225, which is about a skinny as I’ve been since before I ballooned up to 260+ a few years ago), and left me in the car of a nurse, who stabbed my forearms with some small needles and bade me sit and watch TV (they had a video of “As Good As It Gets,” which I hadn’t seen in a while; oddly enough, I had forgotten that one of the characters is stricken with very bad allergies and asthma, which I assume is not coincidental with the tape being in the allergist’s office).

After 20 minutes, she came back and said everything looked pretty much normal. She had injected me with saline as a negative control, which hadn’t puffed up at all, and histamine as a positive control, which puffed up normally. The spot where she had stabbed me with undiluted cat dander solution had itched for a while, which concerned me, but it didn’t puff up. By this time I’d been there for about an hour, and was assuming that the next step was to have the doctor come in, tell me I wasn’t really allergic to anything, and that I should suck it up and blow my nose every once in a while. The nurse, however, told me that now they would do the SECONDARY test, in which they would squirt a heck of a lot more stuff under my shoulder skin to REALLY test how allergic I was.

I was thinking, “So what was the purpose of the first test?” but I didn’t ask, because the nurse was nice, and because she had a lot of hypodermic needles. (I’m pretty sure the first test was in very small amounts so they could make sure I wouldn’t react to the much larger amounts that they injected into my shoulder, which still, after 4 hours, is red and puffy.) Anyway, she shot me full of stuff again, and left me to enjoy the comedic genius that is Helen Hunt.

After 20 more minutes, she returned, looked at my arm, and said “Wow, you are REALLY allergic to dust mites and mold.” Good to know. The doctor came back in said the same thing, although it turned out I am NOT allergic to shrimp. I had specifically mentioned that as a possible allergen because a number of years ago I ate something like 300 cold shrimp at a Christmas party and broke out in hives. He said it might have something to do with sulfites, but then asked about wine and beer, and lord knows I’ve drunk that in vast amounts and haven’t had any horrid reactions other than the time I threw up on a Senator.

The nurse gave me some pamphlets on reducing dust mites and mold in the house, and the doctor gave me a prescription for Nasinex, which apparently will help reduce my decongestion which would return me to my pre-1997 nasal status, which would be EXTREMELY rad. So I’ll get that filled this afternoon.

Brian and Mary’s son, Nolan Michael, was born yesterday afternoon, so last night Sarah (who is so pregnant that she can’t roll over in bed without a crane) and I went to visit them all at the hospital. It was the first time I have ever held an infant under 8 hours old, which I guess is something I’ll have to get used to, but I still get nervous about the whole “supporting the head” thing. Everyone else seems to think I’m afraid of dropping a baby on its head, but even my ungainly arms can grip onto a baby. My problem is it’s never been adequately explained to me how far forward a baby’s head can go before it can’t breath, or how far back it can go before things start pushing on soft brain tissue in an uncool way, so once the baby has been placed in my arms I can’t move it, or hand it back effectively. I have to wait until someone who’s moved past these neuroses to come rescue it.

They are cool, though. Nolan didn’t seem to respond to my humming, but then, he didn’t respond to much of anything. I liked him.

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May 8th, 2006 No comments

We had us a busy weekend, yo, seriously serious. Saturday Sarah had a shower, so I planned to have all the guys over to watch sports and grill things. But I had a rehearsal on Saturday morning, which meant that Thursday and Friday were spent cleaning and organizing and in general making the house into a little less of a dump. Just a little.

We partially succeeded; I got a lot of the kitchen stuff put away into the new cabinets, swept and vacuumed, got all the baby crap out of the foyer, all that stuff. There’s still an unkempt bag o’ CDs laying on the floor in the living room because I just pulled them all out of my car and haven’t had a chance to go through them. And of course there’s a fine matting of cat hair on every surface of the house, not much we can do about that, other than simply shaving the cats, and don’t think I haven’t considered it.

Anyway, we got the place into semi-non-crappy mode, I had rehearsal on Saturday morning, and we had a riotous time inhaling meat hunks and grilled corn and beer. Sarah’s shower was also fun times, although at this point it’s not like we need more stuff. Speaking of showers: baby. Speaking of baby: I’ll get to that momentarily. Back to the timeline summary!

Sunday I got up and went to church, then came back to the house and printed out photos with the new printer/scanner/copier Sarah bought with some birthday money. She had picked up frames during AC Moore’s sale last week, so we had 8x10s of wedding photos and a large black 8-panel 4×6 frame array that I filled with pictures of the cats. Sunday night: sang a cool concert with the First and Central Presbyterian Chancel Choir. Among other simpler pieces, we sang a 20th century Requiem by Alfred Desenclos. Very jazzy, very French, is the best way to describe it.

And that’s the weekend.

Back to baby topics: I keep dreaming about the baby (which is, btw, officially due Any Time; we’re at 38 weeks and 1 day, so if Sarah starts contracting, we go into Red Alert Here Comes The Baby Mode, and I may disappear off of here for a while), in a variety of ways. In some dreams, the baby is just sort of there, while other strange dream things are going on. Like, I’ll have a dream about hunting wildebeests in Antarctica or the like (or penguins in Venezuela, whatever), and I’ll have the baby in a backpack. Nothing happens to the baby, but it always seems to be there.

A really weird one I had last week was one in which the baby wasn’t to term yet, but we wanted to make sure that it was going to be normal and healthy, so we actually took it out of Sarah’s uterus, admired it, and then were making preparations to put it back in when I woke up. That one haunted me all morning.

Oh, and Brian‘s wife, who is technically due about the same time as Sarah, is getting induced on Tuesday, so let’s all give her a holla: HOLLA!

Leave your hollaz in the comments. Preferably on Brian’s site. I’m tired of having my site show up at the top of google searches for “dude your mom is totally a skank.”

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