Happy birthday to me

Well, it's my 35th birthday today. All in all, I'd say it's been 35 pretty damn good years.

Over the course of my lifetime, I've managed--through luck, good fortune, and the benelovence of countless friends and my amazing family--to do many things that I can look back on with fondness, from moving to Spain to work and live to meeting the love of my life on a beach in San Francisco.

Of course, the best thing to happen so far is currently hanging out with her mommy and patiently waiting for me to get home....

Still, it's the people you meet in your life's journey that make it all special and worthwhile. It's been said to the point of becoming cliché, but by god, it's true.

So here's to all of you, friends, family, my beautiful, wonderful wife and baby. You've made the last 35 years fantastic. I love you all. Every man should be so lucky.

Now if the U.S. could beat Mexico tomorrow, my birthday would be REALLY special.... :-)

Mr. Fastfinger's Zen Guitar Teachings

Okay, this simply rules.

This Flash animation takes you to a faraway tropical island to study rock guitar with none other than the Zen guitar master himself, Mr. Fastfinger. The animations are hilarious, and the guitar lessons are right on! I can't wait to get home to practice some of this heavy metal madness! Whoever played this stuff is fricking amazing, and whoever coded it is brilliant.

In the "Jam" section, you use the A-Z keys (each riff is assigned to a key) to do battle, Crossroads guitar-dual style, with an evil, accordian-weilding demon who is entrancing the native pygmy population (this is hilarious, folks!). The riffs blend seamlessly with the background track and really gives you the feeling of "jamming" along. Try it!

If I can learn even a couple of these riffs, my bandmates are going to crap their pants at Thursday's practice! Rock ON!

Luxe life

Check out my fabulous slippers -- they are cush.

Summer's counting down

Jenny and I were talking last night about how the summer is almost over but it doesn't really feel like it's even begun. This is due in no large part to the fact that Sylvie is too young for pool time, sun exposure, parties with other kids, etc. (Not that hanging with the baby isn't totally cool, 'cause it is!)

Plus Jenny is dying to go to the beach, but we haven't been able to find one we like yet (Rehoboth is too cheese-mo-dee for us nowadays). We're planning a post-Labor Day beach jaunt this September, so the next step is finding a beach we want to go to!

Help me, Obi-Net, you're my only hope!

Redskins/Steelers; Man Room stage 1

Wow does it ever feel like Monday today. It's muggy and kind of gray out there, and I can't seem to get motivated (or woken up).

Still, this was a fun-filled weekend. On Friday, I went to the Redskins vs. Steelers preseason game at FedEx field. The tickets were fantastic -- right on the 35 yard line and only seven rows back from the field! Plus, they were free! One of the owners of a printer I work with for a lot hooked me up with four tix, a parking pass, and a free program coupon! Very nice, and much appreciated by yours truly, my boss, and my neighbors Kim and Bill who all attended the game with me. Jenny babysat...thanks honey!

As many of you may know, the Steelers are my AFC team and the Redskins my NFC team, so I was in a no-lose or no-win situation, depending on how you look at it. For what it's worth, the Skins won.

Saturday was pretty lazy. Jenny, Sylvie, and I took a walk and mostly hung out. I did make it up to Sears to pick up my early birthday gifts from my folks: a Craftsman 10" table saw and Craftsman compound miter saw! Woo hoo! My shop is almost ready for world domination!

On Sunday I decided to use the inspiration of my new tool acquisitions to get my butt in gear and finally put up the partition in the basement to create our fourth bedroom. I did some math (no mean feat) and trudged up to Home Depot to get the 2 X 4s I would need to frame up the wall. I'll get started sawing and nailing tonight. I promise to post step-by-step photos to keep everyone updated on my progress.

A Real Meal

We actually sat down this week to a real meal. I was so excited by this concept that I took a picture of it. Here is what the meal is made up of:
- pork chops (boneless) w. a curry rub
- steamed asparagus
- a yukon gold potato and turnip mash (w. sauteed onions)

17 years is not long enough

Sorry to be a bummer with this post, but a news story just came out that makes me, as the father of a new baby, incredibly enraged.

Those of you who don't live in the D.C. area are probably not familiar with the terrible news story last year of a tiny baby tortured and, ultimately, killed by her mother's crack dealer.

Well, the crack dealer got 17 years in prison today. Her sentence is a joke. Caroline Deforest, the killer, is 34 years old. That means she'll be out of prison when she's merely 51 years old. And that's assuming that she serves her full sentence. Not likely, as we all know.

Caroline Deforest tortured and killed a defenseless infant. According to the washingtonpost.com article, the timeline went roughly like this:

"Soon, neighbors and friends began seeing bruises and scratches on Selena's face and arms, according to prosecutors. Deforest started isolating the infant, minimizing her contact with other people. One person saw a bite mark on Selena's arm, an apparent lighter burn on her hand and bruises on her face.

Trying to conceal the injuries from others, Deforest stopped allowing others to feed, change or dress the baby. Eventually, she draped Selena's playpen with blankets to keep others from seeing her at all.

In the early days of January, the sounds from behind the blankets started to fade.

By Jan. 12, 2004, they had stopped altogether."

Seventeen years? Wow.

Say it isn't so!

Sylvia: So Beck, did you hear about the carrot who got hit by a car and had to go to the hospital?

Beck: No, what happened?

Sylvia: He was a vegetable for the rest of his life.

8 Tricks and facts about the girl

1. She makes very funny sounds when she sleeps. What could she be dreaming about? Perhaps she has nightmares about the mosquito net that we make her use on her carseat...does it make her claustrophobic?
2. She was 10 lbs, 4 ozs at her one-month check up. WOW. I bet she's ~11lbs now. It feels like it.
3. She likes to flip me the bird when eating at restaurant jenny. Or maybe she's just showing me that she knows what the state of West Virginia is shaped like.
4. She can hold her own bottle. SCARY.
5. When doing "tummy time" she can scoot across the mat if she has something to push off from. She's also easily distracted by said mat and tries to eat the lobsters, fish and crab that are part of the design. MMM...microfleece lobster tastes GOOOOOD.
   
6. She can smile and it's not just gas.
7. She has two boyfriends who are fighting for her attention, Beck and James. Beck is 2 mos. old and James is 3 mos. old. This fact stresses Joe out.
8. She likes the song, "Tiny Bubbles."

It's like sleepwalking, but with your mouth

So, I turned 34 on Saturday. Don't feel any change vs. being 33. By the time my birthday party ended (1130p!), Joe and I were zonked.

Around 130a (still up on baby monitoring 2005), I hear "Sylvia's on a search." I say, "huh?" He says, "She's on a search for 500 actuaries!" I say, "What the heck are you talking about," not realizing that he's fallen asleep on the couch behind me; I was on the computer.

He then wakes up and I tell him what had happened and I say to him, "It's like sleepwalking, but with your mouth."

Pity the poor WV coal barons....boo hoo.

Don Blankenship, the CEO of Massey Coal, the largest corporate rapist...er...coal company in West Virginia, is suing the governor, Joe Manchin (who, ironically, is a major coal whore in his own right), in retailiation for a measely 56-cent severance tax on mined coal in the state.

What gall.

To quote Blankenship, “[Legislators should] show some frugality, so that when times are tough, 10 or 15 years down the road, they don’t have to encumber coal and the coal industry so much as they have in the past.”

Boo hoo. I feel really, really sorry for the poor coal industry. They've been so mistreated and "encumbered" as they have received permit after blood-drenched permit to chop the tops off the WV mountains, break unions, and endanger thousands of communities with unstable earthen dams that contain millions of gallons of coal sludge, sometimes within yards of elementary schools (see photo above).

And let's not forget how hard things have been on Mr. Blankenship personally.... After all, as recently as 2002, he only made a $1 million base salary and a $350,000 bonus, plus stock options. Poor fellow.

So please take a moment out of your busy day to pray for the poor, poor coal industry. They are so mistreated, it makes you want to vomit. Well, something does, at least.

Napping is the best

Stop Drive-through Mastectomies

This issue is really important to me as my aunt passed away this year from metastasized breast cancer. For more info and to sign the petition please click on this link:
http://www.lifetimetv.com/reallife/bc/pledges/bc_mast_pledge.html

Tired.

That, in a word describes my brain right now. Stress at work combined with baby crankiness and midnight feedings have taken their toll and I'm feeling a little burned. I know Jenny must be too. Don't let anyone kid you (no pun intended); having a wee one who needs attention pretty much 24/7 can be tough. Not that it isn't worth it a billion trillion times over, of course. Combine that with about oh, six trillion things at work that all need to be done right now, and you've got synapse destruction waiting to happen.

I could really use about a 16-hour nap right now.

In case there were any doubts....

fashionista

Happy 1 month b-day Sylvie!

It's hard to believe that it's already been a month since Sylvia was born. We thought we couldn't love you any more back then, baby, but we were wrong!

:-)

This war is turning us into the animals we despise

According to an article on this morning's Washingtonpost.com, U.S. soldiers are currently under investigation for more torture in Iraq, specifically torture that resulted in the death of an Iraqi general. In addition, the article reports on CIA-sponsored Iraqi torture squads who, in the words of one former CIA agent "do the dirty work."

From the article: "On the morning of Nov. 26, 2003, a U.S. Army interrogator and a military guard grabbed a green sleeping bag, stuffed Mowhoush inside, wrapped him in an electrical cord, laid him on the floor and began to go to work. Again.

"It was inside the sleeping bag that the 56-year-old detainee took his last breath through broken ribs, lying on the floor beneath a U.S. soldier in Interrogation Room 6 in the western Iraqi desert. Two days before, a secret CIA-sponsored group of Iraqi paramilitaries, working with Army interrogators, had beaten Mowhoush nearly senseless, using fists, a club and a rubber hose, according to classified documents."

This is a disgrace to our country, our flag, and everything we stand for. If this is how we bring "freedom" to a country, it's high time to reevaluate our methods.

In case I forget...

...this is the "i want food now face"

"All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up"