Spent the afternoon at my in-laws' with Stephen's aunt, uncle, and cousin. Good day. Best possible weather.

Still trying to write a little piece about the Bobby McFerrin concert. It was truly amazing.

Chloe is whining and kicking her feet while dreaming. She is curled up in our armchair on her back. I wonder what she's dreaming about...

I'm not sure if it is just my NPR station (WAMU 88.5 FM), but on Saturday nights between 8-10pm, it is great. 78rpm records all night, mostly instrumentals. They have themed nights too, like Fats Waller or Django Reinhardt. It never fails to be the best show ont he radio.

Last week my brother Robert was here. Things were hectic. Steve was here for two days. Robert borrowed my car to practice at the church nearly every day. Saturday, I took him back to the airport. Tonight, my other brother Billy arrives for a week-long visit. They are both coming up here for their spring breaks, which is nice. I'm looking forward to it, although there is always that unseen, unspoken tension that guests/roommates adds to the house, especially with the baby.

The weather has warmed up considerably, but lots of rain has fallen. My sump pump was making a horrible sound last night. Just started shaking and making tons of noise when it was done running every cycle. Because of all the rain we had, there was a cycle every 40 seconds. This thing was loud; I bet the neighbors could hear it. Turns out it was just the check valve, so whenever the pump would stop pumping, water would flow back down through the check valve in spurts, causing the whole thing to vibrate in the wooden frame of the house. Those are the instances where babies really make things harder. My kid had another entire day of acting like a brat (lack of naps due to daylight saving time and bowling), and having a crisis at 5pm only made that worse. The end of the story is that I ran out to Lowe's and got a pump and some parts, but then I thought that maybe the pump wasn't bad. I called a plumber and paid $175 for him to put in a check valve, which probably costs $3. And now I have all this stuff to take back to Lowe's. Awesome. Just great.

While Robert was here, we managed to complete the time-consuming chore of absorbing him onto our wireless "family plan." This worked out perfectly, because Robert wanted a new phone number anyway. New phones, new contract, unlimited messaging, blah blah. Now we are splitting the cell phone bill three ways instead of two. Nice. Robert gave Stephen his old phone with the SIMM card removed. This is certainly the best gift Stephen has ever received. He already loves our phones, remote controls... anything that Jaime and I grab and push buttons on, really. Now he has a real (though disabled) cell phone that lights up and beeps when you push the buttons. It is pretty hilarious and cute. If I go into the "Tones" section, he can cycle through the ringtones; after he presses about every button on the phone, he will randomly press "down" and go to the next ring. He smiles every time.

Stephen had a couple of "firsts" while Rob was here. He can now drink a bottle while sitting up. He's been able to hold his own bottle for months, but he had to be lying on his back to drink it. Now he knows to lift the bottle. We can give him a bottle without putting him in his playpen. He can crawl around and drink it as he pleases. Stephen also improved a lot on making a few syllables. da da da, ma ma ma, ba ba ba

We also saw the new Alice in Wonderland on Friday. Not so good. At all.

It's been very hard to update this blog with everything that's been going on. I used up all my stores of saved drafts and even uploaded a few sub-standard pictures just so I could maintain making one post per day. Maybe I'll get back on track now.

The forecast for Manassas has changed. Instead of two straight days of snow, it is supposed to rain all day today and tomorrow. Possibly we will get a snowstorm on Thursday now. So maybe the rain will clean up all the snow and sand for a couple days, then it will dry up on Wednesday, and then we will get more snow. We'll see. My car still has snow on it and Stephen has a Dr. appointment at 8:10am tomorrow. I hope the rain comes today and cleans off my car. Then I will have officially gotten away with never cleaning 30" of snow off my car.

There was an interesting story on the most recent 60 Minutes about The Bloom Box. This is yet another alternate power source that people think might slowly start to replace our current grid. It is compact, wireless (yes, wireless electricity) and "clean." John Doerr, the famous venture capitalist in Silicon Valley, has contributed over $100million to K.R. Sridhar and his company, who have raised nearly half a billion dollars in capital. John Doerr has invested in some famous flops, namely the Segway Scooter. Like the Segway was supposed to revolutionize travel in the U.S., this new power source is supposed to revolutionize the way we power our homes. Everyone would theoretically get their own little box (it really is quite small, about 4" cubed) in their back yard and generate their own power. K.R. Sridhar made the same type of invention for NASA before he ventured into the private sector.

I just sent off a request to this place for a week in August. We are trying to take a vacation with both sides of our family. This place would be ideal. It is close to the ocean and right on a lake. This way, my dad could bring his jet skis and Jaime and her dad could go deep sea fishing. It has internet, pool table, two family rooms, three floors, a pool.. even an elevator, hehe. We only have one week of availability because Billy is enrolled in classes all summer and his fall semester starts in late August. We narrowed down the list last night based on availability and pet allowance. Hopefully everything works out. It will be nice to have the planning of this out of the way. It looks like a good place for photos. I may try to rent a zoom lens for that week.

I have a good couple of weeks coming up. My brother Robert is visiting for his spring break the week of March 7. My brother Billy is visiting for his spring break the week of March 14. Back-to-back weeks. I am going to The Birchmere three times in less than two weeks. Gaelic Storm on March 4 with a group of six. Leon Redbone on March 5 with a group of five. Bobby McFerrin on March 17 with Billy. The Birchmere won't go out of business as long as I'm still in this area.

Stephen is officially nine months old today. His Uncle Gavin is officially twenty-six years old today. It was thirty years ago today that the U.S. hockey team (comprised of U.S. college players) upset the four-time defending gold-medal winning Soviet team, which of course had a lot of political implications as well.

Here is an article about many convergent studies on the potentially negative effects of ingesting fluoride, complete with more links and citations than you'd ever care to click. Fluoride is, of course, good for your teeth; a lack of fluoride accelerates tooth decay. That is why fluoride is in toothpaste and mouthwash... but you don't swallow toothpaste and mouthwash. Fluoride is also in nearly all tap water in the United States, and is not removed by Brita or Pur home water filtration systems. It also can not be removed from water by boiling or freezing your water. I don't believe fluoride in our water is a big conspiracy like Alex Jones does, but I leave open the possibility that we as a nation may have rushed into the fluoridation of our water supply without thinking. We seem to place a lot of emphasis on teeth and beauty, sometimes above all else. (What's the first thing Americans say about the British population as a whole? Man, those Brits have some ugly teeth).

On a lighter note: The weirdest video you will see today. This is more a testament to my odd sense of humor than anything.

Wow. That might be the worst conditions I've ever experienced. The weathermen nailed this prediction. Gusts up to 40mph that cause complete white-outs where you can't see more than ten feet.

I just took the dogs for the shortest walk of their lives. I couldn't feel my face after five minutes. I had to stop every minute or so when the wind kicked up and I couldn't see. The snow falling and blowing around feels like I'm literally being attacked by ice pellets. Glad that's over with.

Someone finally showed up to clear our parking lot with a Bobcat today. They stayed all day and made quite a bit of progress. I figured I had an hour's worth of work left to do before we could eek Jaime's car out of her parking space. I have done maybe 8hrs of shoveling since Saturday. The back steps, the front steps, a small path in the back, uncovered the opening to the french drain in the back, and Jaime's car. Well, as soon as I started shoveling today, the Bobcat guy came over and cleared out the bulk of the snow in front of Jaime's car. It only took me about 20 minutes to clear some more out. There are still piles of snow over two feet tall on either side of Jaime's car, so it has to be parked ever-so carefully.

Between noon tomorrow and Wednesday afternoon, we are supposed to get dumped on again. I've seen reports that say 8-12 more inches; I've seen reports that say 12-20 more inches. Who knows. With all the compacted snow that's still left on the streets, it could be a pretty dangerous situation when more snow falls. I guess that's why the guy is still out there scraping snow off the asphalt with his Bobcat. This is why we went grocery shopping today in case it gets bad again.

I hope I never see another snow shovel in all my life, and I'll most likely be using one again for the next two days. Great.

UPDATE: Jaime said she heard the Bobcat guy still cleaning up our parking lot at 2:30am. You can't tell from looking at it. Most of it is covered in slick, compacted snow. My walk this morning was rather dangerous as it was still dark and I had to walk on the streets. All the streets in our neighborhood and the neighborhood across the street are in rough shape. Only one lane is open, and no blacktop is visible.

Stephen slept through the night for the first time in six nights last night.

A huge snowstorm like this is hardest on the dogs. At first we really can't do anything except wade through snow that is taller than the dogs in an effort to find a place for them to pee. Eventually we can walk on the street but not the sidewalks. At least having dogs forces me to go out and shovel a few paths.

By this morning we were able to take a fairly normal walk, albeit on the streets. Here are some shots from yesterday when it was really hard for the dogs.

I am the biggest idiot on the planet. I took my dogs for a walk.. a regular walk, which is 1.5 or 2 miles. I saw things I may never see again. I trudged through waist-high snow in the middle of the street. I saw piles of snow six feet high or more next to people's freshly-shoveled driveways. I took my camera, of course. Who wouldn't want to take an opportunity to document the area's biggest snowfall on record?

Many streets had not been touched by plows. We were walking along places where tires had crushed the snow, slipping and sliding all the way. Everyone was out taking pictures or shoveling their driveways.

I got back to the house and grabbed the measuring tape. While trying to take a few snapshots of the measuring tape sticking out of the snow, my spirits were crushed. I had the camera on manual focus for the entire walk, and my pictures are most likely completely worthless. I had some good stuff at my fingertips, and I threw it all away by having manual focus turned on. What an ass.

By the way, my measurement was only 23" which is certainly not any kind of record. It's only one more inch than we had December 19-20th.