I can’t believe that between the Olympics, the phenomenal weather, etc. I’ve forgotten to share some very important news: we’ve scheduled the c-section. If she doesn’t arrive sooner, Baby Girl #3 will arrive on October 3, sometime shortly after 10 AM. All continues to look well inside the Baby Mama. The Baby Mama herself is a bit tired and uncomfortable. But that comes with working as much as she’s worked the past couple weeks.
The first of what should be many Olympic Notes entries over the next couple weeks. I looked back at the archives of my original blog today to skim through my thoughts on the 2004 games. I may have to pick out a few gems to share with you during this year’s games. I understand I have a problem of having a problem with people who have problems pronouncing foreign words, especially in the two languages I’ve studied.
The Olympics kind of snuck up on me. All kinds of blog-worthy material there, so look for lots of that stuff over the next couple weeks. For now, I found this on Wired’s website and thought it required sharing. Even if you’re not a Geek, I bet you have a fond place in your heart for WarGames. It’s one of my favorite 80s movies and could have been a turning point in my life.
Don’t mess with the bull, Frenchies. You’ll get the horns. My MacBook just about went across the room at the end of the 4x100 relay. The Olympics are awesome.
A few words about the methodology for my favorite songs list. First, I had to own a song for it to appear on the list. Duh. Second, I limited myself to one song per artist. After some consultation with a few other music geeks, I determined that I could consider both Beatles songs and John Lennon’s solo work separately. Same for Neil Finn’s work with Split Enz, Crowded House, The Finn Brothers, and on his own.
Songs 20-11 of my 20 favorite songs of all-time below the jump. I changed my mind; part two will come out next Friday. 20 “Born to Run” - Bruce Springsteen, 1975. I have this theory, still in its infancy mind you, that all American rock groups must follow one of two models: Van Halen or Bruce Springsteen. They need to be focused on either having a good time for the sake of having a good time (VH), or on having a good time while talking about some important things with friends along the way (The Boss).
A quick but good trip to the lake over the weekend. There were four families, and ten kids total, at this get-together, which made things a little crazy. Especially when the three two-year-olds decided to get wound up. Unfortunately, we were the only family without an older kid - each of the other three had at least a seven-year-old - so our girls lagged behind everyone else a bit. While even the other two-year-olds were hopping into the water (with life jackets, of course), ours would only stick a toe in, or walk ankle deep while holding one of our hands.
Here is my look at the latest iPhone software update, the Application Store, and other things iPhone. I’ve found the iPhone 2.0 software update to be a profoundly mixed-bag. One of the reasons that lines were (and continue to be) so long for the 3G iPhone is how successful the first generation model was. There were some opening weekend issues a week ago, as well, but things quickly fell into place.
We took the girls to our church’s festival/carnival last night. While I did not indulge, I was reminded of why I’m glad I married a Catholic girl: drinking is encouraged at church fund raisers. That’s going to come in handy when the girls get a little older. For now, though, we had to concentrate on keeping the girls from getting trampled and whatnot. We succeeded and they seemed to have a great time.
I was a little disappointed that baseball is being purged from the Olympics after this year. Not that anyone really cares about Olympic baseball, and I can usually name about one of the players on the U.S. squad. But this news makes me think it is a good idea to ditch it. Freaking Euros messing with our traditional American sports.
Perhaps Brett Favre and Manny Ramirez should run off together. And then they could take a significant portion of the sports media with them. Every football off-season, it’s Favre’s retirement drama. And every July, it’s the Manny Wants Out Of Boston drama. Every summer Favre comes back to play another year. Every August, Manny wakes up wearing a Red Sox jersey and goes out and continues to be Manny as long as the Sox play that season.
We decided to bite the bullet, take the plunge, make the move, etc. and put the girls in the same room last night. My rough plan was to do it sometime in August, so we had a buffer A) before school started and B) well before the baby arrived. And so, if we had a set-back, we had time to regroup and try again. But C. continues to have trouble going to sleep when we put her down and then wake up at least once a night because either her teeth are bothering her or just because she’s a stinker and enjoys waking us up, so we were dreading making the move.
We celebrated M.’s fourth birthday last night. As mentioned earlier, her actual birthday is today. We didn’t make a huge deal out of. Next year, no doubt, she’ll realize that she got to go to several cool birthday parties for friends and that she should start complaining about wanting farm animals to come to the house, or a trip to Chuck E. Cheese, or something like that when her birthday comes around.
Our house has been taken over by small creatures I can only assume are aliens. Nearly every room has at least one piece of paper with these strange little being drawn on them. Surely this is some kind of message that there are E.T.’s living in our backyard, right? Either that or anytime you give M. a crayon or pen and a piece of paper, she draws these cute little guys and tells us what people she wants to send them to.
Interesting that these two pieces hit the Internets today. First, Joe Posnanski writes about autographs, mentioning how he sent letters to players and teams as a kid. Then, former player Doug Glanville writes in the New York Times about cleaning out his closet of some fan mail left over from his playing days. Apparently Glanville is a really sharp and cool guy. Who knew? I totally spent my summers in the early 80s sending baseball letters to players, with their cards and SASEs included, and to teams hoping for autographs, stickers, pocket schedules, and any other freebies they were willing to send my way.
Some day I’d like to mic up the girls so I could record every funny thing they say. Although their behavior could often use improvement, about 90% of what they say makes us laugh. One day M. found a wallet-sized picture of her and C. on my desk. She looked at it and said, “Boy, this picture is adorable!” She paused proudly, and then said, “This picture frame is enormous, daddy.
No way did I stay up and watch the end of the All-Star Game. I made it to midnight, which coincided with the end of the 10th inning and the AL wasting the bases loaded, no outs situation. If the All-Star Game is a big gimmick anyway, what with it determining home field for the World Series and all, why not just go to a league-vs-league Home Run Derby after the 9th inning.
In between geeking out with the new iTunes software while waiting for the new iPhone software, I put together a little something about my two most recent books. 22 - <i>Three Bags Full</i> - Leonie Swann. I was searching for a book to take on my Kansas City trip and was torn between a international thriller-type novel and a more straight-forward detective novel. Then I noticed this one on the bookshelves of my local Border’s, noted the blurb from Carl Hiassen on the cover, and then the interesting sub-title: A sheep detective story.
So much for dodging the Barbie bullet. Last week, before my step-dad got to town for the holiday weekend, the girls and I stopped in at Blockbuster to rent some movies. I told M. we could get her a movie, thinking we would get something that she’s seen but we don’t own like Madeline, Mary Poppins, etc. But there, right at the perfect eye level for a nearly-four-year-old, was the Barbie Mariposa movie.
Another outstanding trip back to the motherland of Kansas City. My thanks to all of those who hosted me, dined with me, provided Royals tickets, etc. Chris N., John and Christie N., Erick and Ann R., Sean and Sarah M., Dave V., Omar E., Billy and Stacey B., Steve and Jennifer B., Mary and Derek Y. I think that’s everyone. Forgive me if I left your name out. We’ll run through some details quickly.