A Christmas Wish

Daddy's Home

Ryan's two months old today. To celebrate, my wife gave him breast milk sixty-two times.
Or at least that's probably how it feels to Mommy, the poor lass.
It's so great to be home and spend time with my wife and son, something people in "normal" families take for granted. (If you do - stop it!) We haven't exactly been relaxing -- had to get out our Christmas cards and finish up wrapping presents, and Our Boy the Attention Hog doesn't exactly sit up on a shelf like a chrysanthemum to let us get to work. But neither one of us is complaining. I certainly am trying to make up for lost time, getting to know the routines and my new son's expressions and moods and gazes and gurgles. He's just so cool and so adorable. I'm also proud that we've bonded well and he hasn't, you know, peed in my eye or something yet.
My in-laws flew to Washington Monday to spend the holidays with their other daughter's family, so we did an early Christmas gift exchange after the Redskins handed the Cowboys their half-gallon hats, 35-7 -- the most lopsided victory in their rivalry's history. Kind of hard to get a kid to sleep when you've got a bunch of people cheering every touchdown and Dallas mistake. Especially when the Redskins have a defensive player named Griffin. "Good play, Griffin!" Our dog, Griffin (no relation), doesn't know what he did, but he wags his tail anyway.
It's also nice to have my brother here, as he's been great helping out when we need an extra set of hands or an extra person to go BOOP BA BADDA THRPRPRPR to the boy to keep him occupied between meals. I still can't believe my wife has been doing this on her own for eight weeks. She's been operating on ten minutes of sleep a day since Halloween and she's still a beautiful, energetic mother. To think I was complaining about staying up late to write papers.
Sheesh.

Prison

Okay, vacation started hours ago, why I am still here?
Granted, I didn't finish my last final take-home exam until 4:30 this morning, and then went to bed at 6, and the entire east coast from Pennsylvania down to Bolivia is covered in a half inch of ice, but STILL. Cripes. Lordy. Santa Maria. Jumbalaya. Tanqueray and lime.
The weather wasn't even that bad here. It was all rain this morning as I slank out the door (slinked? slonk?), bypassing the drunk girl in the lobby who asked me for a cigarette, to drive up to AFIT to slip my Management Aspects of Information Warfare exam underneath the prof's door. Then the 3-5 inches of snow "they" said the rain was going to turn to never materialized. Flakes fell for few fours fut felted fon fhe froads. But better safe than sorry, and the weather on the other side of the (*snicker*) "mountains" looked a heck of a lot worse for traveling in, especially at night, especially on thirty-eight minutes of sleep.
I took the extra time to wrap a bunch of presents and clean up the dumpster that is apartment 415, eat the last of the frosted flakes, and recharge my flux capacitor for an early morning escape.
Stoopid weather. I would have been home by now.

Ryan Descartes

I poop, therefore I am.

Epstein's Mother Saves My Arse

Thanks to the Storm of the...Day, one of my professors pushed the due date of a 15-page paper from Friday to Monday. I would have danced a jig in my apartment, but I really don't have the room.
We only got about four or five inches, but it's my first snow in the city, and shoveling my car out from the snowplowed mound was a hoot. It's snowing again this morning, and more is predicted for Wednesday, which is fine as long as I can still leave Thursday. I don't care if I have to drive west to St. Louis and down to Houston and over to Jacksonville and up the East Coast, I'm going home. Dammot.

I saw a man on the side of the road with a sign: "Will work for food." So I gave him a coconut.

Now It Can Be Told

My brother decided to surprise the United States of America by visiting from England, only he accidentally told some people, who told other people, who posted it on a website, and then someone in the CIA probably leaked it, so that by last Tuesday only my wife and Beth didn't know.
But I'm pleased as Hawaiian Punch that Uncle Tim has met his nephew and my wife has some company until I get home.

YET BEWARE THE EVIL-HAND-PUPPET HUNTER

It has been snowing east of the Rockies since September 3rd, it seems. My wife, with her hands full, has not been able to throw snowballs for the dogs, so huzzah for Uncle Tim. Only no one told him about the dangers of putting on gloves and wiggling fingers in a taunting manner at Bailey, who knows that anything put on the hands is a monster that must be attacked.
I'm told the bleeding stopped after a few minutes.

HELLO, MY NAME IS...

It was bad enough that we had two Dans in the family, but now that I'm a father, I'm a dad, Dad's a dad, my wife's dad is a dad, and don't get me started on how my wife labels Christmas presents. I kept giving her father presents meant for me because they were labeled "Daddy", not knowing they were gifts from the dogs.
My wife told me a story a few weeks ago that her parents were in town, and everyone was hanging out in the front room, dogs snoozing on the floor, and a lull in the conversation had everything peaceful and quiet.
She spoke up all of a sudden to her father: "So, Daddy..."
The dogs all jumped up and looked out the window.

:-(

bzy

papers finals late nights early mornings tired grumpy sick last week not this howdy.
my wife called to tell me that our son smiled at her today.
stoopid afit.

Sk8er B0i

Sometimes, procrastination is a good thing.
I can't get any work done in my apartment, thanks to the multiplex theater that is my neighbor, so I had planned to be out at AFIT past midnight. I was out at the computer lab, stuck in a rut between question a and b in take-home quiz 3, so I clicked on the down-arrow on the internet explorer address bar to see what was going on in the news, and saw the daytondailynews.com link in my recent history scrolldown listing.
enh? let's see what's happenin' local-like.
First story? Weather advisory: Sleet and ice.
Threw everything in my bag and headed out. Apartment discotheque be damned. Better to get home before the roads get nasty. As it was, I had to scrape a quarter-inch of ice off my windshield, and I stuck to a slow crawl on the city roads. The sidewalks were a skating rink, and the 11 o'clock news reported over 40 accidents on the local highways.
I'm home in 11 days.
Weather permitting.

Bringing the Mountain to Mohammed

I have a million things to do in the next two weeks. I was stuck at the library most of yesterday, so I knew I wouldn't get a chance to get down to the humane society. Which was probably for the best, since it was cold and wet and snowy. However, a guy's gotta eat.
Driving to Restaurant Row just off base, the Gods of Volunteerism intervened, as I saw a black lab darting through traffic. I was actually worried that it had been hit, it was running so fast. I was able to follow it, and as she crossed an intersection, sniffing cars, I pulled over and whistled at it, and she came right up to me, jumping up to my window. I got out of the car, and she rolled onto her back, whimpering, but apparently unhurt. I coaxed her into my car, but then noticed she had recently rolled in some excrecetory organic matter, so I tried to clean wipe that off her with some napkins and papers I had in the front seat. So I had a wet, stanky, licky dog to take care of.
I called the Humane Society, but they said they don't take strays. (!) They gave me the number for animal control, and after four more phone calls, I found the right location to take my new passenger.
I'm off to go buy a car deodorizer.