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oh my god there’s a human in my wife’s belly

Behind the iron curtain!
Evening folks. I was going to post some pictures of Lil’ Chino’s pink and pink nursery today, but other things came calling and it just didn’t happen – tomorrow perhaps.

Tonight was our first baby class at the hospital, two hours every week for the next six weeks. Tonight there was lots of talk about vaginal mucous and other such unsavory items – but, overall, I think I’ll enjoy the class. I’ve certainly got things to learn, so a class isn’t such a wacky idea. To kick off the class, the instructor played Bill Cosby’s famous birth/labor bit from his Himself standup – a classic through and through. At some point in the class, I think when the instructor was saying that some babies actually “play” with their mothers’ bladders like constantly inflating beach balls, I realized that this “thing” inside my wife isn’t just some fluid-breathing “growth”… no, this is a human being. While I know she’s not in there contemplating the meaning of life or doing algebra, it’s not like she’s a rock or some other inanimate object – she stretches, rolls, flips, covers her eyes when it’s bright, etc. Oh my God there’s a human in my wife’s belly.

Work today was furious-productive, which is good as I need a kick in the pants to get me going. It was one of those days where I decided to work smarter, not harder, and it seemed to pay off in the end. I always feel good when I have some measurable accomplishments at the day’s end – output really justifies effort for me. Also in work news, I got word late today that I’ve been tapped for a trip to Moscow and Prague in late April – two months post-Lil’ Chino. Now, normally, I wouldn’t really want to travel that close to the baby… but… Moscow and Prague?! I mean, I’ve never been to Europe, and something about Moscow has fascinated me for a long time. So, I asked Sharaun, and she grudgingly said OK. While not official yet, I’m leaning towards going – that could all change after the baby though, who knows if I’ll be interested in travel… maybe I’ll just want to sit around a stare at my new daughter.

Sometimes I hate how heavy-handed I am. I’m just not built for fine, detailed, or small work. I’m all forced, dumb-muscled motions, largely due to my severe impatience and low frustration-factor. I rarely eat something without some of it ending up on my clothes, I break things trying to fix them, and I cut-corners out of frustration and accept less than perfection just to “get the job done.” Now, that’s a generalized statement. When I really have pride in what I’m doing, I go to extra effort to ensure it’s 110% – the catch being that, for whatever reason, I have to care about the results. My backyard, certain tasks at work, etc. The amount of pride I have in, or effort I put into, something is directly related to how skilled I am at the task. I.e., if I’m good at it and/or it’s easy for me, I take extra care in making sure it’s done right. If I’m so-so at it, I put in so-so effort. Not a good way to build skills I suppose, I should work on that. Although I’ll never carve the alphabet on a grain of rice, perhaps I can hone some lacking skills.

Writing that last paragraph, I waffled between using the phrase “take pride in” or the phrase “have pride in.” Do those actually mean the same thing? Strange.

Goodnight my peoples.

Posted on

racist? me?

That's racist!
Monday, and the rain and wind have been unending. I haven’t seen so much rain in a while. On Saturday we got a brief respite, and I used the few hours of sunshine to trim the fountaingrass bushes in the front yard with the new electric trimmer I got and deliver a borrowed bed to a new owner. The weekend was also a busy time for baby-prep, with the nursery coming pretty close to “together” over the past few days. This entry is really just a boring weekend recap, so nothing that special.

Friday we dropped a sizeable chunk of moolah on Lil’ Chino’s little white crib, matching white dresser/changing table, and “pack and play” (the modern day combination of playpen, bassinet, portable crib-thing, and a whatnot. Then, we swung into the local hardware warehouse and picked up two gallons of pink paint, one darkish, one lightish. Somehow, knowing there’s not anymore logical “breaks” between now and the baby (for instance, the time prior to now was broken up with things like Thanksgiving, Christmas, India, etc.), it’s really hit home that we need to move into preparation-overdrive; trying to avoid a New Orleans-esque spending of billions to fix the levy after the hurricanes. Sharaun’s last first day back after break is the 3rd, and her last day back before the baby is the very next 3rd… that’s soon, y’allz… that’s soon.

Sunday morning, the last of our new living room furniture got delivered. At the time, I was cleaning the house, more specifically the kitchen when the doorbell rang. I had Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois blaring on the stereo, in all it’s am-I-religious-or-not white-boy glory. Opening my front door, I was greeted by a smiling man who asked me where I wanted the furniture, how my New Year was, etc. As he headed back to his truck to get the goods, I left the front door open for him. Then, I did something strange, almost unconsciously. I went to the computer, from which was the last chords of an ending Sufjan track were fading out to silence, and I switched tracklists. But guys, I didn’t just switch tracklists… I switched tracklists to the Little Brother album, The Listening, which I downloaded a while back on some website recommendation, didn’t like at all, and just hadn’t yet deleted. What’s the significance of this? Little Brother is a hip-hop record, and the furniture delivery guy was black. I did turn down the volume so that it was barely audible from the room where he was working, but it’s the fact that I did it in the first place. What the hell? I felt really stupid really quickly, and changed it back to Mr. Stevens in all his WASP glory. Racist? Me?

Let’s do a random link-rodeo, since I’ve got a lot of stray sentences that need to be wrangled. First off, there’s a good, but long-winded, read entitled “What I Heard About Iraq in 2005” here. Second, I just got around to watching the History Channel’s excellent Banned from the Bible documentary. An outstanding account of the canonization of the Bible and examination of several apocryphal writings. It’s worth it to set your TiVo for the re-airing. Finally, congratulations are in order for Ben and Suzy, as they’ve agreed to tie the knot.

Time to kick rocks, goodnight.

Posted on

cups

Not a bad deal.
OK, I just had to write about this. Have you guys heard about the AirTran Airlines, Wendys, and Coca Cola deal? Until last week, I hadn’t – but I know all about it now. AirTran airlines, a newcomer trying to drum up business and not yet in debt like most established carriers, teamed up with Wendys to offer a free round-trip ticket to anywhere in the continental United States; all you have to do is collect 64 Wendys cups, which have coupons for the flights. Sounds too good to be true, right? I thought so too, and so I didn’t give the whole thing much thought. My brother-in-law actually told me about the promotion while we were in Florida last week. He jokingly suggested how easy it would be to collect 64 discarded Wendys cups and earn loads of free flights. We laughed, and I forgot about it.

Then, tonight, he called again – having just returned from a multi-Wendys dumpster-diving run where he and a buddy collected 256 cups in one evening. Turns out his buddy has been doing this every single night for near a month now, and he only found out last night – with just two nights left in the promotion. What’s more, his buddy has collected over thirty free flights in the past month. Yeah sure, you can only redeem two per name, but he’s given two flights to nearly every member of his extended family – some of which have reportedly already redeemed the cups for flights and actually flown AirTran. Sounds crazy, but a quick Google shows he’s not alone, and these things are all over Ebay and Craigslist. One article quotes an AirTran representative, “… the airline anticipated a black market for the promotional cups, Mr. Hutcheson says, but ‘when we looked at the pros and cons of it, the cost of getting exposure for AirTran outweighed the bad.'”

Amazing… just amazing; free flights for nothing more than a romp in some fast food trash. For the record, the deal is over now. Meaning, no new cups are being distributed to Wendys locations. However, you can continue to redeem cups until February of 2006, and some Wendys will continue to give out cups while their existing supplies last. So, if you’re adventurous… dive in!

Three-day weekend!! Goodnight.

Posted on

slicing stratosphere

Somewhere up there...
Slicing stratosphere on the way home, another tight connection so fingers crossed that the luggage meets us there. Today would be the day my travel-size baby powder runs out, sticky unpowdered balls for an eight hour cross-country trek, what could be better? Laptop’s got enough battery to last the entire flight, but I’ll get tired of it before then. Debating even opening it, don’t really have anything to write, but I wanted to listen to the Andrew Bird album that I’ve been singing all morning. Had a good time in Florida, always do. Will be glad to get back home though, if for nothing more than to try and get tied into the work thing for a short seven weeks before Lil’ Chino arrives.

Speaking of babies, which, when am I not, lately… that little girl is on her way, is coming. I see it occupy more of Sharaun’s thoughts day by day – bringing it also to the front of mine. We start our parenting classes the week after we get back, once a week for six weeks – Tuesday nights for a couple hours. There, I’m supposing we’ll learn to be parents. Picking up skills like shooshing and swaddling and tummy-timing. I’m excited, actually, to go to the classes… even though they’re not free, or anything. I’m sure we’ll learn a thing or two about a thing or two, and that can’t be bad. But, deep down, I’ve talked previously about how I think this thing is just “meant” to work… being that we’ve made it from caveman to here, y’know.

Man these kind of entries are boring: “This is what we did, this is what we’re doing, blah, blah, baby, blah.” It’s easy to complain about the junior-high journal style of writing, but harder to actually do something original; so you don’t, you shoot for just writing instead, and leave lofty goals of creativity for rare moments of inspiration rather than the norm. Plodding on then, faults well known.

Sharaun got me a great little book for Christmas, 101 Things A Good Dad Should Know. It’s got lots of neat little tidbits of knowledge that all dads should have stowed away. Of course, how to throw a curveball and swing a bat are in there… sigh. Not that our daughter will be pitching curveballs that much, but her mom did play softball. What’s the fear, you ask? People, I have no skills; can’t swing a bat, can’t throw a ball. OK, so I can do both, so can a monkey, but I don’t do either correctly. Never did learn, was always laughed at when I tried, so never put much into it. In the book, there’s and illustration of the good dad, we’ll call him Dad Gallant, hanging a tennis ball from a garage rafter for swinging practice. Me, we’ll call me Dad Goofus, I hang a tennis ball from the garage rafter to know precisely how far to pull in the car. I don’t want to be Dad Goofus. Sure, I can teach you how to find the North Star, complete the square, and balance a checkbook – but I’m a wreck on the field. You’ll still love me, right?

I’ve finally decided I’m getting an iPod. I’ve wanted one now for nigh on two years, but so far had been holding off for a larger capacity future model. Yesterday, I just up and decided I’m getting one – perhaps my last vanity purchase before Lil’ Chino gets here. I want the 60GB model, could care less for the video on that tiny screen, but I won’t mind having it, y’know, just in case. While my collection is twice over 60GB and always growing, I think I can pare it down to a good “purist” base that will be nice to have in a pocket. I always rationalize large purchases with some kind of “plus and minus” model where I comb through the last couple months finances for expenses that could’ve been. When I “find” money that could’ve been spent but wasn’t, I then feel better about unexpected cash outflux. In this case, our skymile-funded trip home for Christmas is the plus to my iPod minus. Sane, right?

Before I go, a couple recent disappointments, one expected, one not. Got dragged to a movie with Sharaun and an old friend of ours the other night, The Family Stone. Please, for the love of Jesus y’all, don’t go see this steaming pile. It was, honestly, one of the worst things I’ve seen in a loooong while. At least the old friend sprung for tickets, so I wasn’t lighter in the wallet for the slop. I hadn’t expected much, but I was shocked and awed and how little I got. Second, finally got the Test Icicles album I’ve been wanting since their 1st single did so well. It blows. Don’t waste your money, you’re better off buying this brilliant Andrew Bird record and falling asleep in the sun.

‘Night.

Posted on

gummy smiles

I think I've used this before.
Been finding it hard to write this week, hence the picture cop-out yesterday. And, while on the subject, in regards to yesterday’s entry – I was reminded by my friend Bob that I should’ve postcripted the “Florida is busted and full of tumbleweeds” story with a note about how they’ve also recently suffered through four, count ’em, four, hurricanes. And yeah, he’s right – four hurricanes in one season is bound to leave some broken marquees and un-done repairs. So, while you can’t really blame the retail exodus on hurricanes, I am willing to allow that maybe the state of brokedowness may be somewhat skewed by it. Lets move on.

Upgraded to WordPress 2.0 Monday night and it went off without a hitch. I love the new backend, things are simpler and I don’t have to switch around so much between different backend tabs to get a post up. Things seem a bit faster too, front and back, and all my plugins seem to be working post-upgrade as well. Plus, they’ve integrated the database-backup plugin I loved and some hard-core spam blocking technology – two big pluses. And, maybe the best new feature, the post preview is now an embedded frame of your actual blog, using your stylesheets and layout, so you can see what the thing will actually look like once it’s up. If you’re a blogger, or you’ve been thinking about starting a blog, perhaps keeping a list of ideas around for the eventuality, you gotta get the WordPress.

Last night I left Sharaun in bed as I headed to the bathroom to brush my teeth. After brushing, I decided to clean up my beard-line (my skin gets mad irritated when I shave, so I like to give it an overnighter to shape up), so the teeth-brushing turned out longer than I intended. When I finally got back to the room, I saw Sharaun lying on her side in bed, sobbing. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “I dunno… nothing…” came the teary reply. I climbed into bed and put my arms around her and asked again, “What’s wrong?” “I don’t know… I’m just afraid I’m not going to be a good mom, there’s so much I don’t know.” I chuckled. After some consoling and empathizing, things were fine again. I think spending so much time around our new-parent friends, watching them take care of their kids and all that’s involved, got her a little anxious. Truth be told, there is a lot involved in the whole deal. But, I think, for me at least, seeing all our peers managing happy young’ns was actually good for my confidence – us kids can do it, are capable. Maybe I’m naive, but I’m not too nervous – far more impatient and ready to dive in than anything. Stress is one thing, and I know she’s feeling a good bit of it late, but confidence is another – and I think we’ve both got plenty of that. I expect we’ll each have a freak out or two in the next coming months, par for the course.

One more thing before I kick rocks. I have no idea what prompted the comment assault on my old entry where I reconciled myself to my new allergy, but I did find it pretty amusing. It makes me smile to think someone (yeah, they were all from the same person) took the time to write that much, for whatever reason. Thanks.

Goodnight.

Posted on

variations on a theme

The theme.
Another Christmas done gone. I have this theory, that Christmas really won’t be “magical” again until our daughter is old enough to where it’s magical to her. I figure three of four years old is probably ideal… from then until about ten maybe. You know, the ages where you can barely sleep on Christmas eve you’re so excited imagining playing with your new Ewok Village or Snake Mountain. My memorable Christmases are all boy-centric, my brother and I rarely pined for dollhouses or Barbie dolls – so having a daughter to impress will be something new for me. But, I’m sure it’s the same girl or boy… Christmas is freakin’ awesome for kids. Where was I going with this? Oh, right – a Christmas recap. Gifting went well, I got a bunch of stuff I needed and some stuff I didn’t even know I wanted. Two of my favorite gifts, even though I’m not a DVD-whore or chronic movie-watcher, are the The Goonies and Stand By Me DVDs. I do enjoy having a “canonical” collection of favorite movies and shows, and those two work well to round out my “coming of age” section. My in-laws are excellent gift-givers, so it’s good lootin’ at their place.

Every time we come to Florida, well, more specifically, our hometown in Florida, I’m amazed how broken-down it looks. I’ve written about it before, actually. I know not all Florida is the same, but it seems like people just don’t invest here – they simply reuse. Buildings go through three or four stores without so much as a coat of paint or changed sign. Broken things don’t get fixed, they just stay broken and you get used to them. Old stores leave and new ones don’t replace them, leaving huge plazas once holding tens of retailers as just wasted space. I started writing this paragraph this morning, and decided it would be loads better with pictures, black and white ones at that. So, I commandeered the mother-in-law’s car, grabbed the camera, and headed out to snap some supporting imagery. Here’s what I got:

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Used to be a Sears, then turned into an “antiques carnival.” Now it’s bingo.

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Row of mostly empty shops. I took my traffic safety class here once upon a time.

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Tagged up side of a trailer hawking Adult Toys and XXX Videos.

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Once buildings go empty, they stay empty.

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More of the same.

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Formerly the Winn Dixie grocery store where I had my 3rd job, a bagger and cart-collector. The first of two of these stores that now stand vacant.

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More empty storefront. The corner store was a drugstore when I was a kid, we stole cigarettes by the carton from the easily-distracted geriatric staff.

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Boarded-up Wendys, broken marquee and drive-thru awning still in place.

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Used to be a K-Mart when I was a kid, now it’s just another huge empty warehouse.

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The Garden Center at what used to be K-Mart.

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This Goodings grocery store opened when I was in middle school, and had closed before I left for college. It’s in the same plaza as the K-Mart above.

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Fresh paint doesn’t make it any less abandoned.

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Another mothballed Garden Center across town, this one alongside what used to be a Wal Mart.

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Space spaces everywhere, and not a car to park. The faded facade of the old Wal Mart.

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This McDonalds is actually still open, but I thought the damaged, yet unrepaired, sign was worth a picture.

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You can still see where the foam lettering once protected this convenience store’s paint from the sun, leaving ghostly faded text offering money orders, lotto, and ice.

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The Van Winkle motel, which, in fairness, is also still operational – just old.

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My favorite picture of the bunch. Only your imagination limits what coulda once been on this marquee and in the store, it’s all dead now.

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Another huge store left to rot in the Florida sun.

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And yet another busted marquee, wasted advertising space.

I had planned to write more, but we got home late and I’m more ready to sleep than ready to write. Last full day in Florida tomorrow, then back to CA for the new year.

Goodnight folks.

Posted on

mr. miles

Book's late.
Near the end of our Denver to Orlando leg of the flight to Florida, one of the flight attendants stopped by our Economy Plus exit row aisle and turned to me, “Well Mr. Miles, is this your last flight of the year?” Somewhat surprised, I replied, “Yeah, but this one isn’t business… how’d you know I have a lot of miles?” “We know things,” he responded, “they let us know when the 100ks or million-milers are on board.” I can’t explain to you how awesome this made me feel. Status, baby; notoriety, son. Somewhere, on that dot-matrix printed flight manifest that shows passenger names, seat locations, and who wants kosher or vegetarian meals – there’s a little asterisk or “100k” next to my name. And I had chalked up the extra snacks, attention, and cups of water offered as we boarded to a particularly good flight crew. Next time I’m gonna expect dark-skinned bikini-clad women dropping rose petals in front of me as I take my seat. Right on.

Merry Christmas y’all!!