Who wouldn't want a guy like that on their side?
He went over a few of the scarier items that we had brought with us after attending the Niagara Health System's pre-natal classes. The classes themselves did little more than scare the shit out of us and make us feel that we were being condescended to. Ever see that Simpson's episode where Marge and Homer are forced to attend parenting classes? There's a bit where the teacher says"I can't stress this enough people, put your garbage, in the garbage can."The classes were like that when they weren't trying to scare everyone out of getting an epididural (which can now be explained by the unavailability of epidurals at 2 of the 3 three hospitals in the region).
So this great doctor basically tells us to ignore everything stupid that we heard at these classes, and listen to someone who's delivered 10,000 babies. Him.
So bottom line is Superwife is happy, I'm happy, and it sounds like babybrown is as happy as he or she can be at this point.
Now, to my tree.
I have this magnificent old tree growing out of my front lawn. Its very old, very large, and twice a year, it is a big pain in the ass when the roots clog my sewer drain. But I digress.
This tree has been shedding these seeds for like three weeks, with no sign of slowing down in sight.
I imagine that its probably going to be fine, but its just funny how my lawn looks like it's blanketed in green snow all the time.
Is there such a thing as a tree doctor? Because I think we're in need of a lawncall.
So my ever-lovin' wife has just entered her 10th lunar month, or so the e-newsletter I just got has informed me.
I cannot believe that she is going to give birth in the next month. We used to talk about having a baby and it always seemed like it was something we were going to do later. Nothing ever more concrete than a ubiquitous later.
But I just can't believe how fast nine months (ok, eight) can go by when you're supposed to be keeping track of them. Monthly, then bi-weekly doctor's visits, weekly pre-natal classes.
It feels like we were saying later only yesterday.
Weird. Eh?
But aside from wanting Superwife to stay pregnant because she is so damned happy all the time (seriously), I can't wait to be a Dad.
Having another person in our lives that we can interact with, and teach, and learn from, and will afford us an entirely different view of the world, as its seen from his/her eyes.
As much as I imagine it will be very hard at times, I already know how I'll feel about it. How much I already feel, and the baby isn't even born yet.
Amazing feeling.
It's funny how comfortable I am with the idea of being a Dad. Most of the stuff I've read in the reams of baby literature I have suggests that a lot of guys are usually losing it at this point in the game. I can honestly say that I'm not. I don't think I've ever looked forward to something so much in my life.
Fuck, you'd think I was the only guy to ever become a Dad.
And speaking of the baby's mp3 player (currently comfortably strapped to Mommy's belly), which I of course wasn't, I'll have to remember to put 'Ping Island/Lightning Strike Rescue Op' into the mp3 player for that kid. Really cool sound track I'm listening to as I write this from Bill Murray's Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Good fuckin' movie too, as Cooley would say.
But I may have to lose the 'Ride the Lightning' to make room for it. Not sure if babybrown will miss it, but there'll be plenty of time for him/her to grow out the hair and hate us later, right?
Labels: superwife
Vanity is a funny thing.
Not that I didn't know about it in my own life, at least peripherally, before now. But for the most part, I'm a low maintenance guy. You know, get a haircut once a month, no real clothes sense of any kind. I'm a t-shirt and jeans kind of guy.
But even to a low-rent like me, vanity can do some serious damage.
See, I've recently noticed a slow but steady march of grey beginning to take over on what was heretofore the no-grey zone of my head. Plenty of it mind you, so at least I won't be bald anytime soon. But definitely grey.
So I tell my wife that I'm going to start dying my hair, and she has the grace to nod and tell me that whatever I do is fine with her.
I've told you before. She's good at allowing me my idiocies.
But rather than begin a lifelong campaign of dying my hair just yet, Superwife suggests that I get my hair highlighted, something I've done in the past. I think that way, she doesn't have a 30 year old husband that dies his hair. I'm still a good distance from metrosexualism, but that's fair enough.
So I go get my hair highlighted (highlit?) last night. And maybe the girl that did it wasn't too familiar with the process. Maybe she cut my hair too short afterwards, and maybe my hair now looks like a blonde skunk with a chessboard carved into the side.
And maybe the dozen grey hairs that no one but me would have seen weren't so bad after all.
Labels: narcissism
So the last Star Wars movie ever to be made has been seen by our family.
Because Superwife is so pregnant, we opted not to wait in line forever to try and see the movie in the first couple of days of its release. Although I'll admit to a fairly nagging compulsion to get ahold of an old monk's robe and a Toys R Us lightsaber and wait in line with the rest of my kind. Instead we went to see it on Victoria Day, assuming that we'd have a better shot at getting good seats without having to go hours before the show started.
So, because I'm me, we showed up an hour before the show started anyway, and were the first people in the theatre. Superwife even got one of those 'I-feel-your-pain' looks from the ticket girl when she told us we were too early, and we had to wait for the theatre to be cleaned before we could go in.
Now I had intended to sit on the aisle, to facilitate Superwife's frequent bathroom visits during the movie - as it turns out, having 20 pounds of baby and associated fluids in your stomach causes some kind of pressure on a woman's bladder. Who knew?
Anywho, Superwife wasn't having any of that. She told me that on any other non-pregnant day, we'd be sitting right in the middle of the theatre to watch one of the most anticipated movies of my lifetime, so that's what we did.
She's a real trooper, my wife.
In case I haven't mentioned this, and I have, she's very likely a much better wife than yours is.
I'm just saying.
So this movie didn't turn out to be anywhere near my expectations for it. But not in the way that you'd think.
It was better.
So. Much. Better.
When The Phantom Menace came out, I was, like every other Star Wars fan, somewhat VERY VERY disapointed. Lucas had taken his original saga and begun a new storyline that seemed either bent on conscripting new fans, particularly young fans, with obscene characters like Jar-Jar, or in selling videogames, a la that seemingly endless pod racing scene. Original fans, like myself could enjoy the movie, but nowhere near to the extent that they wanted to enjoy it.
With Attack of the Clones, Lucas did a much better job of taking the childishness out of the franchise, and making a really good setup movie for the third installment. I'm actually a big fan of 'Clones'. Especially the part when Yoda enters into a surprise lightsaber duel. I still remember watching that with my buddy Jon Taylor, and both of us giggling at how cool that scene was. What can I say, I'm a child?
So now we come to the last Star Wars movie ever to be made. And it was dark, thoughtful, passionate, tragic, extraordinarily violent and contained a not so ill-timed political message about enforcing democracy.
Yes, you should be clearing your throat America.
This movie has immediately been put in second place behind 'The Empire Strikes Back' in my list of favourite Star Wars movies. I know, bold statment, but I fucking loved this flick. I will have to see upon subsequent viewings, if it may end up being my favourite Star Wars movie of all. Lucas makes Skywalker so sympathetic a character, that you're almost willing to take his side, right up until the part in the council chamber with the 'younglings'.
And who was that bastard that laughed out loud during that scene, when everyone else sat in flabbergasted silence?
Oh yeah, that was me.
So even though the return of the franchise had a rocky start, I'll be the first to say I was wrong not to have faith, and loudly proclaim:
'All hail to the one true king, George Lucas'.
Nicely done.
And just so it's been said, Luke and Leia make for some great baby names, no?
Actually, the series finale for Star Trek: Enterprise was aired first on Friday night, but I opted to watch it tonight as it was shown on Space.
In what the producer's of the show called a 'valentine for the fans', this final episode had Riker and Troi visiting key moments of the NX-01's final mission in an effort to help Riker make a decision about how to handle an ethical conflict.
I thought the episode was fantastic. Particularly since TNG has always been my favourite Trek series - with Enterprise a very close second. And it was a very nice tie-in to the TNG season 7 episode 'The Pegasus', which, if I were to make one, would be on my top 5 list for that show.
I found the ep reminiscent of Babylon 5's season 4 ender, 'The Deconstruction of Falling Stars', in which various figures from three different periods in the future examined the impact B5 had on history.
It was a cool idea then and it was a cool idea now.
But the final ending was the best part. A montage of the Enterprises is shown, and as each ship appears, the part of the opening narrative corresponding to each ship's show is heard. First, Picard, then Kirk, and finally Archer, as the NX-01 sails into the distance.
I probably can't explain how sad the ending of this show makes me, and if you're not a fan, you're probably shaking your head and thinking I'm totally fucking looney tunes. But Star Trek has always been there for me, and there are some reasons in particular I'm feeling so low about things:
Star Trek: The Motion Picture was the first movie my Mom took me to when I was just 4, and I've been hooked ever since.
And when I lived with my Dad and was living under the combined tyranny of him and my abusive asshole of a step-mother, I spent a lot of time holed up in my room watching a tiny black and white tv and hoping they'd just go away. I still remember watching 'Encounter at Far Point' after a particularly nasty encounter and just losing myself in it completely.
And later on, when I had to quit high school so I could take a few extra hours at the gas station I worked at just to make rent, what do you think I watched in my shitty bachelor apartment? You betcha. Tapes of old Trek, because I couldn't even afford cable.
Not that I would've rather watched anything else.
And the biggest reason I hung onto this show is that it began airing the fall after Jon died. Our love of Trek was one of the cool things he and I had in common that nobody else did. Jon loved Star Trek almost as much as I do. He and I had pretty much memorized the dialogue for the first 6 movies, and could quote on cue while watching any of them. And with each new movie that was released, he and I would be there opening night, junkies ready for a fix.
In fact, many times watching Enterprise, I found myself wondering what he would've thought, if it would've been another of the things he and I would have enjoyed together.
I know it would have been.
So after the show was over, I waited until Superwife went up to bed before I had a little cry.
Maybe for Trek, maybe a little for myself, but I think mostly for things ending.
Fuck I miss that guy.
But I guess its also bittersweet that I have the final episode of the Star Wars legacy to look forward to. Because in only a few short days, I'll have seen that, and then that will be over for me too.
sigh.
Guess I'll just have to shell out a few bucks and buy myself the new Enterprise DVD sets. I mean, how else can my baby get to grow up watching Star Trek, as I did, if he/she can't count on Dad to come through, right?
Labels: star trek
Well now that I think about that, maybe it's about as demonstrative as you can get.
I installed our baby's carseat this afternoon, with only a minimum of swearing and seat-punching. The swearing was due in large part to my spending 15 minutes looking for something called a UAS anchor bolt, which I found out later was added to vehicles made after 1998.
Fuck.
And the seat-punching stems completely from closing my hand in the back wall of the backseat after realizing that said UAS anchor bolt was narry to be found.
And it now seems that with each preparation for the upcoming baby, our animals are getting further relegated to obscurity.
One case in point would be the recent removal of Maya's bed from our bedroom to make way for the bassinet that I put together. (There's another MAJOR swearing story there, but you can fill in the dots on that one).
Another case in point would be the decree that once the carseat goes into the car, Maya stays out of it. Now the carseat is in, and I'm still not sure what to think about the whole Maya free-zone that the car has just become.
But Maya's issues notwithstanding, that carseat seems to be just screaming to take someone for a ride.
And btw, I have been inspired by a blog that I read regularly to add a disclaimer to my about page that I will herein repeat:
... I should probably tell you for the record, if you're someone I work with (or more importantly, for) we'll all be far better served if you just go ahead and leave.I have no intention of getting dooced, that is, loosing my job because someone I work for read something they either didn't like or didn't agree with (or both) on my site.
So if you are someone I work for and you stay and you get offended, well, don't say I didn't warn you.
Labels: trinity
So sometimes I get more out of my tv watching than your average viewer. Most of the time I watch it like everyone else and just get entertained for a few hours at a stretch.
But every once in awhile I get to see an insight into the kind of person I have turned out to be. And the view's not as bad as I'd expected. I'll explain:
You remember back in the dark ole days of the nineties, when everybody's favourite guilty pleasure was a primetime soap on the then new Fox Network called Melrose Place?
Aw, come on, you watched it. And you'd talk about what happened with the people that it was safe to talk with, about who was sleeping with who and when you'd see more of that uber-hot Sydney. And when they'd get rid of that bastard Michael. And don't even get me started on crazy Kimberly. The one with the lustrous red hair?
Ahem.
But if anyone that wasn't into the show was around, the subject would get dropped like a stripper's panties when the cash comes out.
Hell, there was even a Seinfeld episode about it, because so many people watched the show, but wouldn't admit to it.
Well, I have a new guilty secret tv show and I've been on it for about two years now. Superwife's brother Dave put me on to it, and there's not a scifi loving bone in his body. But he thought I'd watch it because I used to read the Superman comic book religiously. As I did with the X-Men, Fantastic Four, The Flash, Green Lantern, Batman, Spiderman, etc, etc.
The show's called Smallville.
Yeah I know, show about Superman when he was a teenager, no big stretch for a self-proclaimed scifi junkie, right? Except I don't just watch it because it's about Superman.
I mean, I did. In the beginning at least. But I have to admit that the show's characters have totally grown on me to the point that I am now fairly obsessed with most of the arc, particularly the whole Chloe/Clark/Lana/Lois triangle.
Oh wait, is that a quadrangle?
Anyway.
So I really like the show, watch it all the time, tape it when I miss it, watch it the second I get home from missing it, etc.
You could fairly easily say that it is my new Melrose Place.
So in watching the show and examining my aforementioned insight into self, I have decided unequivocally that Clark should get together with Chloe. She's hot, she's smart, she knows about the whole Clark/Superman thing. She's everything that vapid, dippy Lana isn't.
But I just watched the most recent episode 'Blank', and in it Clark gets his memory temporarily erased and ends up having Chloe clue him into his life, his powers (because she knows all about them - except the pre-amnesia Clark couldn't trust her to tell her himself).
And so during the ep, he ends up even in his fugue state going after Lana, and completely ignoring this hottie who is still into him even though he'd be considered a freak by likely everyone else, Lana probably included. And at the very end of the episode, he ends up getting his memory back, and forgetting that Chloe knows his secret, and again going after Lana and completely missing out on what's right in front of him.
So either the writers think the people that watch the show are idiots, because no one would choose the pretty twit over the cute good-hearted friend that has everything in common with our hero or
(and here comes the rub)
by putting myself in said hero's position and choosing the right girl over the fantasy, I've learned that there's just a very little bit more depth to me than I would've thought there was.
Who knew?
Labels: smallville
'Why, aside from the enormous ... er... ego, is it that you rock', you ask?
Because I just finished installing Movable Type mostly unassisted on my web server. And it works.
That's why.
Man am I proud of myself right now.
So this is yet another new look in a long line of facelifts for my site. This one is more functional than cosmetic, at least for now. I just installed Movable type 3.16 to get away from the manual flat file system I've been using. MT uses CGI, PHP and Perl (none of which I remembered shit about from school) and is supercool for lots of reasons, but here's my main two:
1) It will allow my site to be completely dynamic and
2) I can now blog from anywhere, very easily
So here's to my ability to swear and scream and still get the job done.
When I get time I will migrate over all of my archived entries from the old site, as well as rebuild the few good pages that I'll want to keep around: about me, FAQ, maybe my links. I think I'm doing away with my resume and portfolio pages. It's not like I'm using this site to peddle myself anymore.
If I were, with the things I write in this blog, I'd have to be out of my mind to send potential clients/employers here. haha.
Labels: narcissism
What's that you say? Video? Am I talking about a music video?
You can bet your Aunt Suzy's ass I am.
On a sidenote I actually have an Aunt Suzy.
Anywho.
Unless you're a teenager or a night hawk, you won't likely have ever heard of this video, so for the deprived out there, I'm linking it. This is the best video of all time. If you're into women at all, even if you're among the closeted crowd out there, you have to see this thing. Nothing but hot, sexy undulating women in smoking hot workout gear circa 1985 pretending to do aerobics. This thing makes me feel like a damn sexist bastard. In the best sense.
And sometimes its good to revel in what you are. You'll see what I mean when you see the video. You can choose to thank me now, later or not at all. If for some reason the link is down, fire up your trusty filesharing app and search for Eric Prydz. I think he's the lucky gimp in the video with all the hotties. Shouldn't have any trouble finding it. Maybe even from me.
Fuck I love being a man. Another thing I love lately is using words like fuck in my writing. But that's a blog for another day.
One thing though. The song itself, if song isn't too strong a word, is a remake of Steve Winwood's Valerie. It is frustratingly catchy and you'll find yourself turning it over in your head at ridiculous moments afterwards. At least you will if you're me, and solipsist that I am.... well I'll get it when I reread this sometime. But I've never been more appreciative of Steve Winwood at any other point in my life. ;)
On another sidenote I am going to try to get to see The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy tonight, or some other time in my near future. Its one of my favourite books ever, and I suppose I have a little trepidation a la Jeff Dech and his 'Utter Refusal Not To See The Lord Of The Rings Movies'. Like Dech and his understandable fear of Jackson totally fucking up a great work, I'm a little concerned that Hollywood will miss some of the more vitriolic satire that Douglas Adams used to describe humanity. It really is a great book, and I'd only like it more if I was a good enough writer to have wrote it first.
